Wage Control and Union Democracy

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We reprint below the full text of a statement by the newly-formed Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement, an ad hoc committee set up by trade union' militants, which as its name suggests, has been formed in order to campaign for democratic procedures in the Labour movement. As the first step in its campaign the committee, at its meeting last Saturday issued a call for a Conference on "Wage Control and Union Democracy" to be held in Birmingham on Sunday October 24th. As the statement makes clear the Conference is open to all trade unionists. But the committee asks in particular for trade union branches, District Committees, shop stewards committees and Trades Councils to send delegates, sponsor the Conference and make a financial donation towards the organising costs.

The Workers Socialist League will give full support members are called upon to begin the campaign.

Key TUC leaders defying their members' interests to give support to the 4½% deal: Jones (T&GWU), Basnett (GMWU), Scanlon (AUEW), Gormley (NUM) and Jackson Trade The workers' movement today faces anall-round attack. Whilst unemployment is driven over 1½ million and public spending and social services savagely cut, the 42% limit on pay increases endorsed by the TUC Special Congress, means a substantial cut in real wages for workers over the next year.

And the trade union officials who supported everyone of these policies of the Labour government are now cracking down within the unions, attempting to impose a complete bureaucratic straightjacket on their members. We feel the time has come to fight back.

This situation has escalated since the election of the Labour government in February 1974. The ruling Tory government had been forced out of office because of its wages policy. The miners took a stand and defeated their attempts at wagecutting.

'BACK TO WORK'

The new Labour, government elected during the three day week on the slogan "Back to work with Labour" conceded the miners' claim, froze council rents and, when confronted by an AUEW strike, began the repeal of the hated Industrial Relations Act.

But Wilson knew he would immediately face the same economic crisis of capitalism which had driven the Tories onto the attack. And, just like the Tories, he set out to solve it at the expense of the working class.

With prices rocketing, workers struggled for, and often won, big wage increases. The Labour leaders attempted to turn this against them by blaming high wages for inflation - a line they took straight from the employers - and put forward the policy that wages must be held down below 30%. On June 23rd 1975, Wilson retreated in front of a national rail strike threat and the 30% policy was in ruins.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

This defeat forced the Labour government into a change of policy. and the Social Contract came into play. Labour leaders began openly to argue that wages must be held down to cut inflation.

This was also the argument of Jones, who cynically used the July 1975 conference of the T&GWU as a lever to introduce the £6 so-called voluntary limit - its introduction was announced by Healey within hours of the T&GWU decision. Jones' other argument was to say that it would save jobs, yet unemployment has soared ever since - now reaching a post-wat record. the groted 6 as hai diy Lab aur and TUC leaders for an even lower limit - resulting in the 42% figure plus some nominal tax concessions -agreed at the TUC Special Congress on June 16th.

LOANS CUTS AND The government argued that 44% deal was not ac they inter- ¡onal Inans = a condit would need further int Tion the tax concessions meant "real money" in the wage , packet, and said there would be a "slight" relaxation of price controls. • The TUC accepted all of these arguments, and took up the fight to "save the pound". They began fo force the 4½% deal through the unions by a series of bureaucratic manoeuvres - in many instances directly breaking conference policies.

Some trade union leaders such as Jackson of the UPW, began to press for permanent wage control, arguing that he wanted "no return to the rat-race of free collective bargaining"

In the T&GWU, the Executive. which is by rule bound by Biennial Delegate Conference policy, accepted the deal, completely ignoring their own Executive Council resolution at the previous BDC in 1975. This conference had accepted the social contract on condition that eight points were fulfilled, amongst which were: a permanent system of price controls and "vastly improved social services by the injection of the necessary resources.

AGREEMENT In the AUEW, the deal was forced through after Scanlon, together with the right-wing leadership of the engineering section, broke the merger agreement with the other sections. This provided for free votes at full conference. Scanlon obtained a majority in favour of the 42% at the conference of the engineering section (which holds a majority of votes in the whole union) and then mandated all their delegates in favour of the 4½% at the full conference of all sections.

The result of this was a split conference and the 42% was accepted with a majority of the conference abstaining on the vote.

In UCATT, the Executive were deleated at their Biennial Delegate Conference which voted against the deal. General Secretary Smith announced that he did not accent and that a ballot of the membership would be held. Yet, with a deceptively worded ballot paper and a union journal arguing only Smith's case, he only narrowly secured acceptance.

MANDATES In the NUM, the right-wing obtained a majority of one on the Executive, with three right-wingers defying mandates from their own areas in order to support the 4/%. Gormley then used this one vote majority to ballot the membership - again with a deceptively worded ballot paper and amid a huge campaign in the Tory press.

