Birmingham: Unions March For Jobs

"It’s not banks we should be looking
after, it’s workers." Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary, Unite Trade Union.

With
these words Tony Woodley sought to galvanise and enthuse the crowd of marchers
who had braved the elements of torrential rain on this Saturday May 16
to march to Centennial Square
off Broad Street
in Birmingham to
demand action on jobs.

Workers On the March

They
had come from all over the country by coach and train from North and South
Wales, from the threatened Corus plant in Redcar, from Jaguar Land Rover and
LDV vans in the Midlands and from all other
points of the compass. What a magnificent demonstration of anger over uncertain
job prospects for working people!

The
‘Put People First: March for Jobs’ had been organised by the Unite trade union
and attracted between 8,000 and 10,000 workers. Unite organised coaches had
poured into Birmingham
for the event. This is what one trade union managed to accomplish! What could
have been achieved if the TUC had put its mighty organisation into action and
campaigned and mobilised its seven million affiliated trade unionists to turn
out on a day like this? Just over a month ago the Irish Congress of Trade
Unions called its members out on a mass demo in Dublin and more than 200,000 responded.
Translated into UK population
figures we could have had a million plus on the streets of Britain’s
second city.

From
the assembly point in Highfield
Road, down the Hagley Road and into Broad Street the morale of the marchers
was high. Here were working class people putting their stamp on the economic
crisis unfolding before our eyes. What was surprising was the number of older
workers who had turned out. It was as if the battle scars of the defeats of the
1980s and 1990s had been healed and the fighters of that era had been reenergised
and were now mingling with younger workers, brothers and sisters in the
struggle to protect jobs.

Rising Unemployment

It
was also fitting that the march should take place in the centre of England as the West
Midlands unemployment level at 9.3% is the highest in the country
with another 67,000 joining the regional total in the last three months.
Nationally, another 244,000 unemployed in the same period have brought the
total to 2.2million.

The
jobs crisis is real for working class families with homes being repossessed as
the economic crisis hits home. As Tony Woodley said, "Workers did not cause
this recession, but they are paying for it hand over fist with their jobs." He
attacked the government as "no-brainers" for having handed over £900billion to
the banks and still the crisis remains unresolved. He went on to say "It’s not
banks we should be looking after, it’s workers… It’s no good just bailing out
the banks and the spivs and speculators who caused the global crisis. It’s
about the workers."

Both
Tony Woodley and TUC General Secretary Brendon Barber rightly condemned the
actions of the banks and the bankers and millions of trade unionists and their
families look to these labour leaders for a solution to the economic crisis and
its impact on the jobs, livelihoods and security of working class people. But
where were the solutions? Where was the programme to take on the banks, the
spivs and the speculators? The main solution offered was to put some of the
money given to the banks into subsidizing short-time working in the factories to avoid job losses, thereby maintaining
skill levels so that when the upturn comes, workers will be in place to aid the
economic recovery! Tony Woodley wants to emulate the examples of Spain and Belgium.

Bosses – Good and Bad?

The
solution therefore for Tony Woodley is not to put such huge sums of public
money into the pockets of finance capitalists in charge of the banking system
but into the pockets of industrial capitalists in charge of industry. Whilst it
is true that the capitalist system in the UK has been historically skewed to
the interests of finance capital, to believe that subsidizing one section of
these parasites instead of another raises a lot of questions. The crisis in
both sectors of capitalism, the finance and manufacturing sides, are
symptomatic of the general crisis of capitalism.

The
present crisis began in the finance sector but as we know has quickly
transferred to the industrial sector with a devastating effect on jobs. The
prognosis too is that even if there is a slight economic recovery in the near
future, and there are some emerging signs that some corners in terms of housing
and loan applications for mortgages have been turned, the toll on jobs will
continue apace. Employers will be seeking every opportunity to terminate
contractual agreements, enforce wage cuts and reduce employee numbers. In other
words further job cuts are on the cards even in an economic upturn as bosses
seek to do what they always do and always have done – maximise profit levels
from their economic activity. Let us put to one side the myth that there are
some good or bad employers.

