As was not only predictable, but inevitable, the people of Greece have turned out onto the streets in their tens and hundreds of thousands to show their resistance to the draconian economic measures being forced on them by the European Union and the ECB. The organised Greek working class has sent and is still sending a strong message to its own government and those "friendly" governments that are supposedly bailing out the Greek economy. And that message is that they will not stand idly by while, under the pretext of friendly assistance to their country, the privatisers and market parasites of the EU strip them of their wages and their pensions, extend their working lives and demolish their public sector. They will not allow a weak, supposedly socialist, government to collapse under pressure applied by a pincer movement of the EU on the one hand and the finance sector on the other. Rather, they will fight on the streets and in the factories and offices to ensure that those who caused the crisis will pay for it and that isn't the Greek working class. In this country, the Greek crisis has produced an outbreak of appallingly bigoted national stereotyping, with the Greek people being variously described as lazy, shiftless and indolent and greedy in the Tory press. Such slanderous and vicious assaults on a people who are the victims, rather than the offenders, are distasteful in the extreme, but illustrate well just how far down the line the capitalist offensive will go to justify its raids on the living standards of ordinary people. We must be very clear on this. The Greek bail-out is no such thing.
It is an orchestrated attempt to turn Greece into a wasteland, a battleground where free-market capitalism can first kill civil society in the country and then pick over the corpse, stealing what it can and wrecking what it can't, a forced auction of a whole country's assets to the highest bidder. And what rankles deepest with the organised working class in Greece is that it is the representatives of capitalism who caused the crisis in the first place, it is those same capitalists who will benefit from the auction of the country and it is that very same class that isn't being asked for any sacrifices to remedy the crisis that they caused. Let's not forget also that the latest episode in the Greek crisis was precipitated by yet another capitalist edifice, the ratings agency structure that downgraded Greek debt to junk status - those same ratings agencies that gave AAA ratings to billions of dollars of residential mortgage-backed securities which precipitated the near collapse of the world economy. The Greek trade unions are quite clear about it. They will never accept the destruction of their country as the price of bailing out a rich class of greedy tax evaders and profiteers. And in their statements over the last few days, they send a warning to workers in other countries. They are right to do so. The measures being forced on them by the EU as the price of support are precisely the same measures being punted by the new Labour, Tory and Lib Dem friends of the ruling class to reduce the national debt level in this country.
This is no coincidence. It is part of the world-wide drive by capitalism to reverse the tide of history, to attack working class living standards and to shrink the edifices built up to benefit ordinary people. The price of a decent life for all is to high for capitalism to accept. The capitalist system has bought itself a continuation long past its sell-by date, but it is no longer prepared to tolerate the carrot. It's now time for the big stick, because they will not tolerate anything eating into their profits and civil society is doing just that. We wish the Greek workers well in their fight and urge everyone to show what solidarity that they can. Our fight will come sooner than we might expect.
Showing posts with label union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label union. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Unions need to build among migrant workers
To read the newspapers you would think that migrant workers were a new phenomenon – and a problematic one at that. What concerns the media though is a certain kind of migration. No one rages against the “flood” of foreign tourists or worries about being “swamped” by overseas students – although these are two of the largest categories of migrants to Britain. It is migrant workers who are supposedly overloading public services, driving down wages and taking the British jobs that Gordon Brown infamously promised to British workers. This hostility is nothing new. Our rulers have always tried to blame migrants for taking housing and overcrowding schools. But migrants have played a key role in the British labour movement. Chartist leader William Cuffay, who founded a tailors’ union in 1839, was the son of a slave from St Kitts in the Caribbean. The matchgirls and dockers who were at the forefront of establishing general unions in the 1890s included many Irish workers. The women who fought for union rights in the Grunwick photo processing plant in 1976 were largely East African Asians. Now people come from a widening variety of places and often go to areas with little experience of migration. Figures published by the regional TUC showed that in three months in 2004, job centres in Cornwall issued national insurance numbers to new arrivals from 57 different countries, including Poland, China and the Philippines.
Also new is the extent to which those who arrive in Britain work for agencies. Britain has more agency workers than any other European Union member state, but they have the fewest employment rights – a position that New Labour has fiercely defended. What few rights workers do have are hard to enforce. This is particularly the case for those who may have poor English, no right to benefits, or who lose their right to be in the country if they lose their job – as those on work permits do. For those working without legal authority, so-called “illegal workers”, there may be no enforceable rights at all. They face unpaid wages, massive deductions for rent and transport, tied accommodation, very long hours, sexual and racial abuse, and intimidation. Government immigration rules determine who ends up in this situation – which countries of origin and what sort of work is acceptable. Overseas students who work for over 20 hours a week, work permit holders who change employers or holidaymakers who overstay their visas and work are all considered “illegal”. The uncertainty of their status and absence of rights makes workers vulnerable, and there are employers who take advantage. It is not migrant workers who drive down wages – where it happens, it’s their bosses.
Ministers purport to be concerned, but their emphasis is on enforcement of immigration rules by stepping up raids. The majority of penalties for employing workers illegally have been imposed on takeaway restaurants. The Health and Safety Executive and Gangmasters Licensing Authority, who have some powers to protect workers’ interests, are starved of resources. Yet in 2006 the government got over £230 million from fees for visas, work permits and workers’ registration covering workers from the eastern EU. Racism is promoted between workers of different nationalities by some bosses. Immigration rules and the way in which they are implemented are also racist – one in two Nigerians who overstay their visas are pursued by what is now the UK Borders Agency, but only one in 50 Australians.Unions can make a difference in reducing divisions, and in recent years all the major ones have taken steps to organise among migrants. There have also been a number of successful initiatives at grassroots level. Migrant workers in warehouses, cleaning contractors and food processors have successfully unionised and won improvements. Both Unite and the RMT unions have had some successes with contract cleaners.Most unions now prepare recruitment material in different languages – with Usdaw offering 35. CWU strikers used their translated leaflets during last year’s post dispute to persuade Polish casual workers not to cross picket lines and to join the union.
Unison has produced a branch handbook on organising migrants and a “myth-buster” aimed at its membership. In Westminster, central London, the Unison branch has organised traffic wardens and toilet attendants – almost all migrants and all privatised. Unite has campaigned for limited regularisation for those working without official permission, and successfully for the right for domestic workers to change employers when faced with abuse without losing their right to be in Britain. However, the unions’ focus on winning recognition offers little to workers who cannot wait to get their unpaid wages, or who are worried about denunciation to the authorities. Employers have exploited competition among unions for members and recognition. In the US the slack has been taken up by “workers’ centres”, who have developed direct action tactics such as demonstrating on bosses’ lawns until outstanding pay was forthcoming. In France, the sans papiers movement has fought for regularisation for undocumented workers. An effective strategy in Britain needs to combine these tactics with union organisation and opposition to the wealth gap that forces people to leave home to find work. It should also avoid organising migrants into separate branches – this can at best have only short-lived success. If we build a movement based on solidarity, there will be no question of anyone driving down wages.
Also new is the extent to which those who arrive in Britain work for agencies. Britain has more agency workers than any other European Union member state, but they have the fewest employment rights – a position that New Labour has fiercely defended. What few rights workers do have are hard to enforce. This is particularly the case for those who may have poor English, no right to benefits, or who lose their right to be in the country if they lose their job – as those on work permits do. For those working without legal authority, so-called “illegal workers”, there may be no enforceable rights at all. They face unpaid wages, massive deductions for rent and transport, tied accommodation, very long hours, sexual and racial abuse, and intimidation. Government immigration rules determine who ends up in this situation – which countries of origin and what sort of work is acceptable. Overseas students who work for over 20 hours a week, work permit holders who change employers or holidaymakers who overstay their visas and work are all considered “illegal”. The uncertainty of their status and absence of rights makes workers vulnerable, and there are employers who take advantage. It is not migrant workers who drive down wages – where it happens, it’s their bosses.
Ministers purport to be concerned, but their emphasis is on enforcement of immigration rules by stepping up raids. The majority of penalties for employing workers illegally have been imposed on takeaway restaurants. The Health and Safety Executive and Gangmasters Licensing Authority, who have some powers to protect workers’ interests, are starved of resources. Yet in 2006 the government got over £230 million from fees for visas, work permits and workers’ registration covering workers from the eastern EU. Racism is promoted between workers of different nationalities by some bosses. Immigration rules and the way in which they are implemented are also racist – one in two Nigerians who overstay their visas are pursued by what is now the UK Borders Agency, but only one in 50 Australians.Unions can make a difference in reducing divisions, and in recent years all the major ones have taken steps to organise among migrants. There have also been a number of successful initiatives at grassroots level. Migrant workers in warehouses, cleaning contractors and food processors have successfully unionised and won improvements. Both Unite and the RMT unions have had some successes with contract cleaners.Most unions now prepare recruitment material in different languages – with Usdaw offering 35. CWU strikers used their translated leaflets during last year’s post dispute to persuade Polish casual workers not to cross picket lines and to join the union.
Unison has produced a branch handbook on organising migrants and a “myth-buster” aimed at its membership. In Westminster, central London, the Unison branch has organised traffic wardens and toilet attendants – almost all migrants and all privatised. Unite has campaigned for limited regularisation for those working without official permission, and successfully for the right for domestic workers to change employers when faced with abuse without losing their right to be in Britain. However, the unions’ focus on winning recognition offers little to workers who cannot wait to get their unpaid wages, or who are worried about denunciation to the authorities. Employers have exploited competition among unions for members and recognition. In the US the slack has been taken up by “workers’ centres”, who have developed direct action tactics such as demonstrating on bosses’ lawns until outstanding pay was forthcoming. In France, the sans papiers movement has fought for regularisation for undocumented workers. An effective strategy in Britain needs to combine these tactics with union organisation and opposition to the wealth gap that forces people to leave home to find work. It should also avoid organising migrants into separate branches – this can at best have only short-lived success. If we build a movement based on solidarity, there will be no question of anyone driving down wages.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
The march of progress
With the centenary of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 2006, the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights decided to publish an account of the part played by labour in the transformation of legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Although there is a large range of literature dealing with most other aspects of modern LGBT life and culture, Sodom, Gomorrah and the New Jerusalem: Labour and Lesbian and Gay Rights from Edward Carpenter to Today is the first publication to explore the connection between the labour movement and the campaign for LGBT rights. This was a serious gap, because the labour movement has played the single most important role in winning equality law. Lobby groups like Stonewall - even though they have been unrepresentative of the community which they claim to speak for - have been key players. But the hard work to make possible the reforms won since the election of Labour in 1997 was all done in the 20 years prior to that date and it was done through the trade unions and from inside the Labour Party. Tony Blair didn't suddenly wake up to realise the discrimination faced by an oppressed section of society and, indeed, as many activists are all too aware, he had to be reminded of it continually, up to and including the attempts to gain exemptions for Catholic adoption agencies from the sexual orientation goods and services regulations this January. The book is about that history, events which I am proud to have been a part of.
The connection with the labour movement is not accidental. Hence the link with Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a socialist who lived openly with his male partner and who promoted a vision of socialism that included liberation both for women and for people of different sexual orientations. For many years, the socially conservative leaders of trade unions and the new-born Labour Party would not touch the question or even think about it, even though Carpenter was widely appreciated for his writings on every other subject. But, although there was wider public debate on homosexuality across Europe and although, during the 1920s and 1930s, some homosexual and transgender men and women were able to inhabit a subculture in some European cities, there was no sign that legal discrimination was going to be challenged by governments or that leaders of the labour movement would champion such a step. Fascism and war quickly ended the glimmerings of greater openness, while post-war austerity and the cold war were scarcely more congenial climates for so drastic a step as reforming laws on sex. In Britain, the first steps came when liberal-minded MPs proposed an investigation of the law following a spate of arrests of high-profile men for homosexual "offences." The resulting Wolfenden commission recommended partial decriminalisation in 1957. But it was not until 1964 under Harold Wilson's Labour government that anything was done about it.
