IT IS OFTEN REMARKED that the more things change, the more they remain the same. reviewing the Trades Union Congress which will assemble in Brighton next week, it would be more accurate to record that the more things change, the more the TUC remains the same.
The past year has seen an unprecedented attack on the right to work and the social services. In 1975 the General Council's supplementary report on The Development of ine hoodwink delegates into accepting the f6 limit by claiming that many of the cuts imposed by the previous Government on the education and health scivices nave Deen restored ane a suostammar mcrease has been made in housing expenditure'. Why, oh why, are 20,000 newly qualified teachers then on the dole? Why will 300,000 construction workers be out of work this winter?
Pretence Yet despite the fact that the pretence is over, that social expenditure has been chopped by E3 billion by 1978-79 and then again by another El billion for next year, the TUC has not only remained true to wage cutting — it has voted by a landslide majority of 17½ to 1 for an even tougher pay deal. its After the special headlined its report: "Big majority for pay curb policy but warnings are sounded'. It might as well use the same one about tac annual congress.
One and a half million people are on the dole. But the TUC is consistent. It supports the 35-hour week — a measure which could drastically reduce unemployment. It said in 1975 in its report on the social contract: 'In the current situation there may be understandable pressure for work-sharing arrangewill ments. To be effective these must take the form of an of actual cut in hours worked per employee.' Then came the rub: "They should not be used as a method of obtaining a disguised increase in incomes out of line with the pay limit. Negotiators should therefore give priority to securing actual reductions in hours, and reducing normal hours to 40 in sectors When remains a longer term objective.
there has been no TUC was able to ....as SOUTE as ine bargaining is resumed' (our emphasis). year anu-working class poncies Funeral Service union for funeral service employees'.
union for all employees!
Mick Gosling. where this has not been attained. The 35-hour week More simply put, this means an overtime ban. But campaign even for this Jack Jones, the star of last year's TUC, has. however, 're-discovered' the 35-hour week in the run up to this year's TUC. The Transport and General Workers Union is moving a resolution calling on Congress to 'give priority to reducing the working week to 35 hours return to normal collective If anything, this year's TUC is even more of an anaemic affair than last year. With the opposition of the million-strong Engineering Union to wage restraint gone, the Jack Joneses and Len Murrays in the General Council have not even found it necessary to tart up their policies with talk of public works and a big role for the public sector in industrial expansion.
Even more ironic is the resolution from the National Union of Teachers on education expenditure. Last they submitted a motion caning Tol elimination of all classes over 30'. This year, with the groundswell of action around the student teacher occupations calling for the NUT and the TUC to implement their policy on class size, the demand for classes of no more than 30 has disappeared!
The real action in Brighton will be going on outside the TUC - amongst the Right to Work marchers, amongst the lobbiers against the cuts. The success of their actions will depend on how far they can turn anger at the betrayals of the trade union bureaucracy into a coherent movement of opposition to Labour's Otherwise it might well be the National Union of Operatives -WhO Have appropriate motion down at the TUC. It is calling on Congress to recognise it as 'the appropriate trade The way the TUC is going, it could soon be the appropriate trade
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Real action TUC on 16 June The Times