Unite Policy Conference 2016 - Monday's business

The main debate of the day was on Trident, where an Executive Council Statement was agreed. It contains stronger commitments to diversification than in the past, but means Unite won't be calling for MPs to vote against Trident until there is a government committed to diversification.


Motion 36: Economic Policy: Fell
Motion 37 + Amendment: The Financial Crisis: Carried
Composite 9 (Motions 38 + Amendment, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44): A Strategic Plan for Manufacturing: Carried [after EC assurance that this would not be interpreted as a return to "British Jobs 4 British Workers"]
Motion 47: Save Our Steel: Carried
Composite 10 (Motions 45, 46, 101): Save our Steel / China MES: Carried
Composite 11 (Motions 50 + Amendment, 133, 134): Ownership and Regulation of Public Transport: Carried
Motion 49: Ownership Control & Regulation of the Public Transport System: Carried
Motion 48: Investment in Transport Infrastructure: Carried
Motion 51: Supermarket Loss Leaders: Carried
Composite 12 (Motions 52, 53, 143): Living Wage and Basic Income: Carried
Motion 54: Basic Income: Carried
Motion 55: CPI (Consumer Price Index) v RPI (Retail Price Index): Carried
Executive Statement 1: Defence Diversification & Trident: Carried
As a result, all the remaining motions on the subject fell:
Composite 6 (Motions 19, 20 + Amendment, 23, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34)
Composite 7 (Motions 21, 22, 24, 35)
Motion 17
Motion 29
Motion 31
Motion 33
Motion 18 Withdrawn
Motion 25 Withdrawn
Motion 26 Withdrawn

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Defend Warrington Councillor Kevin Bennett - facing disciplinary action for opposing cuts

Another councillor faces disciplinary action by the Labour Party this week - for opposing the cuts.

Kevin Bennett is a councillor in Fairfield and Howley in Warrington, and is a former member of UNITE's Executive Council.  He defied the Labour whip and voted against the cuts at a meeting in early March.

Kevin has explained his views clearly:

"We need to send a strong message of defiance to this idealistic, uncaring Tory led coalition government and show the people of Warrington that we have got the guts to stand up to them.

"I expressed my views on what I believe to be the views of many people, on having to implement cuts which are not of our making.  It is wrong that we should be in the firing line when all of this is a result of vicious funding cuts by this Tory led coalition government.

"This council could safeguard jobs and services for the next 12 months by using reserves and borrowing.  This would buy time to build a fight-back against this Tory led coalition government.  The Labour council's Executive Members and Portfolio holders are refusing to even consider this option.

"There is a definite correlation between the worst cuts and deprivation and I see it in my ward.  There must be NO compulsory redundancies within the council workforce, and we must fight to keep our services 'in house'.  Once they're gone they're gone and probably won't save us money."

Kevin is part of a small but growing band of councillors standing up against the cuts and who deserve our support.

There's a protest in support of Kevin at Warrington town hall 6-6:30pm, Thursday 4th April.  The town hall is on Sankey Street (WA1 1SR), a few minutes from Warrington Bank Quay station.  Go along and let the Labour group know that disciplinary action against Kevin would be intolerable.

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Len McCluskey's speech at the October 20th demo

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21 days till the money runs out

UNITE's new film about pay day lenders and promoting the 20th October demo.

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Building for the 20th October demonstration from Greater Manchester

Update note:  The meeting on 24th July advertised below is cancelled.
Update 2:  Greater Manchester Association of TUCs have organised a replacement meeting which is 6pm on Tuesday 31st July at Methodist Central Hall, Oldham Street, Manchester M1 1JQ.  Facebook event here.

The TUC demonstration on 20th October is crucial for all of us.  After the magnificent build-up of opposition last year, from the half-million strong demo on 26th March to the strike on 30th June and the huge strikes and protests on 30th November, the opposition to the government's disastrous austerity policies really seemed to be building up.  But the leaders of the trade union movement wasted that momentum with delays, dithering, and shoddy deals.

The "A Future That Works" demo on 20th October is part of a push to get the momentum back.  Some unions are already planning strikes around that date, and students are planning their own demonstration in the autumn too.

We need to make sure the demo on 20th October is bigger and stronger than the 26th March and that it gives people confidence to fight back.  This is quite possible.  The 26th March was the first trade union mobilisation on that scale for a decade.  While it was magnificent there were many lessons learned - and if we learn them it should not be hard to make 20th October far far bigger.  Amongst those lessons were the need to organise and book transport earlier and the need for better coordination between different organisations involved in building the demo.