That had a lot to do with the creation of the first campaigning organisation on the issue in Britain, the Homosexual Law Reform Society, in 1960. Pressed by Labour and Liberal MPs and aware that the current law encouraged blackmailers, Wilson gave practical support to legislate the Sexual Offences Act 1967, enacting the Wolfenden recommendations. Two years later, the birth of the Gay Liberation Front in New York following the riot provoked by a police raid on the Stonewall bar quickly created a radical international movement for liberation; the first Gay Pride march in London was held in 1972. Between then and now, the British labour movement has been transformed into a dynamic champion of the cause of equality. Other have written on how gender and race issues came to be seen as integral to the concerns of the trade unions and these struggles led the way for others, among whom were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers demanding recognition. That recognition was won because, initially, unions saw the unfair treatment dealt out to their members, such as NUPE member Susan Shell, who was sacked for being a lesbian in 1981. Unions saw the need to defend all their members and realised that LGBT members had no legal protection. In 1984, NUPE became the first major union to affiliate to the then Labour Campaign for Gay Rights. In 1984-5, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners groups, which were set up to back the famous NUM strike, also had a big impact within the trade union movement.
Basic union principles of equality and solidarity were at stake and, although there was resistance from some, the majority of unions had soon adopted an inclusive policy. Alongside, LGBT members organised themselves in an increasing number of unions and demanded recognition. The 1985 TUC Congress carried the first lesbian and gay rights motion, although the creation of a dedicated TUC structure had to wait until 1998, when it was set up following significant pressure from unions. That 1985 TUC Congress motion was carried just a few weeks before Labour conference debated the subject for the first time and the first of, so far, six conference victories on LGB equality - the T was not included - was secured. Union votes were crucial. Since then the support, which was restricted to the left and progressive forces for many years, has reached all corners of the party. The consequence is clear for all to see. Equalisation of criminal law, repeal of section 28, civil partnerships, employment and now goods and services protection. All of this has been won under Labour - sometimes, only because of a sharp reminder, such as the unions going to the High Court to challenge the exclusion of pensions from the employment regulations. They were instead covered in the Civil Partnership Act. All of this has been won because of the increasingly strong voice of the unions. We still have to win full equality for transgender people. Then, we face an even harder struggle - to defeat underlying prejudices, bullying and exclusion. For this, though, the labour movement will be engaged from the start.
The connection with the labour movement is not accidental. Hence the link with Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a socialist who lived openly with his male partner and who promoted a vision of socialism that included liberation both for women and for people of different sexual orientations. For many years, the socially conservative leaders of trade unions and the new-born Labour Party would not touch the question or even think about it, even though Carpenter was widely appreciated for his writings on every other subject. But, although there was wider public debate on homosexuality across Europe and although, during the 1920s and 1930s, some homosexual and transgender men and women were able to inhabit a subculture in some European cities, there was no sign that legal discrimination was going to be challenged by governments or that leaders of the labour movement would champion such a step. Fascism and war quickly ended the glimmerings of greater openness, while post-war austerity and the cold war were scarcely more congenial climates for so drastic a step as reforming laws on sex. In Britain, the first steps came when liberal-minded MPs proposed an investigation of the law following a spate of arrests of high-profile men for homosexual "offences." The resulting Wolfenden commission recommended partial decriminalisation in 1957. But it was not until 1964 under Harold Wilson's Labour government that anything was done about it.
That had a lot to do with the creation of the first campaigning organisation on the issue in Britain, the Homosexual Law Reform Society, in 1960. Pressed by Labour and Liberal MPs and aware that the current law encouraged blackmailers, Wilson gave practical support to legislate the Sexual Offences Act 1967, enacting the Wolfenden recommendations. Two years later, the birth of the Gay Liberation Front in New York following the riot provoked by a police raid on the Stonewall bar quickly created a radical international movement for liberation; the first Gay Pride march in London was held in 1972. Between then and now, the British labour movement has been transformed into a dynamic champion of the cause of equality. Other have written on how gender and race issues came to be seen as integral to the concerns of the trade unions and these struggles led the way for others, among whom were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers demanding recognition. That recognition was won because, initially, unions saw the unfair treatment dealt out to their members, such as NUPE member Susan Shell, who was sacked for being a lesbian in 1981. Unions saw the need to defend all their members and realised that LGBT members had no legal protection. In 1984, NUPE became the first major union to affiliate to the then Labour Campaign for Gay Rights. In 1984-5, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners groups, which were set up to back the famous NUM strike, also had a big impact within the trade union movement.
Basic union principles of equality and solidarity were at stake and, although there was resistance from some, the majority of unions had soon adopted an inclusive policy. Alongside, LGBT members organised themselves in an increasing number of unions and demanded recognition. The 1985 TUC Congress carried the first lesbian and gay rights motion, although the creation of a dedicated TUC structure had to wait until 1998, when it was set up following significant pressure from unions. That 1985 TUC Congress motion was carried just a few weeks before Labour conference debated the subject for the first time and the first of, so far, six conference victories on LGB equality - the T was not included - was secured. Union votes were crucial. Since then the support, which was restricted to the left and progressive forces for many years, has reached all corners of the party. The consequence is clear for all to see. Equalisation of criminal law, repeal of section 28, civil partnerships, employment and now goods and services protection. All of this has been won under Labour - sometimes, only because of a sharp reminder, such as the unions going to the High Court to challenge the exclusion of pensions from the employment regulations. They were instead covered in the Civil Partnership Act. All of this has been won because of the increasingly strong voice of the unions. We still have to win full equality for transgender people. Then, we face an even harder struggle - to defeat underlying prejudices, bullying and exclusion. For this, though, the labour movement will be engaged from the start.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
No way to make friends
Disingenuous is a wonderful word. It's disdainful and dismissive, carrying with it overtones of dishonesty, insincerity and duplicity. And that makes it a precise description of most of the comments made by new Labour's great and good about any actions by the trade union movement. So we might as well use it when we talk about Tessa Jowell's latest contribution to discussion of the PCS strike which started this morning over attacks on members' redundancy rights. The union balloted for action in February, with the result that 63 per cent of those voting backed strike action with 81 per cent backing an overtime ban. Ms Jowell's response was to attempt to undermine the impact of the ballot and the strike by falling back on complaining about the number of PCS members who didn't vote. It's an old trick and one that has gained no credibility with advancing age. It attempts, by implication, to co-opt non-voting members to the ranks of No voters and is as dishonest as it is ineffective.
Attacking a perfectly legal ballot, conducted properly with a result honestly declared, should never be a tactic adopted by a Labour minister, but, there again, this is new Labour that we are talking about. And what response did Ms Jowell expect from civil servants anyway? Since 2004, when then chancellor Gordon Brown announced that 100,000 jobs in the service would either go or be relocated, civil servants have had the uncomfortable experience of feeling as if they had large targets painted on their foreheads, with job-cutting marksmen lurking around every corner just waiting to shoot them down. In the second quarter of 2005 there were 536,000 civil servants employed. By the end of the first quarter of 2009 that number had declined to 489,930 - these figures being full-time equivalents. That's a huge cut and the jobs butchery is still continuing. Which, given that the population has grown by nearly 400,000 a year during the same period, is a continuing diminution in the quality of service that civil servants can provide - or a huge increase in the workload of a diminishing number of public officials.
So to choose this time in which to hack away at their redundancy agreements is little more than brazen troublemaking by the government. Did Ms Jowell and her spineless lackeys really think that civil servants would tug at their forelocks and say: "Thank you very much, guvnor, we realise that we are a terrible burden and if you're going to get rid of us, we should make the process as cheap and easy as possible?" Not even all the legions of the new Labour lost, headed by Dark Lord Peter Mandelson, could possibly imagine that tens of thousands of dedicated government staff would tamely accept the butchery of their redundancy terms in a period where their jobs are at extreme risk. "Civil" does not mean polite to the extremes of idiocy and "servants" does not mean servile and obsequious flunkeys who will follow the master's will whatever the consequences.
It ill suits Labour, when claiming the role of defenders of public services against the mad cutters of the Tory Party, to be hacking back at the right of civil servants to adequate compensation if their jobs are cut. It certainly raises questions over its sincerity. And it casts more than a little doubt on Labour's stance of maintaining the economy in the face of a threatening depression. If that's the message that Labour's leadership wants to send to half a million civil servants in the run-up to a general election, it may not be the "longest suicide note in history" that the late Michael Foot was accused of writing in the 1983 general election manifesto. It's the shortest.
Attacking a perfectly legal ballot, conducted properly with a result honestly declared, should never be a tactic adopted by a Labour minister, but, there again, this is new Labour that we are talking about. And what response did Ms Jowell expect from civil servants anyway? Since 2004, when then chancellor Gordon Brown announced that 100,000 jobs in the service would either go or be relocated, civil servants have had the uncomfortable experience of feeling as if they had large targets painted on their foreheads, with job-cutting marksmen lurking around every corner just waiting to shoot them down. In the second quarter of 2005 there were 536,000 civil servants employed. By the end of the first quarter of 2009 that number had declined to 489,930 - these figures being full-time equivalents. That's a huge cut and the jobs butchery is still continuing. Which, given that the population has grown by nearly 400,000 a year during the same period, is a continuing diminution in the quality of service that civil servants can provide - or a huge increase in the workload of a diminishing number of public officials.
So to choose this time in which to hack away at their redundancy agreements is little more than brazen troublemaking by the government. Did Ms Jowell and her spineless lackeys really think that civil servants would tug at their forelocks and say: "Thank you very much, guvnor, we realise that we are a terrible burden and if you're going to get rid of us, we should make the process as cheap and easy as possible?" Not even all the legions of the new Labour lost, headed by Dark Lord Peter Mandelson, could possibly imagine that tens of thousands of dedicated government staff would tamely accept the butchery of their redundancy terms in a period where their jobs are at extreme risk. "Civil" does not mean polite to the extremes of idiocy and "servants" does not mean servile and obsequious flunkeys who will follow the master's will whatever the consequences.
It ill suits Labour, when claiming the role of defenders of public services against the mad cutters of the Tory Party, to be hacking back at the right of civil servants to adequate compensation if their jobs are cut. It certainly raises questions over its sincerity. And it casts more than a little doubt on Labour's stance of maintaining the economy in the face of a threatening depression. If that's the message that Labour's leadership wants to send to half a million civil servants in the run-up to a general election, it may not be the "longest suicide note in history" that the late Michael Foot was accused of writing in the 1983 general election manifesto. It's the shortest.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Tide of job losses must be fought
Unemployment statistics released on 18 March last year confirmed that there are now two million people without work. Those claiming unemployment benefit increased by 138,400 in February - the biggest rise since records began in 1971. This could be the worst employment situation of the whole of the post-war period in Britain. Unlike other recessions where job losses were concentrated in manufacturing regions, job losses are hitting workers across the country, with architects and lawyers losing their jobs as well as construction workers, shop workers, etc. With unemployment expected to reach three million early in 2010, this is the most damning aspect of this recession and will have consequences for many people over a long period.
Many signing on for Job Seekers Allowance for the first time in their lives are shocked to find that they are expected to live on just £60.50 a week, with hardly any jobs to seek. The PCS union has attacked James Purnell (work and pensions secretary) for ignoring a moratorium on the closure programme of job centres.
Unemployment can bring a range of problems including homelessness, health problems, suicide and a lower life expectancy. 40% of the unemployed are under 25. This will increase when 600,000 young people leave school in three months time. Young unemployed people will be particularly badly affected as lack of work experience can impact into later years - hence the reference to the 'lost generation.' Not content with the miserly benefits allowed for those out of work or ill, Labour is going ahead with welfare reforms that will make life even harder for benefit claimants. Those still arguing that the Labour Party can be shifted away from its pro-capitalist policies should note that last week's third reading of the Welfare Reform bill in the house of commons was opposed by only 30 Labour MPs. The car industry is still in decline - UK car production fell by 59% last month alone. LDV (the Birmingham-based van maker) is still trying to find an investor to save the plant. The CBI reported that factory orders across the whole of manufacturing declined at the fastest rate for 17 years in February.
