LABOR SCENE

by Bruce Magnuson

The continued growth of the
inflational process is  caus-
ed by the inherent evils of the
capitalist system. These include
the drive for excess profits and
the continuous enlargement of
military budgets. They include
the ceaseless speculation to ac-
quire and to hold private wealth,
including speculation in gold
and various national currencies
of the industrial developed capi-
talist countries.

Even the large and powerful
among capitalist countries are
threatened by the drive for
power and hegemony by giant
international monopolies, par-
ticularly United States corpo-
rate power. The artificially im-
posed hegemony of the US.
dollar has imposed _ so-called
“paper-gold” on the internation-
al money market, in addition to
the large-scale printing of more
paper currency by the capitalist
countries to cover deficits and
expand credit. This is particu-
larly damaging because govern-
ment budgets are now used to
transfer net income from the
poor to the rich and inflation is
consciously used as an instru-
ment to exploit the wage earner.

To determine the effect of in-
flation on wages, it is necessary
to include both taxes and prices
in all such calculations. In addi-
tion to this, the Consumer Price
Index is both rigged and mani-
pulated, and monopoly price-
fixing is covered up by various
hoax theories to put the blame
on wage increases. This hatchet
job not only seeks to excuse
and justify monopoly price-
gouging, but attempts to turn
public opinion against. the work-
ers’ struggles to prevent a de-
terioration of their living
standards.

* * %

A better educated, informed
and organized working class to-
day exerts a greater influence
than ever before. Strikes are
growing in number and inten-
sity. Even reformist union lead-
ers can no longer ignore the
growing militant mood of the
workers.

Technological changes, includ-
ing automation and computeriza-
tion of communications and of
industrial as well as_ service
processes, lead to rising costs of

Britain's workers

By JOHN WILLIAMSON

LONDON—The annual Trade
Union Congress is to open in
Blackpool Sept. 6, and the na-
tional conference of the Labor
Party in Brighton on Oct. 4.

For the Trade Union Congress
there are many _ resolutions
calling for the nationalization
of the shipbuilding, chemical
and film industries, for a great-
er fight against the Industrial
Relations Act, against entry
into the Common Market,
against unemployment and for
a basic minimum weekly wage
of £18 ($43.20), and for higher
retirement pensions.
~ One big union in the printing
industry demands expulsion
from the TUC for any union
that registers under the anti-
labor Industrial Relations Act.
This has been the position of
Britain’s two largest unions in
transport and engineers within
the TUC General Council.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1971—PAGE 6

in regard

Who is the villain

to inflation

production and larger capital in-
vestments. The private corpor-
ate structures refuse to assume
these costs out of private pro-
fits. They demand that the state
intervene to underwrite the pro-
fitability of capitalist industry
by using taxpayers’ money to
pay for scientific research,
technical education, manpower
re-training and mobility sys-
tems, and so forth. In addition
they often demand that govern-
ments put up the lion’s share
of basic investments. By these
means, the government’s role,
apart from providing an increas-
ing market for various commo-
dities under government con-
tracts, is to transfer taxpayers’
money to increase monopoly
profits.

At the same time all of this
serves to undermine the econo-
mic security of the workers,
and leads to increased working
class resistance. The very sur-
vival of the system calls for
vast and ever-increasing social
welfare expenditures. Here
again, as in the above-mentioned
case, big business refuses to
pay. As a consequence, govern-
ments step in to tax wage earn-
ers, salaried employees, farmers
and other independent produc-
ers, self-employed and indepen-
dent businesses, those earning
between $8,000 to $24,000 dol-:
lars per year being particularly
hard hit.

* * *

Government expenditures as
such are not inherently inflation-
ary. In the socialist countries al-
most all national transactions
are government expenditures
and yet do not cause inflation.
But in capitalist economy, gov-
ernments have to balance ex-
penditures by means of taxation
or borrowing. Since big business
does not tolerate or permit gov-
ernment to increase its taxes,
and because there is a political
as well as an economic satura-
tion point beyond which work-
ing people cannot be taxed, the.
government resorts to printing
more bonds or more currency,
both of which cheapen the buy-
ing power of money and are
therefore inflationary.

The bourgeois economists pre-
scribe cures for inflation that
prove to be far worse than the

Congress is also asked to
support freedom fighters in
Southern Africa.

For the Labor Party confer- .

ence there are 70 resolutions
dealing with extending or re-
storing nationalization, 22 on
the Common Market, 22 calling
for a pledge to repeal the In-
dustrial Relations Act, 48 on
the National Health Service, in-
cluding an immediate end to all
charges, and others on unem-
ployment, defeat of the racist
Immigration Act, recognition of
the GDR, increase of retirement
pensions, etc. ~

Even then these resolutions
reflect only in part the current
feeling in the labor movement
on these issues, since the latest
developments have overtaken
that which existed when the re-
solutions were adopted.

