THE Tories are making a desperate attempt to solve their public spending problems by squashing public sector pay deals 'Tarzan' Heseltine is proving much less effective at controlling public spending than he is at making dramatic speeches at Tory Party conferences.
The Tories' requirement is that public sector workers should take home a lot less in their pay packets in real terms. That's why the 'pay round', which is supposed to finish around the end of April and re-open in September, has in fact gone on continuously since the end of the steel strike.
The Scottish teachers, workers, and various health workers have all come into conflict with the government. Tories have more or less imposed an unofficial statutory level of pay settlements of 14 per cent for all publicly employed workers per cent below the level of inflation.
Unless this sort of settlement, and lower, becomes the norm, say the Tories, British industry will not be sufficiently profitable for the employers to maintain guarantee jobs.
It is worth remembering what one of the Corby steelworkers had to say about this argument: 'In the two years or so before the sackposition".
your jobs. told us: local government The - that is 8 production and ing, production records were surpassed in a frantic attempt to become "a more viable pro"All we heard was: "We can't afford to pay you more, but become viable and you can keep Well at the end of two years they "Too you didn't work hard "They presented us with figures about the lack of viability that a four year old could have seen through...The whole quest for viability had been a gigantic hoax at our expense. had been fed this thread of hope in a cruel attempt to keep us quiet until they were ready to In a fight against the government no single workers Is steelworkers, nurses, Post Office workers or miners, every active trade unionist and socialist Wherever possible workers should bring forward their claims in order to go into the.
Where this is not possible, support must be respecting picket lines, building mass pickets, demonstrations and meetings called workers involved, and building local and namuttees ple, the miners.
Amount the differences stewards system.
strong enough to win major hospital, gramme. tional labour movement-based support comThis is even more important for workers in the public services like the NHS because they don't have the industrial muscle of, for examThe Scottish nurses have shown the way by șetting up nurses action committees to surbetween the different unions, between the unions and the Royal College of Nurses, and the lack of links between hospitals because of the absence of a shop Using this base the nurses have been able to build links with NALGO and CPSA workers and speak at the Scottish miners' gala.
But to be successful these developments have to be national in order to force the national union leaders into joint action to win the claims. This can only be done by uniting public sector workers around common demands.
This means re-starting the fight for a national minimum wage — which should now be f80 automatically protected against the effects of inflation. This would be part of the plan to revitalise the public services by restoring all cuts made over the last decade, cancelling all debt and interest payments, and launching a school, and housing But more powerful sections of the public evitably made wage wing in the union, ycals The Broad Left in and has successfully imposed movement.
proin the trade union movement. sector workers as well as those in private industry have to campaign in the same way. The days of effective section by section, and factory by factory bargaining are long gone The introduction of measured day work inbargaining : a national question in every industry and gave the na tional full-time officials a free hand unless there was a strong nationally co-ordinated left armed with the political arguments to enable the stewards to mobilise the rank and file despite the propaganda of the government, whether Labour or Tory.
It was the absence of such effective political left-wings organised around campaigns that enabled the national trade union officials to so 'effectively police the social contract for tou!
the Post Office Engineering Union, however, did fight for the 35-hour week against the Labour government, the union leadership a national claim for 37 per cent. This will be a most vital struggle for the whole Every body of the labour movement nationally and locally must declare support for the telecoms workers, send messages of sup. port, donations to the strike fund etc. A defeat for the Post Office on this question would be a decisive defeat for Thatcher and the right wing