In case you missed it, here's hot news from the TUC

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

Unions losing their 'voice' as Labour plans long goodbye

Frances O’Grady, the first woman general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, says “trade unions should have a strong political voice”. She’s so right because as things stand, their traditional “voice” in the shape of Labour is fading away.

The last week has been wracked with tensions and real as well as apparent turn-arounds in the trade unions’ crucial and historic relationship with the Labour Party. A schism emerged when one of the party’s biggest donors, the GMB, announced that it would cut its affiliation fees by 90% in response to planned rule changes by Labour.

These will terminate the present arrangement, whereby members of affiliated unions have part of their subs forwarded to the Labour Party. In future, individual members would have to “opt in” to membership to make a financial contribution. Labour will hold a special conference next year to make the changes.

Meanwhile, the party has had to back off from allegations of vote-rigging in a parliamentary candidate selection process in Falkirk, Scotland, in what appears to be a behind the scenes deal between the Unite union and Labour leaders. Yet the claims originally triggered Ed Miliband’s plans.

He remains unrepentant. Miliband’s unapologetically arrogant anti-union stance remains nothing other an abject sop to Tory-Liberal ideology and a continuation of Tony Blair’s policy of weakening, reducing and finally eliminating the links between Labour and the unions that founded the party at the start of the 20th century.

His hand is strengthened by a YouGov survey for the Labour UnCut blog.  According to the results, Miliband’s move to make trade unionists “opt-in” is backed by 60% of members of unions affiliated to Labour. The poll result is double-edged. It’s not surprising that trade unionists feel disgruntled and let down by Labour which has endorsed most ConDem policies and implemented the cuts at local council level.

New Labour governments drove on not only the marketisation/outsourcing of public services but the introduction of an authoritarian surveillance state. Their rejection of the socialist Clause Four of the Labour Party’s constitution heralded the transformation of Labour into an openly capitalist, neo-liberal party. Blairite “modernisation”, is being continued by Miliband.

The right to have political representation was achieved through historic political and legal struggles that began in the early 19th century. But now more than ever, workers and trade unionists are losing even the semblance of a political voice. Thus, Miliband and his co-thinkers are completing the reversal of the very process that gave rise to their party in the first place.

Motions put to this year’s TUC reveal the rising tide of discontent against the ConDems destruction of the welfare state and the growing sense that even if Labour were elected in 2015, nothing much would change because the party has accepted ConDem future budget cuts.

A crucial composite put by Unite and seconded by Unison, proposes that “Congress believes that the crisis facing people and their local services is so severe that we cannot wait for a general election in 2015, we must act now.”

It calls on Congress to “instruct the General Council to organise in the course of 2014 a nationwide march against poverty, focusing on the bedroom tax, food banks and other effects of government policy designed to draw in working people and their communities in all parts of the country and to unite people around the trade union movement”.

Council should, it says, “facilitate a co-ordinated programme of civil and industrial action involving trade unions and other campaigns”. The motion, which is certain to be passed, also calls on unions to “promote and support the day of action called by the People’s Assembly for 5 November 2013”.

This is not what Miliband, who speaks at the TUC tomorrow, particularly wants to hear. And he definitely won’t be backing strikes against the government.

Like the appointment of a woman to head the TUC after 150 years waiting, these actions are well overdue and we unreservedly support them. At last year’s Congress, there was plenty of rhetoric and even talk of a general strike. It came to nothing. This time round, we need deeds to match the words. Or the TUC’s own credibility will be worthless.    

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary 

How the state plans to shut down dissent

Later this month, the Trades Union Congress is backing a march and rally in Manchester against the ConDems’ carve-up of the NHS. Next year, a repeat campaign could be deemed illegal under legislation due for debate in parliament today.

The TUC is not exactly a scaremongering organisation. So when general secretary Frances O’Grady warns that the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill is “attack on free speech worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship” there is just cause for alarm.

She points out that the Bill has been drawn so widely that it will “shut down dissent for the year before an election”, adding: “No organisation that criticises a government policy will be able to overdraw their limited ration of dissent without fearing a visit from the police.”

Introduced in response to assorted scandals, one half of the Bill contains proposals to create a register of lobbying firms. The rest is actually a draconian attack on the freedom to campaign. With the date of the next election fixed for May 2015, campaigns from May 2014 could fall foul of the new rules if they are passed. Breaching these will become a criminal offence.  

At present only activities designed with the intent of influencing an election result are regulated. The Bill will instead will regulate activity that may affect the result of an election. That could embrace any criticism of government policy

The amount that third party campaign groups can spend in the year before an election is reduced by more than half to £390,000. The Bill proposes that staff time and other costs should now be included in the limit, whereas before only materials and activities like leaflets and ads were regulated. The TUC believes that the cost of its 2014 Congress alone could take it over the limit.

Naturally, political party conferences are given an exemption in election spending limits. Self-seeking or what!

While the Bill is clearly an attack on the trade unions, particularly those affiliated to the Labour Party, its scope is much wider. Charities and campaign groups like Greenpeace look certain to get caught in the net.

Human rights lawyer Helen Mountfield QC, in a legal opinion for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), says that “uncertainty about what the law requires is likely to have a chilling effect on freedom of expression, by putting small organisations and their trustees/directors in fear of criminal penalty if they speak out on matters of public interest and concern."

And worse. The Bill is so vague that anyone who spends over £5,000 on anything that can be in any way said to potentially affect an election will be caught up. That would cover many political blog sites and online campaign groups like 38degrees. 

Even the Electoral Commission, which is in charge of regulating elections, has expressed concerns about the Bill to the government. Are ministers bothered? No they are not. Andrew Lansley, infamous author of the NHS wrecking legislation, has accused opponents of “scaremongering” and claims the Bill will introduce “transparency” into campaigning. As we know, Lansley is a man of his word so that’s alright.

As for the lobbying industry – which is valued at £2 billion a year – the Bill won’t make much difference. The 70 firms that lobby for access to ministers or promote certain policy changes, are the tip of an iceberg . Major corporations and interest groups have their own in-house teams. They, naturally, won’t be affected by any register.

