THE FIRST national strike against the social contract-that of the bakery workers in the closing weeks of last year-finished in a sell-out concocted between the bureaucrats of the Bakers' Union and the Labour Government, through the intervention of the newly-established Conciliation and Arbitration Service (CAS).
According to its chairman, James Mortimer, the CAS is not primarily an instrument of incomes policy but will have regard to the broad outlines of the social contract. Jean Vicker, the Bakers" Union vice-president, was more blunt at a meeting of local branch officials: she told them that if they did not accept the CAS offer then all other government channels would be closed.
ARBITRATION' The word 'arbitration" is as old as the labour movement itself. To militants it has traditionally meant back-room deals that usually end up in a sell-out To employers and governments it has been one of the ways by which they can impose, no mally with help from the trade union bureaucracy, some form of incomes policy on the working class.
But the ruling class have usually THE HOUGHTON COMMITTEE report on teachers" pay is the second half of the Government's attempts to cut social expenditure in the education field. Already we have had cuts in education spending of E182 milkon which have hit the building programme and school facilities in general, Now the Houghton Committee report sets out to control the level of teachers pay and to restruc ture the pay scales.
Teachers pay now ranges from £1449 to f6000 in five scales. The report proposes to increase this to $1667 to t8500 in four scales, thus extending the hierarchial nature of Teachers pay essential to what they call a "career structure, A teacher at the bottom of scale 1 gets an extra 04.40 per week, but for a head teacher of a large school the increase is 640 per week.
The socond factor supposedly dealt with by Houghton is low pay and inflation: the increase of E228 a year at the botton of scale I is meant to compensate far the dec line in teachers pay since 1964-5. But the last salary claim by the NUT in April 1974 called for a 40 per cent increase to adjust the decline in teachers pay since 1965.
The difference arises from the inprecor palestine:
the tomm dE the ple recognised that in order lo work, "arbitration" needs to appear to be independent of the Government of the day and the toing and froing of Parliamentary politics, The last Tory Government seriously underestimated the importance of this.Their Commission on Industrial Relations, seen as a tool of the Industrial Relations Court and boycotted by most unions, advised in its last report that its successor should be 'safe-guarded by arrangements which remove it from the hazards of political change...
For a Labour Government, and especially this Labour Government ciected on a wave of growing working class militancy and expectancy, it is important to avoid having the nasty label of 'incomes policy' pinned onto their 'arbitration' schemes. Hence the new CAS management is comp osed of three leading bureaucrats (Jones, Briginshaw and Smith), three employers representatives, and thre university professors.
FIELDS
The CAS has three main fields of work advice, conciliation and arbitration. The first is little more than a Tire manaeement consullion ser Ice over such things as labour productivity, work-study, job evaluation and telling management bow to keep efficient tahs on employees. Concil latiun will include full-time profHones, 6 January, 1975 essionals intervening in places where disputes cowid arise (as well as in actual disputes), thus providing yet another service to management.
But the most important aspect is that of 'arbitration'. When unions and employers fail to agree a case goes to arbitration. The findings are not legally binding, but there is always enormous pressure for the unions to accept arbitrators decisions.
This is especially so since arbitration is carried out under the ausp ices of a Central Arbitration Committee which is part of the CAS on which the trade union bureaseracy has representatives ar the highent levels. This ensures that the trade union representatives will assume responsibility for the findings of the arbitrators which, virtually by definition, will be compromises on original claims.
In reality the new CAS, by both combining 'services' that have in the past been farmed out to different state departments and independent committees, and ensuring the active participation of trade union officials at many levels, is a carefully built mechanism for the maintenance of the social contract. But gloomy days lie ahead for the CAS workers but only by 15 percent George Woodcock, Norman Singleton, secretary and Will Paynter at the first meeting of the Commission on Industrial Relations.
The employers are already clamouring for it to arbitrate pay deals before industrial action and for all decisions to be legully binding. More important, the Labour Government are going to introduce certain 'austerity measures" before very long and 2. At the other end of the scale we find more men than women heads and deputy heads in primary schools This illustrates the discrimination ag ainst women in teaching, and the extension of the differentials between the scales can only reinforce this discrimination and this in the year in which equal pay is to he realised!
In reality the Houghton report anwers none of the questions fucing teachers al the present time, So how can we tackle the problem of low grave. pay? By demanding that the tolal offer of about 4400 million be equally divided amongst all teachers This would amount to a flat rate increase of about 515 per week. How can we tackle the problem of inflation? By demanding that any wage agreement is sufeguarded by full cost of-living increases, The fight against Houghton must include both of these In London steps are already underway to organise the struggle. A schools delegates conference las becu called for Saturday, 18 January dens, London W8). The conference is to be held at the school and starts at 2.00 pm. Schools from London and nacionally will be sending delegates to discuss the Houghton report and how we start the fight back which will almost certainly include some form of statutory incomes policy, which they may want to mediate through a revamped CAS The trade union bureaucrats, deeply enmeshed in the machinery of wage conciliation and arbitration, will face a big problem. If they attempl to maintain their support for machinery which is openly working to enforce an incomes policy they will pay a huge political price in terms of their credibility among the rankad-file. But if chey decide to pull out, the 'independence' of Labour's conciliation and arbstration set-up will be left in tatters.
Either way Michael Foot's latest brainchild is in for a very rought time Indeed, consing storms of the crisis are very likely to sent it to any curly Nick Adams INTEX cont. tex struggle. Throughout the rest of the country similar actions should be taken by anti-fascist conmittees, trade unions and political organisaDions, A vital partiof this campaign will be the national picket of ICI headquarters in London, which has been called by the Support Committee for 13 January.
IC are so worried about their public image that they have denied ownership of Intex, A national pic ker will provide a focus for such a campaign and show up ICT in its true light-a vicious capitalist orgunisation that is prepared to go to any lengths to break this strike This picket will be a step coward a mass rally and pickel in support of the Intex struggle called by the Sup port Committee for 25 Junuary. We must show ICI, the National Front. and reactionary trade unions like the Dyers and Bleachers that we are not prepared to let them smash a strike that unites black and white workers The light to reinstate Dave Hallsworth goes far beyond Ashton-under Lyne. It is a fight of national importance for the whole of the working class against racism and the fascist thuggery of the National Front.
Jeff West and Dave Wirhurst Menager of mipport and donarions to The Secretary, 186 King Road. Ashtonwader-Erne Lancashir