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In a motion before the Congress they called for a new long-term approach to pay to ensure that workers in the public and private sectors were treated equally. In return for agreement on flexible pay guidelines determined by discussion between the Government, employers and unions, there would need to be increased public expenditure to raise the rate of growth and to create employment and greater public investment in manufacturing to regenerate the industrial base. Mr Glyn Phillips of NALGO argued that the trade union movement should remove the sense of injustice which workers felt at the crude market to which free collective bargaining gave rise and at the equally crude policy of unilateral Government decisions. The most rational system was for trade unionists to accept that they had to give some authority to the TUC General Council to negotiate a flexible norm. Mr Weighell of the NUR underlined that wages could not be regarded in isolation from the general economic state of the country and argued that it was sensible to plan not just for hard economic times but also for the future when Britain would be self-sufficient in oil so that prosperity could be shared fairly instead of being monopolised by those groups of workers with the greatest industrial strength. Mr Jackson of the UPW said that a free for all would merely produce all the inequalities that free collective bargaining had given rise to in the past, including low pay which had not been caused by incomes policy but had been with the country for a long time. In fact the £6 increase under Phase 1 was the biggest increase that many workers had ever had, before or since.
7. On a show of hands, the motion which would have accorded the Government a role in determining the desirable level of wage settlements was defeated by a large majority and composite 12 was adopted.
8.
Debate on composite motion 11 concerning unemployment and the 35-hour week went on concurrently with the debate on incomes policy. There was unanimity among speakers on the motion which expressed deep concern at the continuing existence of unemployment at its present level throughout the countries of the European Community and called on the Government to make reduction of unemployment its highest priority. The motion called for reflation of the economy along with further development of job creation and job training programmes and improved unenployment benefits. The main thrust of the motion, however, was for a major reduction in working hours and it urged a general campaign with the specific objective of making a reduction of the normal working week to 35 hours without loss of earnings, top priority in negotiations. The Government were asked to negotiate a shorter working week in the public sector. The General Council were asked to put in hand a campaign to ensure that excessive and systematic overtime was eliminated and to pursue the 35-hour working week within the European Trade Union Confederation so that it would cover all countries within the European Community.
19. Mr Evans
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