Some 5 million workers will find their next paypacket a little bigger.
This will result from the payouts under the threshold agreements' which the Tories offered last October as a 'sugar coating" to the bitter pill of Phase 3. The Tories obviously hoped that inflation would not go far above the 7% level in the following year. But now, within seven months, the cost-of-living index has shot clear across the threshold.
by any amount. indignation from all those capitalists who embraced the threshold scheme as an casy way of buying off their workers. A big campaign will be mounted to get the Government to cancel all threshold agree ments, in the 'national interest, of course ly insufficient.
Any such move will be fought by the workers' movement tooth-and-nail. Bor a defeasive struggle is not ensugh. The Phase 3 threshold scheme is totally inade launched by the trade unions to extend the rhreshold into a genuine nading scale "All workers" wages must be protected *All future agreements must be based on a 'nil norm' - workers should receive all immediate payout as soon as prices go up *The amount of the payout must be enough to mintain the full, real value of warkers" wages, allowing for increased taxes and loss of social henefits the present 40p per one per cent rise is total *The trade union movement should connile its cran index, hased on the rea ooods of workiag class families, as a basis for threshold payouts The workers at the Wickman machine tool plant in Coventry have already launched a struggle along thoss lines.
A seven week strike of workers on the machine shop forced the company to concede wage rises of El to E6, but they threshold agreement The machine shop workers returned to work but only to Some of the militants who took part in a mass picket of the Chilean junta's Naval Day reception in Pall Mall on Twea convince the other workers that thin wa a struggle affocting them all. A mas meeting of the entire factory voted for all-our strike action to hack up the do mand for a threshold agreement covering all workers The workers want intmediato protec tion for their wages against rising prices. The ALTEW Convenor at Wickman's, Dick Burdett, told Red Weekly, 'As far as we nu concerico we want vc qUp immealalso the next index is published and 40p even time the index goes up by one per cent after that sorcaly we won t be walne at all for the first payment."
There is considerable pressure un Wickman's to take a hard stand from other engineering employers in Coventry and the West Midlands, who face similar demands from their own workers. The strike is theretore shaping up into a major batte in which all the workers in the area have a very direct interest Contributions and messes of suppor showkd be sent to: Dick Bederr, 19 Robert Crown Avenne, Tue Hill South Cannery.