The Twisters
Mr. Arthur Deakin said last week that the Budget would give " a savage twist " to the spiral of wages and prices. The T.U.C. General Council, in its official statement on the Budget, had said the same thing in more moderate language. And if this atti- tude prevails at the relatively calm centre of trade union affairs moderation is hardly to be expected on the more excitable fringes. The danger of a new spurt in wage increases is present already. The figures for January and February show an increase of £1,241,300. 'Wages in the food-distributing trades, are about to go up, and a further claim by the Union of Shop, Distribu- tive and Allied Workers could add over £1,000,000 a week to the wage bill. The farm-workers, with the full support of the Transport and General Workers (Mr. Deakin's union) are claiming a substantial increase. The unions are evidently only too willing to follow what they denounce as Mr. Butler's bad example. Will they never admit that wage claims do not make themselves but are made by union members and officials ? The T.U.C. actually accompanies its forecast that more and more claims will be made with further prophecies that the incentives given to harder work by the Budget will not be effective and that production will not go up. But all these things—wage claims, effort and production—are substantially controlled by thermions and their members. The spectacle of the unions gloomily forecasting the results of their own deliberate action is ludicrous and appalling at the same time. Let it be conceded that the T.U.C. does not control the constituent unions. Let it be conceded that the unions cannot always control their mem- bers. Is that anything to boast about ? Whatever the union leaders are supposed to do, they surely have some more posi- tive function than that of detached voices prophesying disaster. It is to be hoped that in his meeting with the T.U.C. economic committee on Tuesday the Chancellor mentioned to them that they have more responsibility in this matter than he has, and that it takes two to twist a wage-and-price spiral.
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