How to fight the Pay

BRITISH GUIANA QUESTION:

Now the agreement has been reached between Macmillan and the right-wing • trade union leaders over the 3 per cent wage increase for the railways, what are the prospects of the Tories convincing the engineering unions to accept a similar award?

T.S., London, ANSWER:

We should bear in mind that the acceptance by the right-wing leadership of the National Union of Railwaymen of the 3 per cent was done in the teeth of extremely stiff opposition on their executive committee. The voting was 14 for and 10 against. This is a good indication that had the matter been referred to the local district councils of the NUR, it would have been decisively rejected.

We can be sure, therefore, that the present agreement is only temporary and it cannot in any way resolve the wage crisis so far as the railwaymen are concerned.

Nobody expects the fortunes of the railways to , improve during the next six months, so we can anticipate that in a short while the demand for more wages will again come forward inside the railway unions.

In this respect the railwaymen have not been decisively defeated. They have been sold out without a fight, but their capacity to fight still remains and will grow stronger.

This is the background to the engineers' pay claim.

Macmillan is well aware During few weeks we the next few weeks we shall be publishing a series of questions and answers concerning the problems in the fight against the pay pause.

We invite readers of THe NEWSLETTER We shall correspond with in questions.

if the decision is left to Carron and his cronies then the result will be the same as with the railway unions.

However, rank-and-file engineering workers are also aware of the nature of the sell-out that has taken place on the railways and they will be watching the behaviour of Mr. Carron very closely.

The engineers can profit from the bitter experience of the railwaymen. They are in some respects a more tightly-knit group of workers, many of whom have considerable experience in day-to-day struggle against the employers in different branches of the industry.

In motors, shipbuilding and general engineering, trade union organization is strong. It only remains for the engineers to link up their own industry into a tightly-knit group of rank-and-file committees spreading from the localities to a regional and national basis.

Then the right wing can be prevented from a repeat performance of the railway sell-out. Already there are plans ahead for massive demonstrations on March 5. These demonstrations will draw on to the streets tens of thousands of engineering workers.

From such actions it should not be very difficult to establish local rank-and-file bodies which will fight tooth and nail for the ballot of engineering workers to give a resounding call for a national strike.

This would be a good start in the establishment of more permanent rank-and-file relations if and when the strike takes places.