Our economic and political systems have a great talent for absorbing and deflecting protests, as the recent all-out support by labour unions for Obama clearly shows. Employers united and confident will continue to escalate their war on workers. Their goal, the dismantling of what little power unions still have. The fortunes of the ultra-rich are so vast today that a handful of billionaires can bend most governments to their will. Since the outset of the depression governments has been engaged in a sustained attack on the working class. It endeavours to achieve this by splitting the working class - pitting worker against worker. By fragmenting the working class it renders it more vulnerable to defeat. Migrant workers are split from indigenous workers; unskilled workers from skilled workers; public workers from private workers. In its current attack the government has singled out the public sector workers. To achieve a cutback in the income of these workers it has actively led a sustained campaign against them entailing the polarisation of pubic and private worker.
Working people if they are to revitalize the labour movement must proceed with educating their fellow workers in democracy, in building class solidarity, in waging war against their class adversaries, in political independence. We can learn about our own capacities just by participating in union meetings, collective bargaining, strikes, picketing, and boycotts to be better prepared to wage class war against their exploiters. Unions give employees a voice in their workplaces they otherwise wouldn’t have; they give you the power to fight your employer instead of quitting and finding another job. Unions improve wages and benefits not just for their members but for the working class as a whole. The latter effect occurs because non-union employers might pay higher wages and benefits to avoid unions in their workplaces, and because union gains in such things as pensions, health and safety, and grievance procedures might become the standard bench-mark for many other workers.
When unions lose their strength, so too do all those who work for a living. The unions themselves begin to make concessions that boost business profits and the incomes of those who own the businesses. It is now a rare union in the manufacturing sector that has not agreed to a two-tier wage system in which new hires receive a fraction of what senior employees earn for the same work. Hard-won work rules are discarded, giving companies free reign to compel more work effort from those producing our goods and services. This is combined with brutal workforce reductions, which place heavier burdens on those remaining. Once unions make concessions, it is open season on non-union workers. Employers have a free hand to impose draconian “lean production” techniques (such as kaizen or “constant improvement,” which relentlessly speeds up production by making fewer workers produce the same or greater output). Productivity and profits rise, but workers get no more money, and this further increases inequality.
The calls for cuts in the pay of public employees as a means of solving the economic crisis on the grounds that they receive better pensions, pay and working conditions than the private sector is purposefully divisive. The private sector cannot be compared with the public because like is not being compared with like
The public sector is very diverse in terms of pension, pay and conditions of work. To lump the public sector workers all together on the basis that they all share these conditions is mistaken. Public employees range from general labourers to skilled engineers, secretaries and receptionists to department heads and executives. As to be expected under capitalism the pay and conditions of work between these different categories of state employees is very different. Neither can the private sector be reduced to one entity for the purpose of comparing pensions, pay and working conditions between the state and non state employees. The non-state sector is perhaps even more diverse. Private employees can be employed by different kinds of employers under wide ranging conditions. The private sector consists of diverse enterprises: large and small capitalists; small retail outlets; small-holder farmers and sub-contractors. To make a distinction that in terms of job security, pay and conditions of work state employees have better job security, pay and conditions of work than the latter is mistaken. There are employees in the private sector with much better job security, pay and conditions of work than in the public sector -- senior managers and professionals. The private sector also consists of diverse branches of production and as with state employees many private sector employees are non-productive workers too. It is constantly been claimed across the media that state employees have better pensions, pay and conditions of work. But this is an unsupported simplification. Within individual companies these conditions are diverse. Senior management are not employed on the same basis as other employees. Along with this many companies havenot been affected more adversely by the depression than others. Some of these companies pay relatively higher wages and provide better conditions of work. Many private employees have better pensions, pay and working conditions than many public employees. Much of these differences are due to the power of the market. The law of value can determine how workers are treated by employers. Given the market conditions it can suit employers to provide their workers with relatively better pay and conditions of work than are found elsewhere. Just because many private employees have lost their jobs and suffered pay reductions does not mean that all private employees are suffering the same fate. Many parts of the private sector are still cushioned from the more acute effects of the economic crisis. Yet there is no campaign calling for further pay reductions against employees in these sectors. The populist campaign leveled against public sector employees is a campaign grounded in irrationalist scape-goating.
The working class is constantly being bombarded with propaganda. It is told that the state is living way beyond its means in its day-to-day spending. Therefore, the government must cut back on expenditure to keep the economy solvent. It is argue by cutting back on pay and jobs as opposed to services, those public social services can be spared and maintained. Workers in the public sector are to be forced to pay for the economic crisis. Many state and non-state employees live within the same family or household. In many of these cases the state employees suffering income falls may indirectly adversely affect the non-state employees belonging to the same family or household. The reverse situation is also true. It is said that there is no choice but to make public workers pay for for the state deficit. But apologists for capitalism are not calling on the super-paid highly-affluent public/private elite to pay for it. Calls for "fairness" means nothing. It is merely a word designed to fool the workers into accepting cuts in living standards.
This tactic represents the thin end of the wedge. It constitutes part of a sustained attack on the working class as a whole. The target is the defeat of the entire working class. It is hoped that this approach will deal such a blow to the more organized section of the working class that it will lead to a general assault on the entire working class much easier to achieve. The capitalist hope is the re-structuring and diminution of the public service will lead to a weaker and harder pressed workforce. It is hoped to ultimately reduce the public service worker more or less to the same condition as that of the average factory or shop worker. Then capitalism will have a cheaper and more docile workforce. In view of this it is imperative that the working class meet this onslaught with stiff resistance.
There are only two options facing the working class. One is to try and solve the crisis at the expense of the working class. The other is a social revolution at the expense of the capitalist class. The only way to put an end to economic crises is by eliminating capitalism and replacing it with a socialist societyCompromise is an impossibility. The workers have no choice but to choose one or the other. Socialism is not just an ideal. We do not speak of socialism as an abstract notion which could happen someday. Socialism is our very survival.
No comments:
Post a Comment