Anti-cuts, public services

The first Budget of the Tory-Liberal government has staked out the ground for an enormous assault on the working class in the period ahead - on our living standards and, maybe, on our remaining trade-union rights. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) dotted the i here by proposing tighter anti-union laws to quell any working-class revolt. The Budget itself began the assault. More will be spelled out in the autumn. The Budget plan is harsher than the measures of the Thatcher government 30 years ago. £82 billion of cuts in annual public spending. A wage freeze for six million public...

The 22 June Budget means public spending cut by 25% almost everywhere except health by 2014-5. The details will not be spelled out until the autumn spending review, but the certainty is (as the Financial Times headline put it): "huge jobs cull looms as services hit". Public sector workers also face a two-year pay freeze (with a tiny exception for some lower-paid) and increased pension contributions, i.e. a cash cut in take-home pay at a time when inflation is running over 5%. VAT will rise from 17.5% to 20% from January 2011, in effect raising the prices of most goods and services by a further...

The cuts programme is Europe-wide. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Greece are all making big cuts in social provision. This is a social and political choice by the ruling classes. In the tumult of 2008, many mainstream writers said that neo-liberalism was dead, and capitalist governments would have to seek a new programme, possibly conceding more social provision. Yet the EU governments are gambling on a push for a strongly neo-liberal way forward from the crisis. That means gearing government policy to making the eurozone an attractive site for footloose global...

Q. Are cuts in public services, welfare benefits, and public sector pay, jobs, and pensions unavoidable? Click here to download this article as pdf. A. No. In the first place, there is nothing impossible about the government continuing with a large budget deficit for a while. In the second place, the Trident replacement (maybe £30 billion) could be cut. Military spending (total £37 billion a year) could be reduced. The vast administrative costs of the internal market in the health service and the payments to private contractors under PFI schemes (up to £10 billion a year) could be axed. In the...

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Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public service workers' union Unison, promised the Unison conference in Bournemouth on 15 June: We will only support a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party who is ready to stand with us to fight with us against cuts and privatisation, and we will be looking to Labour councillors and Labour groups to do the same. He continued: We will have one priority to make sure our branches have the resources, the training, the advice, the support that they need to recruit, organise, represent and defend our members... We will organise. We will organise...

On Monday 7 June, David Cameron declared war on British workers — the public sector workers who will lose jobs, the jobless who will lose benefits, the working-class people who will find the services they depend on are gone, or have been privatised out. Britain’s “way of life”, said Cameron, would be fundamentally disrupted, for years to come. Was Cameron just preparing expectations and talking up the scale of the cuts? No. One consultancy firm, Capital Economics, predicts as many as 750,000 jobs will go in the public sector. We are not, as Cameron put it, “all in this together”. Bosses who...

The conference in May of the civil service workers' union PCS resolved on "a major call for joint action amongst public sector unions". There are two problems with making this call "the answer" to cuts. First, it cuts against more confident or militant unions taking action ahead of the rest. Some battles can be won by sectional action. And united trade-union action is more likely to start by some unions giving a lead than by waiting until everyone is lined up to make the first step forward in perfect harmony. Secondly: why the "public sector" limitation? It made some sense when the issue was...

On 7 June the German government, which faces no acute government-debt crisis, announced £66 billion cuts. The cuts will come mostly from welfare benefits, but will also slice off 15,000 public sector jobs. Germany's move is part of a wider pattern. Germany is pushing for other European Union countries to adopt a constitutional amendment like the one Germany voted through in May 2009. That amendment comes into force from January 2011 and prohibits all but the smallest budget deficits from 2016. France has already made a constitutional amendment, banning budget deficits from 2018. Britain's...

Public sector workers in Germany will demonstrate against cuts on 12 June. Government employees in Spain struck on 8 June. Italy's biggest union federation has called a public sector workers' rally for 12 June. Portugal had a big anti-cuts protest march on 29 May. Greece has already had several general strikes. On 22 June the British government will announce its cuts. Welfare benefits, tax credits, and public service jobs and wages, are sure to be among the first targets. That is where the government can save cash quickly. As in other countries, trade-union action has to be central to fighting...