This is seen most dramatical-
ly in the Clydeside develop-
ments where the workers in the
old John Brown yards have put

ordinary poison in the blood-
stream. of our economic system.
Both’ heavier taxation to curb
buying power and high interest
rates to discourage and control
investment capital have not
achieved their objectives. What
they have done is to add to the
unemployment figures, increased
economic misery all around and
brought the economy to a halt in
most areas.

= *

Now the wage settlement in

U.S. Steel, followed by price in- .

creases in steel and other pro-
ducts, has again raised the bo-.
gey about some “conspiracy”
between “Big Labor and Big
Business” to victimize the con-
sumer. Again the same “cure”
which has been trotted out
again and again both in Europe
and America of “guidelines,”
“incomes policy,” some form of
compulsory ‘wage and price
controls,” and so on.

Unfortunately, _there are
many persons in _ responsible
positions in the trade union
movement both in Canada and
the U.S. who seem to think
that some form of wage freeze
may not be too bad and could
perhaps be tolerated, providing
there are controls of prices and
profits at the same time. This
is a terrible delusion.

The monopolies, who are ef-
fectively in control of govern-
ment, make use of this control
to redistribute the incomes of
working people by means of re-
gressive taxation and inflation.
They will continue to do so, at
the very same time that they
will use legislative compulsion
to hold down wages.

* * *

There is indeed a conspiracy.
But that conspiracy is between
big corporate power and state
power, or between monopoly
and government to increase the
exploitation of the working peo-
ple who are in the great majority
in our society. This situation re-
quires political action as well as
economic action. Collective bar-
gaining alone will not suffice.

In Canada, we have much ex-
perience to show how the mono-
poly government conspiracy
works ~against the common
people.

Early in June, long before the

press to

into operation a ‘Work In’ with
a 24-hour round the clock cont-
rol of everything and everyone
that enters or leaves. This is
their answer to the Tory gov-
ernment’s announcement clos-
ing down this and two other
Upper Clyde yards with layoffs
of 6,000—not counting another
8 to 9,000 in supply work.

Communist Councilman Jim-
my Reid, one of the chief shop
stewards, told the workers as-
sembled alongside the unfinish-
ed shjps that the Tory govern-
ment was ‘a callous bunch of
gangsters”. “The world is wit-
nessing a new tactic in indus-
trial struggle,” he said. ‘We
are going to fight with a deter-
mination that hasn’t been seen
this century.” .

He also said over national

TV, heard by millions: “We will
have no hooliganism or vandal-
ism or drinking while we are in
control because the eyes of the
world are upon us.”

The Man Who Came to Dinner
~ WY 3

U.S. steel negotiations came to
a head, Wm. Mahoney, Cana-
dian director of the United
Steelworkers Union called upon
Prime Minister Trudeau for a
full and impartial inquiry into
profits, prices and wages in the
steel industry. In. his letter to
Trudeau, Mr. Mahoney stated
that his union in the past had
offered “‘to hold the wage line
if companies would give guaran-
tees that productivity increases
would be passed on to the con-
sumers in price reductions.”
These offers to negotiate prices
as well as wages were made to
the companies, who promptly
told the union that “prices were
none of our (the union’s) busi-
ness.” The Union. pointed out
that employment costs per ton
of steel had dropped from $48.02
to $46.08, or by 4%.

Recent increases in steel
prices in Canada were blamed in
part on higher prices for -iron
and coal. But Mr. Mahoney ex-
posed this by pointing out that
both these raw materials came
from captive mines owned and
controlled by the steel compan-
ies themselves.

In spite of this, the Prices and
Incomes Commission on July 23
gave its official blessing to an
8% price increase in steel over
the past eight months.

* * *

The fact that monopolies have
endless ways of rooking con-
sumers has even forced Con-
sumers and Corporate Affairs

the left

Next steps being considered
while the men control the yards
are proposals for the municipal-
ities of Glasgow, Clydebank
and other shipbuilding towns to
take over the yards and run
them.

The fury of the workers has
also been fanned by the in-
crease in unemployed to
929,181 throughout Britain —
3.4% nationally but 8.4% in
Northern Ireland, 6.2% for
Scotland and 10% for Glasgow.
Added to this was official re-
cognition of a 10.3% raise in
the cost of living in the past
year in Britain and predictions
that if we entered the Common
Market, as the Tory government
is determined, the increase
would triple.

Both the TUC General Council
(by 15 to 9) and the Labor
Party Executive -(I6-6) have
voted to oppose Britain’s entry
into the Common Market.

-shape or form: © Aion

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duce a new Compelllt
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