The reality is that corporate interests and the interests of the state are inextricably entwined. That is because the political machinery of the country has always been ready to serve the dominant economic and financial interests which, as we speak, are capitalist in their nature.

While the process doesn’t always run smoothly, the broad agenda is the same. The business of government is, more openly than ever before, business itself. That’s why the welfare state has been wrecked by successive governments and replaced by a market-corporate state.

Policing of dissent and opposition is reaching new heights. On top of the mass surveillance and penetration of movements by state agents, campaigning itself is to face criminal sanctions if the proposed rules are transgressed. A democracy this isn’t. A corporatocracy it is.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

         

Living standards crash as recession cuts deep

The living standards of British workers are being progressively destroyed, during the longest slump in the modern age as the capitalist recession takes its toll on the only people who create value in society.

Wages have decreased by a total of 6% in real terms in the last five years, as people have accepted cuts in pay or reduced hours in order to stay in a job at any cost.

On paper, average earnings increased by 1.3% in the first quarter of 2013, but this is skewed by the massive pay and bonuses of the richest. The reality is that workers’ wages are going backwards, whilst inflation is running at 2.7% per annum.

One-third of workers found their wages were frozen between 2010 and 2011, and 70% experienced real wage cuts, according to a new report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

It compares the situation today to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and finds that it is worse. The slump, says the IFS, has been "deeper and longer than those of the 1990s, the 1980s and even the 1930s. It has seen household incomes and spending drop more and stay lower longer."

There has been an unprecedented drop in productivity in the UK, with factories producing 10% less than they were in 2007, the year before the crash. The drop in household incomes means that the service and retail sector are poised for further bankruptcies and closures.

And it's the same picture across the world, as the World Bank today cut its forecast for growth in global GDP in 2013 from 3.1% to 3%. This is in effect negative growth because it does not cover even the needs of the increase in global population.

Few new workers are entering the world economy, and this can be seen by the massive levels of youth unemployment everywhere.

The World Bank further predicts that the eurozone economy will shrink by 0.6% this this year. Growth is slowing in China and India.

The TUC today launches a new campaign "Britain needs a pay rise", but it is all empty rhetoric. A Facebook "like" is not going to put a penny in the pocket of workers, unionised or otherwise.

Last year, the TUC conference pledged an all-out fight against the prolonged freeze in public sector imposed by the ConDems. But nothing whatsoever resulted in terms of action, after the Labour leadership endorsed the government’s policy.

More important than the empty words of the suits at the TUC is the political transformation of a whole generation of young people across the globe. They are being excluded from the world economy, not only in Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK but also in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and beyond.

And the fact that their response to this is to put themselves in the leadership of movements for democracy is a recognition on their part that this economic crisis – we might say this economic exclusion – can only be solved by political means.

It is governments who enforce the law that growth is the only criteria worth pursuing. They are all, universally, in every country mentioned above, fully committed to the perspective that people's capacity to work is a commodity, like any other commodity. If an individual is unable to sell it, or can only achieve a low price for it – that's just the law of the market.

This has always been the case. It is worth reminding ourselves that the transformation of Britain into a low wage economy predates the economic crash. The wages of full-time workers barely grew between 2003 and 2008 and were negative for the lowest earners, who never benefited from the Blair/Brown credit-fuelled boom.

What has changed is that all pretence that the state is concerned for the poorest and can act to alleviate the worst impacts of this market, has been removed.

Therefore it is not austerity per se we should rail against but the rule of the capitalist market and the exploitation of labour for profit, which is destroying our living standards, our economic future and our planet.

Penny Cole

Separating rhetoric from reality over general strike call

Talk of a one-day general strike against ConDem policies is being floated, led by the Unite union. While any action against this most reactionary of governments is to be supported, we need to separate the rhetoric from reality.

Last September, the TUC Congress voted to investigate the legality of a general strike. Most legal opinion indicates that, given the scope of anti-union laws, all-out action would be deemed unlawful and challenged in the courts.

So a general strike would have to be in defiance of the draconian legislation introduced by the Thatcher government and upheld by New Labour. For over 30 years, the trade union bureaucracy has run absolutely scared of the laws that prohibit spontaneous strikes, solidarity action and mass picketing.  

Any defiance wouldn’t, naturally, have the support of Labour, which is heavily dependent on Unite’s money. A Labour spokesman said: “There is no consensus for a general strike across the trade union movement. Strikes should be a last resort, and we are not in favour of a general strike.”

The record of actual resistance to the ConDems’ austerity drive by trade union leaders is poor to non-existent. Apart from the civil servants’ PCS union, whose members are on strike again today, there has been no sustained challenge.

Unite and Unison have constantly thwarted strike plans against cuts in jobs and services at local council level. When the ConDems announced plans to reduce public service pensions, Unison general secretary said he had a “war chest” of £20 million to back strike action. In the end, the government went ahead with its plans with minimal opposition.

In a submission to the TUC, which meets later this month to discuss the issue, Unite says it  believes a 24-hour general strike "would be a landmark in our movement's recovery of its morale, strength and capacity to play a leading part in a society crying out for credible and honourable leadership".

But any general strike – even a one-day protest - is much more than that. It is a challenge to the state and its power, its authority and legitimacy.  

You can be sure that the ConDem coalition will meet any challenge in the spirit of Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minister at the time of the historic 1926 general strike. He famously declared: “Constitutional government is being attacked… the General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.”

The TUC had threatened a General Strike as a negotiating tactic to try and prevent a cut in miners’ pay and a lengthening of their working day. But their bluff was called and the strike got under way without any serious preparation.The army and the police were mobilised and strike-breakers recruited.

TUC leaders quickly entered into secret negotiations and the indefinite general strike was called off after nine days, with the miners abandoned to their fate.

In 1926, between 400 and 500 Councils of Action emerged in the course of the general strike. Made up of strikers and their supporters, they took responsibility for co-ordinating the strike, propaganda, communications, transport, entertainment, picketing and the delivery of food. They represented, in effect, the emergence of potentially alternative sites of power to the state at local level.

A showdown is coming with the ConDem government and the state as justified grievances over a pay freeze, spending cuts, the break-up of the NHS and the attack on the welfare state, come together.