The government is now warning that public sector workers must also suffer the pain of unemployment. Chancellor Alistair Darling is predicting a public sector deficit of £150 billion by next year. Council chiefs are rolling out a "doomsday study" of which services would have to be cut and are not ruling out local authority cuts of 30% in 2011 which would devastate jobs and services. Threatened with the prospect of losing their jobs many workers are accepting shorter hours and pay cuts in the absence of their unions leading a struggle.One reason why the job losses have increased so rapidly is because laws have allowed more 'flexibility', including workers being employed on short-term contracts. These workers can be laid off quickly and without redundancy payments. Many are angry, especially young people and trade unionists who feel as if they have been sold out - and all those who are angry at these devastating figures need to map out a strategy and programme to fight back against unemployment and offer an alternative.
There have already been many examples of fighting back against redundancies and worse working conditions. Workers at Waterford Crystal in Ireland and Prisme in Scotland have occupied their workplaces in protest at job losses while Lindsey oil refinery workers in England took successful unofficial action to protect their conditions and jobs. At a car parts factory in Canada workers occupied the plant, welding the doors shut from inside. They won double the redundancy payments that they were originally offered. Three million French workers joined a national strike last week against attacks on jobs and public services. Trade union leaders will have an opportunity at the anti-G20 demonstration in London on 28 March to build on this anger and raise the sights of trade unionists, their families and especially young people. Local days of action against job losses should be organised which can highlight those jobs that have been lost or are under threat and give people confidence to resist job losses and demand action from the government.
Work should be shared out on the basis of a maximum 35 hour week with no loss of pay. New jobs could be created if a programme of building social housing is instigated, improvements to the health service, more teachers trained to allow smaller class sizes as well as policies to tackle climate change. A one day general strike should be planned and built for to show the government and the bosses that working class people will not pay for their crisis. With no major party representing working class people, a groundswell of anger could be released through riots instead of organised struggle, if the union leaders don't give a decisive lead. However, so far most trade union leaders have simply expressed their sadness at redundancies, taking the attacks lying down and refusing to lead struggles to save jobs. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, described job losses as "individual tragedies", which of course they are. But Unison and other unions should use the strength of the unions, made up of seven million workers, to avoid 'individual tragedies' by taking action to defend jobs, including the nationalisation of struggling factories in a socialist, democratic fashion, with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need.
Many signing on for Job Seekers Allowance for the first time in their lives are shocked to find that they are expected to live on just £60.50 a week, with hardly any jobs to seek. The PCS union has attacked James Purnell (work and pensions secretary) for ignoring a moratorium on the closure programme of job centres.
Unemployment can bring a range of problems including homelessness, health problems, suicide and a lower life expectancy. 40% of the unemployed are under 25. This will increase when 600,000 young people leave school in three months time. Young unemployed people will be particularly badly affected as lack of work experience can impact into later years - hence the reference to the 'lost generation.' Not content with the miserly benefits allowed for those out of work or ill, Labour is going ahead with welfare reforms that will make life even harder for benefit claimants. Those still arguing that the Labour Party can be shifted away from its pro-capitalist policies should note that last week's third reading of the Welfare Reform bill in the house of commons was opposed by only 30 Labour MPs. The car industry is still in decline - UK car production fell by 59% last month alone. LDV (the Birmingham-based van maker) is still trying to find an investor to save the plant. The CBI reported that factory orders across the whole of manufacturing declined at the fastest rate for 17 years in February.
The government is now warning that public sector workers must also suffer the pain of unemployment. Chancellor Alistair Darling is predicting a public sector deficit of £150 billion by next year. Council chiefs are rolling out a "doomsday study" of which services would have to be cut and are not ruling out local authority cuts of 30% in 2011 which would devastate jobs and services. Threatened with the prospect of losing their jobs many workers are accepting shorter hours and pay cuts in the absence of their unions leading a struggle.One reason why the job losses have increased so rapidly is because laws have allowed more 'flexibility', including workers being employed on short-term contracts. These workers can be laid off quickly and without redundancy payments. Many are angry, especially young people and trade unionists who feel as if they have been sold out - and all those who are angry at these devastating figures need to map out a strategy and programme to fight back against unemployment and offer an alternative.
There have already been many examples of fighting back against redundancies and worse working conditions. Workers at Waterford Crystal in Ireland and Prisme in Scotland have occupied their workplaces in protest at job losses while Lindsey oil refinery workers in England took successful unofficial action to protect their conditions and jobs. At a car parts factory in Canada workers occupied the plant, welding the doors shut from inside. They won double the redundancy payments that they were originally offered. Three million French workers joined a national strike last week against attacks on jobs and public services. Trade union leaders will have an opportunity at the anti-G20 demonstration in London on 28 March to build on this anger and raise the sights of trade unionists, their families and especially young people. Local days of action against job losses should be organised which can highlight those jobs that have been lost or are under threat and give people confidence to resist job losses and demand action from the government.
Work should be shared out on the basis of a maximum 35 hour week with no loss of pay. New jobs could be created if a programme of building social housing is instigated, improvements to the health service, more teachers trained to allow smaller class sizes as well as policies to tackle climate change. A one day general strike should be planned and built for to show the government and the bosses that working class people will not pay for their crisis. With no major party representing working class people, a groundswell of anger could be released through riots instead of organised struggle, if the union leaders don't give a decisive lead. However, so far most trade union leaders have simply expressed their sadness at redundancies, taking the attacks lying down and refusing to lead struggles to save jobs. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, described job losses as "individual tragedies", which of course they are. But Unison and other unions should use the strength of the unions, made up of seven million workers, to avoid 'individual tragedies' by taking action to defend jobs, including the nationalisation of struggling factories in a socialist, democratic fashion, with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Are union workers ready for coming battles?
Recently, chancellor Alistair Darling said that halving the government's deficit in four years was 'non-negotiable'. He claimed that health, education, police and overseas aid budgets will not be affected by his cuts. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that in real terms there will be cuts of 16% for all other departments. If the Tories win the general election their cuts could be worse and deeper. Newly released figures on employment reveal that many full time workers are being forced into part time work. This is with a cut in wages of course, to suit the requirements of the employers. The number in full time work fell by 113,000 in the three months up to the end of November 2009, while the number in part time work grew by 99,000; there was no coincident that these were mainly women workers. Many bosses choose to cut workers' hours, rather than get rid of them altogether, so they do not have to train new workers when the economy picks up again.
Workers are also under attack on numerous other fronts, including on their level of pay, pension and their terms and conditions. Whoever wins the election, all the establishment parties are of one mind when it comes to making working people pay for the crisis. So far, in answer to these attacks, the union leaderships, with a few exceptions, have been abysmal. The leadership of the biggest public sector union, Unison, with 1.3 million members, has spent far more effort in attacking the left in general and the Socialist Party in particular than it ever has in defending its members' jobs and wages. The close link between Unison's tops and the Labour government has meant that those leaders will do their utmost not to embarrass the Labour leaders, especially in the run up to the general election. Their record of capitulation goes back a long way. For instance, they failed to defend the pensions of local government workers in 2006/7. This was when, led by the PCS, other public sector unions were at least able to protect present pension rights for existing members, including civil servants and teachers.
Like all bureaucracies that seek to protect their own interests, as the government's attacks against their members intensify, Unison's leaders seek to close down all opposition groups who are fighting for the union to adopt a fighting programme against these attacks. That is why the battle to defend jobs and conditions is increasingly tied to a battle to defend democratic rights and a fight to reclaim the union from the hands of the unelected full time officialdom. Despite all the obstacles thrown in their path, important sections of workers in Britain have demonstrated that when their backs are against the wall they will fight back. These have included the Visteon car part workers in London, Basildon and Belfast, the Vestas wind turbine workers on the Isle of Wight, the Prisme workers in Dundee, and the Swansea Linamar workers in defeating their bosses' attempt to sack Socialist Party member and works convenor Rob Williams.
The above disputes featured the occupation of factories and were an instinctive reaction to the dictatorial actions of the employers. The few minutes' notice given to the Visteon workers to leave their factories was first met with a stunned resignation by the workers in Enfield and Basildon. But when the workers heard about the occupation in the Belfast factory, they followed its lead and occupied themselves. This demonstrated that despite all the capitalist property laws they were not going to accept being treated that way. The issue of occupation could feature heavily in the future, as it does now in the workers' struggles in France. These figures do not tell the whole story. For example they do not include the Visteon workers' occupation because the workers had been sacked and therefore could not be counted as workers striking against their employer! Royal Mail workers who were on official strike regularly throughout the latter part of 2009, particularly in London, were also involved in unofficial action as a result of the after effects of the official dispute. Their unofficial action is probably not included in the official figures.
There were 370,000 days lost in strikes in the first 10 months of 2009 (January-October inclusive) compared to 759,000 for the whole 12 months of 2008. This gives the impression that the curve of strike action was downward. But by the end of 2009 the figures were creeping upwards. In 2008, the number of days lost in strikes in the public sector was 711,000 out of the total of 759,000. Most of this was down to the two-day strike of local council workers on the issue of pay. In October 2009 alone, the postal workers' strike accounted for 199,000 days lost. The interim agreement that ended the postal strikes could be described as a draw, but the employers were forced to retreat on a number of fronts. It remains to be seen if this 'peace' continues into 2010. The National Union of Teachers (NUT), with a left leadership, including recently elected deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney, have the best chance in years to resist the attacks on teachers which have tremendously increased teachers' workloads.
Already in 2010 there have been important developments, with some skilled workers taking action to defend jobs. These include workers at Fujitsu, who have never organised a national strike before but have been spurred into action by threatened job and other cuts. These workers have been encouraged to strike by the company posting record profits. Other workers with no particular track record of militancy could similarly move into struggle against the bosses' attacks.An important issue regarding perspectives for the unions is trade union density. Are the unions making inroads into the huge number of workers who are not in a union but have indicated a desire to join one if given the chance? 30 years ago, unions in Britain encompassed a majority of those at work, reaching a membership of 13 million, 12.7 million of whom were in unions affiliated to the TUC. In manufacturing (engineering, the car industry etc) over 90% were in unions. There were 250,000 shop stewards, mainly in manufacturing industry, who by organising militant industrial action at shop floor level, led the public sector to emulate them.
NUPE, which organised council manual workers and health workers, grew from 60,000 in the 1960s to over 600,000 by the end of the 1970s. NUPE later went on to become a part of Unison. Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher deliberately set out to destroy the power of the unions by, amongst other things, introducing a deliberate policy of de-industrialisation. This saw the closure of whole swathes of industry and thereby undermined part of the base of militant trade unionism and the shop stewards' movement. This, coupled with the anti-trade union laws, was aimed at fatally wounding trade union organisation. She was not wholly able to do this because trade unionism is deeply embedded in the psyche of workers in Britain, with over 150 years of tradition behind it. But trade union membership has been halved over the last 25-30 years. Another contributory factor to this decline was the general move to the right by the trade union leaders following the collapse of Stalinism in Russia and eastern Europe and the accompanying capitalist ideological onslaught.
But there is a 'trade union premium' - the difference between the wages of those in a union and those who are not. Average hourly earnings of trade union members in 2008 were £13.07 whilst non-trade union workers received £11.62 per hour. A union premium of 12.5%. And there are many other issues besides pay, where workers can benefit from being in a union. How does UK trade union membership compare with other parts of the world? Internationally it is highest in Scandinavia at 70%+ of the workforce, whilst in France it only stands at 7.8%. Yet the French capitalists faced around 8,000 strikes last year whilst the Swedish capitalists faced just a handful. In Sweden the unions have for decades been heavily involved in the administration of the national insurance system which every worker has to be part of. This has enabled the unions to keep their membership at a high level. Despite their lower trade union density, French workers, with their militant history, tend to take to the streets when they feel action is required. But generally it still requires the French unions at a national level to give a lead, whether or not the workers are in a union.
