Employment | ukwatch.net

This way happiness lies

Ellie Keen — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:50:23 +0000

Instead of worshipping the invisible, and usually remote, hand of the market economy (which too often can be caught picking the pockets of the poor), you design an economic system in which resources flow and circulate effectively to serve the invisible heart of the core economy – made up of family, neighbourhood, community and civil society.

One unintended consequence of the current global financial crisis is that it will reveal what some have known for a long time, namely that a new economics is already emerging. The tragedy is that the crisis-ridden financial system has long since failed to do the basic job required – underpin the productive economy and the fundamental operating systems upon which we all depend. These have been variously neglected, taken for granted or cannibalised by finance. They include the core economy of family, neighbourhood, community and society, and the natural economy of the biosphere, our oceans forests and fields.

That is why, as we aim for recovery, we should not be trying to get back to how things were before. Before was built on an illusion of limitless credit and unlimited natural resources. It was unsustainable for many reasons. Injecting liquidity into the system and looking for signs of recovery in the return of consumer binge-spending on the high street will simply lay the foundations for an even bigger crash in the future. Consumerism is highly addictive, giving a brief high that quickly wears off and is damaging to both the individual and the world around them.

For a society like Britain, there is a large and growing literature that shows, fairly conclusively, we have been looking in the wrong place to find greater life satisfaction and measure the economy’s success. With most people having most of their basic material needs met, organising society to achieve progress through indiscriminately rising consumption not only doesn’t work – the fall-out from the long hours, throwaway, materialistic, individualistic, status-obsessed culture that accompanies it, is counter-productive, undermining and ultimately destructive.

For a vision of what an alternative might look like, the current edition of New Scientist magazine contains enough economic heresy (but scientific common sense) to choke every finance minister in the northern hemisphere and the whole staff of the International Monetary Fund. Best is the vision for what the country and economy could like in 2020. In it, we have moved from an economy of over-consumption, through-put and waste, and the anachronism of overwork and unemployment, to one which the ecological economist Herman Daly describes as, “a subtle and complex economics of maintenance, qualitative improvements, sharing, frugality, and adaptation to natural limits. It is an economics of better, not bigger.”

The good thing about such an economy is that it is rich in employment and the thick weave of local, micro-economic relationships that help to create resilient economies and bind communities together. Instead of worshipping the invisible, and usually remote, hand of the market economy (which too often can be caught picking the pockets of the poor), you design an economic system in which resources flow and circulate effectively to serve the invisible heart of the core economy – made up of family, neighbourhood, community and civil society.

It is already happening in place but could quickly move to a much bigger scale. Google tell their staff to spend 10% of their time not doing their job. They’re free to get involved with the local community. The company has found that as a result it has made staff more innovative. A lot of research shows that such community involvement also has a very positive payback in terms of life satisfaction. A 10% rule could be introduced across the economy with time credited to the local community. But we could go further. In Britain, the idea of a shorter working week was sullied by the chaos of the 1970s. But again, if people who over-work, worked less, employment could be more equally distributed. Coupled with other innovations to ensure a basic income guaranteeing basic needs, shorter working weeks help turn us from being time-poor, to time-affluent. With more time for family, community and creative learning it makes for happier people and better neighbourhoods.

A duty of reciprocity in public services could also help nurture the core economy. People who offer time, as simple as making visits to the elderly and infirm, could earn time credits to use public services like leisure centres at off peak times.

Local authorities could use Section 106 (the planning gain law) in negotiations with businesses, to introduce a “time commitment” ensuring that they bring some useful service to the local community – even if only making rooms available for use. Time banking is already working successfully in some health centres. In Wales a time banking system was introduced in which older women provided skills to local schools and were given time credits in return. They cashed them in for bingo sessions during the day and theatre performances in the evening. Their fear of going out at night was solved because the local rugby club was part of the scheme too, and took time credits to accompany them. Then, the women started to lose their fear of going out, and felt secure enough to go alone. There was an upward spiral of personal and communal well-being. Note that these are all low-carbon, relationship building activities.

