For Action Against Wage Control

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We reprint below the statement of the Organising Committee of the Campaign for Democracy in our Movement recalling the Conference on Wage Control and Union Democracy to be held at Digbeth Civic Hall, Birmingham from 10am to 4.30pm on Sunday March 27th. We urge all readers In October all the major issues confronting the working class -wage control, the cuts, unemployment, the struggle for women's rights and equal pay, and the use of racialism to divide the working class - were discussed at the first Conference called by the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement.

We said then that none of these attacks on the working class can be separated from the increasing trend towards bureaucratic dictatorship by full-time officials within the unions as the TUC leaders move in with no real base of support to repress the slightest opposition to the policies of the Labour government.

The Conference stressed how central is the role of wage control - in the form of the Social Contract - to every one of the steps taken by the Labour leaders to cut workers' living standards, slash the social services, and speed up production in their bid to nreserve crisis-ridden British capitalism.

Since the October Conference, wages struggles have broken out, particuiarly in the car component industry and in Fleet street. Although these strikes have begun with small sections of workers, they reflect the feelings of the working class as a whole - who were not consulted by the leadership before they agreed to the 5% wage limit, and who clearly do not accept it.

The outbreak of wage struggles has been held back because most workers feel that the actions of their official 'leaders' and their own isolation in individual plants and industries makes it hard to challenge the Social Contract which involves fighting not only the employer and their own union bureaucracy but the whole TUC and the Labour government.

CONFLICT

Where struggles have broken out, workers have immediately found themselves in the sharpest conflict with the trade union leaders. At Rubery Owen, workers refused to allow officials to attend their meetings, knowing the officials would only order them back to work. Eventually their shop stewards were threatened with disciplinary action at the hands of the AUEW Despite these attacks, the pressure for wages is growing in the working class. The mini-budget and the massive price increases have created the conditions for confrontation on wages.

The key demand therefore, in addition to substantial catching up claims, must be for cost of living clauses to provide increases to match the full amount of price inflation. Such clauses should not be based on government figures but on figures compiled by elected committees within the unions.

There is no doubt that the majority of workers would support such a policy.

PHASE THREE

But far from responding to these pressures, the IUC have now made it plain that they are preparing for yet another stage - Phase Three -of wage controls when the present 5% limit expires in the summer.

Jones' response to the jobslashing, wage-cutting mini-budget was simply to call on workers to *unite around the Labour government" . And Murray has made it clear that the TUC will even do g deal with a Tory government.

These moves show the urgers of preparing an all-am tesserce to mage contre! a the comics Healey NUM leaders have prepared the elaborate diversion of the legitimate demand for early retirement to smother any discussion on wages at their next conference.

STEAMROLLER

And the T&GWU Biennial Delegate Conference - (the last one was the launching pad for Healey's £6 state pay laws) - is scheduled for July.

The intention in the T&GWU and in every other union leadership is clear. They want to steamroller through another round of wage control (decorated by talk of 'flexibility', 'fringe benefits' and 'differentials) and then to step up still further the attacks on democracy within the unions - with threats to withdraw stewards' cards or expel from the union any workers who fight in opposition to these betrayais.

Alongside these moves the Trade Union leaders are collaborating in 'participation' schemes aimed at transforming the shop stewards movement into an extension of management.

Plant 2ıtтan ст ЯттрЯтра Dinet laral harainina i0 heino the the and eroded and all negotiations placed in the hands of full time officials. Where militants win a mass base of support, the full weight of bureaucratic oppression is used in an attempt to crush them.

Only in one arena has official opposition to government policy been voiced by the union bureaucracy - on the issue of public spending cuts. But their opposition' has everywhere been consciously restricted to the level of protest demonstrations and one-day protest strikes.

SUSPENDED Indeed, in the NUT, teachers who went beyond this verbal level have even been bureaucratically suspended from the union by irate officials. These leaders have consistently refused to reject all cuts on principle and fight on the maintenance of the full service through the demand for a sliding scale of public spending - rising to keep pace with inflation.

And they have avoided like the plague the only action which would actually stop the cuts - prolonged strike action. The public sector unions have not even been mobil ised in strike action in support of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital - where the first-ever hospital work-in in Britain is in progress.

It is for this reason that moves to bring together the public sector unions in joint action against the cuts can only be of value if it is centred on joint strike action, going beyond mere protest.

The position of public sector union leaders like Fisher - who make it quite plain that they are not opposed to the wage control element of the Social Contract -means that workers wanting to fight cuts and wage control now confront a united block of Labour and trade union leaders.

The "left wing' Labour MPs have SANE No: 3 likewise failed at every point seriously oppose the cuts, and least of all wage control, whether in the PP2.a:p01:

arena of the Party Conference, the Cabinet, OI the Parliamentary Labour Party. Instead all they can offer is the old sterile talk of the National Enterprise Board and their reactionary, nationalist call for HUGE RESPONSE Yet despite all these obstacles, the working class is clearly going to fight. Every time workers have been given the opportunity to express their hostility to the policies of the

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