There is a higher degree of struggle at present in France, but the weakness of the trade union leadership has meant that the French government has still attacked the interests of working people. For example, the 35 hour week has seen major attacks upon it by the government, urged on by the whole of the capitalist class. The union leaders' authority is being used to hold back the struggle, though they are sometimes forced to respond to the anger of the workers by organising action. Across the world and in Britain, the unions remain the most important means through which working people defend their interests against the onslaught on jobs and conditions at work. But to become more effective organisations they will have to adopt fighting policies and programmes and develop the necessary leadership. Much of the existing leadership is incapable of giving a lead without massive pressure from below. This pressure has to be organised and one way of doing this is by means of building broad left organisations within the unions.
Broad lefts have existed in Britain in a number of unions to draw together activists in an organised form, who want a more militant fighting programme for the union. The Socialist Party and its predecessor the Militant have played a major role in developing these organisations in various unions from the civil service union CPSA, now the PCS, to the postal and telecom unions. PCS, and before it the CPSA, developed a healthy broad left. After years of struggle the right wing was defeated and a broad left leadership, along with others who opposed the undemocratic methods of the old right wing leadership, won power and a big majority on the union's national executive. Civil service workers and the PCS probably face their most severe test yet, as the part of the public sector facing the biggest cuts from a New Labour or a Tory government. The old PCS right wing would long ago have capitulated to the government. They would have acted as policemen to root out opposition to the government's plans inside their union, much as the right wing in Unison are doing now.
In Unison the witch-hunt against Socialist Party members and other socialists has led to the coming together of some of the left on the basis of a "reclaim the union" type organisation whose development is in its early stages. The forthcoming Unison snap general secretary election, foisted on the membership by a leadership keen to get it out of the way prior to the general election, will give a means to further develop the left. But this is only on condition that the left outside the Socialist Party is prepared to face up to how much the rank and file membership hate the link between the union and the Labour Party. The Socialist Party has made considerable gains as a result of calling for the link with the Labour Party to be broken, whereas the rest of the left have lost out, as a direct result of their ideological confusion.In other unions there is also a chance of the development of either new broad lefts or a revival of the existing broad lefts. For the union Unite to develop a healthy broad left, it will also have to clarify its position on the link with Labour.
There is no one way of winning workers over to a fighting programme. Rank and file bodies such as the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) could take initiatives to give a lead to those in struggle. But whatever happens the Socialist Party and its supporters in the unions will be in the forefront of these struggles. Amongst 16-24 year olds in the UK, only 5.1% of those in work are in a trade union. So the unions' orientation to young people is an important question. PCS is in the process of developing a new young members' network with its own internal life and democratic methods. But other unions are still a long way from developing similar organisations. One of the key lessons of the past has been that workers will join the unions if they see that they are fighting organisations. That is why the rail union RMT has seen a big increase in its membership, whilst many other unions have declined in membership. The PCS has maintained its membership despite a massive decline in jobs in the civil service under successive governments.It is vital that campaigns like Youth Fight for Jobs are discussed and supported throughout the whole trade union movement. Orientating to young people and showing them that the unions will fight for their interests will build trade union membership.
According to the government's business department, trade union membership in 2008 fell by 0.6% to 27.4% of the working population or around 6.9 million workers. It was 28% in 2007. The private sector, in a reversal of the past, continues to be the hardest to organise. It saw a fall in trade union organisation of 0.6%, to 15.5% of those in work. In the public sector, reflecting the continuation of privatisation and job cuts, especially in the civil service and local government, trade union membership was down by 1.9% to 57.1% of all those in that sector in Britain. In Wales, union membership stood at 37.4%, in Scotland 32.9% and in England 26.1%. But within England there were also some important variations. For example, in the north east, 35.3% of all those in work were union members whilst in the south east only 21.5% of all workers were in a union, although this is up 0.5% since 2007. A number of reasons exist for the fall in union membership in some parts of the economy. The privatisation of utilities like gas, electricity and water has seen union membership go down by 14.6% since 1998. But in other parts it went up, such as in education where it went up slightly from 53.1% to 54.1%, as workers there have turned to the unions for protection. The same data shows that one third of all workers have wages and conditions negotiated, often at national level, by the trade unions even if not all those workers are in a union. Collective agreements cover 20% of those in the private sector, which has 15.5% of the workforce in a union. Over 70% of workers in the public sector are covered by collective agreements, whilst trade union density stands at 57.1%. Civil service workers and the PCS probably face their most severe test yet, as the part of the public sector facing the biggest cuts from a New Labour or a Tory government .
Workers are also under attack on numerous other fronts, including on their level of pay, pension and their terms and conditions. Whoever wins the election, all the establishment parties are of one mind when it comes to making working people pay for the crisis. So far, in answer to these attacks, the union leaderships, with a few exceptions, have been abysmal. The leadership of the biggest public sector union, Unison, with 1.3 million members, has spent far more effort in attacking the left in general and the Socialist Party in particular than it ever has in defending its members' jobs and wages. The close link between Unison's tops and the Labour government has meant that those leaders will do their utmost not to embarrass the Labour leaders, especially in the run up to the general election. Their record of capitulation goes back a long way. For instance, they failed to defend the pensions of local government workers in 2006/7. This was when, led by the PCS, other public sector unions were at least able to protect present pension rights for existing members, including civil servants and teachers.
Like all bureaucracies that seek to protect their own interests, as the government's attacks against their members intensify, Unison's leaders seek to close down all opposition groups who are fighting for the union to adopt a fighting programme against these attacks. That is why the battle to defend jobs and conditions is increasingly tied to a battle to defend democratic rights and a fight to reclaim the union from the hands of the unelected full time officialdom. Despite all the obstacles thrown in their path, important sections of workers in Britain have demonstrated that when their backs are against the wall they will fight back. These have included the Visteon car part workers in London, Basildon and Belfast, the Vestas wind turbine workers on the Isle of Wight, the Prisme workers in Dundee, and the Swansea Linamar workers in defeating their bosses' attempt to sack Socialist Party member and works convenor Rob Williams.
The above disputes featured the occupation of factories and were an instinctive reaction to the dictatorial actions of the employers. The few minutes' notice given to the Visteon workers to leave their factories was first met with a stunned resignation by the workers in Enfield and Basildon. But when the workers heard about the occupation in the Belfast factory, they followed its lead and occupied themselves. This demonstrated that despite all the capitalist property laws they were not going to accept being treated that way. The issue of occupation could feature heavily in the future, as it does now in the workers' struggles in France. These figures do not tell the whole story. For example they do not include the Visteon workers' occupation because the workers had been sacked and therefore could not be counted as workers striking against their employer! Royal Mail workers who were on official strike regularly throughout the latter part of 2009, particularly in London, were also involved in unofficial action as a result of the after effects of the official dispute. Their unofficial action is probably not included in the official figures.
There were 370,000 days lost in strikes in the first 10 months of 2009 (January-October inclusive) compared to 759,000 for the whole 12 months of 2008. This gives the impression that the curve of strike action was downward. But by the end of 2009 the figures were creeping upwards. In 2008, the number of days lost in strikes in the public sector was 711,000 out of the total of 759,000. Most of this was down to the two-day strike of local council workers on the issue of pay. In October 2009 alone, the postal workers' strike accounted for 199,000 days lost. The interim agreement that ended the postal strikes could be described as a draw, but the employers were forced to retreat on a number of fronts. It remains to be seen if this 'peace' continues into 2010. The National Union of Teachers (NUT), with a left leadership, including recently elected deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney, have the best chance in years to resist the attacks on teachers which have tremendously increased teachers' workloads.
Already in 2010 there have been important developments, with some skilled workers taking action to defend jobs. These include workers at Fujitsu, who have never organised a national strike before but have been spurred into action by threatened job and other cuts. These workers have been encouraged to strike by the company posting record profits. Other workers with no particular track record of militancy could similarly move into struggle against the bosses' attacks.An important issue regarding perspectives for the unions is trade union density. Are the unions making inroads into the huge number of workers who are not in a union but have indicated a desire to join one if given the chance? 30 years ago, unions in Britain encompassed a majority of those at work, reaching a membership of 13 million, 12.7 million of whom were in unions affiliated to the TUC. In manufacturing (engineering, the car industry etc) over 90% were in unions. There were 250,000 shop stewards, mainly in manufacturing industry, who by organising militant industrial action at shop floor level, led the public sector to emulate them.
NUPE, which organised council manual workers and health workers, grew from 60,000 in the 1960s to over 600,000 by the end of the 1970s. NUPE later went on to become a part of Unison. Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher deliberately set out to destroy the power of the unions by, amongst other things, introducing a deliberate policy of de-industrialisation. This saw the closure of whole swathes of industry and thereby undermined part of the base of militant trade unionism and the shop stewards' movement. This, coupled with the anti-trade union laws, was aimed at fatally wounding trade union organisation. She was not wholly able to do this because trade unionism is deeply embedded in the psyche of workers in Britain, with over 150 years of tradition behind it. But trade union membership has been halved over the last 25-30 years. Another contributory factor to this decline was the general move to the right by the trade union leaders following the collapse of Stalinism in Russia and eastern Europe and the accompanying capitalist ideological onslaught.
But there is a 'trade union premium' - the difference between the wages of those in a union and those who are not. Average hourly earnings of trade union members in 2008 were £13.07 whilst non-trade union workers received £11.62 per hour. A union premium of 12.5%. And there are many other issues besides pay, where workers can benefit from being in a union. How does UK trade union membership compare with other parts of the world? Internationally it is highest in Scandinavia at 70%+ of the workforce, whilst in France it only stands at 7.8%. Yet the French capitalists faced around 8,000 strikes last year whilst the Swedish capitalists faced just a handful. In Sweden the unions have for decades been heavily involved in the administration of the national insurance system which every worker has to be part of. This has enabled the unions to keep their membership at a high level. Despite their lower trade union density, French workers, with their militant history, tend to take to the streets when they feel action is required. But generally it still requires the French unions at a national level to give a lead, whether or not the workers are in a union.
There is a higher degree of struggle at present in France, but the weakness of the trade union leadership has meant that the French government has still attacked the interests of working people. For example, the 35 hour week has seen major attacks upon it by the government, urged on by the whole of the capitalist class. The union leaders' authority is being used to hold back the struggle, though they are sometimes forced to respond to the anger of the workers by organising action. Across the world and in Britain, the unions remain the most important means through which working people defend their interests against the onslaught on jobs and conditions at work. But to become more effective organisations they will have to adopt fighting policies and programmes and develop the necessary leadership. Much of the existing leadership is incapable of giving a lead without massive pressure from below. This pressure has to be organised and one way of doing this is by means of building broad left organisations within the unions.
Broad lefts have existed in Britain in a number of unions to draw together activists in an organised form, who want a more militant fighting programme for the union. The Socialist Party and its predecessor the Militant have played a major role in developing these organisations in various unions from the civil service union CPSA, now the PCS, to the postal and telecom unions. PCS, and before it the CPSA, developed a healthy broad left. After years of struggle the right wing was defeated and a broad left leadership, along with others who opposed the undemocratic methods of the old right wing leadership, won power and a big majority on the union's national executive. Civil service workers and the PCS probably face their most severe test yet, as the part of the public sector facing the biggest cuts from a New Labour or a Tory government. The old PCS right wing would long ago have capitulated to the government. They would have acted as policemen to root out opposition to the government's plans inside their union, much as the right wing in Unison are doing now.
In Unison the witch-hunt against Socialist Party members and other socialists has led to the coming together of some of the left on the basis of a "reclaim the union" type organisation whose development is in its early stages. The forthcoming Unison snap general secretary election, foisted on the membership by a leadership keen to get it out of the way prior to the general election, will give a means to further develop the left. But this is only on condition that the left outside the Socialist Party is prepared to face up to how much the rank and file membership hate the link between the union and the Labour Party. The Socialist Party has made considerable gains as a result of calling for the link with the Labour Party to be broken, whereas the rest of the left have lost out, as a direct result of their ideological confusion.In other unions there is also a chance of the development of either new broad lefts or a revival of the existing broad lefts. For the union Unite to develop a healthy broad left, it will also have to clarify its position on the link with Labour.
