Big vote for sliding scale of wages JONES BOWS UUI

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In more ways than one the wages debate Conference was the centre piece of the week. endorsed line of the TGWU General Executive Council on this issue has fundamentally altered the political situation within the TGWU, as well as Before the pay debate, tension showed itself in continual hostile questions on the Executive frustration of the membership of the shop floor found its reflection even within the bureaucratised layers that made up the conference; and after the pay debate many delegates, confident the task was done seemed to workers.

struggled to regain its shattered prestige.

But within the pay debate itself a key component was to focus from the very start on the manoeuvre Jones had planned for foisting Phase 3 upon the Conference.

WORDING This meant that the eyes of all delegates had to be directed to the precise wording of the Executive's composite motion, which called for an "orderly return to free collective bargaining" , and insisting that this formula was no more than a blank cheque for a Phase 3.

Moving the main opposition composite calling for 'unfettered collective bargaining from August 1, Danny Harris centred his speech on the wage cuts suffered under the Social Contract, and the flouting by the leadership of the eight conditions on which the last TGWU conference had endorsed the Contract.

But it was left to Alan Thornett, moving the third resolution which on top of free collective bargaining called for a sliding scale of wages to compensate for inflation, to spell conference had been duped by use of a vaguely worded motion:

"Many delegates will remember the last conference, where we had a motion-equally vague-formulated in a similar way.

I will quote it to you.

That this Conference supports the Social Contract, ... recognising that this understanding is in total opposition to any form of statutory wage control, and seeks to sustain (believe it or not) the principle of free collective bargaining.' Not only was free collective bargaining ended by this motionbut none of the conditions were ever carried out."

APPLAUSE

Thornett went on to draw strong applause when he pointed out that the executive had implemented the 5% Phase 2 policy without authority from Conference.

"I am convinced that the term orderly return' is used because the motion would face certain defeat at this conference it if was called Thornett was also the first delegate to point out the ominous government silence on Phase 3.

"It is significant that although we are now only 3 weeks from the end of Phase 2, the shape of Phase 3 has not been revealed.

Why not? If it is a policy which would be acceptable to this conference, why is it not revealed to us?"

ESCALATOR CLAUSES He went on to show the need for free collective bargaining to include the demand for escalator clauses to match inflation.

"Since OUI members cannot influence inflation, they must protect themselves against it.

Setting the dominant note as suspicion of the wording of the matinm moant that the at the TGWU The vote for a sliding scale of taken immediately after the rejection of Jones' "orderly return".

Alan Thornett Delegate atter delegate marched to the rostrum to attack an "orderly return" as a Phase 3.

Among the most damaging attacks on the platform came from Jones' former supporters. The mover of the Executive composite at the last TGWU Conference got up to say he had changed his position.

"Enough is enough" ', he said. Sheffield convenor Sylvia Greenwood, who had also previously backed the Social Contract announced:

'I'm big enough to Colla and say I was wrong, come up FORMER ALLY And, Irish delegate Malachy Grey announced that he had been one of Jones' allies in the fight against the TGWU right wing in the '50s and '60s-but ringingly denounced the Executive motion as simply *the old, old story:

Right wingers were dumbfounded by the onslaught on their policy. Only a handful attempted to speak.

When the chairman desperately "That cost of living escalator agreements to offset the full amount of price inflation be included in wage settlements additional to increases in the hourly rate. To facilitate this the Union establishes its own machinery to compile a cost of living index which will accurately reflect the impact of inflation on the wage packets of our members. Negotiators should demand that escalator agreements be based on this figure and not on government figures which are biased against the working class."

Branch No.

A REACTIONARY composite resolution calling for the government to impose a series of import controls was moved by Ford Dagenham Body Plant convenor Danny Connor.

Connor, like every defender of this nationalist policy, hotly denied that he was a chauvinist, while complaining that every time a job is "taken from this country to abroad", ', Jim Callaghan's dream of an export-led boom "becomes less and less realistic."

This policy is "the foundation for building a socialist Britain", he to back down.

It was against these odds that Jones stood up in the afternoon session and attempted to swing the conference to accept now thoroughly discredited motion. As he floundered through a series of already refuted arguments Jones reserved a special attack for the sliding scale of wages motion, laughably describing it as "rigid wage control". Jor es sees defeat looming in the pay debate