Italian Bosses Scrap Sliding Scale

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For socialism in 'Mo

ALl erupted into strik

st week over the unilat 1. decision to conqudas- Geeson OT

scara or sliding scale.

have bot i part of talian nave been part wages since at least 1957 January 1974 the CPterent had received different awards, with higher gong to nignerstatus job-holders.

The new system abolished the clauses and gave flat-rate payments related to the had moved each quarter cost-ot-iving favourably towards working class expenditure than is the British RPI. Ours is prices, verardless of the prices fact that food, fuel and transport constitute a higher proportion of the working class budget than the middle class's.

The Italian index is based on the consumption pat terns of urban manua workers' families in other words, the organised working class.

Suspension of the threshold 198 mists fra January is real threat to the living standards of Italian workers because they are heavily dependent on the sliding scale for the bulk of their wage rises. In 1981, two-thirds of all pay increases came from threshold payments.

Since 1977, the Italian union leaders have moderated pay claims in an attempt to deflect criticism of the 'scala mobile', whict is intensely unpopular with the employers. In June last year, Confindustria attemp ied to break the agreement Franco Grisola of the LOR an Italian socialist organisa tion told us:

"The Confindustri decision affects workers i big and medium private industry - about 30 or 40% of Italian workers. Shop floor workers who previous Covered by the scala mobile, had 70% of price rises ow only have 35% Workers reaction has been strong. In Milan there was a demonstration of 100,000. The tiaut union bureaucracy first called token four hour strike, but the pressure has forced them to call an eight hour general strike - of all workers, not just those affected on June 25, probably with a national demonstration. topple the government. But "This struggle could the LOR argues that some thing more is needed to shift the bosses - we're calling for factory occupations.

•We're also calling fo rolling strikes, workshop by production, on the paralyse workshop, Val diyst the three-yearly wage nego tiations. These were due in January - but not even the preliminaries have started "The employers understand very well that the present slump gives them a chance to seize the advantoge but were talked out of it by the government promising to 'moderate labour costs' The employers have tried to turn workers against the *scala mobile' by using the reactionary argument that the flat-rate increases compress differentials on the shop-floor. Last week's show of protest proves that, on the contrary, Italian workers are determined to fight to keep their sliding scale, imperfect as it is.

In 1981 it paid them an average weekly rise of 90.5 pence, but this compensated for only 65% of price rises. Last year the unions successfully fought off government attempts to put a ceiling on the number of threshold payments.

Now they want to extend the practice of indexation. As well as defending the existing system, they want HARRY SLOAN reports on his recent visit to Detroit THE potholes in the freeway tell their own story; Detroit, America's famous 'motor city' has fallen victim to Ronald Reagan's policies of depression.

Production cutbacks and mass layofts have leit a cloud of depression over this sprawling metropolitican area, which houses a 5 million population as well as the world headquarters of three automotive giants - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

Detroit city, with diminishing 2 million population, 60% of whom are black, faces the full brunt of the unemployment and the poverty which this brings in the "land of the free" - where once lay-off pay is exhausted there is no dole or state support for the jobless.

The once 60,000-strong workforce of Ford's giant, integrated River Rouge plant — where raw iron ore is shipped in from the Great lakes and finished cars shipped out - has dwindled to 20,000. There are layoffs throughout the other car plants - and spin-off cutbacks reaching even into the privately-run hospitals, where profit margins have been hit by the spreading poverty.

The Rouge plant in the 1940s was the site of bitter organisation into Henry Ford's empire of exploitation; but in the 1980s the battles so far have been of a very different character. d.

On the one hand the car industry employers Chrysler, Ford and General Motors — have demanded ''concessions" on the

By Wendy Mustill

to restore an agreement lost in 1977 which included indexation payments in calculations for redundancy and retirement pay.

Since 1980, cost-of-living payments have been in force in 10 out of the 18 major Western European countries. In places such as Belgium they have recently been suspended as part of government attacks aimed at forcing workers to pay for the recession.

Acceptance

But there is a remarkable degree of acceptance in the European workers' movement that cost-of-living payments are a necessary part of defending standards.

No country has a price index monitored by the unions, reflecting working wages and benefits won by workers under existing wage contracts. In Chrysler this took place as part of the government. "rescue" operation under Carter; in Ford and General Motors the concessions have been pressed home by management using the threat of more layoffs as a pistol at the heads of the warkforce.

And from the other side, bureaucratic leaders of the United Auto Workers union have pulled every trick in the book, in order to ensure that these concessions are ratified by the workforce.