There is no one way of winning workers over to a fighting programme. Rank and file bodies such as the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) could take initiatives to give a lead to those in struggle. But whatever happens the Socialist Party and its supporters in the unions will be in the forefront of these struggles. Amongst 16-24 year olds in the UK, only 5.1% of those in work are in a trade union. So the unions' orientation to young people is an important question. PCS is in the process of developing a new young members' network with its own internal life and democratic methods. But other unions are still a long way from developing similar organisations. One of the key lessons of the past has been that workers will join the unions if they see that they are fighting organisations. That is why the rail union RMT has seen a big increase in its membership, whilst many other unions have declined in membership. The PCS has maintained its membership despite a massive decline in jobs in the civil service under successive governments.It is vital that campaigns like Youth Fight for Jobs are discussed and supported throughout the whole trade union movement. Orientating to young people and showing them that the unions will fight for their interests will build trade union membership.
According to the government's business department, trade union membership in 2008 fell by 0.6% to 27.4% of the working population or around 6.9 million workers. It was 28% in 2007. The private sector, in a reversal of the past, continues to be the hardest to organise. It saw a fall in trade union organisation of 0.6%, to 15.5% of those in work. In the public sector, reflecting the continuation of privatisation and job cuts, especially in the civil service and local government, trade union membership was down by 1.9% to 57.1% of all those in that sector in Britain. In Wales, union membership stood at 37.4%, in Scotland 32.9% and in England 26.1%. But within England there were also some important variations. For example, in the north east, 35.3% of all those in work were union members whilst in the south east only 21.5% of all workers were in a union, although this is up 0.5% since 2007. A number of reasons exist for the fall in union membership in some parts of the economy. The privatisation of utilities like gas, electricity and water has seen union membership go down by 14.6% since 1998. But in other parts it went up, such as in education where it went up slightly from 53.1% to 54.1%, as workers there have turned to the unions for protection. The same data shows that one third of all workers have wages and conditions negotiated, often at national level, by the trade unions even if not all those workers are in a union. Collective agreements cover 20% of those in the private sector, which has 15.5% of the workforce in a union. Over 70% of workers in the public sector are covered by collective agreements, whilst trade union density stands at 57.1%. Civil service workers and the PCS probably face their most severe test yet, as the part of the public sector facing the biggest cuts from a New Labour or a Tory government .
Friday, 5 February 2010
Disability benefit failures are a travesty
The pro-big business parties, New Labour, Tories and LibDems, vied with each other at their party conferences with zealous plans to make the working class pay for the economic and financial crisis. Each party boasts about the size of cuts to public sector services and jobs it will inflict after the next general election. Sick, disabled and unemployed people could only watch in horror. The Tories led the way. Cameron said his party would force all sick and disabled people currently on Incapacity Benefit (IB) to undergo strict medical assessment, aiming to push an estimated 500,000 people off IB and onto Jobseekers Allowance. This would result in a benefits cut of about £25 a week, from an already miserly £89.90 a week to £64.30 a week. This vicious measure has nothing to do with encouraging people back to work. It has everything to do with making the sick and disabled pay for the economic crisis. Cameron says the £600 million saved will fund an expanded, accelerated welfare to work programme to get the long-term unemployed, particularly young people, into work.
The Tory plan involves assessing 2.6 million IB recipients over a three-year period. This would mean processing 3,000 assessments every day. No way will this allow benefit recipients to be assessed fairly, nor will New Labour's current plans of 10,000 assessments a week. New Labour ministers criticise the proposals but, from October 2008, Gordon Brown's government has replaced IB with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for all new claimants. The Personal Capability Assessment of Incapacity Benefit was replaced with a much tougher ESA Work Capability Assessment. Now thousands of people who previously would have qualified for IB are required to seek work. Since October 2008 over two-thirds of ESA claimants have been forced onto Jobseekers Allowance. Jobcentre Examining Medical Officers award no points to claimants who clearly have severe physical and/or mental health problems. The whole system, from initial claim to appeals, is weighted against claimants. More than three-quarters of appeal hearings went against them. The Disability Alliance says the new Work Capability Assessment is too rigid, even requiring people about to have operations and some terminally ill people to be assessed, with the assessment itself unable to reflect disabled people's lives and needs. Disabled people are judged as ready for work when they cannot really work or need specialist help to find suitable employment.
And how easy will it be for the thousands of disabled people forced into the jobs market to find work? Once placed on Jobseekers Allowance they find there is no tailored help at a time of increasing unemployment. They struggle to find work in a more competitive jobs market where, says the Disability Alliance, employer discrimination against the disabled remains high. An estimated 40% of IB claimants have one or more mental health problems, but a recent survey showed that 80% of employers would not take on people with mental health problems. Cameron claims his proposals confirm the Tories as a compassionate party! No less 'compassionate' is New Labour. Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper complained that Cameron's proposals just rehash government plans. She boasted that the government is already implementing tougher tests for everyone on IB, stronger requirements on the jobless to find work and is using private companies. The money that the Tories squeeze out of these vulnerable people will be used to massively expand, in effect, workfare, their 'work for your benefits' system for the long-term unemployed, particularly aimed at those under 25. Unemployed people will be forced to work 30 hours a week for Jobseekers Allowance of just £64.30 a week for those aged 25 and over, and a disgraceful £50.95 a week for those under 25!
The Tories also plan to reduce from a year to six months the period the unemployed can claim Jobseekers Allowance before being forced onto training or into jobs. But New Labour pipped the Tories at the post by announcing their own 'work for your benefits' programme, pilot mandatory work trials and so-called work experience placements for jobseekers out of work for over six months. The Child Poverty Action Group correctly argues that if the government can find temporary work for an unemployed person they should pay them a proper wage. Whoever wins the next general election, these proposals are a thin end of a wedge, the thick end of which could be moves to cap unemployment benefits to a maximum period of six months for everyone, as is already the case in many other countries. Cameron's plans will involve greater use of private companies to deliver their proposals. New Labour has already heavily used private companies to deliver its Flexible New Deal 'back to work' programme. In a scheme intended to involve both private companies and the voluntary sector, fewer than 40% of contracts went to the voluntary sector, despite a DWP fraud investigation into the activities of at least three private 'welfare to work' contractors.
Clearly, whichever party wins the next general election, the sick, disabled and unemployed will feel the brunt of the attacks. Millions of workers, either as employees or users of the public sector, will have no choice but to fight back. The trade unions need to launch a mass campaign, to include unemployed and disabled workers, to defend our public services and the welfare state, a vital part of which is decent benefits for those workers who, for whatever reason, are unable to work. Cuts, outsourcing and privatisation mean vulnerable adults and children are 'falling through the net'. Social care staff are struggling to cope with high caseloads, increasing red tape and worsening pay, terms and conditions at work. Home care, day services, residential homes, social work, child protection, and services for people with special educational needs, mental health services, support for disabled people, people with learning difficulties and older people. All our services are under attack from New Labour in government and the Tories and Lib Dems in our local councils. And more of the same is promised.
In some councils, the tendering process has been refined to little more than an 'e-bay style auction' - rival companies sit at their laptops underbidding each other until the 'race to the bottom' is complete. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The government says that more elderly people want to stay living at home with support, as opposed to going into residential care. The same philosophy drives policies for disabled people and people with learning difficulties. "Independence, freedom and choice" the politicians shout. "Close the residential homes, close the day centres, give everyone freedom and independence".
Socialists believe strongly that all vulnerable members of society should be treated with respect and dignity. They have the same right to a good quality of life as anyone else, including the right to stay at home, live independently, go to work and so on. The truth is, under the present system, these words are a con trick, a smokescreen behind which the politicians can cut back spending on social care, leaving people neglected, alone and abused. Whilst 'old-fashioned' and 'institutional' services such as 9-5 segregated day centres and foreboding residential homes should make way for more mainstream, community-based and inclusive 21st century services, very little resources are being provided for any replacement services. Although care workers in some local authorities have fought for and won improvements to pay and conditions, closures are being used as a way to cut costs and get rid of staff. More and more people are now expected to pay for services themselves - provided mainly by private, profit-making companies and voluntary (charity-based) groups. Councils are providing fewer and fewer services under this con trick of 'promoting independence'.
Work and Pensions (DWP) minister Peter Hain has announced new medical 'tests' from next October for people with disabilities to make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit. 2.7 million people currently claim £7.4 billion a year in incapacity benefit. Many of them are people chucked out of work when the Tories destroyed industrial jobs but whose redundancy pay has gone. Some have severe work-related illnesses such as emphysema, many are suffering from depression. People with psychiatric illnesses make up 40% of those on incapacity benefit. Katrine Williams, who is DWP Wales Secretary of the PCS union, speaking in a personal capacity, told the socialist: "The targets include getting one million people off sickness and disability benefits. "Most of the onus of the welfare reforms continues to be on the individual claiming benefit and their 'responsibilities' rather than the government taking action to tackle the discrimination that people with disabilities face from employers. This government's welfare reforms coincide with savage job cuts and privatisation of essential services like New Deal for Disabled People and Pathways to Work in the DWP. This has a massive impact on the services we provide to the public. The DWP as an employer is far from satisfactory. In one year alone over 1,000 staff were sacked for being sick.
Many currently face the threat of compulsory redundancy are single parents, have a disability or have caring responsibilities and live in areas where it is difficult to find work. A GMB union survey a few years back showed "a direct link between high employment rates and low benefit claimant rates, and vice versa. Where there are jobs, there are low claim rates. The task for the government in seeking to reduce the number of claimants is to promote the creation of more jobs." Instead, they attack their own workforce and bring in new attacks on sick, disabled and vulnerable people. These cuts need to be fought, and the whole "strongest will survive" elitist mantra scrapped. I've seen people who are homeless. A few friends of mine are on very low benefits, and struggle to afford both bills and food. Incapacity Benefit does not even cover basic needs. Electricity, gas, water, and other bills are much more than this, leaving little left over for food or anything else. Millions live on bank overdrafts and other people face the same problem. Some of them cannot even afford to turn the heating on in winter. There is no doubt that Britain's welfare benefits system is complex, unwieldy and hard to understand for those who claim it and those who administer it. But Labour's current Welfare Reform Bill, that would replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support for people who are sick with the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), is far worse.
You have to look behind the spin to see what this will really mean for physically and mentally ill and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit and Retirement Pension are the only two benefits that are based on National Insurance contributions in the way envisaged at the Welfare State's creation in 1948. The government is seeking to increase the age when people can claim retirement pension from 65 to 68. Incapacity Benefit recipients have been increasingly subjected to a 'work-focused' regime of interviews over recent years. This bill enshrines this approach in legislation. Replacing Incapacity Benefit with ESA will erode the provision of contributory benefit by limiting the amount of the contribution-based part of the benefit to a low rate. The 'support' or 'work-related activity' components will be added after the person has been assessed as having 'limited capability' for work or work-related activity. This seriously erodes sick people's rights. It is a further clawing back of concessions won by the working class after the second world war. ESA shifts the benefit's ethos away from compensating someone for not being able to do their own job or any work towards making them work.
The bill doesn't accept medical certificates provided by a GP as evidence of 'limited capability of work-related activity'. People will have a 'health-related assessment' by a 'health care professional' to determine what work or work-related activity they can do. Certain people with severe physical or mental health conditions will receive the 'support component'. Everyone else will be subjected to a regime of work-focused interviews, work-related activities and regular reassessments. Failure to comply or cooperate or to participate in a prescribed way will lead to reductions in benefit. This will particularly disadvantage those with mental health conditions who may not be able to cope with complying with prescriptions about the sort of information they supply and how they supply it. The bill clearly lays out the privatisation of the work to administer the benefit's work-focused elements. This will take away core areas of work from civil servants and hand it over to companies who - the government admits - don't have the expertise and don't want to help people, they just want to make a profit; this is no way for the government to support vulnerable sick people.
