Robert Taylor proposes a new charter of rights for the manual working class in Britain should be adopted if Labour is serious about protecting them in the recession
THE deep contempt of the “new” Labour project for Britain’s manual workers was never more clearly visible than in the hostile attitude of Business Secretary Peter Mandelson towards the angry and insecure skilled construction workers protesting outside Total’s Lindsey oil refinery at the import of Italian sub-contracting workers to the site to fill skilled jobs they thought should be open to them.
For once, the workers involved secured a settlement that gave them much of what they wanted. But the Lindsey dispute promises to be only the beginning. Over the coming months, as the dole queues lengthen for manual workers in particular, we can expect to see similar outbreaks of industrial unrest. It remains to be seen if the Government will respond in a more positive and generous way to the genuine problems facing manual workers in what is becoming a depression through no fault of theirs. However, if Gordon Brown and his ministers continue to devote their main energies to pouring billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the banks and other financial institutions and do very little for the real victims of the slump, the Labour Party’s already unlikely prospects of a general election victory next year will be further damaged.
From its inception, the “new” Labour project was either hostile or indifferent to the aspirations and needs of the manual working class. In Westminster’s green zone, those particular victims of capitalism’s greatest slump since the 1930s are mostly to be pitied and patronised, not least by well-heeled members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the peers loaded down with lucrative lobbying jobs. The fears and frustrations of workers are either ignored or ridiculed. The Government’s clear and predictable priority has been to appease the “masters of the universe” who caused the current crisis in the first place through their misdemeanours and insatiable greed.
Until recently, there has hardly been a whisper of disapproval from Brown and Mandelson at the ruling but besieged elites of global capitalism. Instead, their wrath has been turned on manual workers who are doing what they can without much state support to defend their living standards from a sharp decline. They are condemned as protectionists and racists, and told to go and find work somewhere else inside the European Union or simply shut up and get in line.
It should come as no surprise that the British National Party is trying to exploit the situation for its own evil ends – and with some success. The wonder is that the BNP is not doing much better, although if you listen to the splendid MP Jon Cruddas, you realise it is becoming a serious threat to Labour in his Dagenham constituency. Perhaps Schools Secretary Ed Balls is also aware of the likely political consequences of the neglect of the manual working class and its betrayal by the party that was formed to represent and support them more than 100 years ago.
Until now, the Government has done almost nothing to support manual workers in the systemic crisis of neo-liberal capitalism. Brown and his colleagues remain trapped in a mindset of unfettered markets, deregulation, privatisation, low corporate and personal tax on the rich, and penal social policies – not only for the poor, the low paid and the old, but anyone in a vulnerable job facing redundancy and a life on and off the dole.
We are still waiting for a positive programme of support from the Government to help manual workers through their difficulties. But there is plenty that should be done now. What we need is the creation of a genuine but realistic social democratic alternative to the centre-right project and its obsessive infatuation with neo liberal capitalism.
Here are some practical and radical proposals any genuine centre-left reforming administration should introduce without delay:
- A substantial increase in the level of unemployment benefit for all the jobless, who currently receive less than two-thirds of average incomes. For the past 11 years, Labour did little to increase such benefits in line with the retail price index, let alone earnings. Its intention was to force people into work by keeping benefits as low as possible. But is £60.50 a week really a fair amount for an unemployed person to live on in the new great depression?
- A generous improvement in redundancy payment terms to provide manual workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own with a more realistic level of compensation to help them to cushion the consequences of a sharp drop in income. Britain provides the meanest and lowest level of social benefits for manual workers in trouble than any other western European country. This needs to change.
- More regulation to make it harder for employers to sack workers. It is much easier and cheaper to sack workers in Britain than any elsewhere in the European Union – thanks to the flexible labour market strategies that Margaret Thatcher created and this Government has spent the past 11 years advancing and boasting about.
- A restoration of the 10 per cent tax rate for the poorest wage earners or – even better – a removal of all workers earning less than £20,000 a year from having to pay any income tax.
- A publicly-managed and funded work creation programme. Now the privatisation of the employment services has been put on hold, we ought to see a renewal of the public sector in the state’s response to the unemployment crisis.
- A comprehensive public strategy for skills and further education which is managed and funded by the public services. This should involve the statutory requirement for paid time off in order to train or search for work while remaining in employment.
- The reintroduction of job subsidy schemes to encourage employers to take on more workers or retain those they still have. In addition, there should be a recruitment subsidy designed for small and medium sized enterprises.
- Legally enforceable social protection guarantees should be written into employment contracts through new EU protocols as called for by the European trade unions. The recent rash of anti-worker and anti-union judgements in the European Court of Justice must be over turned by the European Commission. Companies should not be allowed to recruit workers in one country to work in another country at lower levels of pay and benefits. We must outlaw social dumping. If the Government and its neo-liberal allies wish to drive down the conditions of manual workers they must be resisted.
- A repeal of all anti-union legislation in Britain that outlaws solidarity and international strike action. This would bring this country into line with International Labour Organisastion conventions and the Fundamental Charter of Workers’ Rights. The power of global capital should not go unchallenged.
We need to protect and strengthen the much-weakened European social market model. All the socialist parties on the continent are now rallying round such a programme for this summer’s elections to the European Parliament. The battle ahead is to ensure that Labour candidates in this country get behind those demands as well.
Brown and Mandelson may continue to stroke the bankers and bow to the demands of capital. At this late hour, what remains of their party would be well advised to turn their attention to the plight and needs of the manual working class, which remains excluded from the national debate about how to respond to the current crisis.
