... I might start posting a series to keep you all up to date with how the public sector unions start squaring up to the ConDem coalition.
I've never joined a union, but I got our local UNISON branch email for a few weeks before I was deleted from the list for not being a member. Under labour it was usually inviting me to love-ins to learn about 'democracy in Cuba', 'solidarity with Venezula' or some other such nonsense.
This is about to change, a quick read of their June local government conference agenda today and it was clear that mainstream party politics is the name of the game again, they are now mobilising for strikes and protests. 'Cuts' (or no cuts) is top their list of issues.
Dave Prentice reckons:
“It also makes no sense to depress wages now. Hitting the spending power of public sector workers would drag down demand in our economy, just as it needs a boost to avoid a double dip recession."
All educated people know the standard IMF solution to sovereign collapse is sharp devaluation followed by harsh public sector pay and welfare cuts. It's funny how UNISON never wind their members up about phase #1 - or labours cuts to public sector pay and conditions.
Have a think about how much public sector sterling-denominated pay and pensions were worth in 2001 before Brown and his bankruptcy party went on their easy-money 'no boom and bust' binge:
£1 bought about 1.45 US Dollars, today it buys about 1.45
£1 bought 2.2 Canadian Dollars, today it buys just over 1.5
£1 bought 2.5 Swiss Francs, today it buys less than 1.65
£1 bought 1.6 Euros, today it buys just over 1.15
£1 bought 175 Yen, today it buys 130
£1 bought 13 Norwegian Kroner, today it buys 9.27
Gold was worth less than £200/oz, today it is worth more than £800/oz
We're par with the US, but they've been monetising their house price boom and bust credit card bill too.
If we want to keep the IMF out phase #2 is coming and pay cuts are the answer, will ConDem have the balls?
Friday, 21 May 2010
Union watch 1...
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7 comments:
I was a member of the TGWU for one day. School broke up on Thursday and my usual summer job wasn't available until Saturday, so I filled-in at a yoghurt factory for a day and I had to join the union for a day to take the job.
Fascinating work - taking pots off a conveyor belt and plopping them into trays. Breathing takes more brainpower. The woman working opposite me had been doing it for over 20 years, she asked what I wanted to do and I told her I hoped to become a barrister. Her response was: "That must be boring".
"labours cuts to public sector pay and conditions."?
Which cuts might those be? I wasn't aware of any.
A horrible sense of deja vu supervenes in one so old as I: the unions as the enemy within . Nixon closes the gold window to inflate the dollar to pay for Vietnam: the oil-producing countries and the British unions refuse to be paid in a devaluing currency and they are branded the cause of the problem not the effect.
Which major right -wing figure in this country then called the unions "innocent as new born lambs,white as the new blown snow"?
The Union argument that we don't want to be decreasing aggregate spending power in a recession is pretty unimpugnable.Some jackanapes is sure to argue that private sector pay will rise in real terms so that will maintain the total.Well no that's not what is intended.What is intended is the 18th century quack doctors' remedy;bleading the body of circulating medium.But given relative rises in private sector
pay (no chance,naifs) will the privileged private sector workers buy two loaves of bread instead of one,twice as much petrol?And who will buy their goods and services? As the old saw has it:money is like dung ;it does more good the more widely it is spread.
This kind of situation is right for the payment of Dividends ;not the feeble CD's which are amalgams of existing benefits but the good old National Dividend -an unearned income for all to pay for capacity working in factories .
Or you could pay backed-by-nothing QE cheques not to the banks but straight to the public sector as the Greenshirts proposed back in the weird old 1930's or as Lincoln did in the Civil War.
MW Debasing the currency doesn't affect pensions?
DBC - not sure about more money printing. Best get deficit reduction over with.
Long term they need to get 1m people off the gvt payroll.
Short term they should just cut it.
"Hitting the spending power of public sector workers would drag down demand in our economy".
This is just our old friend Broken Window, isn't it?
RlJ
Under the "logic"
We could increase spending power by making unemployment benefit far higher too...
The problem is simply this. Those in the extortion funded sector are paid far more than there is demand for their services.
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