By a special correspondent THERE WAS a strike last month which affected 1400 workplaces in the private sector, closing about half of them. The employers admitted to the Financial Times that the effectiveness of the action had surprised them.
The strike was in the TSB bank. It was called by BIFU, the finance union, over compulsory redundancies made by the Bank in breach of an agreement with the union.
The strike was particularly solid in the North of England. All branches were closed on Merseyside, and fly. ing pickets wore deployed around branches in the Durham coalfeld. seen in the banks since the 1960s, when the National Union of Bank Employoes (the forerunner of BIFU) used regional strikes to gain recognition. stalf associations in order to avoid an independent trade union (what the chairman of Midland Bank then called the serpent in our midst). But recognition was finally Paga 6: February 13, 1993No.37..• achieved through industrial action, although throo stall associations stil exist alongside BIFU in Barciays, Loyds, and Nat West Banks. (Interes ingly, this tactic continues to be used two-year recognition batte in the North of England Burding Society after management created a stall as sociation to oppose t the union.)
Following the TSB dspute, the major clearing banks are drawing up Nat West is outraged at the union's public campaign against compulsory redundancies last year when the Bank 'credit-scored staff for redunNeedless to say. the Nat West Staff Association did nothing to fight the sackings.) And Lloyds are furious at the union's successful campaign Midland Bank, which would have cost Loyds and Nat West have announced - even before negotations have begun - that they wil not pay a ost of living rise this year. Barclays ware to folaw this ina For all their talk of 'competition, the major clearing banks are coordiWeeper processes were at work too. Under capitalism, individual bosses constantly seck to increase their share of the overall profit available in their sector by replacing with machines, making themselves more efficient than their competitors.
Other capitalists are forced to match their rivals latest equipment or go under. However, what is rational for each individual capitalist in isola• tion is detrimental to the capitalist system as a whole.
As marxism alone explains, profit as such can only be derived from the exploitation of human labour - the difference between the workers wages and the value of what they produce at work.
As more and more equipment, to human labour, is needed even to stay in the game, the bosses have to lay out ever greater sums to generate the same terare ooked atanother way, the rate vested tends to decline, to the point where the cost of financing a new venture outstrips the potential payback.
Consequently, the project happens, and business never confidence workers 'displaced' by new technology capital is taken out of the system, as seen in the eighties slump which destroyed around a third of Britain's manufacturing industry. The surviving capitalists get to buy up valuable assets on the cheap.
Mass unemployment creates a pool of cheap labour, while fear of the dole queue erodes trade union militancy and makes it easier for the bosses to cut wages, cheapening the price of labour power.
Governments undertake anti-slump policies for political sons capitalism learned from In Britain, political control of the central bank enables the Tories to reduce interest rates in the nope or encouragis l vestment, while economies like Japan and the USA are turning to Keynesian measures of state spending. Business conditions slowly begin to improve, and the whole crazy cycle starts again.
The only solution for this crazy merry-go-round of boom and bust is a democraticallyplanned socialist economy, naced on working-class selt-organisation, which will operate in the interests of the mont of the population.
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