Secialist Stop Tuc Chiefs' Plot to Cut Pay

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As British capitalism enters a still deeper phase of économic crisis, with every weapon being brought into play in the drive to attack the working class, the TUC leaders are preparing yet another historic betrayal of their members as they discuss proposals for extending the £6 state pay limitation for another The Marxist will say to bureaucracy is the chief i bourgeois state. Power mu bourgeoisie and for that its 'cracy, must be overthrown. year into a Stage Two.

After nine months of devastating cuts in working class living standards under the present pay laws, recent speeches by Scanlon, Bassnett and Jones, leaders of the three biggest TUC unions, show that these men are now searching for a way to force workers into another legal straitjacket.

At all costs the bureaucracy want to avoid the outbreak of struggles against the employers and, crucially, against the pay legislation itself.

CONNECT

Any such struggle cou a unpredictably connect up v ith the smouldering hostility to the pay laws in the, mass of the workers movement and unleash a major confrontation.

The determination of the union leaders to shackle workers and prevent struggle is shown clearly in the case of the SU Carburettor workers and other car workers last week.

The SU workers had actually: won their increase from the the English workers: Ti strument for your oppi t be wrested from the principal agent, the trade management: the only thing stopping the implementation of the agreement was the £6 pay limit!

The SU men were clearly prepared to fight both the company and the government to win their legitimate demand - but they had a more treacherous enemy still - their own leadership in the AUEW:

The Executive of the AUEW ('lefts' and all) voted unanimously to instruct the men back to work -even though during the whole period AUEW policy had been opposed to the £6 limit not a single instruction for action had been issued, and not a single strike actively supported by the Executive against the pay laws! The Executive instruction was backed up by manoeuvres with the employers and public attacks by Scanlon designed to isolate and weaken the strikers, eventually forcing a return to work.

But the bureaucracy drawn a lesson from these le trade union ession by the hands of the union bureauTrotsky, 1929.

PREPARED have recent confrontations. They are now calling for a measure of flexibility in Stage Two, to attempt to prevent the prospect of all-out confrontations between their members and the employers.

But this new call is also completely in line with the demands of the employers. They want sufficient "flexibility" to enable them to introduce rationalised corporate payment structures, and force through still further speedScanlon - used his influence get SU men back to work.

Jack' Jones has expressed this most clearly, saying this weekend that:

*Provision should be made for a margin to allow for incentives to be attached to improvements in productivity and some movement of differential payments against proper evaluation of work performed"

Such talk is of course linked to Jones' conception of a union leader's job as assisting each management to squeeze the

UNION

JACK JONES YOU SOCIAL maximum production out of its workforce, and to throw surplus workers onto the dole.

His speech (made at the opening of a new T&GWU Midlands Regional Office in an area which has seen huge redundancies as a result of the policies of Jones and Wilson) pointed out that in Jones' view a shop steward's job is not to defend his members, but that:

*Branch Officers and Shop Stewards have a role to play in the improvement of SCREW 'EM FOR BIT MORE SOCIAL CONTRACT EQUAL SACRIFICE JUSTICE performance"

Jones speaks with the arrogant treachery of a General Secretary who is not answerable to anyone. The T&GWU bureaucracy is one of the most undemocratic and rigidly controlled in the labour movement.

This is how Jones is now able to carry out his role as leading advocate of state pay laws while his own union policy as decided at last July's T&GWU | Biennial