The number of people on IB is higher in areas where coal mining and heavy industries have closed, because of diseases caused by hazardous work and the devastating effects on mental health of the closure of these industries and the fragmentation of communities. It is these people that New Labour want to get off benefit. The bill's aim is to remove a million of the 2.6 million on Incapacity Benefit. Another aim is an 80% employment rate. Even senior civil servants say that work-focused regimes wouldn't be needed if decently paid jobs with good conditions were available. Instead people will be coerced into low-paid work with poor conditions. In order to reduce the unemployment figures, the Tories also decided that 16 hours work or more was full time. 80% employment based on part-time hours means that the reality for lots of workers is that they have to have several part-time jobs to survive. The Welfare Reform Bill's explanatory notes complain about the 'perverse incentive' to stay on benefit because the benefit rate goes up the longer you're on it. The real 'perverse incentive' offered by New Labour is to private companies whose low pay is subsidised by tax credits paid to workers from the public purse.
In other countries, there have been widespread demonstrations against attempts to dismantle state benefits. In Britain we continue to suffer the death of the post-war welfare state by a thousand cuts, started by Thatcher and followed by Blair. All three main parties have this neo-liberal agenda. Workers need a new party to represent their interests and to protect and rebuild welfare in Britain. Once again workers are paying for the crisis in the capitalist system. Wrapped in words like 'reform', 'modernisation' and 'opportunity', this is an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. In an ideal world, the physically and mentally ill would have the dignity of a living income as well as access to decently paid jobs with good conditions if they were able and wished to work. The Department for Work and Pensions have poorly thought-out plans to get one million people off Incapacity Benefit. The government are trying to divide disabled people into the worthy and unworthy poor. They talk about work for those who can and help for those who can't. The reality is that New Labour plans to bully disabled people off benefits into low-paid, slave labour jobs, which are both exploitative and unsuitable. This isn't only an attack on disabled people but on the wages and conditions of all organised workers - disabled people who refuse such slave-labour employment will have their benefits cut.
The problem isn't in our attitude towards working, it lies in employers' reluctance to offer us jobs. If New Labour were really serious about 'helping disabled people into work' it would do more to tackle the widespread discrimination against us amongst most big employers. Where are these jobs going to come from? Will the government put money into the Access To Work Scheme (set up to provide equipment, etc to disabled people in employment) so as to ensure that any necessary adjustments are made to workplaces? If the government won't find the resources needed, the scheme won't work! Why are they on Incapacity Benefit in the first place? Why did many of us lose our jobs when we became disabled people? Why do employers prefer to train someone new, rather than enable someone who knows the job to carry on working? Why is the media now full of Incapacity Benefit fraud stories? These are the new scapegoats. First it was unmarried mums, next came asylum seekers/refugees. Now add disabled people to that list. Why does New Labour assume it is full-time, long-term work that is wanted, are capable of doing and is available? Many disabled people have fluctuating conditions. Some have regular medical appointments. Some of us need adjustments in the workplace and/or support from work colleagues. If we work, our work patterns need to take these issues into account.
The government's own survey showed last year that only 0.3% of the Incapacity Benefit paid in the UK is fraudulently claimed. You wouldn't think there would be much room for cuts in those figures. But New Labour plans massive cuts in the Incapacity Benefit payment system. It's not easy to get Incapacity Benefit. Last year 2.7 million people applied for it, but only just under 1.5 million received it. A recent TUC study shows that the vast majority of those receiving Incapacity Benefit are either too ill to work or people whose health problems make employers pass them over as job candidates. Incapacity Benefit is paid at three rates, starting at just £55.90, rising at the six-month point and then rising to £74.15 after a claimant has been on the benefit for a year. With additional allowances, the average payment is £84.51 a week. New Labour intend to put all claimants back on £55.90 a week. An extra payment would go to those who could prove they were actively seeking work. A fixed 20% of the most severely incapacitated claimants would receive a top-up, so their total benefit would be higher than the current rate.
Cuts in Incapacity Benefit would cause severe hardship. As a proportion of average earnings, incapacity benefit is already extremely low. The rate for a single person fell from 17.4% of average earnings in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003. Nor is Incapacity Benefit a growing problem for government. The number of those receiving Incapacity Benefit has fallen by almost 400,000 since 1995. No one wants to be on Incapacity Benefit. The vast majority of those on the benefit worked for years and once out of work, a significant number suffer from depression. That makes it even harder to get work - where there is any. So do long NHS waiting lists. Unsurprisingly, the areas that have seen the most dramatic loss of jobs over the past 20 years are those with the highest level of Incapacity Benefit - areas of South Wales, Glasgow, Yorkshire, Durham and Liverpool. According to a Merthyr Tydfil council report from 2004, "approximately 30% of the population have a long-term limiting illness". Those actually receiving Incapacity Benefit number 10,000 out of a population of 56,000, which amounts to 22.8% of those of working age. This earned Merthyr the title of "sickness capital of Britain". But Merthyr's figures are matched by 22.1% in Blaenau Gwent and 23% in Easington in County Durham. And of course, where underemployment is high, those with health problems have even less chance of getting a job. New Labour claim that they want to remove "disincentives" to people getting jobs, but they themselves admit that Incapacity Benefit fraud is almost non-existent. In fact, they are simply further impoverishing some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
Ex-mining and ex-shipbuilding areas are among those with the highest take-up rate for IB. That shows that the conditions that these workers toiled in have made them ill. And many workers in those industries wrecked by previous governments were put off sick rather than adding them to the unemployment figures. Blunkett’s idea of ‘coaxing’ is to cut the income of those who don’t find work. But where is the government going to put these workers eager to "try out" employment, as New Labour coyly puts it? After such disasters as Rover and Marconi there is increasingly only low-paid unskilled work available. New Labour’s majority in Parliament has been cut tremendously and we could see more rebellions from MPs, particularly those from areas with high numbers of IB claimants. A massive campaign of opposition could convince these MPs to join in the fight against this legislation. The government treats Incapacity Benefit claimants as ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’. Yet all New Labour’s policies are designed to aid the real scroungers in our capitalist society - the super-rich. Britain’s wealthiest 1,000 people have just got richer and richer over the last 25 years under both Tory and New Labour governments. They are now 'worth' a record £250 billion, up by nearly a quarter on last year, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. That’s 152% wealthier than when Blair came to power in 1997!
These scroungers gain from pro-rich government policies yet they avoid paying tax on their ‘earnings’. Around the world they avoid taxes totalling a cool $860 billion a year. The rich make this $860 billion out of the $11.5 trillion they stack away. They use ‘offshore’ companies, washing their cash through a host of tax havens, anything rather than contribute towards the societies where their businesses operate. The super-rich are robbing the poor in ‘their own’ countries and in the ex-colonial world. But rich business people, their accountants and tax experts, who bay for punitive action against IB claimants, all say there’s nothing anyone can do about this. When their wealth is threatened the rich often threaten to carry out a ‘strike of capital’, in other words they say they will stop investing. There is ‘something we can do about it’. If these rich individuals try to stop investment, their companies should be taken into public ownership with compensation paid only to those in need. And, if they can’t do a useful job, we could always put them on Incapacity Benefit!
True to form, most of New Labour’s plans are designed to make life better for rich profit-seekers and worse for the rest of us. His big business agenda talks of ‘reforming’ the NHS and the welfare state but he means more private-sector involvement and more cutbacks. One of their most draconian bills aims to curb what ministers call ‘spiralling’ incapacity-benefit (IB) costs. David Blunkett says he wants to "coax" up to a million sick and disabled people off IB and into work. But IB is for people who can’t work through illness or disability. And apart from that very vulnerable group who were incapacitated early in life, most IB receivers have made national insurance contributions all their lives. The Disabled People's Movement agrees meaningful jobs are a key to disabled people escaping out of poverty. But we say NO to being forced off benefits into low-paid work. NO to coercion and punitive cutting of benefits. NO to care charges. NO to their hands in our pockets. They say YES to a flexible and realistic approach to all the issues of work and benefits. YES to disabled people's freedom to choose work. And YES to ending discrimination against disabled people!
The Tory plan involves assessing 2.6 million IB recipients over a three-year period. This would mean processing 3,000 assessments every day. No way will this allow benefit recipients to be assessed fairly, nor will New Labour's current plans of 10,000 assessments a week. New Labour ministers criticise the proposals but, from October 2008, Gordon Brown's government has replaced IB with Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for all new claimants. The Personal Capability Assessment of Incapacity Benefit was replaced with a much tougher ESA Work Capability Assessment. Now thousands of people who previously would have qualified for IB are required to seek work. Since October 2008 over two-thirds of ESA claimants have been forced onto Jobseekers Allowance. Jobcentre Examining Medical Officers award no points to claimants who clearly have severe physical and/or mental health problems. The whole system, from initial claim to appeals, is weighted against claimants. More than three-quarters of appeal hearings went against them. The Disability Alliance says the new Work Capability Assessment is too rigid, even requiring people about to have operations and some terminally ill people to be assessed, with the assessment itself unable to reflect disabled people's lives and needs. Disabled people are judged as ready for work when they cannot really work or need specialist help to find suitable employment.
And how easy will it be for the thousands of disabled people forced into the jobs market to find work? Once placed on Jobseekers Allowance they find there is no tailored help at a time of increasing unemployment. They struggle to find work in a more competitive jobs market where, says the Disability Alliance, employer discrimination against the disabled remains high. An estimated 40% of IB claimants have one or more mental health problems, but a recent survey showed that 80% of employers would not take on people with mental health problems. Cameron claims his proposals confirm the Tories as a compassionate party! No less 'compassionate' is New Labour. Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper complained that Cameron's proposals just rehash government plans. She boasted that the government is already implementing tougher tests for everyone on IB, stronger requirements on the jobless to find work and is using private companies. The money that the Tories squeeze out of these vulnerable people will be used to massively expand, in effect, workfare, their 'work for your benefits' system for the long-term unemployed, particularly aimed at those under 25. Unemployed people will be forced to work 30 hours a week for Jobseekers Allowance of just £64.30 a week for those aged 25 and over, and a disgraceful £50.95 a week for those under 25!
The Tories also plan to reduce from a year to six months the period the unemployed can claim Jobseekers Allowance before being forced onto training or into jobs. But New Labour pipped the Tories at the post by announcing their own 'work for your benefits' programme, pilot mandatory work trials and so-called work experience placements for jobseekers out of work for over six months. The Child Poverty Action Group correctly argues that if the government can find temporary work for an unemployed person they should pay them a proper wage. Whoever wins the next general election, these proposals are a thin end of a wedge, the thick end of which could be moves to cap unemployment benefits to a maximum period of six months for everyone, as is already the case in many other countries. Cameron's plans will involve greater use of private companies to deliver their proposals. New Labour has already heavily used private companies to deliver its Flexible New Deal 'back to work' programme. In a scheme intended to involve both private companies and the voluntary sector, fewer than 40% of contracts went to the voluntary sector, despite a DWP fraud investigation into the activities of at least three private 'welfare to work' contractors.
Clearly, whichever party wins the next general election, the sick, disabled and unemployed will feel the brunt of the attacks. Millions of workers, either as employees or users of the public sector, will have no choice but to fight back. The trade unions need to launch a mass campaign, to include unemployed and disabled workers, to defend our public services and the welfare state, a vital part of which is decent benefits for those workers who, for whatever reason, are unable to work. Cuts, outsourcing and privatisation mean vulnerable adults and children are 'falling through the net'. Social care staff are struggling to cope with high caseloads, increasing red tape and worsening pay, terms and conditions at work. Home care, day services, residential homes, social work, child protection, and services for people with special educational needs, mental health services, support for disabled people, people with learning difficulties and older people. All our services are under attack from New Labour in government and the Tories and Lib Dems in our local councils. And more of the same is promised.