Instead of waiting for union leaders to get serious, trade unionists and their supporters ought to prepare for confrontation now. They should create People’s Assemblies in each area, bringing together trade unionists, the unemployed, private sector workers, older people, campaign groups, small businesses, students, black and ethnic minority communities and everyone in the firing line.

Assemblies can do what the union leaders won’t – take seriously the implications of a general strike and the question of who rules Britain. They can plan for a transfer of political and economic power away from a ruinous capitalist elite and their lapdog politicians into the hands of ordinary people. In other words, going beyond resistance.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Exploitation on the rise as recession deepens

Today’s forlorn protest by the TUC designed to put “pressure on chancellor George Osborne to change course” as he puts his final touches to next week’s budget will fall on deaf ears.

Prime minister Cameron last week insisted that the austerity programme would continue. It was brought in to deal with the spiralling increase in government debt which became unsustainable when the financial system crashed and recession followed.

The aim is to pass the burden of the debt on to backs of millions of ordinary people who have no say in government policy, not any influence on the contents of the budget.

Naturally, the austerity programme has failed. The debt has continued to soar as a result, claims Cameron, of external factors beyond the government’s control, like the ongoing crisis in Europe. But the Office for Budget Responsibility also made clear that deep spending cuts had contributed to the recession in the UK.

Despite extreme, unconventional measures taken by governments and central banks, the world economic system – aka global capitalism – shows no sign of recovering to anything like its pre-crash level. The sharp decline in UK manufacturing reported yesterday is a case in point.  

An almost covert, but massive devaluation of the pound has driven the cost of imports up but had minimal impact on exports. The Bank of England, unable to explain declining productivity, is abandoning its duty to keep inflation below 2%. By “looking through” the target, it is admitting that continuing with the attempt to slow price increases threatens to tip the economy into a new, more catastrophic slump.

Instead it will focus on its attempts to stimulate the economy, with low interest rates, issuing itself with the money to buy more government bonds and more lending. It is encouraging the government to do the same, even though the ConDems Funding for Lending scheme has flopped.

The BoE has floated the idea of negative interest rates, whilst those to the right of the ConDem coalition are pushing for even more stringent cuts. The Tory right want to intensify the current programme which, designed with absurdly optimistic expectations of a return to growth, is not even a third of the way through. People like Liam Fox have health and welfare budgets in their sights, combined with tax cuts. It’s all adding to the pressure on Cameron, whose political future looks less rosy by the day.  

But the real story is that the recession is deepening, confirmed by the so-called “productivity puzzle”. The mystery is that productivity measured both by output per worker, and output per hour has fallen by as much as 14% since the crash.

The pre-budget report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks it has an explanation. In a simplified form it is clear that in the wake of the crash, investment in capital goods has fallen because, with no sign of a return to growth, investors are holding on to their cash.

Wages have fallen as unemployment has risen, but unemployment hasn’t increased as much as might have been expected.  Employers have forced wages down, turned to cheaper labour associated with part-time working and more labour intensive forms of production.

In summary then, the capitalist imperative of increasing productivity is operating in reverse. In terms that Marx might have used, the rate of exploitation of labour is increasing. And as the crisis worsens the impoverishment of the masses is certain to increase.

So the TUC’s shock headline figure, that within two years, almost 7.1m of the nation’s 13m youngsters will be in homes with incomes judged to be less than the minimum necessary for a decent standard of living, will prove to be a monstrous understatement. As for the TUC itself, fewer words and action against the government is needed if we are not to conclude that Congress House is actually a mausoleum.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Historic strike against austerity must become turning point

The historic, co-ordinated pan-Europe strikes and marches taking place today are the clearest indication yet that the struggles against the governments that have imposed austerity policies are coming to a head.

With more than 25 million out of work, all major unions will be marching to oppose further devastating cuts in salaries, pensions, benefits and social services, tax increases and new limits on trade union organisation.

The strike is expected to cause near or total shutdowns of the four most debt-battered countries — Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.

There will be solidarity marches elsewhere organised by new movements like Spain’s M15 as well as trades unions. Demonstrations are planned throughout France. Rail workers in Belgium are striking, as are unions in Malta and Cyprus.    

And from Germany and Switzerland to Turkey, eastern Europe and Scandinavia, workers and many organisations have promised to rally around the single message: No to austerity.

In Britain, the Trades Union Congress has organised precisely nothing, however. A statement declared that its main action had taken place on October 20, when an estimated 150,000 people marched through London on a Saturday afternoon. New general secretary-designate Frances O’Grady will, however, address an evening rally outside the European Commission’s offices in London. That’ll frighten them!

Mounting anger forced the European Trades Union Confederation, representing 85 trades union organisations from 36 countries, with 60 million members to support the action. But the ETUC’s hope that the protest will encourage the European Commission, the European Central bank and the International Monetary Fund to get the economy “growing” instead of cutting deficits, were dashed even before the sun began to rise.

Yesterday, the Bank of Portugal slashed its growth forecast for 2013 from minus 1% to minus 1.6%, following an expected 3% contraction this year; and a new report from respected US forecaster the Conference Board foreshadowed a continued slowing of the world economy through to 2025.

Many eyes are watching events unfold in Europe and elsewhere with more than a little trepidation. Reuters news agency tried its hardest to play down the threat contained in the mounting anger, fulfilling its role in attempting to calm the volatility on the financial markets and encourage the global corporations.

In a piece hopefully headlined “European austerity protests far from revolution”, it claimed that things are looking good for investors: “While US carmaker Ford has announced plans to scrap 6,200 jobs in Europe to reflect tough auto sector and wider economic conditions, its decision to shift some output to low-cost Spain underlined that social tensions there were not a concern.”

This is a report from cloud-cuckoo land. In Spain, people are laying siege to banks that have repossessed over 300,000 homes in the last couple of years. The police union says it will back any members who refuse to help with evictions. Seizing the banks has become a practical notion in the eyes of many Spanish households.

Reuters noted that though “the sense of alarm has reached better-off youths in northern Europe, it is often tempered by a mood of resignation and inability to define a political alternative”. There is some truth in this observation.

