Trade union leaders are delighted this week with the final resignation of Heath and the return of Wilson to Number Ten. This is the moment they have relished throughout the last four years of Tory rule.
The trade union leaders have promised that Labour will do many good things for the working class. If the Industrial Relations Act and Housing Finance Act are repealed; if pensions are raised to £10 and El6 a week for single and married people; if certain essential foods are subsidised, then indeed these will be big steps forward for the workers' movement.
But many Labour and trade union leaders have made it clear that the package of Labour proposals which look so promising are designed only to create the 'climate" in which cooperation" between unions and Gorernment can be achieved to restrain wages.
SCANLON'S MISUNDERSTANDINGS' Hugh Scanlon, President of the AUEW-a union whose members have opposed all incomes policy UnOCE CleT Labour DE LOne puE it this way:
*These measures, far-reaching and broad as they are, will allow the trade unions, on a voluntary basis and under free collective bargaining. to recognise in their wage claims the contribution to living standards Stadents in Oxford last Monday that these measures will make as and when they are introduced.
'This is the pledge we have given and will abide by, but to call this an agreed incomes policy with all that name conjures up in the minds of working people would create misunderstandings which should be But whether a formal incomes policy is agreed, or whether volun tary? wage restraint is achieved by mods, shoves and winks, the principles involved are laid down clearly in Scanion's statement.
TIT-FOR-TAT
What Scanlon is saying is that repeal of the Industrial Relations and Housing Pinance Acts, increases in pensions, and price controls, are not things which workers should simply be given. They are not rights. They are things which the workers' movement must buy.
Each time the Labour Government makes a move, the TUC will "recognise" this as a 'contribution', and make a 'contribution of its own, In other words, when Labour repeal a Tory law, or exercise control over the price of an item in the shops, the unions will turn the screw a little harder on their own members Although the precise form of this 'understanding", this social contract, remains to be agreed, its meaning is perfectly clear. The working class is not to be compensated for the attacks made on it in future.
workers, it would wconditionally and control prices, in addition, it Of course, all of this would require a real struggle between ment improve the conditions for picketing laws and releasing the convicted Shrewsbury workers.
Labour Government is not a signal for a massive struggle to achieve permanent gains for the working ed.
peace and not confrontation is and bitterness' under the Tories classes, but because of the "mistake the Tories made in introducing the law into 'industrial relations"
What is required, however, is the confrontation. ment needs to be compensated for standard of living in the immedate UNCONDITIONAL REPEAL If a Labour Government were really acting in the interests of the wage clains.
repeal these Acts, increase pensions, would bring about radical improvements in the standard of living by, for example, introducing a national minimum wage, and by granting in full all wage claims hailed hy Phase 3, Rather than asking the unions to make sacrifices it would force the capitalists to accept these burdens.
required.
labour and capital. The trade union leaders should prepare this struggle and demand that a Labour Governstruggle by, for example, repealing But to the TUC, the coming of a "disappears' class, It is rather a Government under which 'industrial peace' can be achievAs Jack Jones put it: 'Industrial Labour's policy.' The years of 'strife were broucht about in his view, not because of an inevitable clash between No worker enjoys strugele for to think there is to be prosperity for workers under Labour, it would he an even greater illusion to think there will be 'peace". Worse, it would be a fatal error for the workers" movement not to prepare for industrial This should be clear from the crisis in the economy, the burdens of which the capitalists will try to push on to the working class. I! should he clear even if we consider the single question of rising prices, the issue around which the Labour Government believes that action will induce the unions to moderate Lahour proposes to deal with this by means of subsidies, essentially on imported food stuffs. They have so far failed to say which items they intend to subsidise or by how much, and they ignore non-food items. But if this policy is pursued by Labour, with its traditional respect for the pri- repression. vate property rights of those involved in big commercial transactions, then enormous suns of noney would be MONEY FROM WHERE?
The Government could borrow from the International Monetary Fund. But this would only aggravate the halance of payments deficit, leading to devaluation of the pound and therefore further price inflation. The need to fight for wage increases hardly The Government could raise taxation from the workers, under these circumstances, but further wage increases would again be necessary. Finally, the Government could take the money from profits. But this would only lead to the capitalists attacking the workers in the factories by trying to increase productivity and decrease their lahour force, Daunted by this logic, the Government could take little effective action to control prices. In that cuse, a maswould be needed —a struggle which will meet with the ferocious resistance of the capitalists deprived of the backing of State pay laws.
So whichever of these reformist paths is chosen, 'industrial peace' is certainly not what the workers' move ment must prepare itself for. Yet to the trade union leaders, industrial 'peace' rather than "confrontation" is a greater good than the living standards of their members. Even if this means disarming the workers" movement in the face of an inevitable struggle.
If there is any industrial peace under Labour it will not be because the workers' movement has no further need to struggle. On the contrary, the need for struggle is greater than ever before. It will be because the trade union leaders are preventing it from taking place by bureaucratic It will be becuuse in the name of sugary promises and "big concessions" from the Labour Government, the trade wton leaders are acting as a replacement for the Industrial Relations Act, the Pay Laws and the forces of the State in holding back the struggle of the rank and file.
The bureaucrats have been hyp notising the workers' movement for ycars with the prospect of a golden era under Labour, No worker should he taken in by this stuff. No worker should fall asleep and let the bureauerats tie the trade unions to the capilaist State.
NO INCOMES POLICY There must be no form of incomes policy under capitalism irrespective of which Government is in power. The position adopted by many unions under the Tories - No talks on incomes policy —are just as valid today under Labour, to victimise and physically attack