ANTI-UNION LAWS IN FORCE PAY RISES HELD TO GOVT 'NORM' TRADE UNIONISM AT STAKE

Act and setting the 'norm', what becomes the purpose of trade unions as independent bodies representing the working class?

The TUC's fight against the introduction of the Act was only a token, sham affair. In a circular just issued by Jim Conway, general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, the level of 'opposition' to the Act is clearly revealed. Conway tells his members: 'Wherever possible we must encourage employers to ignore the Act and treat the whole thing as one large party political irrelevancy' On the wages front-with the miners a courageous exception— the unions have collapsed to the 'norm' as this table shows:

250,000 hospital ancillary workers claimed I2 per cent and their union accepted 7.5 per cent. • 770,000 local government manual workers claimed 12 per cent, and their union accepted 7.4-7.8 per cent.

120,000 electricity supply vorkers claimed 10 per cent and their union accepted 7.75 per cent.

165,000 bank workers claimed 8 per cent and their leaders accepted 7 per cent. • 350,000 nurses claimed up to per cent and their union accepted 8 per cent.

An of Post acisen, Workers, accepted an 8 per cent increase for his members last week.

The TUC endorsed every one of these settlements, each a violation of its own declared "high wage' policy.

The pattern has been set. 23,000 London busmen Teachers to go for 9.5 p.c.?

PAY talks continue this week over the 430,000 teachers' 13.7 per cent claim answered so far by a 6-per-cent offer. Their negotiators on the Burnham Committee may try for 9.5-percent award won by the university lecturers.

Meanwhile the 11,000 teachers in Colleges of Education—most of whom are in the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education (ATCDE) ---have reached provisional agreement on the Pelham Committee on a 7.7 per cent rise.

A pay offer is expected today by the 41,000-strong Association Teachers Technical Institutions (ATTI). claimed 15 per cent have been offered 7.5 per cent; 400,000 teachers who claimed 13.7 per cent have been offered 6 per cent; 800,000 building workers who claimed 50 per cent have been offered 7.5 per cent; 2,500,000 engineers who claimed 40 per cent have been offered 7.5 per cent; and 80,000 shipbuilding workers who çlaimed 40 per cent have also been offered 7.5 per cent.

The trend is clear. The union leaders are falling in line with the dictates of the Tory government over wages. The miners were an exception because their determination, plus the overwhelming support for them throughout the working class, swept beyond the TUC's conservatism.

But the employers have seen the warning light.

Engineering Employers' Federation President D. C. Bamford declared last week that his Federation was ready to face a strike and that his members would not invest unless they were assured of profitability. In other words, the bosses want to enforce low wages while wielding the unemployment stick.

The working class fought to build unions in •order to be able to regulate its wages against the wishes of the employers and the employers' governments. Now its leaders are preparing to throw away the fruits of 200 years of working-class struggle.

Because what of trade unions go beyond the tion of wages?

The TUC itself claims that low wages cause unemployment. Yet wage 'increases' of 7 to 8 per cent are wage-cuts in real terms.

Not only is the TUC not fighting on wages, it is not fighting on unemployment either. That is being left to the Young Socialists' Right-to-Work marches from Glasgow, Liverpool, Swansea and Deal.

Trotsky pointed out that, in the epoch of imperialist decay, the trade unions "can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordinating and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat'.

To preserve the unions as working-class instruments of struggle against capitalism, to maintain their independence from the state, requires the building of revolutionary cadres in the unions as a matter of urgency. is the point if they cannot state's allocaMINERS FROM SNOWDOWN PIT, KENT, ACCOMPANY THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH Flying start to YS Kent jobs march IAN YEATS IN KENT THE FOURTH Young Socialists' Right - to - Work march got off to a flying start yesterday on its 15-mile first-day march from Deal to Ramsgate.

About 20 marchers set out from the National Union of Mineworkers' modernized Deal headquarters where they spent the night-despite opposition Communiqué reveals little EVENTUAL American withdrawal from Taiwan is foreshadowed in a joint communiqué marking the end of President Nixon's talks with Chinese leaders in Peking. The communique details agreement on further diplomatic contacts, but gives no indication of agreement over Vietnam.

See close to RIGHT TO WORK DEAL TO LONDON 1972 LINIUN OF ANIN 4 31.

SOWDOWN from the Communist members who control three-pit Kent coalfield.

Permission was given after Deal Labour Party secretary Dave Johnson intervened.

Said Mr Johnson: I think what the Young Socialists are doing is very commendable. I would like to see the Tories out and I think that any working man would agree. "What we need is a Labour government with Clause 4 back in its constitution.' Miners and post office workers turned out with their banners to support the marchers through Deal on Saturday.

Men from Snowdown and Tilmonstone pits marched with a delegation from the London branch of the overseas telegraph operators section of the Union of Post Office Workers.

Afternoon shoppers choked the narrow pavements in the town centre and there was some applause 'as the 20-stronx march wound its way to a meeting at St John Ambulance Hall, Mill Hill.

Sixteen year-old factory worker Bill Hicks watching the march with a group of his mates told me:

It's definitely right what they're doing. There's a lot of unemployment round here and if you got the sack you'd be on the dole 16 months, or more, even.' Betteshanger miner Alan Warman commented:

I've never seen anything , like this round here, he told me. 'Betteshanger would certainly have supported it if we'd known.

"The trade unions have never been more together than they are now. We could clear this lot out of government. The miners' strike showed what can be done if the working class stick together.' Warm praise came from Mill Hill pensioner Mrs Ellen Dearden as scores of neighbours came out onto thein doorsteps or hung down the windows of their homes to watch the march go by.

"Good luck to them', she said. 'It's up to the young. ones now. My husband's done plenty of marching in his time.

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AND THE SLL THE RIGHT-TO-WORK marches, like every other campaign which the Socialist Labour League embarks upon within the working-class Monday