Unite's "Manchester Area Activists Committee", which covers Greater Manchester, decided to initiate an meeting to help build for the demonstration and is sending a letter out to other unions, trades councils and community campaigners to invite them to take part.  Below is the text of the letter (I've removed the contact details to avoid spam - please contact me if you have any questions).

To: all trade unionists and community campaigners across Greater Manchester

The TUC has called a national demonstration in London on 20th October to send the message that

AUSTERITY ISN'T WORKING

·         spending cuts threaten a lost decade

·         invest for jobs and growth

·         defend quality public services

The aim is to make this demonstration even bigger than the one on 26th March 2011, and to achieve this we need to organise - now.

Unite's Manchester Area Activists Committee, which covers the whole of Greater Manchester, decided to initiate an open organising meeting to build the maximum turnout for 20 October from Greater Manchester and to approach other unions, trades councils and campaign groups to take part.

This open organising meeting will take place:

6:30pm, Tuesday 24th July

Unite the Union, Merchants Quay, Salford Quays, Salford, M50 3SG

Free car parking is available and the Unite office is a few minutes' walk from Salford Quays Metrolink stop

We hope you will be able to attend the meeting and to publicise it through your own networks.

TUC materials to help build for the demonstration are available from www.afuturethatworks.org.

If you have any questions about the meeting please contact me, Jimmy Carter --- or Ian Allinson ---.

We look forward to seeing you there and working with you to make 20 October a resounding success.

In solidarity

Jimmy Carter

Secretary, Unite Manchester Area Activists Committee

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Decisions of UNITE Policy Conference Monday 25 June 2012

The policy conference agenda and other key documents are on the UNITE web site here.

The policy decisions were:

• Motion 1 Democratic Control of the Banks and Financial Institutions: Carried with amendments 1 & 2.  Amendment 3 was lost.
• Motion 2 Failure by Banking Executives: Carried
• Motion 3 Feral Capitalism: Carried with amendment 1.  Amendment 2 fell.
• Composite 1 (motions 5, 6 an 7) Robin Hood Tax: Carried
• Motion 8 Alternative Economic Strategy: Carried with amendment
• Motion 15 Public Sector Cuts: Carried with amendment
• Motion 14 Re-Nationalisation: Carried
• Motion 4 Campaign to Amend Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010: Carried
• Composite 2 (motions 9, 10+amendment, 11, 12+amendment): Carried
• Motion 13 Offshore Skilling: Carried
• Composite 9 (motions 56, 57, 69 & 60) Workplace Health & Safety: Carried
• Motion 58 Long Hours Culture: Carried with amendment
• Emergency Motion 1 Carcinogenic Diesel Engine Exhaust: Carried
• Executive Statement ES5 Transport: Carried
• Composite 10 (motions 61+amendment, 63, 64, 65 & 66) Manufacturing: Carried
• Motion 62 British Aerospace: Carried
• Motion 67 Morning Star: Carried
• Motion 68 Media: Carried

The text of the EC statements and Emergency motions isn't yet on the union web site, but hopefully will be soon.

Update: I've posted the EC statements here.

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Is there a "demographic timebomb"?

In the debates about pensions, much has been made of rising life-expectancy, with scary graphs which show the rapid rise in the percentage of the population over 65.  A lot less attention has been paid to far less scary graphs which show the percentage of the population aged 15-65.  What this shows is that the proportion of the population who are not of "working age" has not changed anywhere near as fast (even if you allow for the fact that people are older when they start working later now than 100 years ago).

Because the debate on pensions has been dominated by "pensions experts" who look at the issue in isolation, they miss the fact that today's working population is supporting a broadly similar proportion of the population who are not of working age as in the past.  More pensioners is offset by fewer children.


Production per worker has risen massively with developments in technology.  If society could afford a decent welfare state and pensions in the aftermath of World War 2, we can afford it today - if we're willing to stop the trend of more and more wealth being concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority.

The domination of the pensions debate by institutions that gamble on the markets has been poisonous, obscuring the fact that decisions about what proportion of society's wealth go to look after children, older people and those unable to work are political decisions.

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We're NOT all in it together

I've come across two sets of information recently which have rammed home the point that we're not "all in it together".

