Their perks more than your

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"That's why some people seem so much richer than the rest of us"

This is the way last week's Man Alive Report (BBC-2) summed up a whole catalogue of tax-free perks which bolster the already fat salaries of top management.

There were some interesting statistics, particularly in a period of a rigid 5% limit on workers' wage increases.

FOr those workers struggling with the HP payments, repair bills, insurance fees, mortgages and prospects of rising petrol costs to keep family cars on the road, it is instructive to learn that three out of every five new cars that pass you by are provided free of charge by companies.

An initiative which could transform the fight against the cuts in Sheffield was begun on Saturday with the calling of a delegate conference 'On Cuts in the Health Service"

The conference adopted a fighting programme of policies to offer a lead to trade union branches and Labour Party wards, and a steering committee was elected to co-ordinate the campaign.

Rundown

Speakers from the Organising Committee presented a detailed report on the running down of the health service in Sheffield and brought out the importance of occupation linked to supporting strike action as the only tactics to defend threatened jobs and services.

Ron Giles (ASTMS)

brought out the links between fighting the cuts and the struggle against low pay, stressing that only a sliding scale of wages could protect health workers' living standards.

While families scrape around for the cash for one holiday a year, 48% of companies pay for wives/ husbands to accompany representatives on business trips.

36% addition And "perks" in one form or another account on average for a 36% addition to the salary of managing directors.

Foremen, on the other hand, have to scrape by with average benefits worth only an extra 13%.

The Man Alive Report detailed a number of case histories to prove how top bosses can easily add tax free perks to their salary worth more than the average annual wage.

One executive talked casually about the pension In moving the Organising Committee's resolution to the conference he also emphasised the need for nationalisation of drug and supply companies, the importance of this to be demonstrated by a fight to open the books of Area Health Authorities: to elected committees of trade unionists and users of the health service.

The resolution also spelt out a programme of occupation and strike action to combat the cuts in the city.

The extent of these cuts was outlined by lan Davidson (ASTMS) who painted a familiar picture of job losses, reductions in hospital beds, long waiting lists and penny-pinching by the Area Health Authority which was resulting in totally inadequate, facilities.

The start of the latest round of attacks comes with the closure of part of the Sheffield Royal Infirmary in January and the conference resolved to oppose this and to campaign to save the rest of the threatened hospital.

Other speakers included scheme, free Jaguar car, sick benefits, free slap-up lunches, education grants, telephone rental and accountants' fees paid out by his grateful firm:

And merchant banker Tony Vernon- Harcourt welcomed the .BBC cameras into his sumptuous home to tell viewers about his cheap mortgage, car, pension, medical insurance and meals worth, he estimated, around £4,750 after tax-or £15,000 before tax.

More ingenious Whole businesses are no' setting up to advis employers of new, mor ingenious ways of forkin out benefits for top manag ment that evade governmer wage controls and taxatio The new name for suc perks is "alternative remul Ted Eames (Oxford City Nursery Campaign), Ken Williamson (Chairman of the Longworth Hospital Support Committee) and Candy Unwin from "Fightback"

Ted Eames attacked the treacherous role of the trade union bureaucracy in sabotaging the fight against the cuts and underlined the international nature of the crisis of capitalism which the Labour government is attempting to foist onto the working class.

Specific details of the occupation of the South Oxford Nursery, of the building of the Longworth hospital defence campaign and of continuing struggles in London and South Wales were brought out.

Supporting strikes

Ken Williamson used the example of the recently ended occupation of Hounslow Hospital to illustrate the absolute necessity for supporting strike action whenever services are occupied.

The Sheffield Campaign Against Cuts in the Health Service now has a clear PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report eration"

Virtually free suits, and even camera equipment are one possible new area still being explored.

Rigid controls

Meanwhile on the shop floor where workers' sweat creates the profit squandered by these parasites, wages are subject to rigid government It was typical of the BBC to attempt to defuse the dynamite contained in the first part of the programme with a futile "discussion" at the end in which an ageing TGWU convenor predictably burbled on about how "disgusting" it all was--before trotting out an absurd pet scheme for a universal 18% rate of tax to apply to all programme on which to fight in the labour movement in the city.

Major battles lie ahead, particularly with the deeply entrenched Stalinists whose considerable strength in Sheffield is consistently used to attempt to undermine the labour movement's willingness to fight the cuts.

But the campaign, which has already successfully defended a threatened children's hospital, has the opportunity to provide the kind of revolutionary socialist leadership which the Stalinists, reformists and 'protest' groups cannot challenge. wages and salaries.

This nonsense brought equally predictable favourable noises from employers' spokesmen.

And the regulation 'sociologist' was wheeled out to mutter that it was all "rather sad", , lamenting the nergy required to obtain sufficient perks to secure top management's "social status"-as if all the material benefits were sought for psychological reasons!

The fact is that under capitalism such corruption and inequality are built into the very system itself, where party STARR MORE HO PITE PT.

A WSL pamphlet How to fight the cuts the chosen representatives of the private owners of the means of production supervise the exploitation of the working class who own nothing but their ability to work.

The answer lies not in cosmetic measures to cut perks but on action to force the expropriation of basic industry, without compensation, under workers' management which will ensure that ' "managers" become accountable to and equally paid with the remainder of the workforce:

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ADOSTRIA The third day of the Hounslow work-in, September 1977 Dromey. GLATC chairman out patients departments.

NALGO's National Executive, members wrote their own letter . L and +hand amittor curh nocitinns The occupation of Hounslow: Hospital was ended on Tuesday 28 November after a statement issued by the Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow Area Health Authority that they were to arrange removal from the premises.

This was widely understood to mean likely moves to eviction by the AHA.

Hounslow Hospital had been occupied for over a year, (the longest occupation in the history of the NHS) as part of a and local press coverage turned the event of the raid in favour of the Hospital's defence and against the AHA.

Hounslow Hospital became a national focal point of the fight against hospital closures and cuts in health expenditure.

Assisted by the Hounslow Trades Council, the Occupation Committee was a major force in creating the Fightback organisation, and also launched a local Area Campaign Committee NEWS against health service cuts.

However, the political weaknesses of the Occupation Committee were not corrected; namely mere protest politics, the spawning • of lusions in "left" Labour MPs and union bureaucrats and the refusal to campaign for national indefinite strike action against cuts in the health service Thus great store was put in last Friday's meeting of South East Region TUC Secretary Jack Frank Stiller, members of oner trade Unionists . anu members of the Occupation Committee with members of the AHA.

It was hoped that this meeting could produce a joint delegation to David Ennals that would prevent a statement from the AHA that it could not run a health service on: its present budget, and requiring the refunctioning ot the X-ray and Nho De stepped upHowever, the three AHA that JULI MUSTIVIN.

The decision to end the occupation of Hounslow Hospital was opposed by a minority of the Occupation Committee, and it has been agreed that a steering committee will pay close attention to the future of the Hounsiow health service and that a national campaign against cuts in the meeting throws out

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