sued by Thatcher, has been to increase virtually every differential within the working class.
A skilled manual worker earning £199 a week before tax in March 1985 had gained a four er cent increase i eal income under the Tories. This is i addition to far more obvious and spectacular increases: 10 per cent for a middle manager earning £18,000; 22 per cent for a senior manager £26,000 a year; and 35 percent for a company director earning £54,000 a year.
In contrast all those at the bottom end of the income scale have been savaged. The real wages of semi-skilled workers earning £146 a week before tax have fallen by three percent under the Tories, income of unemployed by 18 per cent. million people have been pushed out of jobs altogether — the greatest plunge poverty of any section of the into population.
Between 1978-79 and 1981-82 alone the bottom 20 per cent of the population suffered an average real loss in income of £82 a year. The after-tax share of income going to the poorest half of the population fell from 27 to 25 per cent in the same period. Since 1979 the proportion of male manual classified as low paid has doubled from 10 per cent to 20 per cent even on of ficial criteria. Among women it has risen from 65 to 80 percent.
For some sections of the working class the situation is far worse. Blacks are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. The wages of an average black male worker are f20 lower than those of white. And the only reason the differential is not so high for women is that all women's wages are so much lower than men's. Women's wages are still less than three-quarters those of men's, and the differential is increasing. Nearly two-thirds of full-time workers, and 90 per cent of part timers, classified as low paid are women.
One of the most concerted of all the Thatcher government drives has been tion of Japanese workers. This protected privileged position for a minority was accompanied by much bigger more earning Two Photo: JOHN HARRIS workers Terry Duffy, helping the Tories casual workforce, with far less rights in employment than in a country such as In the United States, until recently, such a clear division of employment did not exist. However the US acheive roughly the same effect by having far greater during booms and slumps than Western Europe and by the systematic racism in employment, and every other field, against blacks Of late such divisions have been terviews with services, including construction.
• 'A dependently old work.
Day, rangements, on three-month contracts.
" a manager said, to permanent status. outside contractors tionally done National Economic in employment their initiatives "The study is based on extensive inmanagers in 31 panies, half in manfacturing and half in West Midlands mechanical engineering company has encouraged many of its skilled workers to set up inas pipe-fitters, joiners, painters and son, and tender for their • 'An electronics company in South Wales employs about 230 supplementals on three-month and 10-month contracts to act as a buffer protecting its employees. The suplementals have less attractive sick holiday pay and pension arand are given permanent jobs only when someone leaves the per• 'A large insurance company based in the north-west has increased its part-time workers by a quarter in four years and has begun to recruit clerical staft "You can call it our pre-cautionary demand for "and it helps Photo. JOHN HARRIS us to select suitable people to transfer • 'A British-based multinational in the food, drink and tobacco sector is also searching for functions to contract out, mainly as a way of hiving off its industrial relations problems to a contract workforce. As a sweetner for its unions, the company is encouraging its remaining workforce to compete with for work tradiby outsiders peripheral *The study shaped some of the main pensions. conclusions of a paper submitted to the Development Council in March by Mr Tom King secretary. Companies training, "had not been unduly constrained in by UK protective legislation," it says ... Companies are however more concerned about protective legislation that stops them offering workers poorer benefits, such as holidays, sick pay and In the longer term, the report suggests, these developments could have serious implications for policies since few companies offer their peripheral workers much training; and for social security arrangements, since they are blurring *the already -two of the key unions the Tories ha targetted. Their core was the introdu tion of compulsory postal ballot coupled with restrictions on secondar action, such as picketing and so or Thatcher calculated on, and is now ge ting, relatively direct collaboratic from the leadership of these two b craft-originated unions certai issues of trade union policy.
The second aspect, outlined in th Ridley. Report, was that there is a re
economic basis for collaboration with the right wing of these unions. tricity supply — the key to defeating the miners' strike — in particular was singied out as an industry in which longterm security of employment and high wages could be guaranteed. Confrontation in this sector, Ridly noted, therefore both avoidable and should be avoided.
As regards other higher paid groups of workers, the Tories believed they could gain support by rejecting comes policy and wage controls. revolt against wage controls among higher paid and skilled sections of the working class had already started under the last Labour government with the Leyland toolroom workers' strike. In 1979 the shift to the Tories, among skilled workers, 13 per cent, was higher strikes in 'essential services' such as Elec- health local government, through systematic weaken or destroy unions Privatisation policy dovetailed into inis approach. In inese areas tree wus was an authentic drive by the Tories to literally destroy trade union organisaLOR.
Finally such a policy had a tremendous impact at the political level, terms of the unity and structure of the labour movement. At the peak of its electoral popularity (for 1945-50 or 1964-66) the Labour Party's support was based on a bloc of high paid and low paid sections of the working class. The unity of the TUC itself -with its membership stretching trom ultra-skilled high-paid -aNG attempt such as example in TRIKE RKIN white-collar Corr Socialist Action 30 August 1985
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Nantgarw/ Windsor Colliery South Wales Area