Whose living standards?

Scan page 3

organised If you agree with what we have to say, you can help. Become a supporter of the Socialist Organiser Alliance -groups are established in most large for more information, write at once ACCORDING to government figures, wages are still keeping ahead of prices. It seems an unlikely story. And a recent analysis shows that it is indeed, for most working class people, not true.

An article by Peter Kellner in last week's New Statesman looks at the government's Retail Price Index.

Would you trust this man to calculate your cost of living? According to this index, prices went up only 3.9% in the first nine months of 1982, while earnings were rising at about 8% per year.

Very good. But Peter Kellner points out that inflation has been far above the RPI for council tenants, and far below for people with mortgages. "There is nobody in Britain to whom the present RPI applies":

The RPI assumes an "average' household which spends about equally on mortgage payments and on rent. In real life people pay one or the other.

Rents As interest rates have fallen, so have mortgage payments. But rents have been forced up, by order of the Tory government.

Taking the example of Haringey - where the Labour council has actually raised rents less than instructed by Heseltine - Kellner calculates an average increase in rent and rates of 60% between December 1980 and December 1982.

The mortgage-payers? *inflation rate' , he concludes, was 8.8% in 1981, and less than 0.1% in 1982. For a council-house family, the cost of living has risen 16.1% in 1981 and a further 8% in 1982.

So council tenants, if they have been getting average-size wage rises, have had their standard of living cut seriously. According to the Sunday Times (November 7) the Tories are likely to call for a further £2 per week rent rise this year (about 16% on average).

The Sunday Times also reports that: "Rent arrears owed by council tenants have reached an all-time high. More than £80 million is owed to councils, mainly in the big cities"

This is not the first time that the RPI has been misleading. Its 'average household' is a fiction, and a misleading one in a society with gross inequalities.

Another common snag with the RPI - though one that has not applied recently • is the different rates of inflation for food, at one end of the scale, and consumer durables, at the other.

Through technical progress, prices of consumer durables often rise slowly or even fall; but food prices rise more steadily. Obviously better off people spend a bigger proportion of their income on consumer durables, and worse-off people a bigger proportion on food.

Recently food prices have actually increased less than most other prices. But there is no saying how long that will last.

In France and other countries, the trade unions compile their own cost of living indices, rivais to the government index. It's about time the British labour movement started to do the same.

A working class index can provide a solid basis for seeing which wage offers actually do meet inflation and which don't. It is also useful as i basis for cost of living éscalator clauses in wage agreements. Socialist Organiser is not just a We fight to organise workers struggle for a new leadership labour movement.

towns.

To 'Get Organised' in the fight, us at 28 Middle Lane, London Nø. Name Address.. paper. in the in the John Bloxam

Scan page 4

Socialist Organiser no. 108 November 11 1982 Page 4 TOTKI GWIS Innestamonalnews • 4's premo per ma ferra

----- pull-quotes -----

Get Or