In some councils, the tendering process has been refined to little more than an 'e-bay style auction' - rival companies sit at their laptops underbidding each other until the 'race to the bottom' is complete. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The contracts for looking after our mums and dads, nannies and granddads, are awarded to the lowest bidder - in one case just over £7 per hour. The only way the companies can make profits at this level is to cut wages and to fiddle the books - claiming for time spent with clients which doesn't happen. Older people are dying through the pursuit of profit. The government says that more elderly people want to stay living at home with support, as opposed to going into residential care. The same philosophy drives policies for disabled people and people with learning difficulties. "Independence, freedom and choice" the politicians shout. "Close the residential homes, close the day centres, give everyone freedom and independence".
Socialists believe strongly that all vulnerable members of society should be treated with respect and dignity. They have the same right to a good quality of life as anyone else, including the right to stay at home, live independently, go to work and so on. The truth is, under the present system, these words are a con trick, a smokescreen behind which the politicians can cut back spending on social care, leaving people neglected, alone and abused. Whilst 'old-fashioned' and 'institutional' services such as 9-5 segregated day centres and foreboding residential homes should make way for more mainstream, community-based and inclusive 21st century services, very little resources are being provided for any replacement services. Although care workers in some local authorities have fought for and won improvements to pay and conditions, closures are being used as a way to cut costs and get rid of staff. More and more people are now expected to pay for services themselves - provided mainly by private, profit-making companies and voluntary (charity-based) groups. Councils are providing fewer and fewer services under this con trick of 'promoting independence'.
Work and Pensions (DWP) minister Peter Hain has announced new medical 'tests' from next October for people with disabilities to make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit. 2.7 million people currently claim £7.4 billion a year in incapacity benefit. Many of them are people chucked out of work when the Tories destroyed industrial jobs but whose redundancy pay has gone. Some have severe work-related illnesses such as emphysema, many are suffering from depression. People with psychiatric illnesses make up 40% of those on incapacity benefit. Katrine Williams, who is DWP Wales Secretary of the PCS union, speaking in a personal capacity, told the socialist: "The targets include getting one million people off sickness and disability benefits. "Most of the onus of the welfare reforms continues to be on the individual claiming benefit and their 'responsibilities' rather than the government taking action to tackle the discrimination that people with disabilities face from employers. This government's welfare reforms coincide with savage job cuts and privatisation of essential services like New Deal for Disabled People and Pathways to Work in the DWP. This has a massive impact on the services we provide to the public. The DWP as an employer is far from satisfactory. In one year alone over 1,000 staff were sacked for being sick.
Many currently face the threat of compulsory redundancy are single parents, have a disability or have caring responsibilities and live in areas where it is difficult to find work. A GMB union survey a few years back showed "a direct link between high employment rates and low benefit claimant rates, and vice versa. Where there are jobs, there are low claim rates. The task for the government in seeking to reduce the number of claimants is to promote the creation of more jobs." Instead, they attack their own workforce and bring in new attacks on sick, disabled and vulnerable people. These cuts need to be fought, and the whole "strongest will survive" elitist mantra scrapped. I've seen people who are homeless. A few friends of mine are on very low benefits, and struggle to afford both bills and food. Incapacity Benefit does not even cover basic needs. Electricity, gas, water, and other bills are much more than this, leaving little left over for food or anything else. Millions live on bank overdrafts and other people face the same problem. Some of them cannot even afford to turn the heating on in winter. There is no doubt that Britain's welfare benefits system is complex, unwieldy and hard to understand for those who claim it and those who administer it. But Labour's current Welfare Reform Bill, that would replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support for people who are sick with the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), is far worse.
You have to look behind the spin to see what this will really mean for physically and mentally ill and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit and Retirement Pension are the only two benefits that are based on National Insurance contributions in the way envisaged at the Welfare State's creation in 1948. The government is seeking to increase the age when people can claim retirement pension from 65 to 68. Incapacity Benefit recipients have been increasingly subjected to a 'work-focused' regime of interviews over recent years. This bill enshrines this approach in legislation. Replacing Incapacity Benefit with ESA will erode the provision of contributory benefit by limiting the amount of the contribution-based part of the benefit to a low rate. The 'support' or 'work-related activity' components will be added after the person has been assessed as having 'limited capability' for work or work-related activity. This seriously erodes sick people's rights. It is a further clawing back of concessions won by the working class after the second world war. ESA shifts the benefit's ethos away from compensating someone for not being able to do their own job or any work towards making them work.
The bill doesn't accept medical certificates provided by a GP as evidence of 'limited capability of work-related activity'. People will have a 'health-related assessment' by a 'health care professional' to determine what work or work-related activity they can do. Certain people with severe physical or mental health conditions will receive the 'support component'. Everyone else will be subjected to a regime of work-focused interviews, work-related activities and regular reassessments. Failure to comply or cooperate or to participate in a prescribed way will lead to reductions in benefit. This will particularly disadvantage those with mental health conditions who may not be able to cope with complying with prescriptions about the sort of information they supply and how they supply it. The bill clearly lays out the privatisation of the work to administer the benefit's work-focused elements. This will take away core areas of work from civil servants and hand it over to companies who - the government admits - don't have the expertise and don't want to help people, they just want to make a profit; this is no way for the government to support vulnerable sick people.
The number of people on IB is higher in areas where coal mining and heavy industries have closed, because of diseases caused by hazardous work and the devastating effects on mental health of the closure of these industries and the fragmentation of communities. It is these people that New Labour want to get off benefit. The bill's aim is to remove a million of the 2.6 million on Incapacity Benefit. Another aim is an 80% employment rate. Even senior civil servants say that work-focused regimes wouldn't be needed if decently paid jobs with good conditions were available. Instead people will be coerced into low-paid work with poor conditions. In order to reduce the unemployment figures, the Tories also decided that 16 hours work or more was full time. 80% employment based on part-time hours means that the reality for lots of workers is that they have to have several part-time jobs to survive. The Welfare Reform Bill's explanatory notes complain about the 'perverse incentive' to stay on benefit because the benefit rate goes up the longer you're on it. The real 'perverse incentive' offered by New Labour is to private companies whose low pay is subsidised by tax credits paid to workers from the public purse.
In other countries, there have been widespread demonstrations against attempts to dismantle state benefits. In Britain we continue to suffer the death of the post-war welfare state by a thousand cuts, started by Thatcher and followed by Blair. All three main parties have this neo-liberal agenda. Workers need a new party to represent their interests and to protect and rebuild welfare in Britain. Once again workers are paying for the crisis in the capitalist system. Wrapped in words like 'reform', 'modernisation' and 'opportunity', this is an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. In an ideal world, the physically and mentally ill would have the dignity of a living income as well as access to decently paid jobs with good conditions if they were able and wished to work. The Department for Work and Pensions have poorly thought-out plans to get one million people off Incapacity Benefit. The government are trying to divide disabled people into the worthy and unworthy poor. They talk about work for those who can and help for those who can't. The reality is that New Labour plans to bully disabled people off benefits into low-paid, slave labour jobs, which are both exploitative and unsuitable. This isn't only an attack on disabled people but on the wages and conditions of all organised workers - disabled people who refuse such slave-labour employment will have their benefits cut.
The problem isn't in our attitude towards working, it lies in employers' reluctance to offer us jobs. If New Labour were really serious about 'helping disabled people into work' it would do more to tackle the widespread discrimination against us amongst most big employers. Where are these jobs going to come from? Will the government put money into the Access To Work Scheme (set up to provide equipment, etc to disabled people in employment) so as to ensure that any necessary adjustments are made to workplaces? If the government won't find the resources needed, the scheme won't work! Why are they on Incapacity Benefit in the first place? Why did many of us lose our jobs when we became disabled people? Why do employers prefer to train someone new, rather than enable someone who knows the job to carry on working? Why is the media now full of Incapacity Benefit fraud stories? These are the new scapegoats. First it was unmarried mums, next came asylum seekers/refugees. Now add disabled people to that list. Why does New Labour assume it is full-time, long-term work that is wanted, are capable of doing and is available? Many disabled people have fluctuating conditions. Some have regular medical appointments. Some of us need adjustments in the workplace and/or support from work colleagues. If we work, our work patterns need to take these issues into account.
The government's own survey showed last year that only 0.3% of the Incapacity Benefit paid in the UK is fraudulently claimed. You wouldn't think there would be much room for cuts in those figures. But New Labour plans massive cuts in the Incapacity Benefit payment system. It's not easy to get Incapacity Benefit. Last year 2.7 million people applied for it, but only just under 1.5 million received it. A recent TUC study shows that the vast majority of those receiving Incapacity Benefit are either too ill to work or people whose health problems make employers pass them over as job candidates. Incapacity Benefit is paid at three rates, starting at just £55.90, rising at the six-month point and then rising to £74.15 after a claimant has been on the benefit for a year. With additional allowances, the average payment is £84.51 a week. New Labour intend to put all claimants back on £55.90 a week. An extra payment would go to those who could prove they were actively seeking work. A fixed 20% of the most severely incapacitated claimants would receive a top-up, so their total benefit would be higher than the current rate.
Cuts in Incapacity Benefit would cause severe hardship. As a proportion of average earnings, incapacity benefit is already extremely low. The rate for a single person fell from 17.4% of average earnings in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003. Nor is Incapacity Benefit a growing problem for government. The number of those receiving Incapacity Benefit has fallen by almost 400,000 since 1995. No one wants to be on Incapacity Benefit. The vast majority of those on the benefit worked for years and once out of work, a significant number suffer from depression. That makes it even harder to get work - where there is any. So do long NHS waiting lists. Unsurprisingly, the areas that have seen the most dramatic loss of jobs over the past 20 years are those with the highest level of Incapacity Benefit - areas of South Wales, Glasgow, Yorkshire, Durham and Liverpool. According to a Merthyr Tydfil council report from 2004, "approximately 30% of the population have a long-term limiting illness". Those actually receiving Incapacity Benefit number 10,000 out of a population of 56,000, which amounts to 22.8% of those of working age. This earned Merthyr the title of "sickness capital of Britain". But Merthyr's figures are matched by 22.1% in Blaenau Gwent and 23% in Easington in County Durham. And of course, where underemployment is high, those with health problems have even less chance of getting a job. New Labour claim that they want to remove "disincentives" to people getting jobs, but they themselves admit that Incapacity Benefit fraud is almost non-existent. In fact, they are simply further impoverishing some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
Ex-mining and ex-shipbuilding areas are among those with the highest take-up rate for IB. That shows that the conditions that these workers toiled in have made them ill. And many workers in those industries wrecked by previous governments were put off sick rather than adding them to the unemployment figures. Blunkett’s idea of ‘coaxing’ is to cut the income of those who don’t find work. But where is the government going to put these workers eager to "try out" employment, as New Labour coyly puts it? After such disasters as Rover and Marconi there is increasingly only low-paid unskilled work available. New Labour’s majority in Parliament has been cut tremendously and we could see more rebellions from MPs, particularly those from areas with high numbers of IB claimants. A massive campaign of opposition could convince these MPs to join in the fight against this legislation. The government treats Incapacity Benefit claimants as ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’. Yet all New Labour’s policies are designed to aid the real scroungers in our capitalist society - the super-rich. Britain’s wealthiest 1,000 people have just got richer and richer over the last 25 years under both Tory and New Labour governments. They are now 'worth' a record £250 billion, up by nearly a quarter on last year, according to the latest Sunday Times rich list. That’s 152% wealthier than when Blair came to power in 1997!
These scroungers gain from pro-rich government policies yet they avoid paying tax on their ‘earnings’. Around the world they avoid taxes totalling a cool $860 billion a year. The rich make this $860 billion out of the $11.5 trillion they stack away. They use ‘offshore’ companies, washing their cash through a host of tax havens, anything rather than contribute towards the societies where their businesses operate. The super-rich are robbing the poor in ‘their own’ countries and in the ex-colonial world. But rich business people, their accountants and tax experts, who bay for punitive action against IB claimants, all say there’s nothing anyone can do about this. When their wealth is threatened the rich often threaten to carry out a ‘strike of capital’, in other words they say they will stop investing. There is ‘something we can do about it’. If these rich individuals try to stop investment, their companies should be taken into public ownership with compensation paid only to those in need. And, if they can’t do a useful job, we could always put them on Incapacity Benefit!