As
Marxists we do not look at the morals governing the behaviour of the
bosses. Production takes place not to
provide jobs but to make profit for the owners, the shareholders. If more
profit can be made by slashing workforce numbers and raising the rate of
exploitation of fewer workers, then that is what will happen. The phenomenon of
the past 25 years has shown that although there is an historical tendency for
the rate of profit to fall given the nature of capitalism, the rate of profit
has actually risen due to a greater exploitation of labour. In the coming
economic upturn the same will take place. Stocks will be rebuilt and production
will resume in the cheapest manner possible with the fewest workers possible.

Hand Outs To Banks

Tony
Woodley’s proposal to subsidize industrial bosses out of the public purse will
mean in effect boosting shareholders’ profits out of taxpayers’ money with no
guarantee that jobs will be saved. Let us learn the lesson of what happened to
the banks. The government has just carried out a third emergency injection of
funds to the banking system in the hope of getting credit flowing again. The
first was last October with a hands-off part nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds
from a £37bn cash injection. The crisis was stabilised, but bank lending did
not increase. In January of this year a second package totalling some £600bn
was injected with RBS being underwritten to the tune of £260bn and Lloyds by
£325bn. In total some £1.3 trillion of public money had been pumped into the
banks and they were still refusing to lend to industry and thus safeguard jobs.
Some £400m of that injection is expected to be a loss paid for out of public
money. Now a third package of £50 billion has been injected and we await the
results.

The
only result so far is that business for the banks carries on as normal and
companies are forced to close due to a lack of credit. Public money has been
used to protect the private banking system. Profits have been privatised and
losses socialised. If the banks behave
in this way to protect their capital and shareholders’ interests, why should we
believe that industrial capitalists would behave any differently? Even after billions of public money had been
pumped into bailing out the banks, the bankers used large parts of that money
to continue with the system of huge pay packets and bonuses.

There
have been no guarantees that public money would be used to protect the public
from the ravages of this crisis and working people constitute the overwhelming
majority if the public. The only public to benefit from the injection of public
cash has been the bankers, the spivs and the speculators that Tony Woodley
condemned in his speech at the end of the march.

Socialist Answer

What
would be a socialist answer to the crisis? Firstly, the banks should have been
nationalised with compensation to small shareholders being paid on the basis of
proven need. To ensure public accountability the governing boards of the banks
should be elected with representation from the workers in the industry, the
wider labour and trade union movement and the government. Only then can we
ensure capital is available to invest in industry, house building, schools and
hospitals and social infrastructure. Let us learn from the fiasco of PFI. For
ten years we were told that schools and hospitals could not be built with
public money as the government’s debt would exceed 40% of the total wealth we
produce in the UK
in one year, the GDP. With the bailing out of the banks the total government
debt is now 80% of GDP, double what we were told it could not be. We can find
money to bail out the spivs and speculators but not to build schools and
hospitals.

Secondly,
any company threatening job cuts must be met with decisive action. If the order
books are low then share out the work with no loss of pay. If the company says
it cannot afford it, then we must demand that the company books be opened. If
finance is not available, then we must demand that the government nationalises
the company, makes money available for investment from the now nationalised
banking system and that the company is run under worker’s control and
management.The only way to prevent working people from paying the crisis of the
system is by working people owning and controlling the system.

Decisive Action Needed

The
march today was a massive step forward for the labour and trade union movement
and Unite is to be congratulated for organising it. It must now be followed up
with action involving the whole of the movement. When workers take actions to
defend their jobs, then they must have the full backing of the whole of the
movement. Decisive action can defeat management as the Visteon workers
demonstrated. But action without a programme, without a strategy, can also be
blind. At all levels of the movement now is the time to put forward a socialist
answer to the crisis and for the content and scope of that answer to be
discussed in all areas of the labour and trade union movement.
For
the first time for more than 30 years the crisis of capitalism is hitting every
working class family and that has affected the way that working people are
thinking. The crisis, combined with the greed of elected MPs and their
expenses, has shaken the confidence and belief in the way that society is run,
in capitalism, and more and more people are looking for an alternative way to
run society. Now more than ever is the time ripe for the socialist answer to
the crisis.