By David Harris
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-06-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
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matic wage rises for the town's employees and other measures it would be possible to save 300 jobs. However according to de Volkskrant the cuts are likely to cost 1500 jobs.
The chairman of AbvaKabo, which with some 249,000 members is the second largest union in the largest union federation, the million strong FNV, commented after the Rotterdam vote: "You ask yourself who is more right-wing: the cabinet or the town council which calls itself left wing."
A local official of AbvaKabo attacked the Rotterdam council as "a willing wheelbarrow for the government."
But it is not only in Rotterdam that the acts of the PvdA are causing a confusion which lends itself to exploitation by the right wing press.
Coalition
The national policy of the PvdA is concisely expressed in what in many respects is an effective recruiting "paper" Amsterdam-krant, which criticises the government's cuts and asks people to join the party, now being pushed through the letter-boxes of houses and flats in Amsterdam. A headline in this says "Economise Make cuts?) Yes, but do it fairly!"
In fact it was only recently that the PvdA withdrew from a CODA and Vert which tad had already introduced cuts. In the provincial elections in March last year its vote slumped to 21% compared with the 34% it received in the provincial elections of 1978 and 28% in the 1981 general election, and it refused to go along with further Which mayaforward cuts.