Bosses' M:gazine Says "british Workers Not So Well Off"

The Latour Government has done much to re-in‘orce the very reactionary argument thet all of Britain's ills are due to the fact that the British workers are over-paid and over-protested as compared ith those of. our export rivals, It is rather surprising to find a well-argued and well~ documented refutation of this myth in the letest issue of Monegement Today, a journal which, as its name implies, ceters for managerial staff in lorge businesses, The refutation comes in a special report in the lstest issue of the magazine, The journal draws the conclusions that British workers are among the worst off in western Europe, Simply in terms of wages, the British worker gets less than his counterpart in Germany and Luxemburg and is only a little better off than Dutch or Belgian workers. And compared with the average European worker he gets much less from his employer in the shape of social security, holidays, pension, sickness aid and bonuses, Even the Italian worker gets more in the shape of fringe benefits than workers do in this country. An Italian also gets much more of his total reward for work in the fo + of fringe benefits. Only 49% of his reyard f-r effort comes in woge-form comp*red with 8L% for the British working man, Another very significant feature is that the wages in Common Market countries are rising much faster than they ere in Britain. Between 1960 and 1966 wage rates in Holland, Italy and Germany all rose by more than 70% compared with 44% in Britain. For the Eurdpean worker the promise of increasing prosperity in the years ahead seems real enough , the magazine comments, but for the British worker now living on an unpleaant diet of wage freeze and stop~ go, the prospect of greater prosperity seem dim. The magazine concludes that this situation may go a long way to explain Britain's less-than-impressive economic growth compared with the Common Market countries, This is an indication of how far the Labour Party leaders and some of their trade union hangers-on have strayed from the path of even reformism, The most far-~seeing of the bosses are beginning to realise that present Government policies have many features which are damaging to British capitalism. Of course one can have no illusions in this section of the bourgeoisie — reatly the whole situation is an inlication of the parlous stote of British capitalism, Instead of trying to patch ‘up the crumbling edifice, Labour lesders should be proclaiming that only socialism can solve the structural problem of British intustry. ANNOUNCEMENT