Fight Now for Cost of Living Clauses

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An initial indication of workers' response to the Tories' flood tide of inflation has been given by the pay claims drawn up by Vauxhall and Ford workers in the last two weeks.

The Vauxhall unions are demanding a 25% increase and a 38 hour week-having suffered a sell-out deal last year in which a 4.3-6.7% basic increase was linked to an 'incentive' scheme.

But the claim includes no provision for protection against inflation, which by the end of the year will be rocketing towards the 20% mark.

"Substantial"

The Ford claim however goes in the opposite diretion, seeking only a vague "substantial" increase-but protected against inflation through an index-linking agreement.

TGWU negotiator Ron Todd evaded the issue of a money increase and declared that the unions would not "nail statements about percentages to the wall"

While militancy and frustration is clearly building up within the working class on the question of inflation and falling living standards the Ford and Vauxhall negotiators, dominated by full time national officials, reflect this only in a partial, distorted and inadequate form.

What is necessary in the Fetall AT THE coming situation is to spell out that pay claims must:

1) make good the losses in real earnings caused by inflation since the last pay 2) provide for an improvement in living standards in real terms.

3) protect this settlement against future inflation through the inclusion of a cost-of-living clause providing automatic increases in line with a cost-of-living index worked out by elected committees of trade unionists and housewives.

Such a policy challenges not only the Tory plans to inflict the whole burden of the oil price increases and the world inflationary crisis onto the working class but also those union leaders who argue that pay claims should relate not to workers' needs and the defence of living standards Todd THAT RUDDY CALLAGHAN!

U9T33 COMMISSAR BENA DAILY PROFTL LEADS RED IS WHAT'S NEEDED— STAND UP TO THE WRECKERS!!! but to the ability of the employers to pay and his 'right' to a profit.

Indeed the Tories are reportedly planning an autumn campaign aimed at persuading workers that they should moderate pay demands and not look for extra money if they have not conceded extra effort on the shop floor. The Tories will argue that workers should not necessarily expect an increase in pay every year! Far from abandoning annual reviews, workers should be pressing for these to be linked to the continual updating of real wages in relation to prices, as provided by the operation of cost-of-living ciauses. workers an answer to the Tories' conscious price hikes, rent increases and VAT rises.

The fight for cost-of-living clauses must be pressed ahead now both in the car industry and throughout the labour movement, as part of the struggle to defeat the Tory offensive and bring down the Thatcher government.