It's a good few years since I was an economics student (I'm not nearly as young as I look in the profile picture) but I do remember a bit about what the Government should do in a recession.
Cutting jobs isn't it - so it is galling to learn that half of local authorities have cut jobs in the current crisis.
Reducing jobs in local government further reduces spending power in the local economy and thereby worsens the recession. What we need is a massive programme of public spending with increases, not reductions in public sector employment.
What we are getting from Tory dominated local government is a taste of the economic policies of what I fear may be our next Government.
Today I had the pleasure of speaking at the AGM of the Hammersmith and Fulham Branch of UNISON, where I heard the best speech I've heard in a while from UNISON member Dawn Francis, one of five women workers who face redundancy because of the hare-brained scheme of her wildly reactionary Tory employers to first privatise their caller centre and then move it to Rochdale.
The five workers have a total of 93 years service with the Council but face the sack on 15 March because they can't be redeployed. The meeting voted unanimously to request a ballot for strike action to defend these workers' jobs.
This is the sort of response we need to job losses in local government.
The demonstration on 28 March is an excellent opportunity for us to mobilise our response to the economic crisis - we also need to put our Union on a war footing to fight to defend our jobs, conditions, services and pensions.
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3 comments:
Your absolutely right .... it clearly is a very long time since you studied economics. Keynes died years ago!
Robert, I think the point is that we oppose Labour Councils who follow Tory policies like that, and we oppose Tories doing the same thing?
Anon, Marx has been dead even longer but has even more of value to tell us about how capitalist economies function (or don't).
Marx? Now we know you're having a laugh!
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