IF ANYONE had any manuster Gemancing tat tue concordat is nothing CORE OF CONCORDAT Industrial Relations Act, and the social contract.
to impose cooling off procedures.
ATTACKS ON PICKETS • The attacks on Warren and other building worker trade unionists. PURE MOONSHINE TUC is accepting policies of mass unemployment. right-wing policies of this government. OPENS WAY FOR TORIES Britain today.
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Socialist Challenge 1 March 1979 page 2 doubts about the meaning of the TUC-government concordat, they should have been well and truly cleared up last week. With the combined voices of Len Murray, Peter Shore, Joel Barnett and just about every other government workers reject the NUPE executive decision and go back to work, it is clear that the but a plan for open strike-breaking government's and Murray's actions are in fact an even more blatant act of scabbing than the TUC General Council decision to isolate and defeat the Fire Brigades Union strike last year.
Such strike-breaking, and attacks on rank-and-file unionists and union democracy, is at the very core of the concordat. Even its details are virtually identical to such previous anti-union measures as Labour's 1969 In Place of Strife, the Tory * The talk of strikes being 'a last resort' and opposing strikes "during negotiations' is no different to Paragraph 15 of In Place of Strife, which said that 'the typical British strike...is in breach of agreed procedure', or the Tory Industrial Relations Act's attempts picketing and solidarity, now named "secondary action' by the press, Tories, and government, are no different in essentials from those in the Industrial Relations Act. This outlawed any attempt to interfere with the performance by anote person or a contract • Iris one in a long une or auacks on pickets — notably the infamous Shrewsbury frame-up trial of Des * The move by the concordat to get secret individual ballots has exactly the same aim as In Place of Strife. This ruled that, 'Where an official strike is threatened, the Secretary of State will discuss with the unions concerned the desirability of holding a strike ballot'. The Industrial Relations Act proposed the same with compulsory ballots where a strike 'has begun or is likely to begin'. The aim is to break up the solidarity of workers and make them Individual targets for anti-union press and television • The economic part of the concordat, such as its so-called aim to get inflation down to 5 per cent in three years, is pure moonshine. It is just like the social contract, which in fact reduced real wages by 12 per cent between 1975 and 1977. Real wages are only just beginning to recover from this — and then only by the fact that last year wages bust the government incomes policy limit. The concordat's growth target of only 3 percent means that the In fact, under the concordat the TUC is offering to give the government the greater part of what the employers were unable to force the working class to accept through In Place of Strife, the Industrial Relations Act, and the social contract. Thatcher will thank the TUC kindly for surrendering the last ten years' struggle to defend trade union rights, and will try to turn all their proposals into law the moment she is returned to office as a result of the Anyone who supports the concordat is supporting a massive attack on the rights of rank-and-file trade unionists to fight and organise, starting with the public sector struggle, and is helping to open the door for the Tory wolves. Total and complete rejection of the concordat is the touchstone for any class struggle politics in