How much do strikes achieve?
The view is held by some trade unionists and by so-called militant organisations that militancy is the key that opens all doors for the working class. The argument is deceptively simple: as strikes can gain wage increases more and larger strikes will gain more increases, seemingly without limit. How far is this true? There is plenty of past and current evidence though, as will be seen, some of it is open to misinterpretation. When Marx wrote about this more than a century ago he did not share the “militant” view about the extent to which trade-union pressure could raise wages. In his Value, Price and Profit for example (Chapters IV and XIV) and in Wage-Labour and Capital (p. 35 in the Whitehead edition) he took a somewhat pessimistic line based on his understanding of how capitalism works. While urging resistance to the efforts of employers to depress wages he thought it was largely a defensive struggle, with only occasional opportunities for the workers to secure “temporary improvement”. His view was that the times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement were when the capitalists were doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. In the reverse phase of the “trade cycle”, with sales and profits falling and unemployment rising, he thought the workers could do little.
“The relations between the supply and demand of labour-power undergo perpetual change, and with them the market price of labour-power. If the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method.”
(To bring this into harmony with the present period of fast-rising prices it has to be remembered that though money wages do not now sink, a pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall of “real” wages, i.e. purchasing power.)
Nothing Gained
It will be noticed that Marx talked of “testing” the situation when trade is bad. The militants reject this. They think that if enough workers strike they can make big gains in spite of adverse conditions. As regards past experience the evidence is all against the militants’ case. Apart from 1921 and 1926, the record number of days lost through strikes in any year was in 1893, when the total was over 30 million. This included Lancashire cotton workers who were out for five months, and 400,000 miners. Both strikes failed and wages generally did not rise.
Another outstanding example was the ten years 1921-1930. Unemployment was high, trade was bad and prices were falling—in all by 30 per cent. In those years, which included the General Strike of 1926, the number of days lost by strikes and lockouts averaged 31 million a year, but the strikes completely failed to prevent wages also falling by about 30 per cent.
Discontent & Resistance
The question arises to what extent recent experience differs from the past. Various changes have taken place. There are many more trade unionists, though still only a minority of the workers, and workers on strike instead of depending entirely on their own resources and trade-union and benefit-society funds can now get Social Security payments for their families. British capitalism in the past six years has been in depression with unemployment at one point topping the million mark. And strikes have been building up, from 2,400,000 days lost in 1966 to 13,600,000 days in 1971 and a likely total of 20 or 21 million in 1972. The fact that strikes have become more numerous and last longer is not simply a reflection of workers’ discontent but is also a reflection of stronger and better-organised resistance by employers. It is a truism that the most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production.
In recent years, with sales falling off, employers have taken a tougher line because they stand to lose less when trade is slack than when they have full order-books and are hard pressed to meet delivery dates. Also, as in engineering and the building industry where the recent strikes were not general, employers with strikes on their hands received financial help from the other employers.
Keeping Pace
What then has been the outcome of the big increase in strikes? On the basis of the rise of the cost of living and the estimated increase of wage rates (not including overtime and bonuses etc.) and of average earnings (including overtime and bonuses) it would seem that real wages have been rising at about 2 per cent a year since 1966; but some complications have to be taken into account. The first is that what matters is not gross pay but “take-home pay” after deduction of tax, and owing to the way this operates take-home pay increases by a smaller percentage than gross pay. If for example a single man on pay of about £25 obtained an increase of £5 a week (20 per cent) his increase of take-home pay would be just under 19 per cent (£4.10).
And owing to the rules governing family income supplements and free school meals it can happen that some workers can be worse off through a pay increase. For a married man with two children a pay increase of £2 from £28 to £30 a week would leave him 95p. a week worse off. (The Times, 8 September 1972).
It is obvious that the past six years, in spite of more strikes, has left the mass of workers in Britain doing little more than keep pace with prices.
Some Do Not
An enquiry by the Economic Research Council (Financial Times, 18 August 1972) indicated that between 1962 and 1970 average take-home pay did not even keep up with the cost of living, though some improvement may have been made since 1970. Another factor that should be borne in mind is that the past few years have seen a widespread tightening-up of jobs through labour-displacing productivity schemes linked with pay increases. Take-home pay in terms of purchasing power has certainly not fully reflected increased output.
Some confirmation of Marx’s general argument is given by a comparison of Germany and some other continental countries with Britain. While British capitalism -has been in depression, production has been expanding fast in Germany—the condition in which Marx expected the workers to be able to increase wages. Though strikes in Germany have been much fewer than in Britain, in recent years real wages have risen much more in Germany. Indeed, according to a document submitted to the TUC (The Times, 5 October 1972): “In recent years Britain’s wage increases have been the lowest in Europe.”
H.