CIVIL SERVICE STRIKE Supplement
Socialist Press1981 1981-06-25Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
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With civil servants and ambulance crews still taking strike action in pursuit of adequate pay increases on the last pay round, top bankers are calling on the Tories to lower their pay limits still further.
The Bank of England bulletin has stated that wage awards would have to be "negligible" for "a number of years" if British employers are to increase their profits.
With inflation still near the 12% mark-and likely to rise higher as the pound falls on the foreign exchange markets-workers face more rate and rent increases brought on by Heseltine's latest cuts.
Living standards cannot be defended as long as this government remains office.
inger Impervious to continued protests from a dn Sir Keith Joseph has claimed that despite mass unemployment, workers are unemployed on average for "only" 5-6 months.
Yet the fact is that while Tory ministers prattle on about the recession "bottoming out" and a possible rise in industrial production, most economic surveys show that unemployment will continue to increase.
The Cambridge Econometrics group now predict unemployment soaring to 3.4 million by 1983-and continuing upwards to the 4 million mark thereatter, as the death of weaker sections of industries is combined with the introduction of jobslashing new technology in the stronger sections.
And while the Tories talk of handing over hundreds of millions of pounds to British Rail and the Coal Board, they are making it clear that such money is conditional on the axing of tens of thousands more jobs in these basic industries.
There is no way out for the working class through compromise or concessions to the employers: look at BL, where Edwardes has used union officials to help force through a vicious package of new working conditions-and cynically followed up with a new spate of plant closures!
3 million new jobs can only be created by the establishment of a planned socialist economy that will utilise and expand the existing forces of production. But this demands the removal of the Tory government. rise and fall of Bani-Sadr •p.3