Social Contract Collapses Low Pad Workers Face Sell-out

Scan page 1

Michelin, strikes have so far been averted by offers well above the limit; and in Fords, management have reached a figure nearly three times the government ceiling.* Fourteen TUC leaders felt painfully aware that they would face the full fury of their members if they put their names to a new pay limit.

A particular embarassment to them was Healey's credit squeeze measures only days before the vote, which brought mortgage rises sufficient to gobble the entire 5% increase in one go.

Striking bakers in Walthamstow. The news of new forces joining the strike.

But the other 14 leadersincluding 'left' demagogue Clive Jenkins-decided they would sooner continue to combat their own members than run the risk of a stand-up confrontation with the government on wages.

Consensus

The rejection of the agreement marks the end of three years of general consensus between Labour and TUC bureaucrats-years which have brought historically unprecedented cuts in working class living standards.

This means that with the 5% limit effectively a dead duck wherever determined leadership is given in the private sector, the weapons Healey will use against the working class are the same as a Tory government would use.

The government will rigidly resist wage demands in the public sector, and use monetarist policies designed to cut inflation by increasing unemployment and cutting public spending.

This strategy depends on the weakness and tacit collaboration of the public sector union leaders whose members include some of the worst paid workers in the country.

Strike action

Every indication suggests a growing willingness among these workers to take all-out strike action in pursuit of the E60, 35-hour week demand submitted jointly by unions representing 1.1 million local authority workers, and by 300,000 hospital workers.

Healey will already have been strengthened in his stand by the knowledge that the local authority workers' claim should have been settled three weeks ago and there is still no sign of action from union leaders.

The most flamboyant of these is NUPE chief Alan Fisher, who by holding back his members last winter, played a key role in isolating the firemen's strike against Phase 3, and ensuring that NUPE members were held to the 10% limit.

Now he is reportedly planning not a serious, all-out strike to break the 5% limit, but "guerrilla" strikes, local stoppages and token protests.

Whittling down

Such action would be criminal. By whittling down militancy it could lead to a miserable 5% sell-out, and thus condemn millions of other workers in the public sector to a further year of drastic wage cuts.

The fight on pay in the public sector must be recognised as an all-out fight against the Labour government.

But NUPE and the other unions in the public sector have the strength to win such a battle, provided their strength is connected with the strength of the other sections of workers now coming into struggle against wage controls.

Futile gestures

In countering Fisher's futile protest gestures and partial actions, local authority and hospital workers must take the lead in calling for the setting up in each area of councils of action, comprising delegates from trade unions, workers polițical parties, tenants associations, students and claimants bodies, with the aim of spreading and coordinating all-out strike action to break the 5% limit in the public sector. Such bodies can also provide an important arena within which policy can be decided and action planned on other struggles in each area-the fight against closures and sackings; the fight for unionisation; the fight against public spending cuts.

They must put down demands that those Labour MPs and trade union leaders that claim to oppose Healey's policies launch an active campaign to drive out the Callaghan-Healey leadership and take up a fight for a socialist programme, and offering them support insofar as they do so, Struggles In the course of these struggles, revolutionaries will fight to prove to workers in practice that what is needed is not simply the replacement of right wing Labour leaders with Labour 'lefts' but the construction of a principled, revolutionary leadership prepared to mobilise the full strength of the working class in defence of its interests.

*As we go to press talks between Ford management and the unions are continuing with the union leaders clearly hoping for a settlement in the next day or so.

Scan page 2

ber, 1978

----- pull-quotes -----

EFICIAL STRIAT PHOTO: Mark Rusher. IFL