Only using such manoeuvres did the TUC leadership get their 17-1 majority at the Special Congress. In reality their votes did not represent the views of the working class, but only the views of themselves as Manoeuvres came also from those claiming to oppose the pay policy. In ASIMS, which voted against the 4//o deal, the influence of the Communist Party ensured that the Conference resolution said nothing about actually fighting the policy - simply voting against it at the TUC.

In a similar way, at the AUEW engineering section conference the motion opposing the deal was defused even before the vote on the 4½% by two Communist Party members who successfully fought to remove a clause in the resolution opposing the deal which would have given official support to any section of members fighting the limit.

DECEPTION

Now we can begin to see the prolonged, conscious deception carried out jointly by the Labour and trade union leaders. Not one of the arguments for wage controis held any water.

The so-called voluntary f6 "flat rate" policy accepted we were told to "avoid state control" has turned by law as soon as you don't. Free collective bargaining - nominally the policy of virtually every union - has been abolished.

The argument that wage-cutting was necessary to "cut unemployment" has been turned into a laughing stock with the f6 limit being followed up by huge redundancies and rationalisation in both private and nationalised industries, creating record unemployment which has been accepted .. without a finger being lifted by the trade union leaders.

"SAVE THE POUND"

The 4% deal, held up as a means of supposedly "saving the pound" and avoiding the need for international loans and public spending cuts, has in reality been accompanied by a further collapse in the pound, huge new loans, and the first of a further round massive spending cuts, beginning with £1,012 million.

Indeed The fall in the value of the pound, reflected in rising prices, has already more than wiped out the whole of the 4½% increase.

The promises to control prices have collapsed and instead the existing inadequate controls have been relaxed, giving a £1,000 million bonus to private employers and cutting over 2% from the value of the wage packet of a worker.

Now, to cap it all, there is talk of increasing taxes later this year, to cancel out the nominal cuts made in Healey's budget to sugar the 4½% pill.

The TUC leaders backed up all these promises with a political threat: they argue that a rejection of the 4½% would mean the return of a Tory government, ignoring the fact that any danger of a return of the Tories is entirely the responsibility of the Wilson-Callaghan policies which was shown absolutely clearly by the mass abstention of Labour voters in recent by-elections.

EXCUSES

But the trade union leaders carry out the series of cynical manoeuvres outlined above they have had to take measures to silence critical voices within the trade union movement. To this end they began tightening the bureaucratic control of the full time officials over the shop stewards movement and the membership.

The new 'gag' Rule 15 was adopted by the TUC in September • only two months after the £6 limit, clearly in anticipation of a fight in the Trades Councils. This new rule ties Trades Councils to TUC policy and has an optional clause giving dictatorial powers to remove the credentials from delegates regarded as "disruptive"

in, in an attempt to transform the shop stewards movement into an extension of management, similar to the joint consultative committees the nationalised industries and hospitais.

Plant level bargaining is being ended and negotiations placed in the hands of full time officials.

Where militants win mass bases of support, the full weight of bureaucratic oppression is combined with orchestrated press witch-hunts in attempts to isolate them. Where militants win control of committees the officials and the right-wing simply close them down as they did with the T&GWU Automotive District Committee in CLOSE Where a principled leadership emerges in a Trades Council, again as in Oxford, that Trades Council is bureaucratically closed down and "reorganised" by TUC officials backed by the right-wing and Communist Party, * In Bradford the Trades Council is threatened with disaffiliation from the TUC for organising a meeting critical of Labour Party policy.

The leadership of many trades unions have adopted a policy of expulsion and the removal of shop stewards credentials.

In the Fire Brigades Union, the entire Strathelyde Area Committee were expelled for opposing the £6 limit. In Hull, the shop stewards credentials of every T&GWU steward on the docks was removed by the regional committee because the dockers refused to lift a black imposed in defence of jobs.

STRENGTH

But the bureaucrats still have a problem. Despite their attacks on trade union democracy the strength of the working class continuously emerges.

Earlier this year, in British Leyland, skilled workers fought the £6 pay deal and it took the full Executive of the AUEW to force them back to work.

Although betrayed by their leaders, student teachers occupied their colleges against the cuts.

In union ballots, despite the intervention of the capitalist press and the manoeuvres of the leaderships, 47% of miners and 40% of UCATT members voted to reject the 4½% - even though they were told they would be "on their own" against the whole trade union movement. It is clear that the barrier to the defence of wages and jobs is the trade union leadership.

We sav that it is time to begin

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