Billion dollar wage cuts

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IN AMERICA - it is said - everything is bigger. That MFRIRA- it is said - evervthing is bieger. That led the charge, and union leaders have collapsed in conditions that were won with great difficulty over

This week has seen the grand daddy of them all - Last November brought the sell-out of the BL throughout industry in most cases amount to a Indeed the redundancies. now being accepted a negotiated deal between the United Auto Workers union and the giant General Motors corporation, in which union leaders have signed away between $2- $3 billion worth of pay and holidays for 319,000 previous "final offer" • Union officials and BL management are even now putting the final touches pay strike with a settlement actually worse than the to a new procedure agreement arising from that complete loss of jobs to new technology. there is no indication that concessions and retreats by the workers' movement can placate the Secondly as bitter experience has confirmed with nine days paid time off. Cost-of-living pay Surrendered are annual pay increases, together a miserable betrayal on wages and a settlement well In Ford an about-turn by union leaders brought pay have in each case been followed up by renewed In BL, for example, repeated annual betrayals on increases will be deferred; and wholesale changes in attacks on jobs and wages - halving the workforce in working conditions will be imposed at individual GM In Europe, too, the motor industry has been the the last five years, with worse still to come.

pace-setter. 789,000 German carworkers have been Thirdly the whole approach starts not from the In exchange GM have agreed to reopen four led into a wage agreement giving a measiy 4.2% plants scheduled for closure, and pledged for a period of two years not to close any plants in order increase — well below inflation. And in Italy, union officials at Alfa Romeo have accepted 5,700 lay- problems and profitability of the employer and the needs and interests of the working class but from the of wholesale lay-offs at times of recession (141,000 replaced by a policy of permanent job loss through UAW members are laid off indefinitely at GM) be There is also agreement that the present system other industries. Last week saw steel union officials concluding an agreement with the British Steel Cor- But the same approach is also being applied in "We have a future ... We are ready to break surrender to the anarchic capitalist system which the struggles for improvements at some point in the trade union and labour movement was built to com- indefinite future, this is no more or less than a total Though decorated with ritual phrases about the same UAW leaders concluded a $1 billion wage- The GM sell-out is not unique. A few weeks ago the employer can be restored to profitability, then In every case the philosophy is the same: if only cul-de-sac leaving workers bogged down in capitalist The reformist "road to socialism" is in reality a wages and conditions of their members in order to Union bureaucrats are willingly sacrificing the surely some concessions and improvements can be In the process, individual sections of the labour As TGWU official Ron Todd argues on the movement find themselves pitted against their fellow Airline workers, construction workers, food Ford settlement "If and when conditions improve, workers at home or abroad: Ravenscraig officials processing and road haulage workers have all been sions to the employers. But the US bosses are not dragooned into settlements which make huge conces- that far ahead of their British colleagues. Mishnal FAwardos _ pooed on hv Thatcher - has we will be asking for more than we got this year." kind of position. Firstly, there is no immediate pros- pect of an end to the slump: the concessions that have been made amount to a permanent surrender of But there are three obvious drawbacks to this Wales steel plants; Terry Duffy "backs Britain" boast that their members can outproduce the South against "foreign" competition by betraying his mem- bosses into using the money saved from their payroll bers at BL: UAW leader Fraser tries to cajole US car

IN AMERICA- it is said

also goes for the sell-outs.

members.

plants.

to use outside suppliers.

natural wastage.

cutting deal with Ford management.

bail out hard-pressed employers.

everything is bigger.

This path.

capitulation.

EXPANSE * in Evans' later days, it became more esoteric and trivial. Even at its best, Insight stood out as an exception to serious reporting, rather than typical of The Thalidomide campaign is often held up as newspaper campaigning at its best and to prove the "freedom" of the British press.

Yet the most notable feature was that the Sunday Times was silenced by Distillers' writs for years until the European Court ruled that the articles could be run.

The Sunday Times did not publish and be damned. It did not defy the courts. It simply hired better lawyers.

Evans was an outsider at the Times in the sense that he was not part of the Establishment. The policy line Thatcherite. Evans was line Reaganite. Evans was ONE thing a recession is good for is getting valuable goods at knockdown prices. And that's not just in your local high Street boutique's closing down sale. As Amersham International's sale at bargain basement rates shows, if you've got a few million to

led the charge, and union

below the rate of inflation.

offs under threat of closure.

poration at Ravenscraig, boasting: more records in steel production."

made in the long run. many years: capitalist system as a whole.

bat.

chaos.

conditions that were won with great

employers and prevent further attacks. to cut the price of Japanese imports. proceed.

employers. mation of society.

clause. American and thus undercut

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MAGGIES LAGGIE

disagreements with Murdoch say it all. Evans was soft on the SDP; Murdoch is a hard-

critical of US policy in El Salvador; Murdoch is a hard-