Oil crisis hits US pay limits 4INFLATION BILIEJS 257 24390 557694

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thus boosting the profits of US toyed with the idea of taxing Loyea wittElit away much of the increasewhile of course leaving the oil bosses sufficient extra loot to keep them quiet.

Now the OPEC increases mean inevitable rises in oil prices over and above Carter's moves.

Having steeled himself to boosting price inflation by a calculated amount, he now faces the prospect of a dramatic increase at a time when prices are already rocketing upwards.

January's figure of 0.9% inflation was followed by 1:2% in February-a 15% annual rate. Oil increases come on top of this, striking a sévere blow at Carter's hopes of enforcing a 7% pay limit in key union negotiations in the next few months.

Shaky The pay policy had ıde a shaky start, assisted onl y the determination of . US inion bureaucrats to preser' their reactionary alliance with amounts to 35% over 3 years— with 13.5% in the first year.

This is clearly well in excess of Carter's guidelines-though well below the going rate of inflation.

When bosses leaders' offered only halt the claim, Teamster leader Fitzsimmons attempted to disguise the issue by arguing that payment of 58 cents an hour due in April under the Teamster's existing cost of living Agreement should be added to the 64 cent offer-and claiming that this did not breach Carter's pay policy.

The fact is that truck drivers are already entitled to that 58 cents an hour under last year's agreement-it is not up for negotiation.

Fitzsimmons appears to be lining up a settlement which will trade away half the claim in exchange for this cow-of-living supplement-thus producing a fictitiously high increase, in the hopes of fobbing off militants within the Teamsters' ranks.

indeed the prospect of a strike is one that sends cold shudders down the spines of Carter and Fitzsimmons alike. simmons' gangster leadership which, in deep collaboration with the bosses and the capitalist partners, does nothing but hold back that strength.

Paralysing strike

As for Carter, the memories of last year's bitter miners' strike are all too vivid: he knows that a stoppage by truck drivers could quickly * 'paralyse the country. Already •he has made it clear that he would immediately apply for an injunction under the union-busting Taft-Hartley laws to enforce an 80-day "cooling off period" if a strike was called.

And Teamster leaders, rather than preparing to mobilise the giant 2 million-strong union to fight such measures have attempted only courtroom manoeuvres to test out Carter's legal powers to impose such measures.

This confrontation takes place however under conditions of sharpening mass struggle in the US working class.

In California thousands Contreras, gunned down en the picket line by a farm owner.

, Police in Salinas have already purchased $250,000 worth of tear gas and other ' strike breaking equipment to assist scabs when full scale harvesting begins.

Employers have clearly decided not only to resist wage demands but to attempt to break the UFW. Chavez- up to his neck in collaboration with Democratic Party politicianshas been unable to outline any strategy to tight such attacks, and professed himseif "surprised" at the employers' attitude.

Texas fight

But this is not a reflection of the mood of the membership. On the contrary, in Texas, too downtrodden farmworkers are responding to bosses' attacks and falling living standards by turning towards the UFW. An 800-strong, Organising Convention in San Juan, Texas showed the militancy and readiness of these workers to fight against formidable odds for the right trade union organisation.

Shipbuilders

And another mass section of workers also fighting simultaneously for tradé union rights and tor improved • lIvIng standards are the 13,000 Steel Workers Union members at Newport News Shipbuilding, who have been on strike since January 31.

Newport News is in Virginia. And Virginia is a 'right to work' state in which the closed shop is outlawed and employers stand even more confident of the support of the courts and the police in their efforts to keep the unions. out.

But the rapid growth of the USWA in the yard and the tenacity of the year-old strike there by 1,200 designers both indicate that only the bankruptcy of political perspective within the USWA bureaucracy will prevent a major inroad being made against, the employers' anti-union set up.

is vital that all-out solidarity blacking action is fought for by the whole US labour movement against Newport News Shipbuilding's owners, the giant Tenneco oil monopoly, to break the isolation of the strikers in Virginia and force the employers to recognise the nation-wide strength of the trade unions.

At the same time the struggle must continue to break the unions from, the paralysing bloc with the Democrats brought about by their reactionary bureaucratic leaders.

The demand must be for the building of a Labour Party on a programme that will start out from the independent class interests of the US working class and point to the necessity for the overthrow of crisis-ridden US capitalism and the establishment of a planned socialist economy.

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£2.3 bn -milk lakeEvery day now seems to produce further evidence of the colossal waste involved