Although the power workers got a deal giving a 31 per cent increase. only 16 per cent of this was an actual Increase in wages the rest being consolidated threshold pay. With inflation now running at 20 per cent a year according to official figures, plus the effects of increased taxation, pension and insurance contributions, this means that by the end of the your the power workers will have taken a substantial wage car.
During 1974 prices rose by 19.1 per cent according to the retail price index-the most rapid rise for over half a century. On the face of it, anyone carning t40 a week in December 1973 would have needed £47.64 in December 1974 just to break even. However a higher proportion of any increase goes in lax.
Before the present budget a single man carning E40 woukl get £28.37 take-home pay. Labour Reseurch (March 1975) calculated that a 19.1 per cent increase in net pay would give an increase of 15.42, bringing take-home pay to £33.78 altogether. but requiring a gross rise of 22 per cent or E8.80. A married man with two children on 140 would have taken bome (31.87. A 19.1 per cent increase would have added C6.08 to this figure, requiring a gross increase of £9.90 or 24 per cent.
LOW PAID
For lox-paid workers with families of two children, petting two-thirds of average earnings or £30 a week-which is also the supplementary benefits levei for a two child family-increases of 28%a per cent in gross earnings between April 1974 and April 1975 were necessary to gain 20 per cent increases in net earnings to keep pace with inflation. On average, workers required 25 per cent increases in grows earmings to stand still.
The hardest hit are large families. and short-time working are taken into account-means that most working class incomes here only just been keeping ahead of infiarion even where increases of nearly one third have been guined!
SLIDING SCALE There is no way to halt inflation without getting rid of the capitalist system itself. But until then it is necessary to delend the buving power COST OF LIVING SAFEGUARDS Automatic compensation of wa against inflation would lay the bast for an assault on low pay and for n increases in workers' standard of Living, uniting the whole class arou a common goal. The attempts of th bosses and the Government under t guise of fighting inflation' to set lo paid against relatively better paid workers and unemployed against employed would be defeated, and th road opened up to workers' power socialismi.