The Sunday Times has published its annual "Rich List".  Even their own headline makes the point "The Sunday Times Rich List reveals that Britain’s wealthiest people are richer than ever despite the worst recession since the 1930s".  Even The Telegraph, that well-known friend of the poor, highlights the discrepancy between the rest of us and the top 1000 people: "Their total fortune has risen by just under five per cent since 2011, to £414 billion, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List.  That exceeds the previous record of £412.8 billion set in 2008, which came just a few months before the financial crash from which the wider British economy has yet to recover".

The second set of information has received a lot less publicity.  I found it via the blog of the economist Michael Roberts.  In this article on the weak US recovery, he highlights how as profit rates recovered, corporations hoarded profits, rather than reinvesting them, undermining the recovery of the wider economy.  The figures are staggering - he explains:

"US corporate profits have recovered dramatically since the trough at the end of 2008.  They surpassed their previous peak in 2006 by early 2010.  This was achieved by a massive reduction in costs (including labour costs) and a strike in investment.  But most of the recovery in profits since the end of 2008 has been hoarded and not spent on new investment.  According to these latest figures, undistributed profits have accumulated to $744bn from just $19bn at the end of 2008!   Profits are up around $1trn since then, but the cash accumulation is up over $700bn, so only 30% of the increase in profits has been spent on new investment.  This explains why the economic recovery has been so weak, with the US economy growing only barely at 2% a year (1.6% yoy according to the latest Q4’11 GDP data)."

So next time some millionaire cabinet minister (and most of them are) tells us that there's no money for decent jobs or for the services we all rely on, let's remember that there are individuals and corporations sitting on vast wealth which could be far better used by those who produced it.

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Real wages falling fast

Just to maintain the same share of the value we produce at work, workers need a pay rise equal to inflation (to take account of the falling value of money) and their increase in productivity (to take account of the increasing value they produce).

A lot of attention is (rightly) focussing on how governments are pushing the costs of the economic crisis onto working people by nationalising bank debts and then repaying them by cutting our services and increasing our taxes. These actions reduce what is known as the "social wage".

Less attention is being given to how employers in public and private sector are using the recession to try to permanently shift wealth from workers to employers. I've produced the graph below from the latest inflation and wage figures:
It shows that since the start of 2009, when inflation took off, the value of average regular wages has already fallen by about 7%. The Average Weekly Earnings figures from the Office of National Statistics on which this is based, exclude "irregular" earnings such as overtime and bonuses which fluctuate significantly.

Many workers have seen their work intensified over the same period, and productivity driven up, so the share of what we produce that workers receive as wages will have fallen even faster than our real incomes.

We need stronger unions if we're going to beat off the attacks on our wages and our social wage. That means building them everywhere. It also makes the coordinated strikes planned for 30th November vitally important. The fight by millions of public sector workers to defend their pensions can show millions of unorganised workers the potential power of union organisation. UNITE has produced a great little leaflet to explain the issues to members in the private sector - please get it out and about.

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UNITE announces free transport to 2 October March for the Alternative

Yesterday UNITE announced it is paying for transport to the TUC's March for the Alternative at the Tory party conference in Manchester on 2nd October. Details are here.

Recent economic news bears out UNITE's arguments that far from helping the economy, the governments cuts and austerity are jeopardising the recovery.

A big demo on Sunday 2 October will help strengthen every campaign, including the ballots planned across the public sector and beyond for action on 30th November. Every member should do their best to attend and bring their workmates, family and friends.

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Gold Plated Pensions

Next time someone tries to deride those workers who've managed to cling on to decent final salary pensions, you could do worse than point them at this Independent report on pension pots for top company bosses.

We aren't all in it together. We do live in a two-tier society, but it isn't those with final salary pensions v the rest, or public sector workers v the rest, or those in work v those on benefits. It's a small bunch of the greedy, self-interested and reckless bosses v the rest.

They may be a tiny minority, but they wield enormous economic and political power. How can working people stand up to them without organising collectively? We need stronger union organisation in every workplace, and to rebuild the traditions of solidarity - we are stronger united. The most effective way to build the union is to help workers put up a fight over the issues affecting them.

Everyone should get behind the Southampton Council workers fight against cuts, the national demonstration at the Tory party conference in Manchester on 2 October, and the next round of strikes against public sector pension cuts, expected in early November.

The warnings we have being giving about the risk of austerity killing off economic recovery are looking worryingly accurate. Unite has an excellent policy against the cuts, which needs putting into practice.

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Inflation up to 5.5%

The latest inflation figures confirm what most of us know - our living standards are being severely squeezed. RPI inflation is up to 5.5% and even CPI inflation (which isn't a fair reflection of the cost of living) is up to 4.4%.



