As tumultuous world events like the uprising in Ukraine, the
direct democracy movement sweeping Bosnia, the Syrian civil war etc etc grab
your attention, you may have missed a momentous announcement by the Trades
Union Congress here in Britain. There is to be a mass demonstration in – wait
for it – October!
Yes, in eight months’ time we are being invited to march
through London to a rally in Hyde Park.
Not on a weekday because that might involve people going on strike (God
forbid) to take part. No, as usual, we will all walk calmly through the centre
of the city on a Saturday afternoon.
There, if you care to stay for the rally, you will hear
speeches from TUC luminaries and probably Labour leader Ed Miliband. They will
be standing under the banner of “Britain Needs a Pay Rise”. Not workers, you
notice, but “Britain”.
Stirring stuff, eh?
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was billed as an anti-government
action, to condemn the ConDems for slaughtering living standards in the wake of
a capitalist crisis workers are not responsible for. But no, “Britain
Needs a Pay Rise” is actually demanding that everyone gets a share “in the
recovery”.
Far from opposing the wretched Coalition, this is actually
buying into their claims that a “recovery” is taking place. In fact, as even
George Osborne has had to acknowledge, any “growth” is driven by debt and the
housing market. In fact it resembles a new bubble waiting to burst along the
lines of the 2008 calamity. As the 1930s song goes:
I'm
forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty
bubbles in the air,
They
fly so high,
Nearly
reach the sky,
Then
like my dreams,
They
fade and die.
Back to the TUC on October 18 and its general secretary Frances
O’Grady. She says in the call-out for the demo that “hard-pressed families
across the UK must be beginning to wonder when the tough times they are
experiencing will ever end.” Actually, just as many are wondering whether the
TUC will ever get off its bureaucratic backside and lead some real resistance.
The real value of average wages was falling before the
recession and they have declined more rapidly since 2010. Pay-day loans have
soared and many people have loaded up their credit cards to pay for essentials
like shopping and housing costs. And where was the TUC (and Labour) while all
this was happening?
O’Grady rewrites the history of the last four years when she
claims that “during the dark days of recession, workers accepted that their pay
might have to be frozen or even cut to save jobs”. No! The TUC alone accepted
that terrible position, even though member unions opposed the government’s
policies.
At the TUC Congress in 2012, for example, the leaders of
Unison and Unite threatened a general strike against the public sector pay
freeze. TUC leaders killed that proposal stone dead. As hundreds of thousands
of jobs were culled by local councils and other public bodies, the TUC sat on
its hands.
Instead, we have the ritual of the annual demo. This year’s
will be the fourth in a row. A chance to let off steam by marching around town
and then going home. No wonder the turnout has declined year-on-year.
Meanwhile, Miliband is pledged to continue ConDem austerity
should his One Nation Labour win the 2015 election. This includes retaining the
present public sector pay freeze. His latest wheeze is a plan to give employers
a taxpayer subsidy to pay the “living wage” (which is actually a subsistence
wage).
So when O’Grady tell us that “the time has come for Britain
to get a pay rise” she reduces a pressing need to a fatuous slogan. For
her information, countries don’t get pay increases, workers do. That’s why
people formed unions in the first place and in 1868 came together to launch the
TUC. For the present leadership at Congress House, all this history is
bunk.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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