Across the world, strikes, demonstrations and protests of all kinds – a massive action is planned in the United States next week against the anti-union corporation Walmart - are powerless to stop the accelerating contraction of the global capitalist economy. This – and not some misguided policies - is what is driving governments to cut spending and drive down conditions.

The struggles against austerity must not be allowed to founder in a futile effort to get governments to "change course". It is high time to begin the construction of a not-for-profit replacement, and we’ll be working with others on the blueprint – a new Agreement of the People - this Saturday.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Fear not, the TUC remains 'vigilant' as Osborne attacks rights

Chancellor George Osborne’s plan for workers to sell off their employment rights, making it easier and cheaper for bosses to sack people, might well have produced a tough reaction from a trade union leadership prepared to confront the despised ConDems.

The proposals are to be rushed through parliament to come into effect next April. Dressed up as a voluntary scheme, it is almost certain to be compulsory for new employees, however.

They will have to sign a contract that abandons hard-fought for rights on redundancy pay, unfair dismissal and maternity leave. In exchange for a few shares of dubious value, workers will also give up rights to training and flexible working.

At a stroke, these laws will create a modern form of bonded labour to satisfy some mad Tory dogma as well the deeply reactionary people who constitute the party conference delegates assembled in Birmingham.

With the TUC threatening all sorts of action some time next year over public sector pay, here was a golden opportunity to ratchet up the rhetoric at least. But over at Congress House, home of the Trades Union Congress, there was not so much fire in the belly as a

dose of post-lunch sleepiness.

Outgoing general secretary Brendan Barber restricted himself to “deploring” the plans, adding that “these complex proposals do not look as if they will have very much impact as few small businesses will want to tie themselves up in the tangle of red tape necessary to trigger these exemptions”. Amazing, Barber claimed that Osborne’s plans were “said for effect” but the TUC would be “vigilant” just in case they were the thin end of a “future anti-employee wedge”.

So that’s okay then. No need to get alarmed. Just a keep watch just in case the Tories turn really nasty! What world is Barber living in, you may ask? The Tories and the Lib Dem – who hate unions just as much as their Coalition partners – are whittling away rights at a rapid rate.

Only recently, business secretary Vince Cable – who, as we know exchanges frequent text messages with Ed Miliband – announced plans to restrict payouts for employees who win employment tribunal cases, as well as making it harder for them to make a claim in the first place.

Pension rights for millions of public sector workers have been eroded, without much resistance from union leaders with one or two notable exceptions such as Mark Serwotka of the civil servants PCS. Real wages have been cut by years of pay freezing. But don’t despair, the TUC remains “vigilant”!

Which makes you wonder about the thinking behind the TUC-organised October 20 March for a Future that Works. Taking place safely on a non-working day to avoid any kind of strike action, it is surely designed to let off steam while letting the ConDems off the hook.

As the economy continues to deteriorate, with public finances going from bad to worse according to the International Monetary Fund today, Osborne and the rest of the cabinet have their backs to the wall and are extremely vulnerable.

Neither the TUC nor Miliband’s Labour Party have any intention of rocking the political boat, however. They are prepared to wait it out to 2015 in the forlorn hope that a change of government will put things right. With Labour committed to spending cuts and attacks on welfare benefits, that’s not going to happen.

Yesterday, Osborne cynically used the phrase “workers of the world unite” when announcing his plan to scrap employment rights, while last week Miliband invoked the imperialist Tory Disraeli in a speech that over 50 times mentioned the phrase “One Nation”. With the parties virtually interchangeable, it tells you everything you wanted to know about British politics and forgot to ask.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Point of no return in Europe

Impasse. Tipping point. Crisis. Boiling point. Point of no return. Explosion. What words can convey the profundity of the present moment of transition?

The people of southern Europe in Portugal, Spain and Greece have reached the limits of their preparedness to tolerate more brutal assaults in the name of austerity.

But the leaders of the public and private sector unions who have called today’s general strike in Greece do not intend their collective action to bring down the three month-old coalition, let alone challenge the economic and social system. Quite the opposite. 

"We call on everyone to take part in the strike and resist the austerity measures that hurt Greek people and the economy," said Despoina Spanou of the ADEDY labour group.

With unemployment at a record high in Greece – hitting almost 24% at a national level and 55% among young people, the highest in Europe – the leaders want the action to emphasise how deficit-cutting measures at the expense of growth and development are creating an economic death spiral. As Stathis Anestis of the GSEE union group put it: “These policies have led Greece to an impasse and are totally counter-productive.”

The anger is intensified by the European Union, European Central Bank and the IMF who are pushing for further cuts in wages and pensions which have been drastically reduced in the five years since the crash. As well as proposing the introduction of a six-day working week, the Troika aim to cut the minimum wage by 22% and abolish collective labour agreements.

Union leaders, not just in Greece but throughout Europe, have no intention of going beyond resistance and protest actions. Their “alternatives” are based on the notion that present policies are “wrong” and that growth would be better.

But we are patently in a crisis of the capitalist system of global proportions, where contraction is driven by an inner momentum which governments of all persuasions are barely able to influence let alone halt. And the political crisis is growing too, especially in Spain where riot police fired rubber bullets to prevent crowds storming the parliament building yesterday.

In Catalonia, nationalists are turning the anger onto the federal government. Catalan President Artur Mas has called an early election for 25 November, a move towards secession that has stirred dark warnings from the military with echoes of the Spanish civil war.

The people of Portugal have also had enough of austerity, with one draconian package after another imposing longer working hours, 7% pay cuts, tax rises, and an erosion of pensions. Unemployment has reached 15.7% - with one in three young people jobless..

A week ago, more than half a million people marched in cities across the country in the biggest protests against the government since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. The peaceful marches were a milestone in a country where people are not known for a protest culture.

From left to right, from moderates to radicals, from young to old, from professional protesters to first-timers, it was an unmistakable warning shot for the government. Protests were scheduled even in wealthy Cascais, a coastal city near Lisbon famous for its upper-class demography.

In the shadows of the darkening clouds of the planetary emergency brought on by decades of debt-fuelled growth, the crisis engulfs, overwhelms and overpowers the increasingly desperate attempts by agencies and governments to build new defences as the old ones fail to deliver.

