Make everybody work harder says CBI chief

THE HEAD of Britain's most powerful employers' organization yesterday called on firms to exact dramatic increases in individual productivity from every single worker.

His call came 48 hours after publication of the government's White Paper on the operation of its Phase Two state pay controls.

This puts direct economic pressure on employers to force up their rate of exploitation.

BLAME

In a speech to the Foreign Press Association, Michael Clapham, president of the Confederation of British Industry, attempted to pin the blame for inflation squarely on the working class.

But he did so in a way which that Moyer ever or the mat main worry is that their traditional weapons against wages militancycuts in real living standards and the creation of a pool of jobless-are just not working.

Said the CBI president: It has been an inflation led by wages and salaries at a time when the classical economic rules say that it should not have occurred: namely at a time when the economy has been stagnant and unemployment has been high.' CAPACITY

OUR LABOUR

CORRESPONDENT over the last 20 years had been a low level of productivity compared with competitors in the rest of Europe, North America and Japan.

British industry had less capital at the disposal each man employed than its main competitors.

Unless this was put right 'we risk becoming the peasants of the western world.

Clapham, who beside his CBI post holds the chairmanship of chemical giant ICI, was at some pains to explain the historical difficulties of British capitalism.

He attacked those aspects of the Tories' Phase Two code which limited profits.

*Sloppy thinking about the role of profits, as we see from the White Paper on the operation of Stage Two of the counter-inflation policy, infects Conservative as well as Labour governments.' LOGIC Such thinking he described, in the most ominous and reactionary terms. as cultural defeat,. a weakness in national logic' The CBI president went on to hope that. Phase Three of the pay laws would be voluntary, and that employers and employed could work together under it. iournalistic audience will in. doubt most terpret this as a conciliatory gesture, and this is the impression they will try to foist on the workers' moveIn fact the opposite is the case-which again demonstrates the treacherous nature of the TUC's collaboration policies.

HOME buyers will be paying at least 10 per cent on their mortgages as building societies leap-frog each other in a bid to attract funds. Mr lan Russell, a director of Anthony Gibbs (Mortgage Services) Ltd has predicted. Leap-frogging was already evident with major, societies, such as the Leek and West- NOW-CH bourne, raising their interest to investors rate to 6.5 per cent.

It will solve -employers' crisis The CBl's Michael Clapham GET YOUR BOOKS. PERIODICALS AND MELZER paperbacks centre PAREKBALKŚ CENDKE 28 charlotte st london w1 night opening) 9 am. -7.30 p.m Saturdays 9 am- -5 m

For the third time in four years BSA workers face possible mass redundancy. This time, however, the jobs of all 6,000 remaining workers are at stake. The f25m motorcycle and engineering group—heavily run down since its heyday in the 1950s—threatens to founder altogether on the twin rocks of Japanese competition and US protectionism. The government has launched a half-hearted bid to save the company. But the £4.8m with which the Tories have undertaken to finance a merger with Norton Villiers, under Manganese Bronze chairman Dennis Poore, can only temporarily stave off the crisis. And Manganese Bronze in any event has already indicated that either way redundancies are inevitable. At BSA the real villian of the piece is capitalism—British capitalism in its most