Holding wages down while prices rise effectively reduces the share workers receive from the wealth they produce.

Whether in the public sector, private sector or the not for profit sector, workers need to unite to oppose the attempt by employers and government to make us pay for a crisis we didn't create. Join the demonstration on Saturday - it is clearly going to be huge.

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Inflation rises (again)

The latest inflation figures are out today, showing the cost of living (RPI) up 4.8% in the year to December, and even the artificially lower CPI that the government and media quote so much up by 3.7%.

Pay rises have continued to lag behind the increase in the cost of living for a number of months, meaning standards of living for most workers falling rapidly. As I've previously highlighted, this is one of the key planks of the effort to make working people pay to boost profits following the financial crisis.

These figures don't even include this month's VAT rise.

There can't be many workplaces where "productivity" hasn't been driven up over the last year or so, with fewer workers working longer and harder (for less). This means workers getting an ever smaller share of the wealth we produce.

Anyone want to join the union and campaign to protect our standard of living? You'd have to be hopelessly naive to think you could stop this on your own...

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Post, Privatisation, Wages, Beans and the Welfare State

There's a national "Keep Our Post Public" rally today against the government's plans to privatise Royal Mail, with Len McCluskey as one of the speakers.

Privatisation is a key plank of the government's strategy to increase profits at our expense, by opening up our public services as new markets for comercial activity.

Plank 2 is cutting real wages (in the public and private sector) by using mass unemployment to depress wages while letting inflation drift up. The latest inflation figures this week show CPI inflation up to 3.3%, while RPI inflation, which is a more realistic estimate of the rate of increase in the cost of living, is up to 4.7%. No wonder some members are being driven to take strike action to defend their standard of living - UNITE members at Heinz in Wigan start their strike over pay tonight.

Plank 3 is the assault on public services and the welfare state, by a combination of pushing costs onto individuals (as with education) and direct cuts in provision.

If we want to successfully defend our own jobs, standard of living and services, we need to support all those resisting any element of this strategy to make us pay for an economic crisis we did not create. Amongst other things, that means backing campaigns against privatisation such as at Royal Mail, campaigns to defend pay and pensions such as those at Heinz or the BBC, and campaigns against cuts in public service and the welfare state, such as the magnificent and inspiring campaign being waged by school, FE and University students.

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The lies about the cuts

The proposed cuts to public services threaten the welfare state at a fundamental level. If they go through, life for many working class people will be more like that in the 1930s, before it was established. The attacks on the welfare state cover every area, including health, education, welfare benefits, pensions, care for disabled and old people, and much more.

To try to force through the cuts, the Con-Dem government and its allies in the media and business have to sell a series of lies to enough of the population to prevent us uniting to mount sufficiently effective resistance to the cuts. Every union activist has a responsibility to challenge these lies to promote effective resistance. Let's look at a few:

LIE 1: We're All In This Together

The Con-Dems would have us believe that we all face a financial crisis and all have to tighten our belts. What a sick joke coming from a cabinet a majority of whom are millionaires. They aren't reliant on public services like the rest of us. Their vast wealth provides security for them should they fall ill, lose their jobs (let's hope!) or grow old. They can afford to buy the best care and support for their families too. Why should we start tightening our belts until theirs' reach the same circumference as ours?

In reality, there isn't much belt-tightening going on at the top at all. Friday's Guardian reported that the Chief Executive Officers of FTSE100 companies had seen their earnings rise by 55% in a year. Total pay for all the board members fo the top 350 listed companies went up 45%.

When they pretend not to be enjoying slashing public services, I can't help picturing Cameron & Clegg as prefects at some public school, beating some kid's backside and saying with a perverted grin "this is hurting me more than it's hurting you".

LIE 2: The Cuts Won't Really Affect Us in the Private Sector

There's a clever bit of language being used to peddle this lie - referring to the cuts as in the "public sector" instead of "public services". The reality is that unless you are a millionaire, you rely on public services at key points in your life or that of your family. It is these services that are under threat.

But there are other ways we in the private sector will be affected too.

Many of us work for companies who, directly or indirectly, sell products and services to the public sector. These contracts are already being slashed, impacting on our own employment prospects.

Many of us have family or friends working in the public sector, many of whose lives are about to be torn apart.

When the recession started, may profitable private companies used it as an excuse to attack jobs, pay and pensions and to push through changes they had always wanted. If the putlic sector gets away with slashing jobs, pay and pensions, and tearing up employment contracts, this will encourage private sector employers to come back for more.

