The Con-Dem Budget as a class project

What attitude should one take towards last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review by the UK government? That all depends on one’s point of view. Neo-liberals take a different view from that of Keynesian analysts. And it is a Marxist understanding, which uncovers the underlying class dynamics.

‘No ifs, no buts, no public sector cuts!’ – Trade union demonstration in Birmingham on 3 October 2010.

The coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is in the process of unveiling its budget cuts in order to address the national debt level resulting from the bailout of failing banks during the financial crisis. In practice, this means significant cuts in public sector spending of 25 per cent in each department affecting amongst others child benefit payments, school refurbishment programmes, services for people with disabilities, etc. Everybody should do his/her bit in order to get debt levels under control, it is argued. What sounds rather reasonable at first sight, however, masks three important facts.

‘No to austerity. Priority for jobs and growth!’ – Widespread resistance against public sector cuts in Europe.

Bankers caused the financial market crisis through their mistakes, but it is now the people, who are asked to pay for it. While many banks are back on profitable routes (see, for example, The Telegraph, 6 August 2010), citizens across Europe are expected to pay for the bailouts of banks, be it in the form of unemployment, be it in the form of wage cuts, be it in the form of cut-backs in public services. It is now that governments across Europe cut back on public services including health, education and other social services for disadvantaged groups in society. As Will Hutton wrote in the Guardian on 26 September in relation to the forthcoming budget of the British government, ‘while the country is now exhorted to tighten its belt and pay off its debts, those who created the crisis — the country’s CEOs and bankers, still living on Planet Extravagance, not to mention mainstream politicians — all want to get back to "business as usual": the world of 1997 to 2007’ (Guardian, 26 September 2010).

But workers are not only victims.

Emerging resistance against budget cuts and the problems with New Labour

On Wednesday, 22 September at 7.30 pm a public meeting took place in Nottingham/UK to discuss and organise resistance against cuts in the public sector at the local level. The meeting was addressed by representatives from the local Trades Union Council, the Communication Workers’ Union, the National Union of Teachers, UNISON as well as a whole range of local campaigns against Mental Health cuts, Learning Disability cuts and School Building cuts amongst others.

Globalisation and Trade Unions: different challenges and a variety of responses.

Globalisation has put national labour movements under severe pressure due to the increasing transnationalisation of production and informalisation of the economy. In a new edited collection, labour academics, trade union researchers and social movement activists analyse concrete instances of successful as well as failed strategies to draw out possibilities of, but also obstacles to, transnational labour solidarity in times of global restructuring.

Bieler, Andreas and Ingemar Lindberg (eds.) (2010) Global Restructuring, Labour and the Challenges for Transnational Solidarity. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-58083-0. 

Finnish trade unions in changing times – Part II: an attack on trade union rights?

Some of the trade union representatives, interviewed in the period of 8 April to 12 May 2010, and here in particular representatives from trade unions organising the workforce in the public and private service sectors, raised the concern that a returned centre-right government around the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party as the result of general elections in 2011 could lead to a more direct attack on trade unions and labour rights in Finland.

What future for the right to strike in the UK?

Yet again a planned strike was deemed illegal by a High Court judge in the UK. On Monday 17 May, Mr Justice McCombe ruled that Unite, the trade union which organises British Airways (BA) cabin crew, had failed to tell its 12,000 members about the 11 spoilt ballot papers in the last strike vote. This is a clear minor technicality, which in no way affected the overall outcome of the ballot. BA had made a new offer, which was overwhelmingly rejected by trade union members at the beginning of May. In a turnout of 71 per cent, the majority against the proposals was 81 per cent.