Jobs: the Fight Is International!

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FUND A £60 donation from a reader in Bath our fund total up a bit this week.

We've also had, in donations or supporters" regular contributions, f5 from Southampton, £72 from Coventry, £20 from Camden, €5.50 from Hull, £5 each from Wandsworth and the Oxford Bookshops group, and £20 from The first few bank statements of the month having arrived, •we can tot up our supporters' standing orders. As of February 5, they totalled £143.95 this month.

So that's £192.50 this week and £719.85 total so far this month. Better, but not good...

Send contributions to Socialist Organiser, Rolainn rons charge sahres raised. into demonstrators ing to rule and demon- Where they already have a of the struggle is shown by oland: Support Solidarnosc. Demonstration March 13. See p.5 LAST Thursday, 5,000 angry steelworkers invaded the streets of Brussels, beseiged the EEC Commission headquarters, and came off best from street clashes with sabre-wielding mounted police.

They were demanding the go-ahead for an investment plan for their company.

Decrees On the previous Monday, 8th, there had been a one-day general strike against the economic policy of the Martens government, which is ruling by decree under emergency powers. The strike, called by the Socialist trade unions, was solid in French-speaking Belgiumwhere the Catholic unionists joined in-70% effective in Brussels, and widespread in Flemish-speaking areas, too.

Against a background of 12.9% • unemployment-the highest in the EEC-Martens' decrees propose to:

*curtail the inflationproofing system for workers' wages, to cut real wages by 3 percent this year.

*additionally, to cut money wages by 5 per cent in "lame duck' industries (like steel). *to, cut employers' taxes.

*to cut public spending.

The government also, last Wednesday, announced that it would let the big Cockerill shipyard, part-owned by the state, go into bankruptcy.

Belgium is only the sharp point of a general crisis hitting capitalist Europe.

39 hours In West Germany, unemployment is 8.2%, the highest figure since 1955. In France, despite all the promises of the Mitterrand government, unemployment continues to rise, and is now Last month the French government reduced the legal maximum basic working week from 40 hours to 39. Now French workers are striking, occupying, working to rule and demonstrating, as employers try to ng, as employers try to DELETE CUP CHI ONE MAMI bilk the reduction.

French bosses are seeking loopholes, just as British bosses have done over the 39 hour week agreement here in engineering.

Some are cutting breaks during the working day. Some say that breaks previously counted into the working hours paid for will now be counted out. Some demand speed-up. Some are cutting pay.

But many workers are going on the offensive. Where the already have a 39 hour week, they are demanding a 38 hour week; some are demanding agreements on a staged reduction to 35 hours. The workers struggles have already forced the government to change its tune. After initially announcing that the cut in hours would generally mean a cut in pay. on February 11 prime minister Pierre Mauroy said that wage levels should be maintained.

The international nature of the struggle is shown by the fact that exactly the same struggle as in France is going on right now in the BL plants at Cowley, as management try to cut relief time to 'fund' the 39 hour week.

Women workers occupying the Plessey plant at Bathgate, strikers in Leyland Vehicles, and the train drivers, are all pursuing the same basic fight for jobs here in Britain, where the official jobless rate is now 12.7%.

Neither Martens nor Thatcher started this unemployment crisis. The only way that capitalism can try to renew its profitability is by human sacrifice-by purging production of millions of workers, and by imposing speed-up and wage cuts on those that remain.

The steel industry shows this most clearly. Now Belgian steelworkers , are fighting for their jobs. In 1980 it was British steelworkers. In spring 1979 French steelworkers struck, demonstrated and rioted Leeds.

Middle Lane, London N8. against closures. In winter 1978-9, it was German steelworkers who fought a sixweek strike and lock-out for the 35 hour week.

Though the fight has taken place country by country, fundamentally it has been the same fight.

Often the workers'

leadership has tried to blur the international nature of the struggle. The French Communist Party, with its slogan of No to a German Europe, led steelworkers to wreck railcars of German Plessey, Laurenc BL i-SI steel. Many leaders of the British labour movement tell us that the way to win jobs is to put up high walls of import controls, or to defend the British steel industry, the British motor industry, against foreign competition.

But when workers move into real action, the same class answers begin to emerge everywhere.

If there is less work available, cut the hours and share the work. This basic argument has been behind struggles in many countries for shorter hours.

And in all those countries, workers have understood that the point of the shorter working week is defeated unless all attempts to cut breaks and impose speed-up are resisted. Working 10% harder for 10% fewer hours helps no-one but the bosses, who save on overheads.

In many and sometimes confused forms, the demand come forward for Hidi workers' control of production-for a workers' plan to reorganise production, place of the chaos of the profit system. To be consolidated, this demand requires a fight for nationalisation and for a workers' govern ment, controlled by and accountable to the workers organisations.

Understood

When the bosses say wage cuts are necessary get more jobs-for other wise, they cry, how can the!

afford to pay mor employees? -workers across Europe have under stood that wage cuts in fac go hand in hand with jo cuts, as part of the bosse offensive. Where will money come from to pa additional workers? Fror the loot of the capitalist and the bankers, from arms budgets, and from new wealth created putting the economy on more rational basis!

From Belgium to Britai the problem is the same the profit system. And so the answer-independe workers' struggle.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 18 February, 1982 Page 2 " "yog"