You can see that in Britain, where the deficit is rising and only the printing of vast amounts of money by the Bank of England is holding back economic collapse. Yet the TUC is restricting itself to a weekend demonstration and the threat of some scattered, one-off strikes over pay sometime next spring. It just won’t do.

Humanity stands at the threshold of an evolutionary leap in social organisation. Either we cross it, building a not-for profit economy and society based upon co-operation and collective stewardship of the world’s resources, or we will become capitalism's victims.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Iran targets trade unionists as defiance grows

On May Day, in Sanandaj, Kordestan Province, north-west Iran, scores of workers — men and women — gathered and chanted, “We are workers; we are hungry.” Security forces quickly arrived and dispersed the crowd. At least eight workers were arrested, their fate unknown.

While trade unionists around the world gathered and marched on the streets, in Iran workers were denied permits to hold rallies in public in cities across the country on May 1. In Tehran, workers had to gather in a gymnasium.

The pathological fear of the reactionary, authoritarian Iranian regime of independent trade unionism is nowhere more viciously demonstrated than in the treatment of Reza Shahabi, the treasurer of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company.

He has been detained in Evin Prison in Tehran, since June 2010 and given a six-year jail sentence on vague charges. He is in poor health after numerous hunger strikes and it is doubtful whether he is receiving all necessary medical treatment.

Reza Shahabi has also been fined 70 million rial ($5,700) and banned from all trade union activities for five years. According to his lawyer, the prosecution is seeking to bring a fresh charge of “enmity against God” for alleged contact with the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a banned opposition group.

The Tehran bus union was banned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Workers resumed the union's activities in 2004, although it is not legally recognised. In December 2005, police arrested 12 of the union’s leaders at their homes. Other members were arrested on 25 December 2005 after they went on strike to call for the release of their colleagues. Hundreds more were arrested during a further strike.

The deputy head of the union, Ebrahim Madadi, was released from Evin Prison only last month after completing a three-and-a-half-year sentence for his alleged activities “against national security”.

Amnesty International believes that Reza Shahabi has been convicted solely for his peaceful trade union work, and has adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. The Trades Union Congress in Britain is backing an international campaign for his release.

Other trade unionists have been arrested or harassed recently in Iran. On or about 24 April 2012, trade unionist Zabihollah Bagheri was arrested on his way out of the Moharakeh Steel Plant in Esfahan, central Iran, by three plain-clothed officials. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Members of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company (HTSCC) union, which is also not recognised by the government, have come under attack. Rasoul Bodaghi, a member of the Tehran Teachers’ Trade Association, arrested in September 2009, is serving six years in prison for “spreading propaganda against the system” and “gathering and colluding against national security”.  

The background to the repression is a deteriorating economy. Sanctions have taken their toll but the moves to end subsidies on fuel and food that began last year have led to soaring inflation and mounting anger on the streets.

Earlier this month, an Iranian parliamentary committee rejected the second phase of the subsidy “reform” programme which requires massive cuts in public spending (sounds familiar).

Prices have spiralled since the subsidies were first reduced, causing serious financial problems for millions of people across the country. The price of petrol has risen three-fold and the cost of gas has soared by 500%. The value of Iran’s currency, the rial, has declined steeply, the employment rate is about 15% and inflation is running at nearly 20%, with food price inflation exceeding 50%.  

Activists inside Iran believe a long, hot summer of resistance is on the cards as resistance mounts across the country.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Women hit hardest by the crisis

The lives of women in Britain are being devastated by rising unemployment, rising prices and the coalition's spending cuts.

Unemployment now stands at 2.67m and of this total 1.1m are women, the highest number for 23 years. Job losses are rising twice as fast for women as for men.

The TUC estimates that 80% of the 700,000 job losses planned in the public sector will be women. In local government 1 in 10 jobs are to be cut and 75% of local government employees are women.

Of course, the official unemployment figures disguise the real picture. Using the American measure of unemployment - which includes unemployed, discouraged, marginally attached and under-employed workers - would mean unemployment in the UK standing at 6.3 million.

An analysis by the TUC also shows that under-employment - people doing temporary or part-time jobs because they can't find permanent or full-time work - has risen to a record 1.9 million.

Last year the UK's major stores were closing shops at a rate of 20 a day, cutting one of the main private sector employment opportunities for women. Women are more likely to work several part-time jobs, and losing one of them leaves them facing debt and poverty.

It is estimated that 73% of the money raised by the Treasury by cutting or freezing tax credits and changing tax rules will be taken out of women's incomes. The cruel cuts in disability benefits contained in the Welfare Reform Bill, will hit women disproportionately in their role as carers. Many disabled women rely on Disabled Living Allowance to be able to go on looking after their families.

A growing number of women approaching debt charities for help have taken out payday loans to cover household bills, and then been unable to pay them back. These high interest loan companies target women with their ads on TV and in magazines.

Around 1.8 million households (almost 9% of the total) spend more than 25% of their income on unsecured debt repayments and an estimated 1.6 million (7.9%) spend more than half of their income on debt secured on their home - i.e. mortgages and bank loans.
More than 50,000 women declared themselves bankrupt in 2011 and 63,000 in 2010.

Over 100,000 UK families relied on food parcels last year, and you only need to look at what is happening in Greece to know that the worst is yet to come. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) projects that the poorest UK households will see a 3.5% slump in their incomes in 2012/13 and even steeper falls of a further 6.3% in 2013/14.

Equality for women is just another of the myths we are fed from birth. When society as a whole is based on generating profit and driven by the market, their unprofitable role as carers of children, the sick and the elderly is always undervalued.

Women have most to lose from the slump and most to gain from a democratic transformation to a society driven by co-operation and care for each other. Taking inspiration from the women of Egypt and Tunisia as their example, women in Britain can take the lead in bringing about fundamental change.

They are already in the forefront of the struggle against cuts and job losses. Without women members, the British trade union movement would no longer exist. They took strike action in their hundreds of thousands last year in defence of pensions, a fight their leaders have now abandoned.

By forming democratic People's Assemblies in every area, we can unite communities in actions that will lead to the creation of a political and economic democracy where women can finally become truly equal.

