Under attack from all sides - Morning Star

Under attack from all sides - Morning Star

It's becoming progressively clearer how the recession and the massive public debt incurred by the rescue of Britain's feckless bankers will affect working people if the Labour Cabinet and others get their way.

And the effects are unpalatable, to say the least.

Government, the Tory opposition and the bosses all seem to be united in their determination that the working class will do penance for the bankers' sins.

It's hitting us from all sides at once and it won't be easy to organise against, because the attack is coming in such a huge variety of different approaches.

In many ways, it's the economic equivalent of the West's "shock and awe" assault on Iraq, so massive and so overwhelming that its intent is clearly to paralyse any opposition by sheer weight and volume.

Every element of people's lives is under threat and, the poorer you are, the greater the threat becomes.

In education, Universities Minister David Lammy warns that "it will be a good few years before universities can expect any really significant upturn in their income from the public purse."

Despite warnings from universities facing unprecedented demand that the system could be "brought to its knees" by spending cuts which could eventually run into billions, Mr Lammy, a barrister with a London University and Harvard education, signalled a freeze on spending and suggested turning to the private sector for funding.

In social housing, The National Housing Federation has just warned that the housing budget could be slashed by 17.98 per cent.

It said that, if this happened, around 556,000 planned affordable homes would not be built, while 278,000 jobs and apprenticeships in the construction industry and wider economy would also be lost.

In 2007, the government pledged to build a million affordable homes by 2020 to tackle the housing shortage, but only 162,000 will be built by April 2011.

On pay, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Sunday that pay for top public-sector posts will be reduced.

That's on top of the 1 per cent cap on rises already announced. Top pay may not seem to be an immediate problem for most public-sector workers but, beware, freezes and cuts at the top will inevitably trickle down and affect workers throughout a sector already battered by huge job cuts, with even more planned.

It's not only the public sector, though. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that the impact of the recession on workers has been "much deeper" than official figures showed. There were 6.2 million fresh claims for jobseeker's allowance between April 2008 and November 2009, 7.5 times the rise in the unemployment claimant count. And of those who found new jobs, two-thirds were paid an average of 28 per cent less than previously.

Employers are getting in on the act as well. In September, Jaguar Land Rover offered to guarantee that 8,000 full-time staff would be kept on until 2015 in return for cuts to the salaries and pensions of new staff.

Well, they still want the cuts, but talks with the unions broke down when the bosses changed their minds and withdrew the fragile guarantee on job security.

In Glasgow, workers are organising against cuts that may mean councils dumping 600 jobs in the city and as many as 20,000 across Scotland.

It's a unified assault across the board and it's going to require a unified response. The individual campaigns are going to have to develop a much broader view and unite in a struggle that encompasses them all.

Mutual support and solidarity are the orders of the day if anything is to be held and defended from the ruling-class onslaught that faces us.

Where better to start, then, than the People's Charter, which provides a unifying perspective and a banner under which all these elements can organise?

Lord knows, we are going to need all the solidarity that we can get to fight this concerted assault.

Link:Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Facebook Group
Link: Right to Work conference - Socialist Worker
Link: Morning Star