£6 is not our limit—it must be smashed

By Workers Power

The £6 limit has meant that our wages are rapidly falling behind the rising cost of living. The government is now talking about a £3 or £4 limit next year and anticipating a 5% to 10% fall in real living standards.

Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride have put in a claim for £15. This is a direct challenge to the Labour government’s pay policy. But the trade union leadership has accepted the wage-cutting £6 limit. The NUM executive has now decided to go for the £6 only.

Throughout the country, groups of workers are finding that the bosses will not even yield the miserable £6 without a fight. Women clothing workers have been the latest to discover this. Over 1,500 members of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers (NUTGW) at the Courtauld-owned Northgate Group of factories in Cheshire are on strike for the full £6. They have refused a £3.60 offer.

At Kayser Bonder, a Courtauld firm in Merthyr Tydfil, 400 women strikers are sticking it out for £6 and say they are going to fight until Christmas to get it, if that is necessary. The NUTGW South Wales area officer has refused to make this strike official for what she calls ‘constiutional reasons’, this in spite of the fact that the strikers’ claim is in line with this year’s TUC economic resolution—‘No worker should receive less than £6 per week increase’.

But the union official’s cowardice is matched only by the brazen face of the boss. Using the Wilson-Healey get-out clause that the £6 is conditional on employers’ ability to pay, Courtauld’s management are pleading poverty!

Another danger: We must not allow the battle for jobs to obscure the fight to maintain and improve workers’ living standards.

We say:

• Break the £6 wage limit. Our wages have not caused the crisis. We have not caused unemployment and inflation.
• Maximum support for all workers struggling to achieve the full £6.
• No productivity strings or selling of conditions for wage rises.
• No let up in the women’s Equal Pay battle.

Militants must prepare now not just for this year’s pay battle but for next year’s pay claim.

We must demand:

• No limit on free collective bargaining. No to any Incomes Policy under capitalism.
• For lump-sum increases large enough to at least compensate for our loss of earnings over the last year.
• In addition we must fight for automatic 1% rises for ever 1% increase in the workers’ cost of living.
• A £1 weekly rise for every 1% rise in the Retail Price Index.
• The trade union movement must develop its own index of living costs. We don’t trust the phony figures of the government and employers.

These policies can form the basis for a united class fight to maintain our living standards. They are the only answer to Healey’s and the CBI’s intention to divide us again on sectional and craft lines with their plan for percentage increases—their incomes policy.

Militants in all industries that support these policies must unite now. We must not leave the initiative for formulating the next round of wage claims with those who have presided over wage cuts this year.