What Hope of Wage Stabilisation ?
A week before the General Council of the Trades Union Congros issued its long-delayed appeal to the unions to restrain their wage demands, the engineers had decided to persist with their claim for Lt a week more for all adult male workers. Next day the steel trades, leading in enlightenment as in production, offered to stabilise their cost-of-living arrangements if other unions with similar schemes would do likewise. A day later—last Friday—the building workers, in a statement as disingenuous as it was short-sighted, said that since their own cost-of-living adjustments were made retrospectively each February any proposal or a standstill did not really affect them. Various other groups of unions have offered to hold their hand. The see-saw has gone up and down but the weight of the engineers —whose claim would be sufficient in itself to give a new twist to the inflationary spiral and who seem to have ignored altogether the question of productivity—has brought it down on the wrong side. It is also reported that the General Council, envisaging the awful possibility that it might pledge itself to wage stabilisation and then find a Conservative Government in office next year, began to waver at the last minute. In these circumstances the hope of wage stabilisa- tion held out by the T.U.C.'s announcement published on Wednesday is considerably reduced. But the worst danger of all seems to have been overlooked altogether. It lies in the very arrangements made between the Government and the T.U.C., whereby a wage standsoll, even if agreed by the unions, might be reconsidered if the cost-of- living index rose by six points—the Government, of course, Wing that it would not. But in an article in the current issue ot the Bulletin of the London and Cambridge Economic Service—that go)d- mine of sound information—Professor R. G. D. Allen says "We must expect a rise in the retail price index of at least per cent. b)the
end of the year, and perhaps 5 per cent, or more by next spring. We must also expect a rising tendency for some considerable time thereafter." Government by hope has gone on long enough. If wages are going to be stabilised the Government has been foolish to agree in advance to any escape clauses whatever.
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