COMMUN BOOSTS Unemployment

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The Communist Party leaders in the Italian trade union movement have taken the lead in a campaign to "prune" wage claims and help the employers reduce the unit cost of labour.

As the "centre-left" coalition government - based or an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party - last week prepared an economic package to try to counteract the deepening recession, Luciano Lama, National Secretary of the main Communist led trade union federation, the CGIL, issued a call for "voluntary" wage restraint. "The objective today" he said, "is to struggle against unemployment, rather than for wage increases.

Lama's attack on wage claims comes in a situation where loss of work through unemployment and short time in industry has increased over seven times between the first half of 1974 and the same period this year.

The Stalinists thus pick up the classic cudgel with which capitalism attempts to make the working class pay for the economic crisis -'take wage cuts or you'll lose your jobs" '. And they do so at a time when at least 40 national agreements are coming up for negotiation in the late summer and early auturnn. These include important sections of workers, such thran •n ansingarina motol_ The turn to the right in Stalinist trade union policy is part and parcel of their continuing behind-the-scenes campaign to get an agreement for coalition with the Christian Democrats. A labyrinthine struggle within the top echelons of the Christian Democrats to remove the thoroughly anti-communist party secretary Amintore Fanfani, has continued since the Communist Party scored significant gains against the right in the June regional elections.

Coalition

But far from putting up any programme to defend the rights of workers in the crisis and break up the present coalition, the Communist Party chiefs prepare to sacrifice pay packets as the price of their entry into a popular front coalition - a enalition which. if