Travail at Transport House
The birth-pangs of the T.U.C.'s wages policy are formidable and prolonged. After yet another week of discussions the economic committee of the General Council has still not managed to produce anything but interim statements. 'But those statements are acquiring precision by degrees, and it is becoming possible to hope that the T.U.C. will in the end recommend an enlightened policy to its constituent unions. The danger that the deliberations of the past eight weeks would end in a recommendation so general as to be useless began to clear when Mr. Vincent Tewson, the general secre- tary of the T.U.C. said towards the end of last week " It is not so much a question of what must be done, but how it is to be done." The statement was cryptic, since there is only one thing to be done— to check the rising wave of new wage claims—and if that is agreed the question of how to advise the unions should not puzzle the T.U.C. The solution of the mystery almost certainly lies in the simple fact that the latest discussions have required the participation of Ministers. A search has been going on for ways of proving to the unions that their sacrifice of their wage claims would be accompanied by a corresponding check to profits and prices. That really is difficult. Not even the Chancellor of the Exchequer can 'claim that the cost of living is going to stand still or fall in the next year, or assert that profits can be further reduced without disaster. And yet on Monday the General Council called upon all unions to postpone wage negotiations. A favourable answer to that call would be encouraging, for pending claims cover half the membership of the T.U.C.—some 4.000.000 men—and if they hold their hand the immediate danger is averted. If, as Mr. Ernest Sevin is said to have recommended, they hold their hand for a whole year, then there is one last chance that production might be so increased in the meantime that some of the claims could eventually be admitted. To that distant prize is added the possible reward of electoral support from middle voters, who might swing away from Labour if the unions insisted on disrupting the economy by sticking to their claims. The prize is big enough. It will soon be known whether the T.U.C. unions can see it, throug.a the mists of suspicion and unreason which have clouded all their actions in the past two months and have still not been finally dispelled.
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