gle for London cost-of-living allowance only pay for most indirect taxes, they also pay the majority of direct ones.
This is all the more true now that direct taxes on wages and salaries are State, before workers themselves receive any wages, whereas taxes on capitalist protit and on the incomes of those in the so-called "liberal", agreement Photo: Workers Press 'independent' professions are paid afterwards and without any real control. Thus the bourgeoisic gains twice over. First by paying taxes late they benefit from the loss of usually paid in full by the bosses to the buying power of currency -a fixed amount of tax on a capitalist profit paid six months after its realisation is a tax lowered by 5% if the rate of inflation is 10%. Secondly, to pay taxes without any effective control on the real amount of profits opens the flood-gates to tax evasion and fraud.
The graduated scale of tax upon wages means that each time the sliding scale causes money wages to rise to an income level that is more heavily taxed than the one beneath it, the increased tax payable is greater than the wage increase itself.
What interests a worker gross wages, a purely fictional notion, but real ner wapes, tist is to say the total amount of goods and services which he can effectively buy with the money he gets at the end of the week, A sliding-cale must safeguard the buying power of pay actually received and must in some way offset the effects created by increas ed taxation.
A solution demanded by the Inhour movernent in several comniries indexing of salaries, wages and taxes, the gap between the lowest and highest wages, while remaining the same proportionately, continually increases in abrolute figures;
argument. First, it is only right to limit the tax indexing to a definite celling, based upon the incomes of skilled workers. In the above examp le, it could for instance be supposed Francs a year. Beyond this ceiling incomes would be hit even harder, thus reducing somewhat the gap between low and high wages.
ences in income levels, is to struggle for cost-of-living allowances, end of year bonuses, and for true wage increases (beyond the sliding-scale's sphere of application) thar are the sume for everyone on the basis of equal pay for equal work.
differences in wages and salaries cannot be waged by limiting the sphere of application of the sliding scale, but only by winning allowances and wage increases that are equal for all. It is in workers" iS not interests to have a simple sliding scale, simple and automatic, that will prevent them from being ground under and losing their buying power.
the fight against the inequality of incomes for which other weapons have to be used.
SOCIAL ALLOWANCES pensable for the protection of the whole working class against the A massive campaign must be mounted by the labour movement *to reash all anti-union laws. This must involve the widest range of mass action-including industrial action leading up to a general strike, if this is necessary to force the Labour Government into action and to defeat the manoeures of the ruling class and its political parties.
This campaign should demand: * immediate scrapping of the Industrial Relations Act and the NIRC: all NIRC judgements, and all cases before thie NIRC, to be wiped out; immedinte repayment of all fines -levied by the NIRC * immediate scrapping of Phase 3. and no laws restraining wages • inmediate release of the Shrewsbury 6, and a full pardon for all those convicted in the Shrewsbury frame-up trials * cnactment of legal mensures to abolish the conspiracy laws and guarantee the right to picket CHILE: the immediate task is to build the biggest demonstration possible on Chile for the anniversary Two replies can be given to this that the indexing of tax-ceilings upon wages or salaries would stop at 30,000 After this, the best way of fighting the excessive pap caused by differThe real strugele against excessive A sliding scale serves this end, and not What is, on the other hand, indishousehold budgets. area. fought for are:
and all union officials costs of inflation shifts towards the onlculation of real price rises. Everywhere, bosses and the bourgeois State try to get accepted an index of prices for of the cost of living) established by the public administration system, as the base upon which wage adjustments can be calculated, Everywhere, experience has shown that these indexes are taked and only help bosses slow down wage adjustments, that is, to increase capitalist profits The means most widely used by the bourgeoisie to reach this end are 1. The dishonest doctoring of the goods that are taken into account when calculating a cost of living index. In cffect, this monthiy index is an average arising out of the fluctuations in prices of a largo number of goods and services. If one Jets slip into the total mass of these goods a series of articles that are hard- it does not mean that the increase in ly ever consumed by workers and whose price increases are lower than the average, an index will be obtained that does not honestly reflect the real rise in the cost of living. Thus, the Belgian trade union movement has for a long time denounced what it calls the top-bat index' because goods such as top-hats were taken into consideration when calculating the cost of living index.
The same type of dishunest manipulation can be seen in the exclusion from any cost of living index of services whose costs increase particularly fast-c.z. in some countties, rent and medical charges not subsidised by social security-or to include then but to to give them less weight than they actually have in of the coup in September, and to strongthen the blacking campaign. In order to do this, the entire labour movement should cooperate in the establishment of local branches of the Chile Solidarity Campaign in every WORKERS' DEMOCRACY One question which, while not on the conference agenda, will nevertheless run through all the debates, is that of working cins democracy. The open flouting by the Labour Government of one conference decision alter another makes the urgency of this question obvious The struggle for workers democracy -both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party-will be a crucial one in the conting months. Among the central things that must be * rank-and- file control of the unions * subordination of the Labour Government and the Parliamentary Party to Labour Conference * the ending of all bans and prescriptions in the Labour Party goods (e.g. bread), artificially maintain the index at 1.9% or 1.8%, thereby creating for some months a loss of buying power on the part of workers of up to 2% VETO This fiddling of the index is so blatant in countries such as Italy or France, that functionaries from the various Institutes of Statistics have even denounced it themselves, and have offered trade unions their help in calculating an honest index.
In Belgium, the unions have won the right to veto any officially recog nised index. Sitting on a price commussion next to the bosses and the government's representatives, they can refuse to recognise as valid the index published cach month by the government. But this 'suspending" veto has a purely propagandistic value, as salaries that a more honest index would produce are automatically obtained Trade union calculations of the monthly level of prices shouldn't be carried out in the shadows of offices. even if they are union offices, Information on prices should be collectell by teams of housewives and • workers, in the shops, through priceconirol commuttees, This information should be publicly discussed and debated before the working masses. To associate the mass of workers now with the application of the sliding scale is to ensure later the widest based working class democracy and the real self-orgunisation of workers when they have won political power and overthrown the capitalist system.
* for the establishment of democratic bodies representative of the rank-and-file (mass meetings, strike committees) to take charge of those struggles in which workers are involved All the tasks involved in the fight ArOUNd these Esoes not be sorted out simply by a one day meeting. The Clay Cross conference must issuc a call for the convening of similar conferences on a local level to work out a practical plan of action for carrying the light forward.
Such meetings-representative of the entire warkers novement, including trade union bodies, local Labour Parties, the Communia Party and the revolutionary leit-would provide a powerful launching pad for getting the struggle for socialism underway, and be a practical demons tration of the effectiveness in action of workers" democracy The conference will be hekd in Contral Hall, Westminster, starting at 1l am on Saturday 8 Jane for further demils or credentiols contact: Charle Bunting. 7 Conom Close, Danesmoor, Clay Cross /Tel: 0246-862756)
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ara ma last November-Clay Cross conference must take active steps to build further action