Shipbuilding jobs under Labour axe

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Market set-up.

This cost leaves out the massively inflated food pricesanything up to 2½ times the level of world prices-which are built into the EEC system itself, and have formed a major component of the fall in working class living standards since the unholy coalition of Labourites, Tories and Liberals The real face of Labour's "nationalisation" of only bankrupt sections of British capitalism was revealed last week.

The announcement of £108 million losses in British Shipbuilders was followed almost at once with revelations of the gargantuan job-slashing programme now planned in a bid to make the industry profitable.

And at the same time union leaders are playing along with a pay plan which promises the most miserable rises offered by any employer outside British Leyland.

As a result shipyard workers face:

*12,300 sackings-linked to speed up for the 74,000 left in work.

*Centralised pay bargaining in the hands of appointed officials.

*A rise this year of well *Some grades to receive no pay rise for 24 years.

The pay proposals were strangely praised as "revolutionary" by one member of the shipbuilding committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which is recommending the deal.

But the rates on offer are a measly £80 for skilled men, £70 for semi-skilled and £62 for unskilled.

Despite an ostentatious show of opposition to the sackings by Boilermakers' leader John Chalmers, there is no prospect that he or his fellow union bureaucrats will call any form of action to enforce his demand for the redundant workforce to be retained on fuli pay until they find work.

They have in essence accepted the argument that workers should tailor their demands to the financial state of British Shipbuilders-which is only an aspect of the international crisis affecting the industry in every capitalist country.

Meanwhile the private firms that feed off lucrative contracts Chalmers with British Shipbuilders continue to draw profits from the misery and exploitation of shipyard workers.

The Labour leaders took a conscious decision to force this crunch situation in the shipyards by imposing a limit on the deficit of the 'nationalised' firm -just as the government is the motive force behind the attacks on jobs and conditions in British Leyland and British Steel.

In taking these steps they show how their concept of nationalisation operates solely in the interests of the crisis-ridden capitalist class.

The books of the nationalised industries must be opened to elected committees of trade unionists to reveal the sections of big business that exploit the state sector.

Such information is essential ammunition in demonstrating the inability of reforms within capitalism to guarantee jobs or working conditions, and the necessity for the expropriation of major industry and the banks as a step towards a planned socialist economy.

Such a course means an all out fight for the removal of the existing labour and trade union leaders and the building of a principled revolutionary leadership.

HOTO: Ray Smith, IFL xi Mass meeting of shipyard workers

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Hednesday 22 Nore When Newsweek correspondents went looking for quotes on President Carter's so-called "anti-inflation" package, they found the Teamsters union leadership gathered at a golf tournament in southern California.

"The rifle is pointed at our contract", said one wealthy bureaucrat, presumably between greens.

That "contract" is the master pay contract covering 400,000 Teamster truck drivers, due for negotiation next March.

The present contract was won after a three-day national strike in which truck drivers blockaded main highways and fought gun battles with policeand provided a 32% rise over 3 years, plus an unlimited cost-of-living clause giving automatic increases to match price rises.

RULE 1: DON'T GET THROWN. RULE 2: STAY IN THE RING. RULE 3: REMAN CALM.

RULE4: LEARN JAPANESE. RULE 5:

WATON HIS EYES Oliphant 1978 Washington Democrat Tweedledum.

One exception :to this appears to have been in the state of Missouri, where, as reported previously in Socialist Press, employers had waged a multi-million pound campaign in support of a 'Right to Work' law.

If passed this would have outlawed the union closed shop, as is the case in some 20 states.

Union bureaucrats were forced to fight this move, and a substantial rank and file campaign amongst union membersFold dealers his "anti-inflation" package by mutual agreement rather than by law means that the full burden of controlling the wages militancy of the working class falls onto the shoulders of an increasingly hard pressed trade union bureaucracy.

And these officials, for all their willingness to serve US capital, are painfully aware that Carter's much-vaunted price controls offer more get-outs than a collander.

The White House is already talking of permitting increases