PROGRAMME for every increase in the cost of living. Agreements along these lines, although not fully adequate, have been won by workers in Belgium and Italy. The question is, how are we to get from the existing threshold agree ments to a real sliding scale of wages?
EXTEND
The first thing is obviously to extend threshold agreements to the whole of the working class. A good basis for this exists. Existing threshold agreements will almost certainly be triggered off by price increases next month. Obviously those workers not covered by such agreements will see the benefits to be gained.
In all further agreements the threshold must be pushed downward from 7% to 0% so that compensation is received for every going to be needed in the struggle.
Even before the big struagles break out in the autumn or spring there are many steps which militants can take. The demand for a sliding scale of wages can be pushed forward at every union conference and in every local wages struggle. Engineering workers are going to be enpuged in hundreds of local negotiations during the summer. In every one the demand for a sliding scale, a 'nil-norm" threshold, should be put forward. Immediate action is also possible on equal pay. Thirty two per cent of the work force in engineering are women.
Local organisations of the working class movement can also take the initiative. Hackney Trades Council, for example, is calling a conference, on the situation of working women in which equal pay will be a big issue. The London Trades Council's "Working Women's Charter" er to stay in the same place. as a whole. were not raised. the NUM, for example, is proposing that instead of a big wage increase the miners should usk for a three year contract and a threshold agreement. But this type of trick is easily dealt with by insisting on big wage demands in addition to the demand for cost of living clauses, and the maintenance of yearly contracts, The manoeuvres of the right can be easily exposed and are now far less of a danger than the threat of the working class becoming exhausted from having to run faster and fast TERRIFIED We should be under no illusions that this will be an casy programme to win. The ruling class is already complaining about the cost of the present, inadequate threshold agreements and is trying to scrap them. According to the Financial The strength of the big battalions of the working class must be brought into the struggle to gain demands such as a national minimum wage for the weakly organised. For such a pain can only be won from the employers if they fear a response from the working class OPPRESSED In fact, many sections of the population already look to the trade unions to protect their interests. It was very significant, for example, that when the pensioners held their first demonstration last year they marched to the TUC. Jack Jones and Len Murray, for all their other weaknesses, also had the right line when they threatened strike action if pensions entire working class and all forms of working class income-both through including such a demand in all wage claims, and by forcing Labour to make such protection compulsory under law. *Protect all wage gains by fixing the threshold at O (thus making rises automatie for every increase in the cost of living) *Provide 100% protection by setting threshold increases at a minimum of 60p for every 16 rise in the cost of living. *Establish a trade union controlled cost-of-living index.
employers. This is vitally necessary when, as we have seen, the capitalists are trying to isolate the trade unions.
All the demands which have been discusseda sliding scale of wages, equal pay for women, • nationul minimum wage-are exactly the type of demand which could rally the mass of the population. Not only the organised workers, but the 12 million who are not in unions as well, would see the trade union movement as their defenders.
Some militants think the decisive place to put forward these demands is to a Labour Party conference. Of course this is useful, but it is not the key thing The experience of the lust years shows that the real power lies in the mass struggle of the working class. It is through such struggle that trade union militants must fight for these demands against any Government. The fact that Labour is in office just makes this tusk slightly easier at present.
The trade union leaders want to avoid this. Jack Jones wrote in Tribune'. somehow wages must be raised well above the poverty line indicated'. "Somchow will not gel us very far. What we need to know is how. The decisive thing is to win the unions to fighting for them.