Cameron’s EU Deal... What’s So Special?

Well, BBC Breakfast this morning has wall to wall coverage of the UK’s Special Status in the EU. Cameron has triumphantly marched back from Brussels telling us he has secured a deal that lets us stay in, while there is speculation about what Boris Johnston will say.... Don’t all yawn together.

But it is difficult to contain excitement about this deal.

Wording changes about European integration and further cuts to benefits for “migrants” are difficult to get excited about. Let’s look at what the renegotiation doesn’t say:-

• Nothing about job creation across the EU where youth unemployment in particular is at worrying levels
• Nothing about workplace democracy and collective bargaining
• Nothing about modernising labour laws to cover zero hours contracts
• Nothing about challenging corporate tax evasion (but more protection for the City of London)
• Nothing about the Robin Hood tax on financial transactions
• Nothing about the protection of quality public services in Europe, while privatisation continues running amok

So the EU remains exactly the same as far as its workers are concerned.The same EU that has dictatorially imposed austerity across Greece, Spain, Portugal, drastically cutting living standards, watching as unemployment rises and wages fall, cutting pensions, slashing public services, privatising public assets at knock down prices for private profiteers. But of course protecting the banks.

Maybe as workers the question has to be, what is in the EU for us?

4 October National March & Rally - programme confirmed

#4Oct British trade unions are facing a full frontal attack. Government spending on public services and the welfare state is being rolled back decades. It has never been more important for trade unionists to protest. The TUC has published details of the upcoming demonstration at the Tory Party conference in Manchester on Sunday 4 October:
https://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/no-austerity-yes-workers-rights-national-demonstration-conservative-party-conference

Click here or on the graphic for leaflets and posters to download and print.

Scotland after socialism?

Beneath the EU’s affront to democracy in Greece there is still the debate about whether Syriza reflects a shift to the left or whether it is just a singular reaction to a single issue which unites elements of left, right, middle and non-aligned. There is a mirror of this in Scotland as the debate around austerity always seems to end up as a debate about the constitution or national identity, as opposed to politics.
    The contradictions couldn't be more obvious. The words say: 'fight austerity, stop privatisation' and the actions bring privatisation upon privatisation and decimation of local government. Many are willing to excuse that as the result of failing to 'grasp independence' or because 'Labour did it before'. More worrying are those who actually support the service cuts, privatisations, tax freezes and business tax cuts as legitimate while still trumpeting an anti-austerity front.
   It makes for a difficult job for trade unions challenging these issues. Elements - sadly sometimes on the left - continue to try to characterise trade unions as part of the problem (the 'old order' or 'red tories') rather than the only realistic resistance we have to a mainstream political consensus that backs at least some level of austerity.
    In light of this, our attention was recently brought to a three paragraph blog from writer Ken Mcleod  which deserves wider distribution and will no doubt provoke some controversy but hopefully an interesting debate:

Greece votes for democracy

Yesterday’s referendum in Greece on the terms of the bailout offered by the European Union offered a decisive answer to those seeking to continue with the route to austerity. By a margin of 62% to 38%, the Greek people voted no, on any terms a decisive result.

Most commentators had prophesied that the referendum would reveal a deep split in Greek society between those voting for continued affiliation to the EU and those rejecting the terms imposed by the IMF and the EU. This split did not materialise.

All roads lead to Manchester on 4 October

Building on last Saturday's larger than expected anti austerity protests in Glasgow, London and other cities, the TUC is calling a national demonstration in Manchester on Sunday 4 October to coincide with the Tory Party conference. Over 50,000 attended a similar demonstration in 2013.
    TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: “This October’s march and rally will allow thousands of ordinary people to show the government exactly what they think of their policies. The Conservatives’ planned attack on trade unions and extreme cuts are an assault on working people at a time when they should be focused on securing the UK’s fragile recovery and creating better jobs to boost productivity.”
https://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/regions/tuc-organise-national-demonstration-during-conservative-party-conference

Europe - the dog that didn't bark at #uNDC15‏

As the clock ticked down on a bail out deal between the Greek Government and the Troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF – UNISON conference was debating emergency composite motion 2 on ‘UNISON’s political campaign after the General Election.’

However this omnibus composite (agreed between the NEC and 5 branches) was silent on Britain’s relationship with the EU - an issue which is central to the political agenda of the Tory Government and attracting growing concern in some parts of the British trade union movement (see below).

People’s Assembly Scotland: Greens top pledge against austerity followed by Labour then SNP

#GE2015 Most of Scotland’s election candidates who responded to the People’s Assembly Scotland’s petition against austerity have also signed up to it, pledging “to commit themselves to oppose all Austerity Cuts.”
   Top pledgers were the Greens (14), next came Labour (11) and surprisingly in third place was the SNP with only 9 of its 22 responders agreeing to sign up to oppose all austerity cuts while the others issued a statement which included “We believe we can manage the deficit down, but without destroying the social fabric that holds us together.”
   Phil McGarry, Chair of the People’s Assembly Scotland, said: “With austerity right at the front of so many parties’ election campaign, we are surprised more candidates didn’t take the chance to publicly confirm their opposition to austerity. Given the public campaigning, we are even more surprised at how few SNP candidates were willing to actually pledge to oppose all austerity.”