True to form, most of New Labour’s plans are designed to make life better for rich profit-seekers and worse for the rest of us. His big business agenda talks of ‘reforming’ the NHS and the welfare state but he means more private-sector involvement and more cutbacks. One of their most draconian bills aims to curb what ministers call ‘spiralling’ incapacity-benefit (IB) costs. David Blunkett says he wants to "coax" up to a million sick and disabled people off IB and into work. But IB is for people who can’t work through illness or disability. And apart from that very vulnerable group who were incapacitated early in life, most IB receivers have made national insurance contributions all their lives. The Disabled People's Movement agrees meaningful jobs are a key to disabled people escaping out of poverty. But we say NO to being forced off benefits into low-paid work. NO to coercion and punitive cutting of benefits. NO to care charges. NO to their hands in our pockets. They say YES to a flexible and realistic approach to all the issues of work and benefits. YES to disabled people's freedom to choose work. And YES to ending discrimination against disabled people!
Sunday, 20 December 2009
BA fatcats vs. working class
The battle lines between union-busting British Airways (BA) boss Willie Walsh and 14,000 cabin crew workers have been drawn. Walsh is intent on slashing jobs, cutting pay and ripping up working agreements; he has already imposed damaging cuts on cabin crew numbers without agreement with the workers’ Unite union. But workers are refusing to take it – and have hit him with plans for a spectacular 12-day strike. Cabin crew delivered a massive 92 percent vote for action with over 80 percent turning out to vote in the ballot. This magnificent result shows the strength of feeling and determined spirit to fight that exists among workers. One stated "We worked hard in the good times and made BA lots of profits. They should have kept some of that money for the bad times. It’s not our fault that we’re now in a recession. I have to pay my mortgage and my bills, yet BA wants to cut my wages.” Walsh says he needs to make cuts to save money, and much of the media will back him up on this ridiculous claim. But what he’s really interested in is union-busting – and the workers know it.
Walsh built his callous reputation when he was chief executive of the Irish airline Aer Lingus – where he slashed a third of the workforce and pushed privatisation. “What BA really wants is to end the union,” another claimed. “We know Willie Walsh is a bully because we saw what he did at Aer Lingus. But I’m not worried because we are strong.” Walsh expects workers to swallow the cuts – while he grabs thousands of pounds. Last year he got a pay rise of 6 percent. Makes the blood boil, doesn't it? His basic salary was £735,000, compared to a basic wage of around £18,700 for a cabin crew member. On top of this, BA, which claims it has no money, threw an extra £90,000 into his pension fund. Walsh is proud of his bullying reputation. As he put it when he was at Aer Lingus, “A reasonable man gets nowhere in negotiations.” But this time he may be in for a shock. Bosses everywhere will be watching this battle closely. They know that if Walsh is pushed back then other workers facing similar attacks will have more confidence to fight. BA gives a snapshot of the bitterness that exists everywhere – and shows the potential for resistance to break through.
British Airways (BA) has won a court injunction to stop some 14,000 cabin crew workers from taking strike action; they were set to begin a 12-day strike on Tuesday. The injunction does not resolve any of the issues that led workers into a dispute. Unions should not allow an unelected judge to overrule the democratic vote of thousands of workers. They should defy the law and continue the fight to stop BA’s cuts. Cabin crew workers in the Unite union voted by over 92 percent on an 80 percent turnout in favour of strikes to fight BA plans to slash jobs, cut and freeze pay and cut allowances. The fact that BA imposed cuts on workers without union agreement last month has angered workers. Despite the overwhelming vote for action the court accepted BA management's position that the union had not correctly balloted its members on the strike action. The management argued that because some staff in the process of leaving the company had been balloted industrial relations law had been breached. Unite stated that this was a "disgraceful day for democracy" and that it would reballot if the dispute wasn't resolved. Talks are currently continuing between BA management and Unite. The mood among BA cabin crew is angry and the strength of the vote shows how determined workers are to fight BA’s cuts. They have the potential to win and they should make sure that union leaders don't throw it away.
Walsh built his callous reputation when he was chief executive of the Irish airline Aer Lingus – where he slashed a third of the workforce and pushed privatisation. “What BA really wants is to end the union,” another claimed. “We know Willie Walsh is a bully because we saw what he did at Aer Lingus. But I’m not worried because we are strong.” Walsh expects workers to swallow the cuts – while he grabs thousands of pounds. Last year he got a pay rise of 6 percent. Makes the blood boil, doesn't it? His basic salary was £735,000, compared to a basic wage of around £18,700 for a cabin crew member. On top of this, BA, which claims it has no money, threw an extra £90,000 into his pension fund. Walsh is proud of his bullying reputation. As he put it when he was at Aer Lingus, “A reasonable man gets nowhere in negotiations.” But this time he may be in for a shock. Bosses everywhere will be watching this battle closely. They know that if Walsh is pushed back then other workers facing similar attacks will have more confidence to fight. BA gives a snapshot of the bitterness that exists everywhere – and shows the potential for resistance to break through.
British Airways (BA) has won a court injunction to stop some 14,000 cabin crew workers from taking strike action; they were set to begin a 12-day strike on Tuesday. The injunction does not resolve any of the issues that led workers into a dispute. Unions should not allow an unelected judge to overrule the democratic vote of thousands of workers. They should defy the law and continue the fight to stop BA’s cuts. Cabin crew workers in the Unite union voted by over 92 percent on an 80 percent turnout in favour of strikes to fight BA plans to slash jobs, cut and freeze pay and cut allowances. The fact that BA imposed cuts on workers without union agreement last month has angered workers. Despite the overwhelming vote for action the court accepted BA management's position that the union had not correctly balloted its members on the strike action. The management argued that because some staff in the process of leaving the company had been balloted industrial relations law had been breached. Unite stated that this was a "disgraceful day for democracy" and that it would reballot if the dispute wasn't resolved. Talks are currently continuing between BA management and Unite. The mood among BA cabin crew is angry and the strength of the vote shows how determined workers are to fight BA’s cuts. They have the potential to win and they should make sure that union leaders don't throw it away.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Labour sets its sights on civil service workers
The government has launched a massive attack on workers that every boss in Britain will be watching. It is targeting hundreds of thousands of civil service workers as it aims to slash the huge public spending deficit by hitting jobs and services, and selling off public assets. New Labour wants to massively reduce the payments that civil service workers get when they lose their jobs, in preparation for sacking tens of thousands of them. Cabinet Office bosses last week unilaterally announced that changes would be made from April next year to the terms, which are known as the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. And even that’s not guaranteed as voluntary redundancy terms will remove any contractual right to the sums detailed. They also leave departmental managements the option of paying only the statutory minimum to whoever they choose.
This could help open the way to further privatisation, as it would make it cheaper for private firms to get rid of workers in the future. The plan for the compensation scheme is the government’s latest assault on this key workforce, in its attempt to get ordinary people to pay for the problems caused by its bailing out of the banks. If the attack on the compensation scheme is successful, whoever is in government after next year’s general election will feel emboldened to attack other groups of public sector workers. Workers and their trade unions are furious that these attacks are being pushed through. Both the PCS and Unite unions have threatened to ballot for strike action unless management and the government come back to the table to discuss the issue. The PCS national executive was meeting this week to discuss what action it should take. Activists are pushing for hard-hitting action of more than one day to take place as soon as possible.
This could help open the way to further privatisation, as it would make it cheaper for private firms to get rid of workers in the future. The plan for the compensation scheme is the government’s latest assault on this key workforce, in its attempt to get ordinary people to pay for the problems caused by its bailing out of the banks. If the attack on the compensation scheme is successful, whoever is in government after next year’s general election will feel emboldened to attack other groups of public sector workers. Workers and their trade unions are furious that these attacks are being pushed through. Both the PCS and Unite unions have threatened to ballot for strike action unless management and the government come back to the table to discuss the issue. The PCS national executive was meeting this week to discuss what action it should take. Activists are pushing for hard-hitting action of more than one day to take place as soon as possible.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Privatisation is sick, not the NHS
THE LATEST report on safety standards in our hospitals lays bare some shocking examples of safety failures in some NHS hospital trusts. The Hospital Guide, compiled by a joint private/public body known as "Dr Foster", highlights 12 trusts that underperform on patient safety measures. The report highlights foreign bodies being left in patients after surgery, operating on the wrong body part and 5,024 patients with low risk conditions dying in hospital. Predictably the media headlines blame the national health service, trying to weaken support for the NHS and its hard working staff. But these problems are mainly caused by the privatisation and cuts to our NHS that New Labour has instigated. Many of the hospitals in deepest crisis were Foundation Trusts, initiated by Labour Health secretary Alan Milburn in 2002.The criteria for hospitals to become Foundation trusts included getting their finances in order and meeting targets, regardless of the consequences.
Foundation hospitals represent a further move towards privatisation as they have more financial autonomy than other hospitals (though patient care is not always a priority).They are supposed to involve the local community but the real decisions are made at the top. Before privatisation and PFI there was at least some local accountability for health services through the community health councils. We now need local health services that are run and planned by democratic committees with representatives of NHS workers and the local community. One big incentive for hospital chiefs to obtain foundation status is to secure a fat pay rise. The salary of the chief executive of Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre NHS Trust rose 32% from £125,000 to £165,000 on gaining foundation status. The Royal College of Surgeons' President explained that: "Too many hospitals are too concerned with meeting financial targets at the expense of clinical standards, and we are seeing patients suffering as a consequence."
Unison (the largest trade union in the health service) calls for Basildon and Thurrock Foundation Hospital to be taken back under NHS control, and calls for a public enquiry into patient care at the hospital.They explain that the hospital's privatised cleaning contract has been inadequate for many years with too few cleaners and not enough training. This is the direct consequence of private companies inside our hospitals ensuring fat profits at the expense of patient care and of staff wages and conditions. Public money fills the pockets of companies who make huge profits from building hospitals under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). As interest rates for private borrowers are rising, it now costs £6.3 million more to finance a £100 million deal than it did two years ago. And it costs £23 million more to fund such a deal through PFI than using money borrowed from the government. In consequence, less money is available for patient care. While supporting Unison's demands on bringing hospitals back into NHS control, the health unions should also call for an end to all privatisation and cuts in the NHS. And they should stop paying huge amounts of their members' money to the Labour Party who are responsible for the cuts and privatisation of our health service.
Foundation hospitals represent a further move towards privatisation as they have more financial autonomy than other hospitals (though patient care is not always a priority).They are supposed to involve the local community but the real decisions are made at the top. Before privatisation and PFI there was at least some local accountability for health services through the community health councils. We now need local health services that are run and planned by democratic committees with representatives of NHS workers and the local community. One big incentive for hospital chiefs to obtain foundation status is to secure a fat pay rise. The salary of the chief executive of Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre NHS Trust rose 32% from £125,000 to £165,000 on gaining foundation status. The Royal College of Surgeons' President explained that: "Too many hospitals are too concerned with meeting financial targets at the expense of clinical standards, and we are seeing patients suffering as a consequence."
Unison (the largest trade union in the health service) calls for Basildon and Thurrock Foundation Hospital to be taken back under NHS control, and calls for a public enquiry into patient care at the hospital.They explain that the hospital's privatised cleaning contract has been inadequate for many years with too few cleaners and not enough training. This is the direct consequence of private companies inside our hospitals ensuring fat profits at the expense of patient care and of staff wages and conditions. Public money fills the pockets of companies who make huge profits from building hospitals under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). As interest rates for private borrowers are rising, it now costs £6.3 million more to finance a £100 million deal than it did two years ago. And it costs £23 million more to fund such a deal through PFI than using money borrowed from the government. In consequence, less money is available for patient care. While supporting Unison's demands on bringing hospitals back into NHS control, the health unions should also call for an end to all privatisation and cuts in the NHS. And they should stop paying huge amounts of their members' money to the Labour Party who are responsible for the cuts and privatisation of our health service.
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