POLICIES Workers' control

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FALL TO The National Union of Miners, at the same time as ratting on the wages struggle, is engaging in a national debate on the two positions opposing independent wages struggles and attempting to incorporate the unions into management-are very much part and parcel of the same thing.

They • represent two aspects of the drive by right wing union leaders to wi saken the working class by ty ing it hand and foot to the employer.

Debated In the November/December issue of The Miner the question of 'Industrial Democracy and the Miners' is debated.

The NUM Executive this year accepted a position which would involve miners being on a 'colliery management' team, making decisions over output (ie. over the rate of exploitation of themselves)

financial targets, marketing, appointment of managers, and budgeting.

Their aim in the current discussions is to persuade miners to accept this.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Scargill They quote favourably the line argued by Eric Varley in 1963:

"The Labour Movement has always stoo d for an extension of demor cracy and a new social order. To deny 105$ -Real Weekly Take-Home Pay (Man on Average Earnings!

at September 1977 Prices)

55j1970 71 12 73 74 75 76 77 the relevance of workers' control today would be to deny the very basis of socialism'.

Varley of course, as a Minister, has made a name for himself by prodding Chrysler and British Leyland managements into confronțation with workers in a drive for all out speed-up.

In this fraudulent statement is contained the essence of the difference between our notion of workers! democracy and the notions of these left wing fakers and defenders of capital.

Workers' democracy

indeed the very basis of socialism.

Parasites

But that basis can only tully exist within a state controlled by the working class, where the capitalist parasites and blood suckers have been forever wrenched from their prey.

Workers' within the context of a capitalist state, where the aim of for private Savage cuts in living standards of the working class have bitten to such an extent that a married man on average wage, now takes home less in real terms than in 1970.

The source for this evidence on the effects of pay controls is nothing more siniSter than Treasury official figures, in reply to a Parliamentary question, and can therefore be expected to put the best possible gloss on the pay figures.

The graph published by the Treasury shows that wages at September 1977 pnces reached a real peak in 1974 when the self contidence of the working class in fighting for wages was also at its peak.

Throughout the following period of Labour and TUC backed wage controls in the 'national interest there has been no benefit whatsoever crediting the leadership in the eyes of the miners. It also weakens the union's ability to negotiate effectively with the management because miners begin to distrust a leadership who are prepared to participate in dismissing a member of the union when this is clearly a management function and a management decision which can and should, be challenged by the union as representatives. of the membership'.

Scargill goes on:

I submit that we do not need workers' participation to play our part as a trade union inside the National Coal Board or any other industry in Britain' Provided the trade union is prepared to exercise BILS strength, we can convince management to change its views, or, at the very least modify them in many fields'.

Direct challenge

So far, so good. But interestingly, Scargill through out his article uses the term, 'participation' and 'workers' control' interchangably.

Yet they are in no way the same thing.

The fight for workers control poses a direct opposite, a direct challenge to management's "right' to exploit the worker as he so wishes. It means not "joint' control alongside the capitalist or his agents, but control by workers over the every action of the capitalist-in the interests of the workforce, not of profits.

Scargill refuses to see this distinction:

'It is impossible to have workers' control within. a capitalist society. Capitalism, by its very nature, produces contradictions which cannot be resolved until and unless we change the system of society. We have to change the working class.

The dizzy heights of 1974 have long since been abandoned and wage levels are now lower than when Wilson lost to Heath in the 1970 election. Significantly they are still falling.

At constant prices, in terms of today's pay packets, a male married worker on average pay took home £69.22; and by September year had fallen to $60.35.

Average wages

If the present trend continues it can be expected to slip below the f60 mark.

Average wages which include some 'high' wages are not an adequate reflection of the general level of wages in run of the mill jobs, where take home wages are well under £50 a week.

At the same time the figures for retail sales-which reflect what the working class is able to spend-•has fallen Workers' control-the probing into the workings of the capitalist economy by special trade union committees is an essential transition to the establishment of workers' management:

'The working out of even the most elementary economic plan-from the point of view of the exploited, not the exploiters-is impossible without workers' control, that is, without the penetration of the workers' eye into all open and concealed springs of capitalist economy.

Committees representing individual business enterprises should meet at conference to choose corresponding commi- branches trusts, industry.

ttees of whole economic regions and finally, of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers' control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself well below the level of January 19/6, and atter an improvement in the middle of this year has fallen steadily since August.

The IMF book-keepers who have now left Britain, have gone away with rosy. official figures on balance of. payment and inflation trends.

But they have also learned inflation to start rising again that forecasts are for in the middle of next year and for the balance of payments surplus to disappear in 1979, despite the bonus of North Sea Oil.

There is absolutely no sign of the real economy (jobs, the amount of goods produced, real wages) rising.

The whole thrust oi Labour and coalition strategy has been to produce a few good figures on selected charts to show off to the world.

It is as if the Government, faced with a freezing room, Trotsky *It is not our intention ti prop up capitalism; but rathe to formulate and fashion nev systems of management tha will enable the socialist caus to advance'.

Of course Heathfield':

method has nothing to de with advancing socialism.

But if workers set out t establish areas in which they not management, exercisi control, and set up their ow committees to monito:

safety; examine the financesthe • profiteering the bankers raking in interest or loan capital; coal merchants pit equipment suppliers; and industries using coal, ther this would advance both workers' control and the cause of socialism.

It is the fight within the trade union movement for this drive to extend workers"

strength that Scargill backs away from.

had decided to breathe thermometer to make things look better.

The disaster of the economic policy is for the working class complete and utter, while firms are now able to make rising profits because of the low level of wages.

Immediate demand

It is only by rejecting all collaboration with Government on wage controls, guidelines or norms and fighting to restore and defend living standards that the working class can win back what it has lost.

This requires an immediate demand that wage claims be pursued, through vigorous strikes, to destroy the policy that has brought this about.

The working class only has an independent solution to the CrISIS.

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workers participation. • This is not surprising, since

WAGES 1970 RATE