Surrendering to neo-liberal ‘fiscal discipline’

Keith Ewing suggests that Scottish independence may come sooner than the high-speed rail link, partly because of ‘Labour’s extraordinary proposal to give quasi-constitutional status to Austerity.’ Unfortunately, Labour is not alone in this as the SNP manifesto betrays. (UK Constitutional Law Association)

He is right that the proposed ‘Budget Responsibility Lock’ – at least without a miraculous and spontaneous economic recovery – would effectively make some level of austerity legally compulsory, if it could be made to work at all.

Public services - more austerity carnage ahead

#Budget2015 The cuts to public services projected in yesterday's Budget speech by Tory Chancellor George Osborne are unprecedented and a timely TUC analysis confirms that 'departmental spending is set to fall by 5.4 per cent in 2016-17 and 5.1 per cent in 2017-18. That’s a rate of spending cuts that is 2.4 percentage points more severe than in any year of austerity to date. Even in 2011-12, when service cuts were at their most significant, spending fell by 3 per cent of GDP.
   The cuts the Chancellor has planned for 2016/17 and 2017/28 are 80% greater than those we have seen before.' Rather than embrace austerity-continuity in 2015/16 and austerity-lite thereafter, Labour must offer a clear alternative to the destruction of public services. And all UNISON branches must get behind the union's strategy of encouraging members to vote out the current Government on May 7:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2015/03/the-worst-public-spending-cuts-are-still-to-come/

Prof Prem Sikka on 'How to Defeat Austerity?' Video now online

'There was absolutely no need for anything to do with austerity. It is really a political project which has been carried out in the UK for the last 30 or 40 years. It has eroded the purchasing power in the hands of ordinary people... it has resulted in concentration of wealth.. there has been an organised humiliation of normal people.' says Prem Sikka, Professor of Accountancy at Essex University, in a video from a recent Morning Star conference in Glasgow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAtj3ZsFRM

Northern Ireland says NO to Austerity

#M13 Over 50,000 public service workers, including UNISON members, across Northern Ireland took 24 hour all out strike action against austerity cuts yesterday. Education, health, transport and council services were brought to a halt in response to the cross-party Stormont House agreement which will cut 20,000 public sector jobs over the next 4 years. A well supported march and lunchtime rally was held in Belfast and 10 other towns.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-31858483

Union women can defeat the Con Dems

#unwc15 UNISON NEC member Jane Carolan writes in the Morning Star on the potential influence of the union's women members on the outcome of the upcoming General Election: 'The country can afford the services that UNISON members provide - services that save, protect and enrich lives - if we stop wasting money on costly privatisations and pointless reorganisations and make the banks, big corporations and the super-rich pay a fairer share in tax.

Cuts to funding are becoming critical, to the point that local authorities could be on the verge of collapse - yet if the Tories continue in power there’s more to come. Our alternative, the UNISON manifesto Securing the Future of Public Services, is available on our website.

We each have a contribution to make. Do not assume that neighbours and workmates vote. Do not assume that they are aware of the alternatives. We need a million female members speaking up for public services because they care about the services they deliver and the services that they use.

One million women demanding an alternative can make a difference. One million women demanding change equals hope'
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-978c-One-million-women-make-a-difference#.VN2atVZFDIU

The lesson from Greece - austerity must end

Yesterday, the Observer presaged the outcome of the Greek general election - a victory for the anti-austerity Syriza coalition - with an emphatic statement that 'the lesson of the Greek national polls is that austerity must end' Nobody would have expected David Cameron to heed that advice and his statement last night that 'the Greek election will increase uncertainty across Europe. That's why the UK must stick to our plan, delivering security at home' is consistent with his callous disregard of the impact of austerity on local jobs and services. But will Labour listen?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/observer-view-on-greek-elections

A Tale of Two New Year Messages

A comparison of the New Year messages issued by the CBI and the TUC reveals a far more assertive and upbeat mood from the employers organisation. The CBI Director General John Cridland sets his stall out for a hard line on deficit reduction (aka cutting public spending), for business friendly restructuring of the education system, EU reform (aka deregulation, notably singling out the Working Time Directive).
   Ever hungry for new markets for his profit seeking affiliates, Cridland promotes the EU/US trade deal TTIP and calls for a radical ‘structural reform’ of public services including integration of health and social care.
   TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady focuses on the unrelenting decline in real earnings in the UK (a reduction of £487 in 2014 alone and £2,509 since 2010) and challenges employers and politicians to ‘make wage-led growth a policy priority’. While the TUC leader is right to raise the alarm about the Tory threat to the right to strike it is unclear what evidence exists (given the austerity consensus) to support her sweeping statement that the ‘Autumn Statement opened up a huge choice in British politics between radical cuts and pay freezes versus investment for the future and a strategy for decent jobs, homes and living standards’.

