Jubilant opponents of the ConDems’ multi-faceted so-called Work
Programme are celebrating two court judgements ruling that most of the schemes
were unlawful. Yet their joy is certain to prove short-lived.
It means that university graduate Cait Reilly shouldn’t have
been obliged to give up volunteering at a museum to work for free filling
shelves at Poundland in order to keep her unemployment benefits.
Neither should Jamie Wilson an unemployed HGV driver from Nottingham have been told that he had to work unpaid,
cleaning furniture for 30 hours a week for six months, under a scheme called
the Community Action Programme.
Tessa Gregory of Public Interest Lawyers was among those
claiming that all of those who refused to take part in these schemes and were
stripped of their benefits have a right to claim the money back.
But the celebrations will be cut short. Within hours of
the judgement, ministers at the Department of Work and Pensions issued new,
more detailed regulations which, they insist, allow the workfare schemes to continue
unabated.
And in reply to those who want to claim back benefits
unlawfully taken away from them, employment minister Mark Hoban was on BBC last
night looking and sounding like a character in a Dickens novel whipping up “the
taxpayers”, insisting that people
without work should be grateful for the “help” they’re being offered.
Paragraph 74 of the judgement says this: “However, any
scheme must be such as has been authorised by Parliament. There is a
constitutional issue involved.” So there’s more than the technicalities of
regulations at stake here. The government no longer consults parliament.
And it goes deeper still.
Tom Walker, employment law partner at law firm Manches,
said: "This judgment upholds what is perhaps the key tenet of employment,
namely the 'work wage bargain'. If someone gives their labour to a company,
they should be paid for it. However well intentioned a workplace scheme may be,
it is very dangerous to introduce compulsory unpaid labour into the UK
employment market."
Last week the court heard another legal challenge, this time
to the tightening of constraints on non-EU immigration which has split
thousands of families in recent months. The operation of these schemes wasn’t
subject to Parliamentary approval either.
The deepening global financial and economic crisis has
brought the system to its point of breakdown. Companies like Poundland now
depend on essentially free, state-subsidised labour to produce and sell
devalued and debased products
Anything so long as it’s cheap and profitable, never mind
their effects on people or the planet. The same pressures are at work on
companies throughout the global food chain, whether it’s the cheap labour
demanded by UK
fruit and vegetable growers, or the processors and sellers of horsemeat
lasagne.
Now the state is sanctioning the end of the wage-labour
contract, which is the fundamental social relationship that defines capitalist
production. And Walker is right. That’s a dangerous thing to
do.
So its time for a real celebration.
February 12, 2013 was the official first day of production
under workers’ control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in, Greece . This means production
organised without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly
democratic assemblies of the workers.
The workers’ assemblies have declared an end to unequal
division of resources, and will have equal and fair remuneration, decided
collectively. It’s the way to go wherever you live and work.
Social relations based on private ownership must now either
revert to slavery or be superseded by a new stage in social evolution. We must
learn the lessons from the past. Arbeit macht Frei – labour makes you free –
was the sign posted above concentration camps by the Nazis.
So we have to move forward to a democratically-determined,
collective stewardship of the world ‘s resources and sustainable production to
satisfy need. This goal can’t be postponed.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
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