When all workers face statutory pay restraint, any union which fights its battles as a 'special case does so at the expense of the movement as a whole. It undermines in advance the political unity needed by the movement at such times.
The recent Report of the Pay Board on Pay Anomalies makes this point in an ironic and graphic form, It proposes that some of those unions whose leaders in Phase 2 had argued that the arbitrary timing of the Freeze had made them cases for special exemption should at last be nominally compensated at the beginning of Pliase 3. But the money is to come from the total available for pay rises under the Phase 3 formula.
The Report is designed to clear up anomalies in to the Pay Board before the struggle by the cases where sottlements are normally fixed in elation to the settlements of other groups. Where the pacesetters settled before the Freeze last November, the groups who follow in their footsteps were left in the cold. A million and a quarter workers, including civil servants, hospital workers, gasmen and watermon, fall into this category. The Report now allows these differences to be made up. Thus the gasmen will have their wages made up to the rates of power workers: the hospital workers will have their rates made up to those of local council manual workers, receiving 40p a week extra; and the Civil Servants are picked out as a special case deserving 11%.
NOT AUTOMATIC These rises are not automatic awards. On the contrary, the union leaders will have lo allend the Pay Board to claim the money. The rocommendations of the Report therefore represent a carrot designed to attract union leaders along working class against Phase 3 gets under way. There is evidence that an inspired leak of the Report to the TUC Congress in Blackpool had some effect in swinging the natrow majority in. No entry for management at the Adwest gates Thursday 6 September the management presents an agreement' demanding an unprecedented degree of joh flexibility, refuses to negotiate, and the talks break down, Friday 7 September at a meeting between T. Joyner (Vice Chairman, Adwest Group) and Par Farrelly (ALEW Divisional Organiser), Joyner claims that he wants to come to terms. and frantic efforts are made by the management to convene an carly meeting.
Monday 10 September-Joyner goes back on his previous informal' offer.
Thursday 13 September-some progress is nside. and certain guarantees on job security are conceded.
Friday 14 September-Joyner retracts the comThis 'hard cop/soft cop technique is intended to disorient the workers, to make them feel solated and powerless, and ready to accept anyfavour of individual unions being allowed to attend the Pay Board during Phase 3 where they thought it helpful. Bill Kendall of the CPSA described the Report as a 'basis for negotiation" The Government will claim this as a tactical victory But nobody should be fooled by the Pay Board Report. Hospital workers, for instance, will not be satisfied with a paltry 40p a week extra, which will not be backdated and which comes after the biggest round of price increases since the War. In Liverpool they are already threatening to strike the rank and file must not allow the union leaders to get away with the argument that accounts have somehow been settled by