Back to main newsCOMMUNISTS SAY: FULL SUPPORT FOR STRIKING PUBLIC SERVICE WORKERS
Mon 18 Aug 2008
Author: COMMUNISTS SAY: FULL SUPPORT FOR STRIKING PUBLIC SERVICE WORKERS
We are witnessing the biggest onslaught on working-class living standards since the early days of the Thatcher regime nearly 30 years ago. Unemployment is rising faster than any time since the late 1970s.
The official figure stands just shy of one million, but the real figure is nearly double that. The drive to force the long-term sick and incapacitated off benefits and into low-paid work or destitution will increase the misery.
Pay is increasing by no more than 2.5 per cent a year in the public sector and no more than 3.5 per cent in the private sector.
Meanwhile, food prices are on average 14 per cent higher than this time last year, the biggest jump since 1980. Basic foodstuffs have all shot up in price by between one-third and a half. Petrol is up by a quarter. Domestic gas prices have gone up by one-third so far this year and electricity by one-quarter. That's 10 times more than any increase in wages, pensions and benefits.
The real annual rate of inflation for many people in Britain is at least 30 per cent. Those who flourish under new Labour are not the public sector workers who provide the vital services we all depend on and who are being forced to withdraw their labour today.
New Labour's have allowed manufacturing industry to decline as Britain has become overdependent on the financial sector.
We Need a Left Wing Programme
The reality is that New Labour primarily represents the interests of big business. This government has orchestrated an Indian summer for the spivs, swindlers and speculators.
Whether in the City, oil, gas, electricity, water or supermarket retailing, the transnational corporations have been encouraged to make monopoly super-profits. New Labour's policies have allowed manufacturing industry to decline as Britain has become over-dependent on the financial sector.
The Communist Party calls for a left-wing programme can resolve this crisis in the interests of the working class.
Price controls need to be imposed on household fuel, petrol and basic foodstuffs.
A windfall tax on the energy and retail monopoly profits would boost public investment.
Take gas, electricity and railways out of the hands of profiteers.
We need unions to lead a big wages offensive for increases which meet the real rate of inflation. But the union leaders are not leading that fight. Pressure from below, from shop stewards and trade union activists, must be piled on these leaders to force them to use the potential power of the organised working class to win these pay rises.
The workers on strike today are not the causes of inflation but the victims of it. Capitalism remains a system of insecurity, periodic crisis, mass unemployment and war based on exploitation, oppression and inequality. But there is an alternative.
BUILD THE FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM
BUILD THE MARXIST PARTY OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT. JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTY
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