The motion instructed the General Council to oppose any arbitrary pay limits. It was somewhat inconsistent in calling for both meaningful low pay targets for the next round of pay negotiations and at the same time recognising the need for the restoration of adequate differentials.
4. Mr Murray, the General Secretary, admitted that the case which he had advanced and which had been accepted by previous Congresses and by trade union members for moderation in wage claims had not produced the results which he had thought it would. He argued that the main reason why 1 million people were unemployed was that the economy had grown too slowly and that unless economic expansion resumed there would be recourse internationally to protectionism and trade war and beyond that to social disorder. The General Council favoured an expansion of demand accompanied by selective import controls as well as support for the National Enterprise Board to keep the UK in the forefront of new technology. He said that the General Council saw no merit in the Government being involved in complex wage negotiations, least of all when they would be sitting on the same side of the table as the employers. The Government should not get itself frozen into a rigid formalised attitude and he said that trade unionists had learned enough from their experience of inflation in 1974 and 1975 to pursue moderate and responsible objectives in pay negotiations in future.
5. The line propounded by the General Secretary was supported by Mr Lawrence Daly of the National Union of Mineworkers and Mr Ken Gill of the AUEW (TASS). Mr Daly said that he did not want free bargaining without regard to the interests of the rest of the community but that the problems to which previous rounds of incomes policy had given rise could only be resolved by eliminating all Government intervention when national and local pay agreements were being negotiated. He expressed the view that the Government had not done enough to meet its commitments under the social contract but that co-operation between the trade union movement and the Government - not necessarily uncritical - would continue. Mr Gill criticised the TUC for not pursuing its rejection of incomes policy with sufficient conviction and argued that free collective bargaining would help transform Britain from a low wage economy into a fast growing and fully employed economy. He made the point that the reduction of differentials had turned friends among skilled working people into disillusioned enemies.
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6. There was never any doubt but that the composite 12 would be adopted but three unions NALGO, the NUR and the UPW
put forward a contrary view, recognising that the Government had responsibility for the management of the economy and would always have an opinion as to the desirable level of wage settlements. They pointed out that. free collective bargaining had never been a reality in the public service where the Government was directly or indirectly the employer.
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/In a motion
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