Us Miners Facing Key

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The miners' 3-year contract expired on December 6 with deadlock in negotiations over a new contract.

US coal bosses are determined to inflict a body-blow to the strength of the union in this bid for increased profits.

The mine owners who repity and oil conglomerates have stockpiled coal for over 3 months in anticipation of the strike.

They have spent millions in contracts for foreign coal and coal from the many non union mines in the west.

The UMW is in critical condition. The mineowners have withheld millions of benefits at all under these circumstances.

Bankruptcy

The pension fund is near bankruptcy with the real threat that all pensions will L- - Le - ff be cur oil as soon as me tha miners walk out.

The central demand of the last UMW convention for the complete right to strike over health, satety and work concitions is critical to the lives of the miners. Yet to win this demand will require the virtual complete defeat of the corporations that own and run the coal mines, who are set on preventing such gains.

Arnold Miller, the president of the UMW, has used a his power not to fight the corporations but to attack from all over the country to open up the struck mines by shooting it out with the pickets.

Miller can certainly not be depended on to defend miners in the present strike.

In order to win the miners strike the entire trade union movement must be rallied to their cause.

All foreign coal shipments must be blacked by dockers and transport workers to prevent this scab coal from reaching the US.

A campaign must be begun in the trade union movement for the nationalization of the coal mines.

This struggle is not simply an economic battle of the unions against the companies CP leader Cunhal ties would support the latest round of measures demanded by the IMF as a condition for a $750 million loan.

This loan is now of the utmost urgency for the Portuguese economy. The bourgeois parties threw out Soares because they preferred their own measures which would involve less restrictions of the market but an even more full-blooded attack on the organised workers' movement and a more complete reversal of the gains made since 1974;

The opportunistic nature of the calculations of the Stalinists was shown by their behaviour during the debate.

For the first day not single Communist said a word -not even in response to savage attacks on the CP from the bourgeois parties.

Conciliatory

The leader of the CP pariiamentary group, Carlos Brito, wasn't even chamber.

He was waiting elsewhere to see it the government would agree to a last minute bargaining session. Only after this was refused did Brito make the first CP contribution.

Despite some criticisms of Soares this was a conciliatory speech.

But hours of demagogic hypocrisy from both sides did not result in a CP vote for Soares.

When, in this tinal speech he offered not the slightest concrete concession to the Stalinists they cast their decisive votes against the government, as did the five 'left' socialists who left the party earlier in the year and the single MP of the 'left-wing' PDP.

The Portuguese bourgeoisie is now without not only the inadequate Mario Soares but revolves tion of who the mines.

around the queswill own and run The entire history of the miners and their union has been one of a continuous battle to defend their union which is the only thing they have.

To defend the union today requires a political solution for the entire industry.

In this respect it is interesting to note that a defeated UMWA Presidential candidate Harry Patrick, recently spoke out calling for a break from the bourgeois Democratic Acting as guest speaker at a convention of the 'rank and file' body Teamsters for a Soares-can either a coalition of the bourgeois parties (impossible as long as Socialists and CP MPS vote against it as they almost certainly would),or a tripartite coalition of 'democratic' parties excluding the CP (inacceptable to Soares who would thereby rapidly lose his already declining working class base).

Failing these parliamentary alternatives the right might go for new elections in the (probably vain) hope of getting a majority for the bourgeois parties or for some move toward military dictatorship, either under President Eanes or some new potential Spinola, Partially demobilised It must be realised that the Portuguese working class has been partially demobilised in relation to these dangers as a result of the criminal policies of the Socialist and CP leaders over the last two years.

But Portuguese workers have not suffered any major malitinal dofast start a Labor Party in this country, I'm all for it."

Patrick as an individual has an appalling record as a top-level UMWA bureaucrat.

But such a speech must reflect the feelings of wide layers of workers and now particularly the miners, locked in struggle with the US capitalist system and its political representatives.

Only the development of a leadership within the UMWA prepared to carry through a break with the bourgeois parties and take the lead in fighting for a labour party based on the trade union movement can press forward the fight for expropriation of the mines without compensation. he capitalists find a substitute?

as in 1975 to begin to build soviet organisations to defend all the gains made since 1974, to take up and unify an independent fight for jobs and wages and to form a basis for workers' power.

Immediate tasks

There are other immediate lasks which are just as important.

There must be a fight in the unions to force the Stalinists and reformist bureaucrats to call action in defence of jobs, wages, nationalised property, and land reform.

Workers must struggle within their mass parties to force the CP and the Socialist party to form a government and carry out a programme based not on the demands of the IMF but on the needs of the working class.

Leaders who have demonstated clearly their contempt for workers' requirements, such as the defeated Soares cabinet, must be thrown out of their positions in workers' parties and organisations.

win The Australian Labour Party is in crisis following its failure to make any dent in the LiberalNational Country Partyl Coalition's majority.

The General election has left millionaire Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, with a virtually unchanged majority of over 50 in the 124 strong House of Representatives.

At 11.00 pm on Saturday night Gough Whitlam conceded defeat and announced that he would be resigning as leader of the Australian Labour Party. He will probably be replaced by his tormer Finance Minister Bill Haydon, who made a bid for the leadership earlier this year.

Negative reaction

Fraser's victory can be attributed to a number of factors. He had the assistance of the entire media in covering up potentially explosive scandals-eg. the Lynch affair -as well as in conducting virulent polemics against the ALP.

Whereas Fraser promised tax cuts, Whitlam called on voters to renounces hopes of such cuts in the interests of 'economic stability'. In addition, Fraser managed to keep the ALP's previous disastrous record in Government sufficiently to the fore to deter potential Labour votes.

The decision by Australian voters is thus in some ways a negative reaction to the lukewarm reformism of the Labour Party, rather than an endorsement of Fraser's anti-union strategy. Australian voters clearly felt no desire to give support to a party which, while in Government, instituted wage control and presided over growing unemployment and inflation.

Critical support

Despite that, Socialist Press last week called for critical support for Labour as a way of drawing the class line, between it and the direct representatives of Australian capitalism.

Fraser's consolidation of his position will not alter fundamentally the balance of class forces in Australia! The election had been called on the union bashing theme of 'Who Rules?' after a ten week strike by La Trobe Valley Power workers for wage increases. (see SP 78 for details).

That strike was sold out but the working class in the area remain strong and there is now talk of a resumption of the strike should the arbitration board throw out their wage demand. The continuing inflation (13 per cent) and unemployment (6 per cent)

are objective material forces confronting the working ciass and are going to pose serious problems for Fraser as much as they have done in the past.

Temporary respite.

His reaffirmed majority does give him a certain temporary respite but it cannot be long before things start hotting up again.

In preparation for renewed class battle steps must now be taken towards the formation of an authentic Trotskyist Party in Australia. The current crisis in Labour, although in one sense a set back for the working class would

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resent companies such as US Steel, Ford and the giant util-