Tone year arm 1980 unemployment rocketed 000 to nearly 147,000 a staggering increase of 000.
South Wales miners bently showed how ht back the agnificent defeat of the fries that the ernment can be beaten thee tole jobs TuC The Wales ould give working peothe inspiration and roction to learn from the bs and living standards. Unfortunate v there Is obstacle to this: the curleadership of the and the ficies they support. Their approach can be umed up as follows: to jobs Wales ds new investment; to this investment must show that it co-operative and militant demonstrations and everything proceed otiations and collaboon witn employers and ornment.
The Wales TUC Social • is a good example of be strategy. centree is a utopian 'agreebetween the trade the next Labour The Finen co ate ok. government and CBI would agree to in• OI basic working week to 35 They would also ensure wages kept pace with inflation, and set a minimum wage level at not less than two-thirds of average earnings.
Wales TUC
public fringe meeting 1pm Sat 2 May Marine Hotel Speakers: Lee Jeans occupa Tion, Port Talbot and Lianwern Action groups, South Wales leg of People's March, Also invited: NUM, NUR, British Aluminium Resolven.
The trade unions for their part would accept the inevitability cies in manufacturing industry, confining their response to negotiating better redundancy payments.
They would also allow manpower restructurig meaning more shift work, intensive working practices, and more flexiole use of the workforce along more control by the trade union leaderships over the rank and file to smother unofficial action.
The Social Plan should thrown out by the Wales TUC conference. It says nothing about what working people should be doing now to • I is the Tory onslaught. absurd suggest CBI would ever volunteer r of crafis, Yortstire ESC ness' of ISTC leader Bill Sirs Wales general secretary George Wright steelworkers theirs.
Lastly, the Social Plans pushes idea of: cof According to George Wright, significant emplovment opportunities can be provided in Wales on the model of the Mondragon co-operatives the basoue country.
But it took 25 years to create 18,500 jobs in these Basque co-operatives. And this was helped by the boom years of the 1950s and 60s. That many jobs (18,500) were lost in Wales in just one month last year the government ran down the steel industry!
win total unemploy ment 47,200 (1) (13.6 per cent of standing the workforce), and in the depths of an economic slump, eratives could barely begin to meet the massive need for jobs.
Problem The proposal for co operatives does not tackle the basic problem defeating the Tory government and resolving the economic crisis in favour of working people rather than the bosses.
Opposition to the Social Plan has grown inside the labour movement over the last month. It 18 rumoured George Wright may withdraw from the wales luC con ference agenda because he is afraid it will be rejected!
In the wake of the miners' victory, argue that to defend jobs and living standards working people must use the onwe have: our and labour For pay. ad with a vigorous campaign against Overtime, would create hundreds of thousands of ness 10cs.
get determina Tout al Jes is regional mand major capital invest and steel: Such a building national _strikes, Steelworkers picket Margaret Thatcher's visit to Cardiff last December. ment in the Welsh pits, railways and steel.
The beading as and 21*a hospitals schools would not only building workers and fill a crying social need, it would also mcrease demand lor cod startling steelworkers' jobs. It was in Wales, to back down but did plans, the And when she fair is illuminating.
was on 28 January, was on massive programme could be paid for by reducing the massive arms ball, in particular cancelling all nuclear weapons.
The powerful mili. tancy of the workers should be used to spearhead industrial
----- pull-quotes -----
Socialist Challenge