The T.U.C. Does Its Best
The mills of Transport House grind slowly, but the lumps remain as large as ever. The full report on wages policy, published on Tuesday and to be discussed at the anxiously awaited conference of trade union executives on January 12th, is no doubt a consider- able achievement for a body which not long ago was denying the possibility of any sort of national wages policy. The policy of restraint on new wage claims and the suspension of sliding-scale arrangements set out in the report was first adopted in November and was then welcomed with whatever enthusiasm is appropriate when a powerful national body very belatedly recognises common sense. But not one of the difficulties visible at that time has been removed since. Some of them have been made worse by this report. The constant complaint, rooted in suspicion and nourished in refusal to admit the effectiveness of the profits tax, that profits arc getting more than their share of the national dividend, is repeated. It is accompanied now by further complaints concerning the alleged high level of business, professional and academic salaries. The dreary—and obviously false—argument that the only alternative to the policies of the present Government is a disastrous deflation is still there. The large wage claims of particular groups of unions— the shipbuilding and engineering-trades in particular—are still there, too, flatly contradicting the hard-won policy of the T.U.C. and potentially making nonsense of it. And yet this report is well meant. It carefully draws the distinction between wage rates and earnings, and points out that there is not the slightest reason why earnings should stand still even now, always provided that the workers are prepared to make a new effort. It does not join in the
current attempt by the Labour Party to prove that the British economic situation is growing steadily better. But what is most needed now is a change of heart, first among the unions who insist that a quart can be got out of a pint pot, and second among the rank-and-file of those unions. The powers of the T.U.C. to effect that change are limited, but the old horse is doing its best.
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