Throwing hundreds of thousands of workers on the dole will dramatically reduce their spending power, reducing the market for the products and services that workers in the private sector produce, further depressing the economy.

LIE 3: The Cuts Won't Really Affect Us, Only Work-Shy Scroungers

The government has targetted the very poorest in society, those dependent on state benefits, for the biggest cuts. This will have a devastating impact on many of those who are out of work, old or seriously ill.

Many people have heard a few stories about people on the fiddle, and the media ensures that everyone hears such stories (true or invented) second hand. Of course if the National Minimum Wage wasn't so pitifully low, decent childcare was readily available, and employers weren't so ready to sack people who are ill, fewer people would be tempted to fiddle.

But really the issue of "scroungers" is just a distraction, intended to get working class people squabbling over a few quid amongst ourselves. The real robbers are in the city. It was irresponsible gambling in the city that triggered this recession. Vodafone have just been let off paying about £6bn of unpaid tax.

The rise in unemployment was caused by employers throwing millions of people out of jobs, not by a pandemic of the laziness virus. The problem doesn't lie amongst the unemployed, but in the market economy that dictates that it is now more profitable to prevent people working and have fewer jobs.

The key argument though is about why the Con-Dems are so keen to target those not working. Cutting benefits to those out of work won't increase the number of jobs. What it will do is make people increasingly desperate to compete for the small number of jobs available, allowing employers to drive down wages for those of us in work, increasing the profits enjoyed in the boardrooms at our expense. That's the fundamental reason why people in work and out of work must unite against the cuts.

LIE 4: The Debt Is So Big There Is No Alternative

The debt is indeed big, thanks to the collossal bailout of the financial markets. After years of privatising profits, governments around the world nationalised the debts. We had a few months where there was serious discussion about how unfetterred markets had caused disaster, then the neo-liberals went back on the offensive and now they want more privatisation and deregulation as the "cure" for the debt.

But it's worth getting the debt in perspective. As these graphs show, UK national debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has gone up in 2009 and 2010 (when it exceeded 50%). But this is still low by historical standards, FAR lower than after World War II, the period when there was consensus between the main political parties that we had to invest in setting up the welfare state - health, education, benefits, housing etc - and grow the economy in order to pay off the debt.

It isn't the size of the debt that is driving the Con-Dems (and some other countries) to adopt harsh "austerity" policies. It is a continuation of the neoliberal economic madness that triggered the crash in the first place, combined with a knee-jerk desire to get out of the crisis by making working class people pay.

"There Is No Alternative" (TINA) is a line used by Thatcher to justify Tory assaults on working people in the 1980s, and by Blair to justify his wars in the 2000s. Even if they couldn't think of something positive to do instead, NOT wreaking dustruction on millions of people would have been a better alternative to what they did.

LIE 5: The Public Sector Had Grown Too Big and Greedy

It wasn't teachers, nurses, refuse collectors and all the other public sector workers who caused the crisis. Financial institutions had succeeded in persuading governments that they didn't need to hold much capital, so when the US economy took a small dip and some people couldn't repay high-interest mortgages, they ran out of cash. As financial institutions had bundled up these debts with lots of others and sold them to each other all round the world, they all panicked about what bad debts they might hold, and stopped lending to each other - the Credit Crunch. This triggered a collapse in large sections of the "real" economy.

LIE 6: The Cuts Are Essential To Protect the Economy

Throwing half a million public sector workers out of their jobs, along with half a million private sector workers who provide goods and services to the public sector, while cutting the incomes of many in the poorest areas, are measures likely to deflate the economy and increase the chances of a prolonged slump or double-dip recession. How on earth can the private sector "take up the slack" when the people who might buy their products and services are skint?

There are many detailed alternative arguments, including UNITE's "Alternative Economic Programme", the TUC's "All Pain, No Gain: The Case Against the Cuts", "The Case Against The Cuts" from PCS, and "One Million Climate Jobs" from the Campaign Against Climate Change and various unions.

LIE 7: There's Nothing You Can Do

We have to make stronger links between workplaces and local campaigns in every town and city. There are thousands of group, protests and activities against the cuts springing up in every town and city (like Right To Work in Manchester where I live). Get involved. Use UNITE's Area Activist meetings and local Trades Councils to make links.

Whenever any group of us is in the firing line, whether that's in the public sector, local community or the private sector, we need to unite behind them. That must include backing the strikes to defend the fire service in London (FBU) and pensions at the BBC (NUJ).

