Andwustric Speciaul Viability argument leads to The slippery slope of concessions wage cutting concessions o Problems

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IF POPULAR myth is to be believed, everything USA - even the sell-outs by union leaders.

That may be pretty hard for Cowley workers to believe -but even they have not (yet) been forced by their leaders into legally-binding three year contracts embodying an actual reduc tion in wages. That - if Duffy and Evans have their way - is a treat yet to come.

In the USA, however, givebacks" nave been 'negotiated' by union bureaucrats in a' wide range of industries in which employers have claimed the only alternative is redundancies or closure.

A recent leaflet put out by the New York rank and file grouping "Teamsters for a Democratic Union' sums un the results of these 'deals': -==. ATTO "In the steel and rubber industries giant corporations like Uniroyal, US Steel, General Tire and National Steel closed plants even when workers made concessions.

At Chrysler, the auto workers made concessions three times, giving up $1 billion in pay, yet 50% of them are laid off.

Across the auto industry incl uding suppliers, the union has made $ 5 billion in concessions. The net effect of this no-fight strategy has been the loss of 600,000 jobs.

Freight Teamsters [transport workers] see carriers closing up nearly every week, despite the recent sell-out Master Freight Contract which, freezes wages, cuts cost of living allowances, forces drivers to pay into the pension and health funds, and gives major concessions on work rules.

Besides carriers like Time-DC which have folded anyway since the new NMFA contract was signed, hundreds of others, seeing the union in retreat, are refusing to sign, and are demanding even more 'telief".

Not only have the union bureaucrats been giving concessions, SOLIDARITY bigger an By Harry bought Marathon Oil. Unemployment is over 10 million - the worst since 1939.

Sometimes the extra money a company saves when we make concessions is used to automate existing jobs out of existence, or, as at Cooper Jarrett, to invest in new areas while the company lays off the very workers who helped the employer finance them out of a job.

The biggest problem is that the employers rightly see union givebacks as a sign of weakness, and this whets their appetite for even more concessions. This means less job security, because the company knows it can walk all over the union without the union doing a thing.

Wage cutting at one company may help that company get a competitive edge on other companies for a while.

Jobs may be transferred from one place to another, but it won't create a single extra job in the balance.

It does, however, cut the heart out of unionism, if it gets Team. sters in one local or company competing with those in another so as to undercut the wages and working conditions of our brothers and sistèrs.

The current economic crisis is driving many, especially smaller, companies to the wall. The freight industry, for example, under the impact of deregulation and recession, is undergoing rapid consolidation.

The largest carriers are expanding their facilities and service, and increasing their profitability. Yet, even they are demanding concessions as they prepare for more cut-throat competition with other firms. No amount of union givebacks will keep the weaker companies from being swallowed up.

Since 1976, 150,000 Teamster freight jobs, over one third of the total, have been lost due to industry reorganisațion and the carriers' union-busting campaign. The growing non-union sector is being used as a club against unionised workers by the employers to force more concessions.

The only way to end this threat is by a campaign that mobilises the Teamster rank and file to help organise the unorganised, and proves to them in deeds that the muscle of the entire IBT will be used to back them up, including supporting strike action and secondary boycotts"

The American experience is echoed in each and every example of retreat by British union leaders.

Far from being satistied by the concessions they have gained. the employer i he a mere management threats of impending bankruptcy, closure or mass sackings can just as easily be suckered into wholesale collaboration in this or that 'miracle' scheme that might 'save' the company - most recently the BL Maestro.

The financial crisis hitting whole sections of capitalist industry flows not from workers excessive demands but from capitalism's own chaotic methods. of restructuring production and reviving profits, by driving weaker firms to the wall.

Employers - whether "lossmaking' or highly profitable -have embarked on a sustained and pany's bluff on the sacking of the whole workforce of a vast, newly reequippped plant that produces the company's star model, and mobilising the full industrial strength of the TGWU and AUEW to occupy the plant, and to paralyse the car and engineering industry until the sackings are reversed and union demands conceded.

Plants It means in smaller plants taking a similarly hard line against management demands and threats. fighting closure threats with mass occupations and the struggle for supporting strikers competitors and into a never-ending drive for more speed-up and lower wages, while the weakest firms must in the end, under the present system, inevitably go to the wall.

The logic of sacrifices to the god of viability is the pauperisation and super exploitation, the division and fragmentation of the working: class into competing units identifying each with their own' employer and cutting each others' throats in the fight for the remaining few jobs available..

Against that fearful prospect we must: fight for the logic of the class struggle: just as the em-