Seclalist Trade Union Democracy Suppressed 41%- Tuc Speak Only for Themselves!

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By endorsing the 42% wage deal agreed between Healey and the General Council in April, the TUC Special Conference has accepted a wage cut. But in doing so the union leaders do not speak for the working class. They speak only for themselves, and for the bankers and speculators who will benefit directly from it.

The working class were never asked what they thought of the deal. Millions of votes were cast by a handful of people. In the T&GWU for example 37 people on the Executive cast 1.8 million votes, after consulting nobody at all.

In the one case where workers were asked - the miners - they voted against the 4½%, though the totals were swung by the votes of foremen and clerical workers (see The argument used by Jones and Murray is that workers must "save the pound" . This is a complete fraud, which ensures workers lose either way.

On the one hand they are told that a cut in real wages is needed to save the pound. This of course has no real effect on the pound, since the crisis is not caused by high wages.

And on the other hand as the pound continues downwards, prices of imported goods go up, again slashing the living standards of the working class. To follow Jones' line of "defend the pound" is to face a certain wage cut.

-As it was, even before the TUC Conference was held Healey had signed up a £3,000 million loan from international bankers to "save the pound"

While Callaghan and Healey loudly declare this cash comes with "no strings attached" everyone, especially the TUC, knows it means further savage cuts on social service spending are on the way.

HELD These cuts have been consciously held back until after TUC endorsement of the 4½% deal, to avoid further embarassing union leaders like Drain of NALGO and others with large memberships facing cuts and redundancies.

But the TUC leaders are not hiding their acceptance of the cuts. Last week on television Hugh Scanlon said that further cuts were "a matter for unions with members affected"

But all workers, including all AUEW members are hit by social service cuts, so it is clear where Scanlon stands. And all those who argue "save the pound" will obviously accept social service cuts just as they accept wage cuts.

The crisis of the Callaghan government in this situation - a reformist government offering no reforms - is shared by the trade union bureaucracy who are politically inseparable from the Labour leaders..

In order to vote for the 4½% and accept the social service cuts they are having to launch a full scale attack on democratic rights within the unions.

The problem for the bureaucracy is that the working class is strong. If its most advanced sections and those under the most direct attack were called on to fight for the defence of living standards, the response would be enormous.

The bureaucracy is therefore determined to break up any section of workers, group of shop stewards or union conference which initiates such an opposition.

UCATT CONFERENCE The events at the CATT Conference at the beginning of this month are probably the most striking example.

Following the defeat of the Executive resolution supporting the 42%, General Secretary Smith announced that he would not carry out the conference decision on the basis that it was "unrepresentative"

Uproar followed, but Smith stuck to his position saying that the UCATT delegation would abstain at the TUC conference; that the membership would be balloted; and that then if the membership voted in favour of wage control this would "prove" that the conference is unrepres tative and he would have to "reconsider" its future role.

Yet the UCATT Biennial Delegate Conference is, in the rule, the highest body 1n union, the supreme policy making body and comprised completely of elected delegates.

A similar position prevails in the T&GWU. Jones is acting completely without mandate.

Though he obtained an executive decision in favour of the COURSE TIM