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Kings, these to be backed up with faced withheld from whatever rank. and-file action has emerged and The attempt to e tablish ane av oc bureaucracy this year was little a united trade union leadershort of an outright wage cut. ship in Argentina which COst began after last year's of living clause-but one which only allows for a 10% rate of general strike has failed.

resulting in yet further intlation -nopelessiy denino tne government's own fraudulent division and abject confufigure of 18.4%. sion in an already sorely There wasn t w ain" index-inking improvement oppressed and weakened allowed for in last year's squalid working class. deal lor car workers engiecred Two weeks ago the fragile United Autoworkers Conduccion Unica de los Trabajadores Argentinos Steelworkers in the US. (CUTA) split into its componin Britain, have not traditionally ent parts-the Comision been among the most militant Nacional de Trabajo (CNT) and sections of the working class. the Group of 25'-over the However the Kiritich steel nomination of delegates to the strike showed how horugge any International Labour OrganisaWOrKerS learn in tion (ILO) and the International how effectively WOrKerS Cal Confederation of Free Trade organise to fighi for their osn Unions CFTL 1.

corthy not bao bot that llave independent interests.

Internal weakness certainly not _been on the international steel bosses and union bureaucrats. It is a reflection of the The only way forward for internal weakness and political US steelworkers is plant bankruptcy of CUTA that this should be the issue to cause the INT TO ATTRI- HOM DIES CHORIO fight closures and sack- schism-the ILO has always been a haven for high-flying all-out stnke achon to ton back labour bureaucrats eager to the employers' offensive. settle down for a chat with capitalist technocrats in Geneva while the ICFTU's Pan-american organsation, ORIT, is an openly imperialist body to which the TUC remains affiliated.

The CUTA had always been illegal although the Videla dictatorship was forced into the tacit recognition that it repres ented the Argentine labour movement.

Taken over

The majority of the leaders of the CNT are from unions formally 'intervened' by the military (offices taken over by soldiers and all effective independent activity proscribed within the union itself).

Consequently the CNT has always been closer to the regime and carried more weight with it than the Group of 25' which represenis unions inat are 10t intervened and which called las: year's strike.

It was the CNT's upper hand in nominations to international bodies that caused the split.

The CNT may be openly attacked as being collaborationist, but the fact is that neither it nor the '25' nor the CUTA itself was capable of providing leadership for the struggle of the Argentine proletariat against the welter of attacks unleashed by the dictatorship.

This, of course, had aiso been true of the now dissolved Confederation General de Trabajo (CGT) which had been the centre of union activity in Argentina for decades.

While the 25' has certainly been more militant than the CNT, it has preferred to force negotiations rather than fight for the overthrow of the dictatorship.

The CNT reprsents the more entrenched bureaucratic elements of Peronism, the 25' merely draws from its left' sector.

Destruction

However. the immediate issue a: stake is the defence of working cla 55 DrEaDiSatiOn. which the dictatorship threatens to destroy entirely.

Last year's labour code proposes government takeover of all union funds and facilities, reducing the existing bodies to corporate organs of the state. immune from the scourge of unemployment but one section of workers is everywhere suffering most-the immigrant workers.

Imported in their millions trom countries like spain, Italy, Turkey and Yugoslavia, immigrants in the years of the postwar boom came to occupy an important place in the labour force of several countriesespecially West Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Those workers were often badly paid, lived in appalling conditions, have been hounded by the police and have no rights of residence when not employed.

The capitalist class has used what they euphemistically term "guest workers" to cushion nonimmigrant workers partially against the slump.

Immigrants have been first to be dismissed and are then repatriated and so involve no drain on the capitalist state's finances.

In Holland, often regarded as the most liberal of bourgeois states, a law has recently been passed which subjects immigrant workers to immediate expulsion from the country if they have not been continuously employed for two years in the same firm.

As a result of this law an estimated 20,000 workers are now fleeing from the police.

Over the last few weeks five hundred of them have sought refuge in churches which have been willing to shield them from the state.

Embarassing

The right wing govern Christian worthies is ed with the embar:

ision as to whether to armed police into the