And of course, don't neglect developing union strength in your own workplace. Without strong and effective workplace organisation, we are building on sand.

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Another watershed in the decline of manufacturing

The news of the end of manufacturing at Toshiba's Plymouth plant, with the loss of 270 jobs, means the end of mass TV manufacturing in the UK.

The government's failure to intervene to protect jobs and working people is an absolute scandal, especially set against their blank cheques for war and to bail out the banks.

After the economic disaster unleashed by the "free market" lunacy that has dominated the world in recent decades, you might have thought that all parties would be distancing themselves from such policies as quickly as they could. But you would be wrong. Instead, the prescription is basically more of the same.

I hope there's a good UNITE presence on the "Jobs, Education, Peace & Justice" demonstration on 27th September at the Labour Party conference, which has been called by PCS, UCU, NUT, NUJ and a variety of campaigning organisations.

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Opposing 3400 UK job cuts at HP

UNITE is starting a campaign over the massive proposed job cuts at HP, which took over EDS not so long ago.

In the current economic climate I think it is incredibly important that the union doesn't just deal with redundancies in the same way we might have a year ago. The consequences of redundancy for individuals are much more severe as we go into recession. But also the options for resistance have got wider. Firstly the ideological prop of "market forces" to justify decisions that hurt working people has got a lot weaker. Secondly the scope for gaining widespread support from across the movement and the public has grown. Thirdly the potential to pressure the government to intervene is much wider.

These relatively favourable conditions may not continue indefinitely - a significant rise in unemployment could make it harder to fight job losses. It is crucial that we try to draw a line now and that the whole movement piles in behind any group prepared to fight job cuts.

Is the action of the Ford Southampton workers the beginning of something bigger?

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Right to work flexibly - race to the bottom

What a disgrace that the government is talking about delaying the extension of the right to work flexibly.

This must be a new entry for the ongoing competition for the most blatant example of the government bailing out the rich while piling the costs on the most vulnerable. Previous "top of the pops" had to be the news of the massive rise in house repossessions by the government (aka Northern Rock), which is repossessing far more homes than most lenders.

What the latest announcement means is a signal to businesses that when times are hard, they should ditch those with caring responsibilities first.

I fear that over the coming months there may be many occasions to use this excellent cartoon about the race to the bottom.

How about putting people before profit for a change? It's not as if the doctrine of "competitiveness at any price" has worked, is it.

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Economic Crisis - what does it mean for us?

It's hard to keep pace with the development of the current economic crisis, and the numbers are so large they are mind-boggling. There's a real danger of the labour movement not responding adequately to the scale of the changes that are taking place. This is not the time to be stuck in a rut.

Economics
The old saying that "there's no crisis so bad that the bosses can't get out of - if we're prepared to pay" should stand as a stark warning to us all.

We're already seeing recession in many countries, jobs being lost, house repossessions on the rise etc. How will governments raise the billions being pumped in to prop up the casinos? Will they get away with forcing through tax rises and service cuts?

Will employers get away with increasing their share of wealth by holding pay rises below inflation?

Can we press the government to reduce dependence on increasingly vulnerable pension funds (many of which held shares in the banks) which gamble on the stock market by a boost to the state pension on a similar scale to the support for banks?

Ideology and Resistance
For some decades the ideology of the free market (neo-liberalism) has been used as a barrier to workers fighting to improve or defend their standard of living. The arguments came in a variety of forms:

• The money isn't there
• Governments are helpless in the face of the markets
• Any interference in the market would only make things worse

All these arguments now stand threadbare. The money is there - on a scale that we in the labour movement never dared ask for. Governments can and have intervened in the market.

The stark truth is that governments chose not to intervene when jobs, livelihoods, homes and whole industries were under threat. Because many in the labour movement accepted the neoliberal arguments to a greater or lesser extent, we were disarmed. We didn't believe we could fight and win the things we needed. It's high time this changed.

Politics
There is no escaping the political dimension to the current crisis.

With the government now owning most banking activities in the UK, will they press on with repossessions? How can it be right to make someone homeless for failing to service their mortgage, while bailing out the billionaires? As other industries suffer from the recession, how can the government justify non-intervention? We're not just talking about a few small companies on the ropes here - for example GM, Ford and Chrysler are reportedly talking about mergers and wholesale job cuts.

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National Economic Council - without the workers

Thanks to IansRedLog (a different Ian) for spotting an excellent piece on John McDonnell's blog which highlights the way the government is still looking to the bankers and bosses who got us all into the current economic crisis for advice.

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