The News Line: Editorial
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Trade union action to beat =91stagflation=92
TODAY 800,000 local council workers, members of the UNISON and UNITE
trade unions, begin a two-day strike against a government-imposed wage
cut, an offer of 2.45% outstripped by inflation.
UNISON said: =91With everyday essentials like food and petrol going up,
as well as gas and electricity bills, our members cannot afford to
take another pay cut.=92
The unbearable situation confronting, not just local council staff,
but about five million workers across the public sector, including
teachers, lecturers, civil servants and staff in the National Health
Service, was highlighted by inflation figures published yesterday.
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal
that inflation has become endemic and is getting worse month by month.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI), favoured by the government because it
gives a lower figure, reached an 11-year high of 3.8% in June,
compared with 3.3% in May. This is way above the Bank of England 2%
target set by the government.
The Retail Prices Index (RPI), which includes mortgage and housing
costs, went up in June by 4.6%, up from 4.3% in May. Within these
figures food and non-alcoholic drinks went up at an annual rate of
9.5% last month. A price comparison website monitoring supermarkets
has found that the price of a basket of 21 staple foods has increased
by 20% over the past year.
Earlier this week, the ONS revealed that the prices of manufactured
goods (producer prices) are rising at an annual rate of 10% and their
input prices of raw materials are up 30%.
Inflation has taken off and is about to rocket out of control. At the
same time, jobs are being axed in construction, manufacturing and
retail sectors. Last week, housing giants, including Taylor Wimpey,
Barratt, Persimmon, Bovis, and Redrow, announced at least 4,000
redundancies.
=91Stagflation=92 is returning with a vengeance in a more virulent form
than that of the 1970s.
In response to this situation Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his
Chancellor Alistair Darling are making clear that, while they are
bailing out the banks with at least =A3100bn of taxpayers=92 money, they
want to make working-class and middle-class families pay for the
present crisis of capitalism.
The Chancellor said yesterday: =91Whether you are in the private sector,
or public sector, whether you are sitting in the board room or working
on the shop floor, we cannot allow inflationary wage increases because
that would mean that everyone, especially people on lower incomes,
would suffer.=92
This is the government=92s =91Big Lie=92. Everyone knows that workers=92
wa=
ges
are not the cause of inflation.
Speculation by major banks, mortgage lenders, private equity groups
and hedge funds, using billions of dollars and pounds in cheap credit
over recent years, has led to the so-called =91Credit Crunch=92 (debt
crisis), the decline of the dollar and the present wheeling and
dealing in commodities like oil, metals and staple foodstuffs, like
rice, wheat, maize, etc.
The five million public sector workers, battling against government-
imposed pay cuts, must demand their trade unions, organised in the
Trades Union Congress, develop their own cost of living index.
There must be a fight for a sliding scale of wages, where wages
increase automatically in line with this index. Job sharing, with no
loss of pay, must be the trade union policy in the fight to stop
sackings.
Workers must demand their unions form a public sector alliance that
will organise a general strike to put an end to the government=92s pay
cuts and win inflation-proof wage rises.
This means defeating and replacing the Brown government, which has
decreed that the banks will get billions, while sla****ng workers=92
living standards.
A general strike by millions of trade unionists will force the Brown
government out, block any return of the Tories and create the
conditions to bring in a workers government that will implement
socialist policies to defend people from the threatening catastrophe
of the capitalist crisis.
Such a struggle means building a new revolutionary leader****p in the
unions to replace those leaders who have refused to organise the
struggle against pay cuts and defeat the Brown government. Join the
Workers Revolutionary Party today and take part in the fight to build
this new leader****p in the unions!
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/3369
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