They have not found an enthusiastic response. In Ford, only 28% of workers turned out to vote "yes" to package of cutbacks which deprived them of annual increments, cut overtime pay and axed holiday entitlements. In General Motors a bundle of wage cuts and cuts in benefits totalling $3 billion was handed to the employers -but only by a 52%- 48% margin.

Ironically, the GM concessions were completed as the company announced a 1981 profit of $333 million and a new bonus programme or top execuuves.

The only basis on which any workers at all could be mustered to vote for the concessions to the car industry bosses was through their fear of layoffs.

Less security

US workers have less job security than almost any section of workers in the advanced capitalist world: layoffs go largely unfought and inflict indefinite hardship • on workers whose contracts are written to outlaw industrial action for three years at a time.

And the initial pool of unemployment assistance paid to the first wave of laid-off car workers in the

class interests, alth the Papandreou go ment in Greece is curt reconstituting its cons price index to meet i demands. But the sl

scale payments do gu tee some degree of matic recompense wages eroded by inflat More importantly form a potential basi much greater parti tion by workers in se ways:

*In controlling statistics are compiled asking in whose inte they are used.

*By monitoring challenging price more effectively (cf Lo Transport and the resp to a similar situatio: Paris).

*By basing wage i ands on needs as el ienced and formulater active rank-and-file volvement in areas our traditional pay bargaini *By showing solid with workers abroad face the same problem. explained in Soci Organiser two weeks ag mid-1970s has long dried up. Now a lai worker receives next t benefit, while standin chance of finding an‹ job.

Having created 1

social misery, it was n industry execut together with other 1 ness chiefs, who reci wook the lead in an atte to restore some of Detr "civic pride" • No, they not planning to open plants or take on r workers: instead they ! stumped up $2.5 millio resurface the roads arc the town centre and it crash barriers ready stage a Grand Prix m race!

The race will circle the showpiece - but artless -Renaissance Centre - a complex of office blocks erected by similarly cynical businessmen in the wake of the bitter riots in Detroit's black ghettos in 1967.

In this, the depressed industrial heartland of Reagan's America, are to be found in microcosm all the strengths and weaknesses, all the problems and possibilities of the US working class.

And it was to Detroit that I went to visit one of the organisations fighting to build a revolutionary Marxist party in the American labour movement.

The Revolutionary Workers League is Trotskyist organisation, politically sympathetic to the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee.

It has fought to establish roots in the main industries and unions (the auto workers, the Teamsters, amongst hospital workers and among hotel and catering workers on the West Coast) as well as develop work which will bring contact with especially oppressed sections of the working class - black workers, lough Ivernrently liding aranautofor ion.

they s for icipaveral how I and rests rises ndon Ionse n in demxperd by intside ing. arity who s, as ialist 30.

ago id-off no g no other mass notor ives, busiently empt oit's y are new nore have in to jund astal • to lotor other national minorities, women workers and gays.

The Second National Conference of the RWL was therefore a time for taking stock of the achievements in these arenas and of the organisation's fusion with the Socialist « 'League (Democratic Centralist) last year.

Trade union reports revealed patient and courageous work in the UAW, fighting the pay concessions in Ford and General Motors. It revealed serious work in the Teamsters union, building on and developing work begun initially by the SL(DC). A caucus in which RWL members and supporters are active in the 12,000 strong St. Louis Teamsters Local 688 had won a number of stewardships in the teeth of a witch-hunting right-wing opposition.

And in the Harper Hospital in Detroit the RWIsupported 'Membership. Action Committee' has THIS PLACE been the core of the opposition to a management offensive designed to force wage concessions in the forthcoming contract negotiations.

In mounting any suck challenge to management, the RWL has found that consistently the most militant stance is that of black workers and women, who face the additional burden of racial and sexual oppression at the hands of the system.

The readiness of in particular black militants to break from the conservative political views of the US labour bureaucracy and capitalist 'establishment' was also confirmed by an initial surge of interest for the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP) - interest which subsided as the Party itself lost momentum and began to fall under the influence of Stalinist and petty bourgeois politics.

But work by the RWL ir DETROIT. Italian carworkers demonstrate the gay and lesbian communities in Detroit, Ann Arbor and the West Coast Bay Area has also shown that other especially oppressed and alienated sections of American society can rapidly move towards a grasp of the need for revolutionary action to overthrow the capitalist system.

Conditions for political work are tough. Tens of thousands of industrial workers are laid off. Only 15-20% of the American working class is organised into trade unions, unofficial strikes are illegal and almost unknown, and there is no independent. workers' Union leaders on salaries as high as £150,000 a year (plus expenses) line up unashamedly with capitalists on every key issue.

It is plain that a revolutionary organisation seeking to root itself in the US working class must look primarily towards the most 200002703725

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rsday 10 June 198:

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