-
WHAT is a job? Is their life without jobs? Do jobs, per se, exploit? Or is the individual without one exploited?Andrew Tyter puts a spanner in the works.
IL
LTHOUGH the old churchfostered work ethic is dead, the air surrounding the work topic is once re scorched with religiosity. Work is no longer that neutral thing . if recent decades; that act of frequently pim necessity performed to earn money md buy time away {tom work. Today it las all the old soulful, social ramificitions. Work is goqd for you. Or even work, and make thy nation great gain, even in the teeth of competition tom the emerging nations. In fact there is a great deal of ¥onfusionThe unions, for instance, are argely hooked by the old industrial age mnditioning. They tell us we have The flight t o work. They pay for young coppers and their older brothers and iistersto march on London while hultaneously organising bitter little jogfights on behalf of the membership uhose object is a bigger slice of what's ¥ailethe shrinking national cake. One p u p gets the cherry. The other gets mmbs in the bed. Or, in union parlance, ip your differentials, mate. Another New Work sect is Tory Monetarism ('I'M). Under TM,unemploynent is regretted but viewed as a logical ¥onsequencof the old sloth and Outtony. TM is about to demonstrate hat through the wisdom of free-rein narket forces we can win back markets
..
SEPTEMBER '82
lost to the Japanese and Germans. But we must put our backs into it, love the new technology, The Alternative Economic Strategy is Labour's own immaculate conkivance. AES will provide full employment by the end of the fimt five year leg& lative term. The cogs of industry will get a kick start by a State with the correct priorities. Industry - in AES diagrams is a flagging motor car with a large hill called economic growth to climb. AES will fin file tank with oil (our crude wealth) from the North Sea. Whatever else is needed gets invented on Royal Mint printing presses or via the inspirations of British genius. This time it won't be like the last time. Ecology is another New Work sect often called soft or green o r escapist by hard rankers of the political orthodoxy. The Ecology Party themselves say there can be no boom without slump. They sap we must steady ourselves to the new reality of shrinking, more expensive resouMeanwhile we must create jobs that fit humans, not machines or the idle spasms of capitalist! The idea that this disunited kinfidom can kick start through the old doctrine of growth economics, say Ecos, is a pa&wMy savage lie since growth inevitably equals inteEnationa1tension, inflation and a tendency to both
-
centralise and further e a t the machine The Ecology Party perspective is an attractive one in that it has regard not only for the rank and file but forthe environment in which they live. But and what a big but - there is now a well founded suspicion among green people themselves that the parade is rapidly passing them by as hordes of disgruntled 'alternativists', who should ' lightly be theirs, get snatched up by New Labour. Wends of the Earth B i i h a m have spelt out their objections to the Ecology Party in the draft of a new paper on employment: 'Being realistic' they say, 'such measures can only be achieved on the bads of radical economic, social and political change of the magnitude proposed by the AES. In order to make the transition to an economy which is socially and environmentally sound, legislation controlling the environment, forcing planning agreements, redistributing the wealth which controls Britain and such like will have to he implemented' But. in the next bite, FOEalso take a lump out of the AES - accusing it of being rough o n the environment and failing to grasp the delicate, almost religious nuances of the New Work debate. This is the uncomfortable breach: AES with its hack-old but 'realistic' programme for social transformation and the green theorists of the Ecology Party whose world many of us would usher in tomorrow if oniy weould find the right button. The Ecos lean on a comprehensive thesis of industrial and agricultural change that involves a national minimum income scheme, l o d job creation centres and local banks (toppedup Initially by Central Government) to fund those jobs. ~riendsof thi Earth, meanwhile, ate engaged in actual groundwork, the point of which is to prove the formula that environmental concern equals jobs. In this respect FOEis substantially closer t o the Ecology Plirty than it is to the AES. Both see a break from the old automation mentality. Both reject the right to perform ponderous, repetitive tasks that quicken the death of the spirit and frequently result in an object that is useless or dangerous. The difference is EPs aloofness versus FOE'S willingness to ride the backs of dubious friends and even enemies. In their ground experiments, groups like FOE Bristol and FOE Birmingham have leaned heavily on a network of 17