WAGE CLAIMS IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 12

WAGE CLAIMS IN BRITAIN

Decision Of Shop Assistants (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, April 7. The Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers decided at the annual conference to press for a minimum weekly wage of £7 10s for its 350,000 members. This would be £2 Is 3d more than the lowest wage paid and 25s more than the average minimum for union members. A further resolution urged a reduction of living costs by restoring food subsidies, by taking the purchase tax off essentials, by limiting dividends and monopoly, and by control of prices. Both these resolutions had the executive’s support. The union’s general secretary (Mr Alan Birch) said, however, that wage increases without higher productivity would not raise living standards.' “There can be no solution to the wage earner’s problems by a negative attitude to productivity,” he said. “There are those in the trade union movement who would refuse to be cooperative in productivity campaigns because they see no guarantee of the workers receiving a fair share of the results. It is the job of trade unions to see that the results of improved methods of work accrue in sufficient measure in the pay packets. “There is no evidence of the failure of unions to do this. If there are some people who have a conception of holding the Government and the employers to ransom on this question of productivity then it must be said that the conception is wholly false. “That ransom can only be paid by the wage-earners themselves, of this or of the next generation. Trade unions, 4n their own interests, cannot sit back and allow any part of British industry to cling to less efficient methods than are available.”