Penny Cole

Make 2012 a year to settle accounts

The year ends as it began, with great social movements of people who have taken to the streets because other means of democratic expression are either cut off, denied or wilfully ignored.

It coincides with a world economy teetering on the edge of a depression, overwhelmed by the very debt that it generated to lead an unsustainable, self-destructive expansion.

Italy, now run by an unelected government headed by a Goldman Sachs advisor, yesterday had to pay almost 7% to refinance a small portion of its huge debt. Europe’s banks only function because they have access to cheap money from the central bank. Everyone knows it can’t continue.

In the last few weeks, huge numbers have defied the authorities in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Russia; many have paid with their lives at the hands of authoritarian regimes that deny basic freedoms.

Across the United States, the occupy movement that began on Wall Street has sustained a stubborn foothold despite state repression and exposed the Obama presidency. In Britain, the biggest strike for 30 years was backed by the resilient and imaginative St Paul’s occupation.

No one can dispute that despite the different forms and apparent aims of people in different countries from Bahrain, Libya to Israel, this is a truly global phenomenon that signifies a new period of world history.

On October 15, various actions against the system were held simultaneously in almost 100 countries, initiated by the Democracy Now! movement in Spain. It was an event unique in human history that we must build on in the coming year.

New generations have driven the movement on, giving the lie to those who stupidly claim that modern capitalism has created hopeless individualism and despair in place of social solidarity.

People have rediscovered and enhanced their individuality in social movements that have emphasised inclusiveness, transparency, democracy and collective decision-making. Social media designed to reinforce corporate culture has become a key tool for mobilising against the self same system.

The movement will ebb and flow and new forms of struggle will emerge to enhance the occupation movement simply because the multi-sided crisis of the present social system is not going away any time soon.

In Britain, over a million young people are out of work, while more toil for a pittance or nothing at all. Prisons are full to bursting, partly as a result of the state’s revenge on summer rioters who were led to believe they were “worth it”.

The ConDem government’s cuts are magnifying the recession. Panic in ruling circles is mounting about the impact of a eurozone collapse. Yet the Tory-led regime rides high in polls, buoyed by the fact that Labour and most trade union leaders offer no alternative let alone leadership.

Although millions participated in the March demonstration against spending cuts and the November 30 strikes, TUC leaders are busily trying to end the fight over pensions. They are signing up to deals that mean paying more, working longer and getting less on retirement.

If 2011 witnessed a great social awakening around the world, while ruling political and business elites were befuddled by the global economic and financial crisis, we should make 2012 a year when historical accounts are settled in our favour.

Some argue, however, that A) a coherent strategy is unnecessary, B) that the system will give way under mass pressure, or that C) a package of reforms can rescue capitalism from itself. A and B ignore the realities of how power is wielded through the state while C disregards the system’s inherent contradictions.

Recent breakthroughs in physics about the smallest particles, the speed of light and dark matter show that humans have capacity to discover and learn about themselves and the world.

The point in 2012 is to change it by creating movements in the spirit of scientists, by working collaboratively to find solutions, developing forms of co-leadership that avoid hierarchy yet do not stifle bold decisions or strategy planning.

More 18-year-olds in Britain are on Facebook than are registered to vote. This does not mean we should turn away from politics because of the politicians - that gives the status quo a free hand. We have to make a politics of our own.

A World to Win campaigned throughout 2011 for a strategy based on People’s Assemblies. These could deconstruct the capitalist state and create the framework for a sustainable not-for-profit economy and financial system based on co-ownership and control.

We took the idea into student occupations, strike movements and the occupations at St Paul’s, Glasgow, Newcastle and other cities. We are looking to our members, supporters and friends to develop this strategy and make it happen in 2012.

A World to Win editors

Fight the great pensions betrayal

Only a rank-and-file revolt in defence of their pension rights stands between leaders of most public sector trade unions and what will surely rank near the top of a long list of betrayals.

With the honourable except of Mark Serwotka, leader of the PCS civil servants’ union, virtually every other official – leader is definitely the wrong term in this context – signalled in one way or another the end of the short-lived campaign over pensions.

They almost fell over themselves to meet a pre-Christmas deadline set by the ConDem coalition to reach a negotiated settlement covering more than two million local government workers, NHS staff, teachers, lecturers and civil servants.

Whatever agreement is reached, it will inevitably cut further into the living standards of public sector workers who are already the victims of a government-imposed pay freeze (which union officials, with their own fat pensions preserved in aspic, have meekly accepted).

On the eve of the talks, the government announced that it would unilaterally impose higher pension contributions on teachers and civil servants. Most civil servants and teachers will pay an extra 0.6-2.4% from April. Did the teaching unions walk away in the face of such a provocation? Not at all.

The only outright opposition yesterday came from the PCS which said it had rejected “the government’s latest attempt to force public servants to pay more and work longer for less in retirement”. It was promptly excluded from further talks.

And so the apparent unity of the 29 unions who staged a one-day strike of at least 1.5 million workers less than a month ago was fragmented at a stroke. The government’s strategy of divide and rule proved more successful than this feeble coalition could ever have imagined.

At a meeting at the Trades Union Congress headquarters, general secretary Brendan Barber, who has been in secret talks with the government throughout, stressed that further industrial action was off the table and negotiations would resume in the new year.

“We have reached a stage where the emphasis in most cases is in giving active consideration to the new proposals that have emerged rather than considering the prospect of further industrial action.” The proposals include the abandonment of the final salary basis for pensions in favour of career average salaries.

To seek a negotiated settlement after giving it everything you’ve got is honourable; to run up the white flag with a hardly a short fired is nothing short of cowardice in the face of an enemy that is waging open class warfare.

For all the fiery talk of general secretary Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, it was predictably hot air. The union’s head of health, Christina McAnea, admitted that “we always knew this would be a damage limitation exercise aimed at reducing the worst impacts of the government's pension changes."

The TUC and union bureaucrats have implicitly accepted the principal reason for the attack on pensions – the government’s budget deficit that is the result of a recession precipitated by capitalism’s financial meltdown.

Public sector workers are, in effect, being told to pay for the crisis through higher contributions and worse pensions. Behind the scenes, the leadership of the Labour Party has worked might and main to get unions to abandon further strikes and do a deal with a government.

