Unity! Unemployment is a war on workers As the capitalist crisis deepens, so even official estimates of the number of workers to lose their jobs escalate. We are supposed to accept it as inevitable and unavoidable = even our own fault. Fighting it will just make it worse, they say. But fight it we must… and will. On the eve of the 30 November strike by two million public service workers, millionaire Chancellor Osborne upgraded predictions of public sector job losses to 750,000 – and an overall unemployment rate of 9%... 3 million workers.
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Morning Star daily paper of the left 80p from your newsagent
Capitalist Crisis There is no longer much talk of the private sector providing “new jobs”, and quite a lot of talk of a “double dip” recession. The fact is that this crisis is as much one for manufacturing industry and the private sector as it is for services and the public sector. It’s not a “credit crunch”, not a “downturn”, not a “double dip”. It’s a full blown, catastrophic capitalist financial and economic crisis. Figures for unemployment have been regularly ‘massaged down’ over the last few decades, and, as government always deliberately underestimates growth in joblessness, we can expect the reality to be far worse than they say.
Communists at the People’s Charter & Trades Councils meeting December 2011 Precarious employment This doesn’t take into account the number of workers forced into part time working, short term contracts and other forms of “precarious employment”. It is this kind of work that many of the 1.2 million jobless young people have to compete for
Unemployment is as much part of capitalism as are political lies, bankers’ bonuses and monopoly superprofits. It serves the needs of the millionaire ruling class. And when the system is in crisis it reflects their general policy of war on workers. The “reserve army of labour” is maintained by capitalism as a mechanism to reduce wages, and to threaten organised workers. They want to buy our ability to work at the lowest price, and have us just “stand ready” for when we are needed. Profit is everything; workers’ welfare means nothing. That’s how the system works – unemployment is not a problem for them… it’s a necessity
The People’s Charter We need to put forward a radical alternative – a policy “For a People’s Britain, Not a Bankers’ Britain” as The People’s Charter puts it, “a policy to meet the needs of the millions, not the greed of the millionaires”. Of course, in building a movement for such an alternative - for jobs, skills, industry and services to meet the needs of the people – we know that the ConDem government and the class it serves will use everything – including their bosses’ club, the European Union - to stop us. It would mean a huge shift in wealth away from the 10% who currently own 50% of the wealth - and that’s not the name of their game! We need a deep rooted movement for real change, based firmly in the trade union movement and in local communities,. In the end, we’ll have to fight for jobs and against unemployment for as long as this rotten system continues. How much longer will we put up with it?
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