The Militant - June 2, 2008 -- For a sliding scale of hours, wages

Vol. 72/No. 22 June 2, 2008

For a sliding scale of hours, wages
(editorial)

From truck drivers in the United States to toilers in semicolonial countries from Haiti to Bangladesh, working people are seeking ways to protect ourselves from the grind of the spreading capitalist crisis with its ruinous inflation and devastating unemployment.

An effective demand that can unite working people today is a sliding scale of wages and hours. There should be cost-of-living increases in the wages and benefits of all workers so that when the prices of consumer goods go up there is an automatic rise in income to match. And to protect our class against rising unemployment, the work week should be shortened with no cut in pay to spread the available work to all. Millions of jobs can be created at union-scale wages through a massive public works program.

In addition to high prices the capitalist rulers rig their statistics to understate the real cost of food, fuel, health care, housing, and education. In 1997 a panel appointed by William Clinton recalculated the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to substantially reduce official price figures. Increases in the price of meat, for example, were not taken into account on the basis that workers could substitute hamburger for steak. In a similar fashion, a commission under the John F. Kennedy administration “disappeared” millions of unemployed workers by no longer counting those who had given up on finding a job.

To counter this trickery the unions need to initiate committees of workers and farmers that can take the determination of the CPI into our hands.

To wage this kind of fight working people need a political party of our own—a labor party based on combative trade unions. Such a party can begin to fight now for a sliding scale of wages and hours and other demands in the interests of working people around the world.

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