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Yet even given this clear man- cut, while in Milwaukee on the date and an ideal opportunity to other hand, grocery workers hit employers at a vulnerable whose firm had been take over time, hotel union bureaucrats were persuaded by their union hastened back to the negotia- leaders to accept pay cuts rangting table and - over the heads ing from 30 to 45%, having been of the members - signed a deal told that the alternative was to establishing a 25% lower rate be "out on the street with lor new employees, cutting nothing" accepting minimal pay in- reaches into the state sector. creases. State government employees Of course the best known cur- have in several cases rejected rent demands for concessions attempts to cut their health are currently the US airlines. benefits, forcing them to pay Several in the past year have out extra each week. successfully forced through pay In several areas (including cuts - 10% at Republic, 10% at Chicago, Detroit and Boston, WE HAVE become accustomed since 1979 to the Thatcher government's relentless offensive on shop floor trade union rights and working conditions.

But in few if any plants in Britain have employers felt confident enough to press for the outright cuts in wages and established working conditions which have been sought - and in many cases obtained - by many big American corporations. • With unionisation below 20% and a union leadership committed to a policy of class collaboration, US bosses have pushed through packages of 'concessions' in a wide range of industries - the best-known here being those on US airlines and in the motor industry.

In fact, since 1979, wholesale 'givebacks' have been agreed by union leaders in the aluminium, construction, glass, grocery, meat-packing, mining, newspapers, oil, railways, rubber, steel and trucking industries.

But as American workers have seen wage concessions fail to stop wholesale plant closures and layoffs, and have become aware that the motor corporations - Ford, GM and Chrysler - have sprung back into massive profitability while keeping wages at the new, depressed levels, the resistance to further • concessions has grown.

FORkERS REviEw To dies Workers' Review is published by the Proletarian Tasks Tendency, PO Box 40458, San Francisco, CA.94140. Copies available, 70p plus postage, from Socialist Organiser. Most British readers will well aware of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy: but the extent of the US bosses' offensive against the working class is less well documented And the scale of the workers fight back barely reaches the capitalist press in Britain or the USA. HARRY SLOAN pieced together this picture of events during a recent US tour.

Just recently, Chrysler workers forced their leaders in the United Auto Workers' union to reopen their contract negotiations and press - with some success - for a major step back towards parity with ford workers.

Telephone workers employed by the giant and enormously profitable American Telephone and Telegraph walked out on strike for 19 days against a draft contract which would have taken "literally billions of dollars out of our members' pockets" , according to Glenn Watts of the Communication Workers of America - and succeeded in defeating the worst of the company demands.

Lorry drivers covered by the Teamsters (transport) union's National Master Freight Agreement delivered another crushing blow against concessions.

88% of the 107,000 participating in a postal ballot voted to throw out a 'relief rider' which would have created a new, reduced wage level for new drivers and for laid-off workers rehired by the employers, and scrapped their cost-of-living protection and sickness benefits.

This new proposed agreement had been 'negotiated' by the Teamsters' new General President, millionaire Jackie Presser, whose union salary is currently $565,000 (£382,000) a year. The successful rank and file campaign for rejection of the deal conducted by the "Teamsters for a Democratic Union' organisation also brought numerous demands for Presser's resignation.

At General Motors' Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio, workers voted two-to-one to throw out a union recommendation that they accept a cut in pay and benefits from $19 an hour (£12.80) to $6 (£4) for new entrants. GM argued (and the International Union of Electrical Workers, IUE, agreed) that this draconian cut was needed to enable the plant to compete with low-wage plants in Mexico, and to fulfil the 'social responsibility' to create new jobs in the area. The US magazine 'Industry Week' lamented:

'the resounding defeat in Warren makes it clear that the rank and file remains wedded to the uniform wage-rate concept even when union leadership counsels compromise"

Further south, too, compa " demands for concessions e spurring bitter struggles. Arizona copper miners - members of 13 unions - have been on strike since July 1 in the fight to defend the automatic cost of living increases which for years have been a component of their three-year pay contracts. Management of the Phelps Dodge Corporation have been able to maintain at least partial production using scab labour brought through pickets with the aid of the National Guard.

But the determination of the strikers was underlined during the recent flood disaster in the area: undeterred, strikers turned out to harass Phelps Dodge scabs driving company lorries and earthmoving equipment in the clean-up operation.

Local steelworkers' leader Cass Alvin regards the struggle as a trial of strength of national significance. Management, he has said, "are playing it right to the hilt, because somewhere on a street in the city of New York with a church on one end and a bank at the other end, someone decided we're going to spend all the money it takes to break these Looking at the National Guard intervention, he asked, 'Is this any different than the way the Polish government operates?"

The fact that most of resistance to company ultimatums comes from the local rank and file rather than union leaderships, however, brings its problems and weaknesses.

At Ford's River Rouge complex near Detroit, for example, a ballot of 13,000 workers in UAW Local 600 was held to decide -whether a section of only 3,500 workers in the steel mill should take a pay cut of $4.13 an hour.

It is a safe bet that most of the 3;033 votes against came from the minority employed in the steel mill itself, while the base of the 5,788 votes for acceptance came from workers not faced with any sacrifice themselves.

UAW local President Rinaldi, having arranged this gerrymandered vote, hailed the result, but admitted that it was, "not a complete victory (!) -it's very saddening, because of the concessions"

Another setback brought about by top-level betrayal was in the hotel unions of San Francisco. The initial contract proposals from the Hotel Employers' Association contained concessions including a four-year pay freeze, an end to seniority rights and a management withdrawal from medical and dental provision. It was rejected in a ballot which gave 94% support to strike action.

«Over 25 million American workers have lost their health insurance through unemployment. How bad is it? A jobless man recently used stolen insurance papers to get an operation on his bleeding ulcers. He was caught, and sentenced to five years in jail.

UAW journal

NEW anti-union legislation creeping through the Senate is in Bill S.462, which would allow a court to rule that self-defence on a picket line is "extortion"

This would invoke an anti-racketeering Bill from the 1930s - and bring sentences of up to 12 years in jail, or $250,000 in fines. statting levels and holidays, and KROP Western and 20% at Eastern -while Continental have used the bankruptcy laws as a pretext to axe 60% of their staff and halve salaries across the board in an attack that has prompted an all-out strike by the unionised section of the workforce.

But the employers' attack is all-sided and relentless. One small engineering plant in St Louis has tried twice to secure ballot acceptance of wage cuts - un the second occasion failing only by a handful of votes.

Greyhound, the nationwide bus corporation, is demanding 30% wage cuts in contract negotiations due to be settled by the end of October.

In the food industry, workers at Armour Food voted lo-to-one to reject a $2.69 an hour wage The call for concessions also