Policies Sloan

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Black trade unionists Cantere but the government has cut money out of social programmes and shifted it into programmes which go directly to the corporations. into military spending, direct subsidies, loans and tax cuts.

Still big business is not investing in production that increases employment, but mainly in specu. lation.

No jobs are being created for working people. US Steel, for ex ample, instead of modernising the decaying steel industry, just OFFICIAL Contact:

Neville Adams 115 Neville = = Londor ruthless offensive - designed drive up the rate of exploitation on the shop floor. Some have pleaded impending _bankruptcy: others - such as Ford - have bluntly threatened to shut down 'uncompetitive' plants and shift production elsewhere.

In such conditions of confrontation it becomes crystal clear that there is a conflict of interest - of class interest - between the bosses and the workforce.

As far as the ruling class is concerned, providing employment, and production of even the most socially useful goods, are secondary to the drive for profit. For the working class, the creation of profit for the capitalists is simply an unavoidable by-product of seeking to earn a living wage.

The lower the wage, the higher the potential profit: the smaller the workforce, the harder each worker is made to toil, the better the employer is pleased. There is no common ground:

The employers obviously pressurise union leaders to sacrifice their members' rights and conditions in order to ensure a satisfactory level of profits. This is dressed up in fancy talk about. 'saving the company', 'saving the industry' or 'saving jobs' ', in a supposedly common 'national interest' But how should workers respond to such blackmail? Must their conditions be driven down at every whim of the capitalist class? Is the mere threat of closure now to be enought to force a miserable capitulation?

The answer must be no. For workers' interests io be defended, .. =as offensive must be halt...i the viability argument 5.2532 and boycott action by the trade union movement.

The calling of management's bluff could often save jobs by halting redundancy plans. If threats of closure are implemented, it is clear that a fight to defend jobs could not have been long postponed even by making concessions:

Workers must challenge every management claim of bankruptcy and every financial argument for redundancies, rationalisation and closure, by fighting for the opening of the books of the firm concerned to elected trade union committees - to show the ways in which the massacre of jobs and hard-won conditions shovels profits into the vaults of the big combines, banks and multinationals. A crucial task is also that of building awareness among rank and file members that the slippery slope • begins one firm, but leads at once into its IPRESERVING OUR AMERICAN AND YOU SHOLLO BE HAPPY TO! remiss, represent the views of the SOA. ployers gang up against workers, so we must unite as a class to defend jobs and living standards, our organisations and our sell-respect.

Anarchic

Against the never-ending decline imposed by the anarchic capitalist system we must look towards the fight for a workers' government, the nationalisation without compensation of the major monopoly firms, the banks and finance trüsts, and the establishment of a workers' plan of production that can utilise and expand the wealth of society, creating the millions of new jobs that are needed and creating goods which are socially useful on a national and international level.

A necessary starting point in this is to begin within the unions and the Labour Party to build the necessary alternative leadership to Evans, Duffy and the apostles of "viability'.

RD OF LIVINGIS A SACRED TRUST.. ITECT IT BY TAKING A WAGE CUT!

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Socialist Organiser no.129 April 28 1983 Page 11