The last thing Ed Miliband wanted was a long-running strike campaign that could have fatally wounded a weak and divided coalition whose policies his party barely opposes (except to demand a harder line on crime).

PCS general secretary Serwotka, urged unions to fight the changes: "We should call further industrial action in the new year because this is so unfair, we have got to stand up against it... Our message really is that those unions will have to be accountable to their members for what they do."

A campaign to reject the sell-out over pensions (and the wage freeze) has to mobilise rank-and-file anger in ways that are linked to the removal from their posts of all those involved in this shoddy surrender. In some ways, it’s a last chance to save the trade union movement from total disaster.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Pension strikers should go beyond resistance

Whatever the Murdoch press may say ("Union leaders are off their heads" – The Sun) it is pressure from members, rather than the not-so-steely resolve of union bosses, that forced the TUC to act over pensions.

Finally, they had to do something to express the anger of public sector workers whose living standards have been cut to the bone and who have seen jobs cut by 110,000 in less than a year, with more to come.

Workers from 14 unions – including local government workers, nurses, care workers, civil servants, teachers, prison officers and firefighters – are planning co-ordinated action on pensions in the biggest joint union mobilisation since the "winter of discontent" in 1978/79.

Actions will range from a one-day strike on November 30, involving around 3 million people, to lunchtime meetings, rallies and joint events with community groups, service users and private sector workers.

Throughout New Labour, the major unions convinced members to accept sub-inflation pay rises, making many reliant on tax credits – which have now been cut. They stood by while services were contracted out, and both the public and private sectors cut pensions for new entrants.

Even now, union bosses pray the Coalition government will save them from acting. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "Hopefully the government will see the anger and perhaps take a step back, be a little bit more flexible and less intransigent."

He wishes! But there IS no flexibility and the government is ENTIRELY intransigent. The attack on pensions is driven by the economic and financial crisis. Without cutting pensions the Coalition can't eliminate the deficit.

And as this bankers' government knows, the market will punish any country going soft on cuts. Nick Clegg explained: "Markets have stopped believing that all European governments can service their debts. We simply cannot afford to let that happen to us too."

As the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, Patrick Roach, said: "The attack on pensions is only one element of the assault on ordinary working people, on the public sector and on the welfare state. Be in no doubt – we are in the midst of a perfect storm. A perfect storm of assaults on pay, on jobs, on rights at work, as well as on pensions."

But the lesson from the perfect storms in Greece, Ireland and Italy is that one-day strikes do not force governments caught in the gravest global crisis in capitalism’s history to change course. The big question is what follows?

Why wait for negotiations which are a total fraud? Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, announced the detail of the pension cuts back in June and nothing has changed since then.

If ever there was a time to defy the anti-union laws, it is now. Ballots are costly, time-consuming, open to endless legal challenges and give the government and their pet media in the BBC and newspapers, the initiative.

Better to just call members out now and save the cash for strike pay. All the unions, including those like the rail union RMT who are not directly involved, should call an indefinite strike to bring down the Coalition.

RMT leader Bob Crow told the TUC Congress that forms of civil disobedience beyond strikes would be necessary, uniting unions with others fighting to defend jobs and services. This is good but cannot be more protest.

At the end of the day, we need to find a way to go BEYOND resistance to a political solution. Otherwise what are we fighting for? To put a Milliband-led Labour, pro-capitalist government in office? No thank you!

This solution can be developed in the course of building People's Assemblies in every community, where union members unite with others – especially those in the private sector – not only to co-ordinate support for strikes and other actions, but also start building an alternative democracy.

Rejecting a state committed to the power of banks and corporations, they can plan a transfer of economic and political power into the hands of the people. Looked at in this way, November 30 can be a springboard to a real social transformation.

Penny Cole

Miliband takes union cash - and does a runner

In the summer of 2010, some union leaders met together and decided that they could buy their way to happiness by backing Ed Miliband’s campaign to become the new leader of the Labour Party.

With the help of the three major union bureaucracies of the GMB, Unite and Unison, Miliband squeaked home ahead of his brother David, who enjoyed most of the support from constituency parties.

Money down the drain, throwing good money after bad, a bad investment, a gamble that went wrong. All these phrases describe what has happened since. Miliband, to no-one’s surprise except that of the union leaders’, has become little more than Blair Mark II.

In fact, Miliband’s speech speech to the Trades Union Congress today was uncannily Blair-like in its content. “You know the new economy that emerges from this crisis must be built on foundations of co-operation, not conflict, in the workplace,” he said.

Co-operation? Trade unionists are being sacked in their thousands and/or losing hard-won rights and working conditions. Many are victims of cuts imposed by Labour-led local authorities.

If delegates were expecting some support for their upcoming struggles, they were soon disabused. Miliband acknowledged that Labour backed public spending cuts in the order of 12% (rather than the Tories’ 20%), defended opted-out academy schools and the Coalition’s new free schools.

And, naturally, Miliband repeated his assertion that strikes by civil servants and teachers in June against government attacks on their pensions were wrong and indicated he would take the same position in the event of more industrial action

Some delegates heckled during Miliband’s speech and Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB, struggled to find words of comfort for his hard-pressed members. In one of this week’s more vacuous statements, Kenny said:

"As Labour Leader he is not embarrassed by his association with trade unions and trade unionists. His engagement with trade unionists on the ground will bring to the fore what needs to be done to get the economy moving and to bring fairness to our communities."

Thank you and good night is all you say after reading that!

Even Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, appeared to pull his punches, saying afterwards that "Ed Miliband needs to decide just whose side he is on” and warning the Labour leader that he was on “political suicide mission”.

The stark truth is that Miliband knows which side he is on – and it isn’t that of trade unionists and workers in struggle. Labour became a full partner of globalised capitalism back in the 1990s and stands by that position.

For the Milibands of this world, there is no alternative to rescuing the broken market economy to create the “prosperous capitalism” that the Labour leader called for in a speech earlier this year.

Were Labour in power now, you would hardly notice the difference between their policies and those of the ConDem government. In fact, many of the Coalition’s policies are a development of what New Labour did to the NHS and the welfare state.

