Hung out to dry

Austerity is simple enough to define: government cuts to social spending, health care, education, pensions, etc. — to balance heavily indebted public budgets (at the expense of working people, rather than taxing the rich and businesses). Austerity can also be achieved through privatization, where once publicly run enterprises are sold (cheaply) to private firms to make a profit, thus taking the cost off the government’s budget.

The labour market is deep-rooted in powerful social forces — wages, benefits, and working conditions are heavily influenced by unions, who use their organisation and strike threat to pressure employers and governments to pay living wages. Non-union workers benefit directly by the unions’ ability to alter the national labour market, since non-union companies have to compete with union companies for workers, who naturally go where wages are higher. Changes in legislation targeting the labour market are euphemistically called “labour market flexibility.” This simply means that unions will be undermined by their inability to protect workers’ jobs, making firing easier (“flexibility”), which results in compelling workers into accepting lower wages and benefits. Reducing unemployment benefits is a very popular labour market reform since it makes workers more desperate for work, and thus more accepting of low-wage jobs — consequently lowering workers’ power in the labor market overall, as wages are lowered nationally. The labour reform attacks — combined with austerity budget cuts — are happening in different forms across the world. The policies of austerity and anti-union legislation are survival strategies of capitalism in a global-wide crisis by creating a “new normal” of social expectations: lower wages and fewer social programmes.



In Spain the new labour law makes it easier and cheaper to lay off workers. For most firms, maximum lay-off payments [unemployment benefits] will be reduced from 42 months’ pay to 12 months. On September 15 in Madrid, over one hundred thousand people answered the unions’ call to demand protest against austerity.  Since January 2012, however, there has been a clear escalation in labour disputes - a general strike on March 29 against labour reform, strikes in public services (education, health and transport), the miners’ conflict which ignited the Asturian coalfield over the summer. They have every right to be indignant. We should all be.

In France the supposed "socialist" President Hollande has given union leaders and bosses until December to negotiate labor-market changes. On the table are various options, including making it possible for firms to reduce hours and salaries in a downturn against a guarantee of job security, along the lines introduced by Germany in 2003.

 Portugal's prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho financed a reduction in company costs through a sharp cut in workers’ take-home pay. The country’s main union, the CGTP, has responded with a call for a general strike on November 14th, dubbing the austerity measures a “programme of aggression against the workers and the people”.

While in Greece, with unemployment now reaching 23.5 percent, there has been six rounds of budget-cutting measures imposed upon the population since 2010.  Up to 150,000 civil servants are to be fired in 2015, more pay and pension cuts are expected. If you are 30 years old, you are either unemployed or working in a company where your salary will be cut and your rights ignored, because you have to be lucky to have any work at all. If you're 40 and have children, you are either unemployed or have a second or third job as a pizza delivery boy, cleaner, taxi driver or whatever you can find to keep your family afloat. You don’t even think about enjoying your life any more. Those who have lost everything, are hiding their poverty and helplessness. Those who are still working and earning, feel guilty in front of their friends and acquaintances. Despair eats away strength and dignity. It is the fertile ground on which xenophobia flourishes. Greece's main public and private sector labour unions will hold a 24-hour strike on Oct. 18 to protest new austerity measures

 Similar policies have being pursued by the U.S. After the presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans are committed to different versions of cuts to social services, education, Medicare, unemployment benefits, and Social Security. This bi-partisan plan is referred to as a “grand bargain.” Republicans deny unions bargaining rights — effectively destroying the union.  Democrats weaken unions less directly, by demanding that unions across the country take massive concessions in wages and benefits — a slower, yet more effective form of labor market restructuring.

In the UK trade unions will be marching on the 20th of October to protest against the cuts.  Leaked documents reveal plans to lengthen public sector working hours and change working conditions for 450,000 public employees. The documents reveal several aspects of working life as susceptible to, including employees' annual leave, occasional days' leave, sick pay, hours of work, the ability of employees to move from one job to another and probationary periods. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said "Amid an imposed pay freeze, and cuts to pensions and redundancy terms, the Cabinet Office now wants to undermine some very basic working conditions that any decent employer should offer,"

While governments and business increasingly demonize unions, the bosses will also try to co-opt the trade unions into joining them in implementing attacks on workers living standards through types of “labour-management cooperation schemes” or “roundtable agreements. But for the trade unions to wage a concerted struggle that puts the interests of working people first, it is essential that they remain independent instruments of struggle to advance the specific interests of their members – that is, independent of the bosses and the politicians who do their bidding. This is their mandate.