WHILE workers today are marching in Birmingham to defend their jobs, their leaders are marching along with Lord Digby Jones, the Tory ex-CBI chief and ex-Brown Industry Minister for something else.
In the Morning Star of May 14th, Simpson and Woodley declared ‘Measures we want to see taken include subsidised short-time working for companies in trouble.’
At the press launch of their plan Lord Digby Jones declared that he wanted to see the labour force on a subsidised short time two-day week. He was not interrupted by the Unite leaders sitting next to him.
This policy is a bourgeois policy, part of the plan to make the working class carry the can for the bosses crisis.
As far as Digby Jones is concerned this measure will keep the labour force alive until the bosses are ready to use it again.
What the union leaders say, is that this is the way to keep jobs in the situation of the slump – along with wage cuts of course.
The Unite union yesterday recommended that its members at Honda Swindon accept a three per cent wage cut.
Unite is also presiding over wage cuts in the printing industry.
Workers at MPG Impressions were balloted last week to accept a 33 per cent wage cut for May, June and July to make an annual wage cut of 8.3 per cent.
Simpson and Woodley think that they are becoming co-managers of capitalism, along with the bosses, and that these measures can save capitalism.
In fact, this present crisis is the worst in the history of capitalism. It is not going to be over in a year. The 1929-31 crisis lasted for a number of years and saw massive unemployment, slump and then war.
The lesson from that period is that the working class had better start defending its rights.
The policy of accepting short-time working and wage cuts, will mean that as the crisis worsens, the working class will have to give more and more and more till finally there is nothing more to give, and the working class goes down with the capitalist ship, like the third class passengers on the Titanic.
Woodley and Simpson, are 100 per cent supporters of the Brown government. They gave the Labour Party £11 million to save it from bankruptcy. They are opposed to socialist policies. They consider capitalism is the only possible system.
They refuse to call for the nationalisation of the motor car industry and the steel industry under workers control despite the fact that Brown has already been forced to nationalise a number of banks, leaving the old owners in control, of course.
Nationalisation of motors and steel is the only way to save the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are involved in these industries.
As well, at a time of huge price rises in the basic commodities that working class families consume, negotiating wage cuts is good for the already rich bosses, but it plunges working class families into hunger and poverty.
The plain truth is that capitalism is crashing, and if it is not replaced by socialism, humanity has in front of it an even more bloody, violent and tormented period than the 1930s.
Trade union leaders who believe that wage cuts and short-time working are the way forward for the working class are bosses’ agents in the workers’ movement.
They must be removed and be replaced by a new socialist and revolutionary leadership.
There must be no wage cuts. The unions must draw up their own cost of living index and fight for real wage rises which correspond to the rises in that index.
There must be no job cuts. There must be work sharing with no loss of pay. If the bosses say that they cannot afford it, and there must be sackings and closures, the factories must be occupied as at Visteon, Belfast, and a national action begun to have them nationalised.
This is the way forward for the working class.
There must be a general strike to bring down the Brown government, to go forward to a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bring in socialism. Union leaders who refuse to fight must be sacked and replaced with a new leadership.
This is the way forward for the whole of the working class and the youth.
