Reject That Cher's Fraud. Wages to Prices

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must take the ead • defence of hey staundanis the British working class into accepting a drastic cut in real wages in the next year, the Thatcher government is preparing to rig the Retail Prices Index by leaving out the soaring price of petrol and heating oil.

They hope that the resulting bogus figures will persuade workers to submit wage claims far below the real rate of inflation.

This plan was brazenly revealed last week during the Tokyo summit, at which leading capitalist heads of state debated ways of foisting the cost of the oil crisis onto the world's working class.

Thatcher eagerly took up the proposal. from a major speech by former Labourite Roy Jenkins, now President of the Common Market Commission.

Higher prices

Jenkins stressed that while it was "essential" that the real cost of dearer oil was passed on in higher prices, it was equally essential to prevent workers from obtaining wage increases big enough to compensate for these price rises!

Living standards must fall for "everyone" in the Western countries, he declared.

But of course the term "everyone" conceals the real content of the plan.

The capitalist class, top managers and professions will of course continue to benefit from huge salaries, unlimited dividends, Tory tax hand-outs, expense accounts and lavish "perks"-while the full brunt of the current tidal wave of price increases, social service cuts and mass unemployment falls onto working class families.

Thatcher's plan to rig the Retail Price Index would have a particularly immediate and drastic impact on pensioners. Howe's budget severed the link between pensions and average wages-substituting a simple link with the Retail Prices Index.

Any move to exclude fuel costs from the Index would therefore leave pensioners high and dry as the cost of living races way ahead of their incomes.

Small savers

And thousands of other Small savers and pensioners with index-linked incomes would also lose out hand over fist.

This might create such an outcry that Thatcher could tactically retreat from changing the RPI. But let there be Ou mistake.

The essential question for the Tories-as it was in three years of wage controls under the Labour leaders-is to force the working class to carry the whole cost of the economic crisis.

Only in this way can they hope through increased exploitation to restore the profitability of British capitalism.

Their allies in such an offensive against the class will be those wretched union leaders who time and again argue that workers should respect the viability of the employers and restrict their own demands accordingly.

All such policies-which lead only to poverty and unemployment must be rejected. Workers must take action to defend real wages against inflation through cost-of-living clauses.

But the open discussion of government plans to cook the official figures pinpoints the TIM Last week's Daily Telegraph shopping basket, for instance, registered a 12% increase in food prices in the last six months-an annual increase of over 24%. And this is before the new fuel prices and EEC price increases make themselves felt!

Add to this the fact that as Tory cuts in local government spending begin to bite, the present local variations in council rents, public transport costs, rates, etc., will grow even wider. Various services will be axed altogether, bringing additional costs to working class families.

In short the only way that the real increases in workers' cost of living can be calculated is not through the abstract and selective government figures publicised by the mass media, but through the setting up in each area of elected committees with the task of working out a workers' price index.

Housewives

In setting up such committees local union branches or shop stewards' committees must take steps to ensure that they include representatives of housewives, claimants and pensioners.

The help of experts sympathetic to the labour movement should be enlisted, and unions must be called upon to make their research facilities available to such price committees.

The figures produced will show unmistakeably the pace at which workers' living standards are being attacked by the Tory government, and spell out to workers the urgency of waging a fight for cost-of-living clauses in all pay agreements to provide each month full compensation for inflation as shown on the workers' price index.

The TGWU Biennial Delegate Conference will next week discuss precisely such a policywhich two years ago won the support of a third of the conference.

By voting for it, and fighting for its inclusion in pay claims, delegates can give a lead to the whole working class, strike a major blow at the Tories strategy, and show their determination to defend their members living standards. * Defend living standards! Wages must be protected by cost-of-living clauses in all agreements! * Build workers price committees! * Prepare mass action to bring down this Tory government of employers and bankers!