Phoney Deficit Mania

Since the publication of the Con Dem Autumn Statement a new reverse paradigm has been introduced into the economic debate in Britain - cutting the deficit versus borrowing. Self serving Tory assumptions about the need for permanent austerity rule the roost. The deficit must be solved, taxation on big business and the wealthy must be minimised, public services outsourcing should be extended to everything but core functions and, of course, public sector pay should continue to be held down despite 6 years of wage stagnation.

Seumas Milne, writing in today's Guardian, challenges this new orthodoxy using the ample evidence of failed austerity policies since 2010: 'where Cameron, Osborne and their friends have succeeded, of course, is in convincing large numbers of people that Labour spending was somehow responsible for the crisis – which it wasn’t – and in turning the budget deficit into the central issue of economic policy – which it isn’t. In reality, the deficit was below 3% when the crisis was triggered by a financial crash – and up to that point public spending under New Labour, at 38.7% of national income, was lower than under every other government since the 1950s. And the budget deficit is only a reflection of the real problems in the economy and cannot be controlled by the government, as Osborne has demonstrated so comprehensively'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/17/deficit-mania-political-fraud-osborne-economic-nonsense

A welfare state for corporations not the people

An extensive article and research by Kevin Farnsworth on the Renewal website examines the extent to which UK public policy is skewed in favour of private companies – placing business tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and a weakening of employment rights etc in the context of a corporate welfare state. ‘Direct and indirect public provision that is aimed at private companies accounts for a significant share of state expenditure. During these times of austerity and public sector cuts, a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of corporate welfare is essential to weigh the direction, emphasis and trade-offs associated with corporate welfare’
http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-british-corporate-welfare-state/

Institute for Fiscal Shock Therapy

The past week's debate sparked by the 2014 Autumn Statement has confirmed the marginalisation of trade unions from British current affairs. Even in the recent past the trade union response to Government policy announcements on economics and public finances would be prominent in media coverage and commentary.
    These days hacks from unrepresentative lobby groups and 'think tanks' dominate the airwaves with none more ubiquitous than the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Long held to be of neo liberal bias and a consistent advocate for lower business taxes, the partisan views of this organisation have been used to reinforce the austerity paradigm - ramping up future cuts projections (ludicrously presenting the Tories as deficit deniers) rather than questioning the absence of measures to boost growth and public revenues including raising Corporation Tax on the profits of already cash rich businesses.
    Unless trade unions quickly raise our game and voice in the public debate then the new cross party orthodoxy on 'solving the deficit' (aka permanent austerity) will become irreversible.

Austerity - Just Say No!

‘Even if the government/OBR forecasts for the scale of the cuts prove to be unworkable they amount to a plan for permanent austerity, of ever deeper cuts. They are also a Tory trap for Labour, which has said it will also aim to balance the budget without challenging the framework that it is the investment strike and weak growth that causes the deficit’ warns the Socialist Economic Bulletin in its analysis of last week’s Con Dem Autumn Statement. A rare and welcome antidote to the ramping up of 'inevitable' austerity cuts which political commentators and parties have rammed down our throats in recent days:
http://socialisteconomicbulletin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/renewed-increased-austerity-will-only.html

Not too late to abandon austerity

'If Labour now repudiated austerity in favour of the far more effective way of cutting the deficit through public investment to expand the economy out of stagnation, generate real jobs, increase household incomes after a decade of steep decline, it would be a game changer at the election' writes Labour MP Michael Meacher.
http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2014/11/the-case-for-abandoning-austerity-is-a-no-brainer-mathematically-financially-and-politically/
    Trade unionists desperate to see the back of a Con Dem coalition which has slaughtered services and social security on the altar of austerity need to wake up to the economic prospectus being offered by Labour. 'Having rejected the option of extra borrowing, Labour will now need to meet all its promises through tax rises or spending cuts elsewhere. Austerity really is here to stay' wrote George Eaton in the New Statesman in response to this year's conference speech by Ed Balls in which he did a U-turn on borrowing to fund capital spending on housing, roads and other infrastructure projects.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/09/balls-binds-labour-austerity-promise-no-extra-borrowing
   Meacher is right about the abject failure of austerity economics and UNISON should support for his call for Labour to abandon austerity. It is not too late.

Brussels sprouts resistance to austerity

Over 100,000 workers protested against austerity in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday in a growing campaign that will include national strike action on 15 December by public and private sector workers. Union leader Marie-Helene Ska said: 'The government tells us and all of the parties tell us that there's no alternative. We don't contest that they have to find 11bn euros we've been saying for a long time that it's possible to find this money elsewhere, rather than in the pockets of the workers'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29944648