Life satisfaction scores tend to be much higher among people with a more communally oriented set of values than those who are materialistic and individualistic. They are also less driven to consume for its own sake. Kick the addiction. Get time-rich. Be happy.

Left talk but no fight against Labour government

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:45:49 +0000

At the beginning of the week, the reports of what to expect at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) at Brighton were apocalyptic.

Amidst what is almost universally acknowledged as the worst economic situation for decades—and possibly since the 1930s—there was talk in the media of a new “Winter of Discontent”, or the conflict between the trade unions and the Labour government of James Callaghan that ended with the Conservatives coming to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Ballots are planned for protest strikes in November against the government’s below-inflation 2.45 percent wage ceiling by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) civil service union, the National Union of Teachers, the local government union UNISON and the UCU college lecturers union, which involve up to one million workers. In addition, the Prison Officers Association (POA) called for a general strike against the government’s failure to rescind the anti-union laws. It also moved an amendment to add the word “strike” to demands for action against the government-imposed wage cap.

Prior to the congress, the TUC issued a series of reports highlighting the bitterness felt by many of its affiliate’s members, and called for the government to change course. A survey found that 13 percent of respondents—equivalent to three million workers—are not confident they will be in their job in a year’s time. Another found growing disenchantment in the workplace, with 42 percent of workers questioned believing their pay has not kept pace with inflation and 46 percent saying the amount of work asked of them has increased.

Another report, “Do the super rich matter?” pointed to the growth of a fabulously wealthy elite under the Labour Party governments. While one needed at least £50 million to be among the UK’s 200 wealthiest people in 1990, one would now need £400 million to be included. The report urged the government to raise taxes on those earning more than £100,000 a year.

The TUC also criticised the “big six” energy firms for making £1.6 billion last year, while raising prices by 42 percent, and called for a windfall tax on power companies to fund a rebate for poor households.

As the congress events unfolded, the unions’ threats were exposed as largely empty bluster, meant to mollify and deceive their own discontented membership.

Delegates backed the idea of some sort of “coordinated action, a national demonstration and joint days of action” against the government’s pay policy, but voted down the strike call demanded by the POA. Its call for a general strike over the anti-union laws was also rejected, supported only by the RMT transport union.

Writing in the pro-Labour New Statesman, Jeremy Dear, the nominally “left” national secretary of the National Union of Journalists, commented cynically, “So we’re ready to threaten the government with a series of leaflets and angry newspaper articles—but no TUC-led industrial action.”

The TUC, far from seeking a confrontation with the government, is doing everything possible to avoid one. Labour is heading towards electoral disaster, with the Independent newspaper’s “poll of polls” showing its support “flatlining” while the Conservatives are set for “an overall majority of 174 seats”.

Without the support of the trade unions, Labour would be finished. They provide fully £9 out of every £10 received by the party. Yet far from mobilising against Labour, the TUC’s most strenuous efforts were made to oppose any leadership challenge to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. TUC President Dave Prentis said of Brown, “I believe he will continue to be [prime minister] until the next election. Of course we want him to. He is the leader of the Labour Party and he is Prime Minister of this country.”

The most likely leadership challenge to Brown is from the Blairite Foreign Secretary David Miliband. This prompted one of the few genuinely angry reactions from a leading union bureaucrat. Interviewed by the Observer on the eve of the TUC congress, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of UNITE, “accused Miliband, in a stream of swearwords, of being ‘smug’ and ‘arrogant’,” the paper reports.

“In terms that caused fury on the right of the party, he also said Miliband would take the country back to the ‘failings of Blairism’ and could be a worse choice as Prime Minister than the Tory leader David Cameron.”

Simpson may as well have saved his breath, as Miliband and the rest of Labour’s cabinet took part in a series of high-profile media events to make clear their support for Brown. The foreign secretary said Brown would “prove people wrong” by winning the next general election.

