The big change since last years T.U.C. is that the Executive is now formally opposed to a Government incomes policy and will also certainly record it's opposition to reduced employment levels at next weeks Brighton Conference. Last year, the T,U.C. leaders gave institutional endorsement to the freeze. This year, membership anger will ensure that no such cover will be offered to the Government, The Pages of the Report which will be presented to Congress at Brighton contain ample evidence of the posture which the leadership has adopted, Last November I pointed out that the Government appeared to be still congerned exclusively with the re-distrubtion of incomes among workers as distinct from re-distribution of incomes in general, The Government White Paper of that month met none of the major obstacles which the General Council had expressed, and again the White Paper had little to say about known wage incomes or profits or dividends, There is a marked contrast in the White Paper between the treatment of Employment incomes and other incomes, The General Council goes on record that in activating the compulsory powers under part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act, the Government made 14 orders in relation to wage and salaries and one on prices, They further state that Trade Unions are not interested in an Incomes Policy which is based on the assumption that a share of the National Income going to working people will remain the same, Their interest lies in a radical progressive incomes policy which will increase their share of the National wealth, This is fine fighting talk and a marked advance on the uncritical support which the Government has enjoyed hitherto from Congress House, But how does the T.U.C. express this radicalism in action? The weight to the bureaucracy's objections to present policies is directed against compulsory Government powers, continued under Part II of the Prices and Incomes Act. George Woodcock, in discussing the T.U.C. voluntary wage vetting scheme, which is offered as an alternative to Government compulsion, has claimed that the T.U,C. could be tougher than the Government, He has argued that it dispenses with a need for Government compulsory delaying powers over wage claims; but concedes that if this fails to achieve restraint, his case against compulsion would fall, In making other than insignificant modifications in the T,& G.W.U's £15 minimum wage demand, the T.U.C, gives priority in its wage claim vetting system to claims below that level, but has rejected many claims which generally fit this criteria, Between November 1966, and July, 1967, Unions notified 340 claims covering 4,0000 workers to the T.U.C. Approval was withheld from nearly 40% of these claims covering 40% of the workers involved, What is this if not redistribution of incomes among workers? Moreover, where is the programme with which a working class movement can achieve a radical incomes policy which redistributes incomes against the property owners? If the T.U.C. continues with its present wide vetting exercise, the tensions created within the trade union movement will ensure that it is short lived,
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