As Jones Prepares More Wage Cuts Betrayed

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The deal signed last week by steel union leaders with BSC is nothing more than an employers' charter - opening the door to a further wholesale onslaught on jobs, wages, manning levels and shop floor agreements. Every management attack now carries the seal of approval of the trade union bureaucracy, who will use every ounce of energy trying to ensure no section of workers defeats the plan.

They do this in clear defiance of the militant determination of shop floor workers in the industry to defend existing conditions - as shown by strikes in South Wales and caus irom mass mecumgo u mastinna in many other areas for national strike action to confront and defeat BSC.

Instead, they bow to the management who are determined to foist the whole burden of the £8.4m per week losses (caused by the recession and the general profits crisis of British capitalism directly onto the backs of steel workers.

CHOICES Just like the union officials who forced acceptance of the 8,500 Chrysler redundancies, the steel union bureaucrats saw that they had two choices. Either they could defend the conditions of their members by opposing the treacherous policies of the Wilson government and its support for the employers; or knuckle under and help the employers impose their solutions, And because these officials see the mobilisation of the working class as a threat to their own bureaucratic positions, they chose the second course.

They now play a key role in implementing 40,000 redundancies. As BSC chief Bob Scholey cynically described their Joint attack on the shop floor: "This agreement will strengthen the hand of local officials and management."

In other words, the union leaders are now seen by the employers as simply an extension of management with a better position to prevent expensive and dangerous confrontation between organised workers and crisis-ridden capitalist class.

PAY LAWS Meanwhile the reactionary speech by Jack Jones, calling for another vicious year of wage cutting to follow on the present £6 pay laws, with flat rate increases again lower than the increase in the cost of living, has been publicised by a coordinated press campaign.

The present combination of Jones legislation and TUC collaboration has already put a stop to free collective bargaining. No longer do wage claims take into account factors like forced increases in effort, rising prices, or the legitimate aspirations of workers to improve living standards.

INSTRUCTED

"Negotiations" now simply centre on the £6 figure, with all full time officials instructed to keep settlements within that figure.

Jones' latest speech then shows that just as the steel union bureaucrats see it as their job to assist management in sacking their own members and to produce a "viable" steel industry for capitalism, so Jones sees his job as blocking and defeating justified wage demands of his members, whose living standards fall each day as a direct result of Wilson's Tory policies.

HOSTILITY

But as these historic betrayals are prepared by the TUC leadership, the class hostility within the union rank and file to the policies of the Wilson government are just beginning to find some expression in the Labour and trade union Most difficult for these leaders to skate round is of course the huge 1½ million unemployment figure just announced - the real fruits of 2 years of Wilson All kinds of pious statements are now being made about this figure - while at the same time both Clive Jenkins of ASTMS and Gormley of the NUM have stated opposition to Jones' new pay cuts proposal.

Such statements. and bureaucratic misgivings are of course only the first rumblings of a split in the united front of employers and reformist leaders which has predominated over the last year. They do not, in themselves, threaten the government. The call must be for these people to stop talking and start acting to defeat Wilson and Jones.

VERBALLY

For months, the 'left' MPs have verbally opposed Wilson - even attacking ex-left' Michael Foot the Employment Secretary. But not once have they been prepared to launch a campaign through the Labour and trade union movement to remove Wilson the right wing from office or even vote against their policies in Parliament.

In this sense, tomorrow's debate on government economic policy and the level of Foot unemployment is a test for "left'.

Any serious opposition to Wilson within the Labour Party must begin with a vote against his policies at the end of that debate.

As for those union leaders who claim to disagree with the Jones plan - not one of them has advocated the necessary alternative demand for defence of working class living standards against inflation through a sliding scale of wages.

And while all sorts, from Jones to Scanion to Bassnett have called for "selective reflation" and cont'd on back page, col 5.

The mounting offensive of the Spanish working class has become an immediate threat not only to the life of the 'new look' fascist regime but to the class collaborationist plans of the Stalinist and reformist leaders.

During the last two weeks about half a million workers in Spain have been either on strike, locked out, threatening imminent strike action. The strike wave which began in December in the motor industry (Chrysler) and electrical engineering industries (Standard Electric and Siemens) has spread to nearly all sectors. Most of the engineering sector is involved plus transport (the Madrid metro workers and the national railway workers), the Madrid banks, the Asturian coalmines which are at a complete standstill, the construction industry and many others.

WIDER

Many of these strikes relate to wage demands, but have taken on wider aims. In Barcelona the death of a worker who was run over by a police vehicle during a demonstration, led to a wildtire spread of protest strikes in which about nine-tenths of the city's industry came to a halt. A separate strike of electrical workers in Barcelona produced a 24 hour complete power blackout.

A number of strikes in the private sector (in the construction industry, for instance) have already led to wage settlements which break the rigid wage controls which form the backbone of the regime's current economic policy. The settlements also contravene Spain's labour laws which ban organisations with which negotiations have been held.

In such a climate the regime has found its new sheep's clothing much too uncomfortable and has responded with wholesale repression. All strike threats in the public sector have been met with the call-up of workers into the army and the threat of courtmartials. In this way it has temporarily stopped the strikes of the postal and railway workers. Meetings of other strikers (many of them in churches) have been broken up with police violence.

BRUTALITY

The same brutality has been used against public demonstrations reaching a peak on the evening of January 20 in Madrid when the largest display of state repression since the civil war