BACK TO THE 'PAYLESS PAYDAY'

city employees 'payless pa days', pay cuts, a job free: and lay-offs.

In 1934 Mayor Fiorello 1 Guardia actually imposed 'payless payday' scheme wheret each city employee was denie a month's pay in the course : that year.

What the Lindsay threat unde lines is precisely the fact th the economic crisis which tightening its grip across tl country means the working cla faces a return to 19 conditions.

But leaders of the city's publ service unions are treating th threat with complete con placency.

They evade preparation to fig back agaınst Lindsay by dismi sing his threat as a manoeuv: to gain an advantage on the er of pay talks affecting fire, tran port, sanitation and social servir departments.

It's all part of the negoti tions', claimed Michael Maye • the Uniformed Firemen's Assi ciation.

Instead of this bluster, a ma demonstration to City Hall lear ing to a general strike of all ci workers is being urged l militants to drive Lindsay bac Dennis Cribben, union milita! and spokesman for the 'Commi tee for New Leadership', a ran] and-file caucus New Yor social services union, spoke 1 Trotskyist newspapi 'Bulletin'.

In this interview he commen on Lindsay's pay threat and tl statement of Director of Labor Relations Haber that New Yor City workers will have to forg wage increases.

The interview explains brief and sharply the problems in fro of this section of US workersjust as similar questions are pose In particular the way th unemployment is used attempt to weaken the pay figh .Ine Licacherous business transhananc "hairinaco usual' attitude of union leade and the absolute necessity of struggle for a new leadersh against the bureaucracy.

Q. What is your reaction 1 the Haber statement?

A. This is clearly a declaratic of war on the dirty unions, i some 94,000 employees enter int collective bargaining for ne contracts in January. The worke I've spoken to. are complete outraged at both this statemel and the statement two days ag to the effect that there woul be payless paydays in the cit It is clear the ranks will no stand for this attack.

It looks like the Linds: administration is really settir up a situation where it will har the biggest strike on its hanc that it has ever seen in the hi tory of this city.

The Haber statement is tr most vicious statement evt coming out of the city adminis JUS STALINISM IN BRITAIN varlable tom Pet Clipsant sw ration. It contains a complete The fact is this is not a string of lies. business-as-usual situation. The Haber contends that city city labour movement is faced workers should be content to with • a situation that is rapidly accept no pay increases in their turning back toward what we 1971 contracts because of their faced in 1934. The whole tenure, and job security, and economic crisis of the country pension rights. is forcing the employers includBut in fact the Lindsay ing the city administrations, at Administration over the past two the workers' throats more and conducting : the most ruthless There are going to be some campaign to attack jobs and big explosions ahead. The old throw thousands of city employees methods of these bureaucrats I would like information about out of their jobs.

This has been very much the city administration to get a few whole thrust of the Lindsay concessions here and there won't Administration. It is very clear work anymore. that the Lindsay Administration is out to try to smash and break Unless there's a real fight to up the city civil service unions thrust these unions into the as we go into the 1971 contract. Q. What has been the re- be destroyed. sponse of the city labour leaders? Q. What do you think should A. Well it is very clear that all What does your caucus plan commented on this are • completely complacent about the A. Our caucus on the first tremendous threat now being notice of the payless paydays, made to the city labour move- launched a campaign passing ment. resolutions in work locations The remarks from Sanitation- around the city, demanding that men's Union head Delury reflect steps be taken to call a mass complete "business-as-usual' demonstration of city workers at attitude. He dismisses the Haber City Hall against the Lindsay remarks as a 'trial balloon' and threat, aiming it at the demand states that the city labour move- that there be a general strike of ment has heard this before and all city workers affected if the the city has come up with the payless payday threat was carried money before .. out. 'Ihe true face' of American 'democracv' EVENTS in Canad one more indica repressive capab reflex actions of bourgeois states.

Beneath that sm/ tic' mask lies the savage reality of cé Pelt wi hin hous The United State stands second to 1 comes to this type On October Nixon signed into 'anti-crime' bill, designed 18 months lation to comba crime, i.e., the Mafi The House of R however, tacked on vision making offence punishable The bill also all‹ ences of up to 25 : tain 'criminals', ever T OUT TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS years, and particularly now, is more. the city labour leaders who have to do? la have given tion of the ›ilities, the the liberal ug, 'democra: vicious and apitalist statetransforming if need be. is government none when it • law a new originally ; ago as legisit organized ia. epresentatives 1 to it a probombing an by death. ows for sentyears for cern if their parwheeling and dealing with the sharpest struggles with the city, the city unions really stand to be done in this situation? ticular offences would normally carry shorter prison terms. Undoubtedly this will mean extremely harsh sentences for those convicted of political crimes.

