3. The Workers’ Position
Writing in December we still do not know whether the British Government will enter the European Common Market, or whether their conditions for entry will prove inacceptable to the six countries already in. And if the outcome is that Britain becomes a member, no-one yet knew what special arrangement may be made for the Commonwealth and Colonial territories, nor what the Scandinavian and other European countries may decide to do in this new situation.
All of these uncertain factors have a bearing on the effect that joining the Common Market will have on particular industries and firms and on workers’ jobs.
Some British workers will find their occupations gone through redundancy and will have to seek a job in another industry or in another place, perhaps across the Channel.
Unions in printing, entertainment and tailoring are among those that have expressed fears about jobs, or wages, or the incursion of workers from other Common Market countries looking for work here.
But in some industries the expectation is that prospects would improve for the firms centred in Britain, and the workers whose jobs may in consequence be made more precarious will be those now working in one of the Common Market countries. Among the industries in which this may happen are engineering, motor car manufacture and chemicals. Mine-workers have also been encouraged by the Coal Board to believe that more British coal would be sold and that employment prospects in the coal industry here would improve.
Sometimes the forecasters who tell workers what they think will happen are not trade union leaders but employers. The British Employers’ Confederation issued a statement that entry to the Market would make wage increases out of the question unless preceded by increases in productivity. (Financial Times, 8/8/61); and Lord Chandos, chief of Associated Electrical Industries, who spoke in favour of Britain’s entry, told his fellow members of the House of Lords (3/8/61) that the consequent sharper competition and other changes
”will impinge upon the workers . . . very much more than on the employers, This kind of thing will make the ‘ wild-cat’ strike, the demarcation dispute, and shorter hours with less work at lower productivity an impossible luxury.” He instanced Coventry as a place where the motor workers would not be exhilarated to see a flood of Italian and French cars, or Italian workers coming here for jobs.
As would be expected, when manufacturers and traders ponder the case for joining, it is not the workers’ comfort they have in mind except in the sense that the ” European cold wind of change” may help them to discipline British workers, or so they think.” (Financial Times 24.7.61).
Workers worrying about these chilling prophecies are mostly upsetting themselves to no purpose. Of course, they may find themselves out of a job or faced with an employer’s refusal to give a wage increase, or see their employer unable lo stand up to competition. But these are things that will happen anyway; they happen all the time and all over the place, not just in the Common Market.
The end of 1961 gave us news of redundancy and short time in the motor car industry; notice that 15 Scottish coal mines will be closed in 1962, affecting 5,000 workers; the forthcoming closure of the De Havilland aircraft factory at Christchurch, Hants, with 2,000 men looking for jobs in an area which depended heavily for employment on the firm; and Courtaulds closing down one of the British Enka plants which it recently bought, so that nearly 4,000 people at Aintree, Liverpool, are expected to lose their jobs.
Unemployment
And those who think that the Common Market will end the workers’ troubles are equally in error. Their argument is on the lines that a great home market of 170 million people is a guarantee of efficient production, steady marketing, high wages and secure employment. But the U.S.A. also has 170 million people and recently had over five million unemployed and in the depression years of the nineteen ‘thirties had unemployment ranging at times up to 10 million and even 15 million.
Within the past few years America has seen its motor car industry and steel at times in the doldrums, with tens of thousands unemployed. And there is no reason to suppose that the Common Market will escape the kind of regional or local bad trade that can exist in all countries, the United States included.
Though at present Germany has very little unemployment, Italy, one of the partners in the Common Market, has about 1,350,000 unemployed or nearly 7 per cent., and it has never averaged less than that figure in the past 10 years.
Immigration
The Common Market aims at unfettered movement of workers throughout the area, but in practice it will probably be long before it becomes effective, and various hindrances of movement will exist even then. There are no legal barriers in the way of the movement oi workers within Great Britain, but that does not prevent unemployment being persistently heavy in one district and light in another, one per cent, in the London and South Eastern Region and 1\ times as heavy in Northern Ireland. Housing is a big factor in this. And as was recently pointed out by the Times, even if the movement of workers in the Common Market were completely free already (which it is not), “differences in wages and conditions are not sufficient to induce many workers to seek employment in a strange country. The only likely movement of any size would be from countries where there is a substantial unemployment, which at present means Southern Italy.”
Figures published in July, 1961, showed that there were 200,000 Italians working in Germany along with much smaller numbers from many other countries, making a total of 470,000 immigrant workers.
We hear much about the workers’ reactions to the incursions of immigrants, but the employers have a problem too. When workers leave their home town it enables those who stay behind to put more pressure into their struggle for higher wages. German employers welcome Italian immigrants, but it looks different to the Italian factory owners.
“Some factory owners complain about the fact that agents of German or Swiss employers stand outside their factory gates offering contracts to workers as they finish their shifts.”
Trade Unions
No particular difficulty should arise in the trade union field. Though British rank and file trade unionists have mostly not been as much aware of international organisation and its problems as Continental workers, the union officials and executives have often had long and fairly close contact with Continental unions, particularly through their own Internationals (Miners, Transport workers, Post office workers, Agricultural workers, Printers, etc., etc.).
This is not to say that unions will easily forget their nationalist prejudices, but at least they will get used to working together in day to day matters on a European basis. Still less does it mean as claimed by Ludwig Rosenberg, Deputy Chairman of the German Trade Union Federation, that formation of the European Common Market is an expression of the fact that “international co-operation and solidarity beyond national frontiers are among the basic aims of the Labour movement throughout the world.”
The grouping of small units into a larger one, with one of its objects to stand up industrially, commercially (and militarily) against other world blocs no more depends on an “international” outlook than did the forging of unity in the 19th century in Italy or the German customs union which lead to German unity, though it does achieve the breakdown of the narrower isolations and prejudices. Certainly it should be easier for workers in all of the Common Market countries to avoid being played-off against each other in the name of the “national interest.”
Wages
Opinions differ about the complex question of comparing wages in this country with those on the Continent. What is true of one industry or country may not be true of another, but, for what it is worth the Times recently gave the following summary of comparative pay and conditions in the Common Market countries:
“Their wages are still probably lower, but not very much so except in Italy and to a lesser extent the Netherlands, but they are rising more rapidly. Their hours worked are shorter, though the working week in some cases is still longer. They get more paid holidays. They devote a higher proportion of their national income to social security. Their occupational training schemes are probably mostly better. At the present rate of progress, Britain looks like becoming a backward country by European standards, before many years have gone.”
For many years, ever since German industry got on its feet again after the war, British politicians and business men have told the British workers that they should model themselves on the hard-working, thrifty, non-striking German workers, who from the German employers’ point of view were exemplary. This idea has helped a little to colour the views of many employers in favour of getting inside: but perhaps they were wrong after all.
Last November it was being discovered by German business men and economists that the German worker was up to the same tricks as British workers, taking advantage of low employment to push up wages. The Financial Times diagram published on November 22nd, showing wages forging ahead of output per hour and of employers’ sales receipts referred to German workers, but it might easily have been taken for an article about British workers any time in the post-war years.
This should not surprise anyone. The European Common Market is not a different kind of capitalist entity—only a larger one. Whether the British Government goes in or not, British workers should be looking to promote their own. Socialist working class unity with workers everywhere, not just in Western Europe.
H.