DECIDE CONTEST WITH EMPLOYERS

The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 105, 6 June 1959 · scan page 4

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

THE results of the annual conference of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers confirmed the Socialist Labour League’s view that the trade union leaders are completely failing to prepare to meet the problems facing their members.

In the past two years, it was reported, the AUBTW has lost 12,000 members. The platform tried to explain away this loss as due to the growth in unemployment.

In fact unemployment in the building industry has dropped. With the building of roads and power stations and the modernization of the railways, union membership could have been increased.

Why has it gone down? Because the leaders do not have a challenging policy on wages, hours and conditions.

Their lack of realism Lack of realism was shown in the discussion on wages and hours. In face of the employers’ rejection, just before the conference, of the fourpence an hour claim, the conference proceeded to pass a resolution calling for a 40-hour week.

If the leaders were at all serious they could. surely have examined, in a critical way, the reasons for the rejection of the old claim before proceeding to launch another one. ' The reasons have nothing to do with the state of the industry. Building trade employers’ profits were never higher.

The employers are determined to keep profits up and wage rates down. That was why they rejected the claim.

The AUBTW leaders are afraid that their bankruptcy of policy would be exposed if they made a critical examination of the negotiations.

And they are afraid that their members would demand a real fight for future claims.

They have not the slightest intention of fighting any harder for the new claim than they did for the old one.