Tories Get Down to Work

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SACK THEM Last week's rise in the unemployment figures produced With Tory courts still piling up precedent-setting the first empirical evidence of the impact on jobs of the anti-union judgements limiting the right to picket and Tories" recessionary policies and spending cuts. impose blacking action, Employment Secretary Prior is lining up new anti-union laws for the end of November.

Most economic forecasts anticipate that the dole queues will grow rapidly over the next 18 months as high interest rates Part of the propaganda smokescreen designed to force through and a soaring pound sterling force the pace of factory closures and this new legislation will centre on last week's Tory report on the union recruitment techniques employed by the print union But if millionaire Environment Secretary Michael tine has his way, the jobless total will rise even more But at the centre of the Tory offensive are attempts to smash the power of the closed shop, to prevent solidarity picketing, and The government is determined to cut the number of to crack the class strength of the working class by taking votes out of the arena of mass meetings and substituting individual "Public administration in this country is overweight and, like every other overweight organisation can, with a little effort, The recent court injunctions against picketing by strikers from Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant and the £750 fine for As for the forthcoming pay claim by local authority "extortion" levied against a Scottish TGWU official for demanding employees, Heseltine has announced that there is "no way" the a cash payment in exchange for dispensation for lorries to cross Government would countenance a pay award equal to the current drivers' picket lines last winter both show that even before the new laws are introduced the Tories and the CBI are determined to increase the use of the courts against the unions.

The fine for "extortion' in particular sets the scene for a barrage of court actions against the standard union practice of demanding that those who cross picket lines forfeit a day's wages. rationalisation.

from mass sackings in the public sector.

employed by local authorities, he declared.

afford to lose a few pounds."

inflation rate of 17½%.

SQUEEZE As Parliament reopened, Tory ministers were united in evading any attempt to forecast the future development of inflation, now on the 17% mark, and certain to go further upwards in the next few months.

But they were also united in opposing pay claims not financed by productivity increases.

On Thursday Thatcher attempted to ram home the now traditional Tory-Labour blackmail declaring:

"The greatest threat to jobs in this country is extravagant pay claims which go beyond what is warranted by increased productivity."

And on Friday Chancellor Geoffrey Howe, admittedly Heselrapidly worried at the substantia increases conceded to worker at the Times, Independent Tele vision and two million engineer ing workers, pressed the sam point.

He quoted the recent defea of the pay strike by Chrysler Talbot workers and the unio collaboration with Michae Edwardes job-slashing plans fo British Leyland as examples o "reality asserting itself."

In a real senseHowelis right. The "reality" that is coming home to workers in struggie against the Tories is that, without a leadership prepared to challenge the concept that the employer must be kept profitable at all costs, they face a wave of runaway inflation which will squeeze their living standards still further. Heseltine Thatcher Jenkin SLADE.

postal ballots.