As certain as we can be that the anti-Mafia provisions will not be enforced - too many highly respected public servants would lose large portions of their incomes - we are certain the anti-bombing provisions will be immediately enforced.

Nixon, in fact, explicitly promised that, this would be the case.

The United, States government and the giant monopolies spend billions of dollars annually counter-revolutionary activities.

An army of federal, state and local agents stand ready to strike at any movement or individual that threatens the power or privileges of the employing class.

This can be seen in the case of Angela Davis who was recently arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been hunted down in a witch-hunt extending from one coast to the other.

Miss Davis, a Communist Party. member, is accused of having provided guns to Jonathan Jackson, whose attempt to rescue three prisoners from a Marin County, California, courthouse ended in a bloodbath when police opened fire.

A concerted attempt to whip up racialism and hatred against militants behind this nationwide witch-hunt. Her bail was set at $250,000 and later refused altogether.

The American CP has launched a legal fund for Miss Davis, it was announced last week.

Angela Davis was replaced on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives' list by another political figure and a woman as well. Angela Davis Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the underground Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society and former national secretary of the old united SDS, has been placed on the list charged with conspiring to transport explosives with intent to injure persons or destroy buildings, possesion of firearms and destructive devices, including dynamite, mob action that never 'City POLITICS—A study of Leopoldville, 1962-1963' by J. S. Fontaine, Cambridge University Press, 1970. £4.25 THIS _247-page work' is another in the series of micropolitical studies conducted into the 'newly-independent'. African states.

As such, like its predecessors, it suffers from relative isolation from its overall context, while, at the same time, either purposefully or willy-nilly, giving an enlarged view of a segment of this context.

Part one deals with the historical and economic background Leopoldville and includes denatele covered une in famous time in the 19th century when Belgian imperialism through King Leopold II, ravaged the Congo.

Such was the devastation of this conquest and pillage that, after 40 years of Leopold's company rule, the population was lower than it had been in 1881, when Stanley and Leopold undertook the 'civilizing' of the Congo, using Leopoldville as their base.

The Belgians set up a system of dictatorship based upon the super-exploitation of cheap wage and peasant labour. In this process the system of tribalism and proto-teudalism previously existing was destroyed physically as the people were dispossessed.

In its place Belgium placed a system of local police regimes, supervised by a 'white' racist oligarchy in situ and in Brussels. This racialist dictatorship was operated with equal ruthlessness by all governments of Belgium, whether 'socialist' or 'conservative'.

The city of Leopoldville expressed this racialism by being topographically divided into 'white' and black' districts. The 'African districts of the city were further broken up into "tribal" communes' as part of the divide and rule policy.

A system of migrant labour caused the majority of workers to be men, great numbers of whom became unemployed as part of the vast reserve army of cheap labour of the Belgian Leopoldvllle 1960:

The Belgian regime administered vicious repressions on Congolese workers.

tion of Lumumba and later of the guerrillas led by Gizenga, Gbenye and Mulele (whom Mobutu murdered in 1969, after the book was prepared.)

The Leopoldville workers were concentrated under Belgian rule with seven companies almost monopolizing the city's economy before independence in 1960, and continuing this economic dictatorship vią the African nationalist bourgeoisie after independence.

The great majority of inhabitants were wage-earners, *staggering permanent feature of this class.

These workers supported, with their under-subsistence wages, a parasitic horde of Belgian and other imperialist racialistic 'white' workers and the new 'African elite'.

The educational segregation and starvation of the Congo toilers by Belgium, mainly through the Catholic and Protestant missionaries (who themselves ran rigidly segregated schools and hospitals), resulted in the total absence of any locally educated graduates.

The University of Lovanium was opened only in 1956, and then only as a subsidiary of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium itself.

On the eve of independence 89 per cent of the self-employed, 77 per cent of the employed workers and 80 per cent of the unemployed workers were either totally uneducated by Belgium or had not completed more than a year or two at primary school.

Moreover, the schools were racially segregated. This section of the book is one of the useful statistical areas covered, albeit for only a short period.

The book's material brings out a number of the contradictions FRIPAY'S REVIEW BY N MAKANPA the present. Over 700 workers lined up In answer to an advertisement for just four jobs at the Southern Callfornia Gas ompany ir 'anoga Parl 7 per cent unemployment ratecompared to the 5.5 per cent national averageforced out-of-work aerospace journalists, draughtsmen and machinists to apply for four meter readers' Jobs.