At a private dinner with the TUC leaders Wednesday, Brown was able to give what was reported as “relaxed, 20-minute speech” during which he “cracked jokes” and was “was warmly received”. More than a dozen cabinet members joined him, including Miliband.

Brown did not deign to address the TUC conference, left instead to Chancellor Alistair Darling. Before this appearance, the TUC had officially backed calls for a rather paltry £1 billion windfall tax on the energy companies. To put this tax in perspective, Blair and Brown levied a much larger £4.5 billion surcharge on the privatized utilities in 1997.

Again conflict was predicted as Brown had already rejected the windfall tax in favour of a scheme to provide some aid for loft insulation. Gerry Doherty, general secretary of transport union TSSA, said, “Darling will get a tough time from the public sector unions. There is bound to be some sort of demonstration.”

At the event, only a small number of UCU college lecturers held up banners saying that food, housing and education were “not an additional extra”.

Darling took the occasion to call for pay restraint and to reject calls for a windfall tax on the energy companies. Michael White of the Guardian summed up the response of delegates as, “They didn’t dance in the aisles, but they didn’t riot either”.

To complete this somewhat pathetic picture, Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman’s speech was supposed to be a sop to workers’ anger at growing social inequality, and provide something the trade unions could cite approvingly.

Though she stated that the inequality of opportunity between “the rich and poor” and “the north and the south” must be overcome, she dropped references to “socioeconomic class” in her published speech.

The TUC bureaucrats gathered at Brighton are fully aware that they are sitting on a powderkeg of social and political discontent. The rhetoric of the lefts and the call for protest strikes are an attempt to provide a safety valve through which to release these tensions, but nothing more. That is why, even now, the only discussion of a break with the Labour Party at the congress was confined to a fringe meeting hosted by the Morning Star, the daily paper of the ever-declining Stalinist Communist Party of Britain. PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka vaguely called for a new party and Bob Crow of the RMT argued that there would be a need for a new party at some point, while UNITE General Secretary Derek Simpson reportedly argued for changing the Labour Party from within.

The entire union bureaucracy is opposed to any struggle that might threaten the fundamental interests of the major corporations or the Labour government. They are not the representatives of the working class, but social policemen who owe their privileged status to their intimate relations with big business and the state apparatus at municipal and national levels.

Control of union assets is one source of their privileges, but it does not translate into a desire to defend their members. As a definite social layer, their existence is bound up with maintaining a position as valued “social partners” of industry and government.

It was possible for the unions to secure certain gains and social reforms from the employers as long as economic life was largely organised on the basis of national production. But with the development of globalised production, the defence of jobs and living standards now demands a coordinated international struggle of the working class led on the basis of irreconcilable opposition to the profit system. The union bureaucracy has developed in the opposite direction. It has abandoned the struggle for reforms and integrated itself ever more closely into the apparatus of corporate management and the state.

As a result of their repeated betrayals, the unions have lost over half their membership from their post-war peak in the 1970s. The number of employed union members fell to just 28 percent in 2007. But even this is a distorted figure, since union density in the public sector is 59 percent, compared with just 16.1 percent in the private sector.

The full extent of the political decay of the trade unions found its most finished expression in a call meant to coincide with the congress issued by Rory Murphy, the former head of the Amicus union, now part of UNITE.

Writing for Personnel Today, Murphy recommended the TUC change its “outdated” name to something like the “Organisation for Workers’ Rights or The Centre for Improvement” and then seek a merger with the main employers’ organisation, the Confederation of British Industry.

He urged, “If the TUC is unsure of its role, and can’t change, might the unthinkable need contemplating? If we are truly to make progress as a society, should the TUC consider amalgamating with the CBI to fight for fairness and justice for all workers and employers? Are the aims of both organisations so widely apart that such an idea is a non-starter? After all, what is the real difference in seeking ‘to improve the economic or social conditions of workers’ and helping ‘create and sustain conditions for business to compete and prosper for all’.”