Labour is happy taking the money from the trade unions to finance the party - and then doing a runner with it. Union leaders from Unite, Unison and GMB know this. But they are in denial mode.

Their members don’t have that luxury, however. Their jobs and pensions are on the line and they are waiting to see if, behind all the militant speeches, their leaders are actually prepared to do battle with the government.

Not having Miliband on their side is excellent news for the rank and file. The fact is that the alternative to the Coalition is not Labour (or any other combination of parliamentary parties). What is demanded is a democratic political system that responds to people’s needs. Achieving that goal will require independence of thought and action.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Coalition wants 'National Wealth Service' not NHS

The story of 12-year-old Chloe McGarry in Harwich, East Anglia shows the harsh realities that many face when they seek health care.

Chloe spent five hours in agony with inflamed gums while her mother Heidi desperately searched for an NHS dentist after finding her usual clinic closed.

Heidi was told by NHS Direct to drive 32 miles to Ipswich or to be seen at another surgery in Manningtree, which is 13 miles from their home.

Such tales of woe will be shared by countless others over the coming months as the Coalition government’s health cuts begin to bite. So, as we join many others today in celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the National Health Service it’s clear that its future is at stake.

The health service unions and the Trades Union Congress are warning of “the potential dismantling of the NHS in the form of Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill”.

The TUC has uncovered well over 50,000 job cuts, the figures only prised out by using Freedom of Information laws. And, the undermining and destruction of the principle of free health care is also being exposed by the independent Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It shows that popular walk-in care centres around the country are already being closed or their hours and services being reduced

Then there is the scandal of the £2.5bn cost to the NHS over five years of the GP surgeries. An investigation has shown that the amount by which the taxpayer is subsidising some GP surgeries’ rentals has risen to £630m per year (an increase of more than 70%) since 2004.

At present doctors are paid rent by the NHS for a surgery, but also keep the profits from any sale of the surgery. At least half of the board members of some GP consortia who commission health care have links with the private company Assura Medical, which is part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. (At present Primary Care Trusts spend around 80% of NHS funds, but in future the GP consortia will be responsible for 40%.)

The essence of the Coalition’s changes to the health service are described by the TUC as leading to an “unaccountable super-quango at the heart of NHS reforms”.

Writer Richard Blogger says: “The free market model that [Secretary of State for Health] Lansley had planned could more accurately be described as the government liberated from the NHS rather than the NHS liberated from the government. Lansley did not want (and still does not want) to run the NHS – he is the first Secretary of State for Health whose primary objective is to legislate away his job … The Secretary of State has been liberated from his duties.”

The proposed National Commissioning Board has aptly been renamed “National Wealth Service”. The GP consortia who will run it could benefit personally from the private companies working in the NHS.

Blogger notes, the thrust of the Coalition strategy for the NHS, in line with years of New Labour rule, “is stripping a huge amount of power from Parliament and handing it to an unaccountable quango . . .The Bill will specifically make it illegal for the Secretary of State – representing the elected government – from changing NHS policy.”

The NHS will truly lose any democratic scrutiny or control as a result of these changes. The TUC’s milk and water call for people to write to and lobby the House of Lords “to stop or alter” the Health and Social Care Bill disguises the real issues about the NHS and other services under attack. Democracy is being wound down and the global crisis of capitalism is driving massive cuts and changes disguised as “reforms”.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

How we can defend pensions

There is a common thread between the upcoming strikes in defence of public sector pensions in Britain and the slow-motion car crash that is Greek political economy. In both countries, the state is saying it can’t pay, won’t pay.

In Britain, pensionable age is rising to 66 and even higher thereafter. Against a background of people living longer and tax revenues in decline, we have to work longer, perhaps until we drop. Public sector pension contributions are going to rise steeply, with retirement age being pushed back for most, treasury secretary Danny Alexander has announced.

In Greece, as state bankruptcy looms, pensions have already been slashed along with public sector salaries and just about anything else the “socialist” Pasok government can get its hands on. As a result, the government has lost its legitimacy and authority. Will the Greek generals step in as they have done before?

The state in both countries is the national voice of a global capitalist system in profound crisis. In Britain, the budget deficit produced by the banking crash and recession has spurred on the drive to cut spending on pensions, education, welfare and public sector jobs.

Deepening the problem is the fact that during the globalisation period, tax take from the corporations has declined as a share of national income (GDP). In 1985, tax on corporate incomes in the UK was about 4.75% of GDP; by the end of 2005 it had fallen to under 3.5%. The figure has fallen throughout the European Union since 2000.

The burden of funding state spending has therefore increasingly fallen on wage earners and consumers. As real wages have fallen in Britain, with increasing numbers working part-time, and people have reduced their spending, so receipts have come under further pressure.

The secret talks between Britain’s trade union leaders and the Coalition government over pension “reform” are meaningless in this situation. Either the union bureaucrats are going to fight or make a rotten deal with one of the weakest governments for a long time.

But what should be the aim of the resistance, which has driven teachers, lecturers and civil servants to a one-day strike on June 30? The state can’t compromise because there is no room for a deal. In the market capitalist state that Britain has become, the public sector is unsustainable.

It would take the creation of an entirely different set of social, economic and political conditions to reverse the attacks on pensions, services and jobs. Relying on corporations to pay more tax is unrealistic under globalisation and asking workers and consumers to share more of the burden – as the government is doing – is reactionary.

However, if the economy were socialised, owned and run not in the interests of shareholders and lenders but those determined by society as a whole, then a different basis for public spending could be established. Instead of taxation as a source of state revenue, we could use the surplus created by economic activity for social purposes.

Under capitalism, this surplus is used to fund massive bonuses and executive salaries, pay off lenders and keep dividends flowing. Tax avoidance is, of course, de rigueur. In a not-for-profit economy, the “dividend” would end up in the hands of a democratic state dedicated to providing for social need.

We should not accept, as some trade union leaders have already done, that they “understand” the pensions’ deficit and that action is required to deal with it. The fight is for a more developed society that enables people to retire young enough to enjoy their lives and fulfil personal development. As capitalism can’t and won’t do that, the battle for the alternative is on – both in Greece and Britain.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor