Sunday 8 February 2009

Treasury committee echoes PCS concerns

PCS last week echoed concerns highlighted in the House of Commons Treasury Committee's report on the 2008 pre-budget report.
The committee expressed concerns about Government plans to find a further £5 billion of efficiency savings in addition to a planned target of £30 billion by 2011.
Questioning where the additional savings would come from, the committee asked the government to provide details of how and where the additional savings could be made, as well as setting out measures to ensure that public service delivery doesn’t deteriorate.
In echoing these concerns PCS warned that civil and public services would continue to suffer if the further “efficiency savings” were made at the expense of jobs and services.
Eighty thousand jobs have already gone across the civil and public sector, with tens of thousands more planed by 2011 including, 10,000 in the Ministry of Justice, 12,500 in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and 10,000 in the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The union maintained that further job cuts and office closures would damage public services and be bad for the economy.
PCS urged the Government to reverse its job cuts and office closure programme across civil and public services to safeguard services delivered to the public.
Commenting, Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said: "The Treasury committee have rightly expressed concern about the Government’s plans for an additional £5 billion of ‘efficiency savings’.
"No doubt substantial savings can be made from cutting out consultants and agencies, but plucking a figure out of thin air with no idea of how it will be achieved is no way to improve efficiency.
"We have already seen the damaging impact on so called efficiency programmes on key areas such as tax, Jobcentres, justice and defence.
Further savings should not be at the expense of jobs and services which would damage public services and be bad for the economy. "Further savings should not be at the expense of jobs and services which would damage public services and be bad for the economy.
"As the recession worsens and people become more reliant on public services, the Government need to reverse its job cuts and office closure programme across civil and public services to safeguard services delivered to the public.”

A wave of anger

A wave of anger is sweeping across the class in Europe. Wildcat strikes in Britain; battles with the cops in Athens and millions of French workers downing tools in a general strike that paralysed the country last week.
The ruling classes of Europe are determined to put the entire burden of the slump on the backs of working people. They’re going to slash state welfare, pensions and social provision. They want to drive down wages through social dumping by closing down their operations in high-wage areas and setting them up in other parts of the European Union where labour is cheap or recruiting cheap labour from poorer regions of Europe to undercut existing rates for the job. This is what Blair and Brown called the “free market” that they told us was going to usher in an era of prosperity for all in the European Union.
It’s what Brown and Co will soon be telling us about the joys of joining the Euro now that the pound is sinking.
For years Labour and the majority of the leaders of our unions have elevated the EU as an instrument for social progress and economic advance. They say that the EU is becoming more representative through the authority of the European Parliament and establishment of regional autonomy. The social-democrats claim that the anti-working class “directives” and “rulings” can be reversed. The revisionist and left social-democratic circles that still pose as communists in some parts of Europe argue that the EU can be reformed to serve the interests of working people.
But the EU with its toothless parliament, ruritanian regional governments and farcical referendas that only count when the vote agrees with what has already been decided by the powers that be, hasn’t been reformed. Nor can it ever be under the Treaty of Rome.
The neanderthal section of the ruling class, who still dream of an independent role for British imperialism, is also opposed to the EU. That’s why some of their minions are trying to divert the unofficial energy workers strike movement down nationalist and racist lines to reduce it to the demand for “British jobs for British workers” that was shamefully resurrected by none other than Gordon Brown himself in September 2007.
These people, like the rest of the ruling class, have nothing in common with workers apart from the fact that they owe their entire parasitical existence to the labour of others. The real enemy of the working class is the employer, not the imported labour from abroad.
Now people see the European Union for what it is – an institution designed solely for the benefit of the oppressors and exploiters – and millions upon millions are seeing through the lies of the bourgeoisie and taking their anger onto the streets. What little benefits the EU has brought such as increased trade and open borders could all have been achieved through separate agreements and treaties.
In fact the European Union is neither genuinely federal nor democratic and every stage of European integration has been financed by working people through higher indirect taxes, lost jobs and lost benefits. The European Union cannot be reformed. It must be dissolved and the Treaty of Rome, which established the Common Market in the first place, and all addenda repealed.
In the meantime the dispute within the energy industry must be resolved through free collective bargaining. The union leadership should take a leaf out of the wildcat’s book and call on the mass membership to defy the anti-union laws to force the Labour Government and the Labour Party whose financial survival depends almost entirely from funding from the unions to meet their demands.