There is no way that the unions, organising millions of workers as they still do, will not experience an eruption of opposition to the government within their ranks. The TUC congress confirms, however, that workers within the unions, as well as those who are un-organised, are faced with mounting a combined offensive against the union bureaucracy that is just as fundamental as that they must wage against the government and the employers. This requires the construction of independent rank-and-file workplace organisations to take the struggle out of the hands of the union leaders, as part of a broad political movement for the construction of a genuinely socialist and internationalist leadership.

Labour Must Endorse Living Wage Campaign to Win Back Popular Support

tim — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:59:09 +0000

Cast your mind back nine years to a time when the Labour party had recently stormed to power and a wave of public optimism still swept the nation. We may have been duped but back then Labour did implement some radical reforms. Now, as the poorest members of society are struggling to cope with rising food and utility bills, it is time for the government to revisit one of its most successful policies, the minimum wage.

It is clear that the introduction of the minimum wage improved the circumstances of many workers, and even Conservative critics now back the policy, with the predicted negative impact on businesses never materialising. £5.52 per hour, however, is no longer enough and as the minimum wage has failed to increase in line with inflation its impact has diminished.

Labour should now go further. Introducing a national living wage – which allows anyone in full-time employment to enjoy an acceptable standard of living – would do more than any of the policies being mooted at present to tackle the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on the poorest workers.

London is already leading the way with its own living wage. Without enforcement, however, the majority of employers have understandably chosen to stick with the national minimum wage. The Living Wage Employer Award hopes to change this. Stephen O’Brien, joint president of London First, described the award as “a new and much anticipated mark of socially responsible business practice”. “A growing number of high profile organisations are now part of the Living Wage Employer Group and London 2012 is set to be the first ever living wage Olympics.”

While the benefits of a living wage for workers and society are obvious – social cohesion, higher living standards, lower crime levels, improvements in health, greater incentive to work – there are also many benefits for employers. A KPMG report stated that since becoming a living wage employer the Royal London Hospital reduced its cleaning staff turnover by 50%. Furthermore, better pay means higher productivity and a happier and more motivated workforce.

Even Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who opposed the national minimum wage, is an advocate of the London living wage and earlier this year increased it to £7.45 per hour. “This is not only morally right but makes good business sense contributing to better recruitment and retention of staff, higher productivity, and a more loyal workforce with high morale,” he said. It is a sad state of affairs when a Tory such as Johnson is the one defending workers’ rights and the Conservatives are claiming to be the party of the poor. They will not fool many but there is, at the moment, no alternative.

London may have been an exceptional case in the past but nationally wages of average earners have remained almost static in recent years and those of the bottom third fell between 2004 and 2007. A national living wage would help to change these damning statistics. If Labour want to tackle poverty they should export the living wage to the rest of the UK. By implementing a national living wage, perhaps with regional variances, they would be able to help those most at need.

Business leaders would plead poverty themselves, as many did prior to the introduction of the minimum wage, but the cost would not have to sit solely with them. By increasing the tax free allowance the government could, in effect, pay much of the cost itself. Public opinion, for a change, would be behind them with a recent Harris poll showing that the majority of people favoured lowering taxes for the poor. The same poll also showed the majority in favour of higher taxes for the richest, but that would surely be asking too much from a government in thrall to the super-rich.

How to decide the level of the living wage would be a contentious issue. However, the results of a recent research project carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated the amount of money required for a ‘socially acceptable standard of living.’ The report concluded that ‘a single adult, working full time, needs to earn £6.88 per hour to reach this weekly standard.’ The study also found that the minimum income standard calculated was higher than the current threshold for relative poverty. The government’s already poor record on tackling poverty, therefore, is even worse than current measures indicate.

Julie Unwin, director of the foundation, said: “This research is designed to encourage debate and to start building a public consensus about what level of income no one should have to live below.” If Labour, whoever their leader is, want to regain the trust of core supporters and improve their chances before the next election they need to be the party leading this debate. Back in their heyday they fought hard to introduce a national minimum wage; they should now do the same for a national living wage.