PREMIER Brown says he wants three-year pay deals for public sector workers, rather than the traditional annual deals, to help keep UK inflation low.
At his monthly media conference, the PM said the measure was necessary to maintain long-term economic stability.
What Brown really means is that in order to be able to continue handing out many tens of billions to the bankers in the next three years, he will be cutting the wages of the working class, by holding down wage ‘rises’ to 1.9 per cent a year, while food and energy prices are rocketing upwards.
His policy is to prop up the bankers and the bosses and to recoup the cash by starving the working class.
It is conscious policy to make the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism. Everyone knows that the fantastic devaluation of the pound and the dollar that is taking place is driving a huge wave of inflation in the price of all of the commodities that are imported into Britain.
When Brown talks about breaking the back of inflation in the next three years he is talking about breaking the back of the working class, and middle class mortgage holders.
The trade union leaders know exactly what the Brown Labour government is planning, but since they are bound hand and foot to capitalism their major fear is that they may lose ‘control’ over a very angry working class.
Yesterday both the TUC and the UNISON trade union said that they had nothing against three-year wage deals, when they know full well that Brown is out to massively cut wages.
General Secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, was speaking like an inhabitant of another planet when he observed that ‘Longer term deals can help create the space to address some of those longer term issues, but unions will only buy into this kind of idea if they’re very confident that people’s living standards will be protected throughout the period of a deal.’
He knows full well that people’s living standards are not going to be protected!
Karen Jennings, head of Health at UNISON, said if its members were to agree to a three-year pay deal it would need to be a ‘decent and fair’ award and remove the risks of an unstable economy from the health workers themselves.
There can be no decent and fair award in a period when inflation is exploding.
There is only one way forward for the working class in this period of acute capitalist crisis.
The TUC must oppose any attempt to impose three-year wage deals with a general strike.
It must organise its own cost of living index made up of the basic requirements of a working class family, and therefore a much more accurate reflection of the inflation rate than any rigged government figure.
The TUC must demand that as well as annual wage rises, wages must be reviewed every three months and adjusted upwards to keep pace with this real inflation rate. This is the only way to defend the living standards of the working class and the middle class in this period of capitalist crisis and rampant inflation.
A new and revolutionary leadership must be built up in the trade unions, and the Barbers and the other labour lieutenants of capitalism removed as trade union leaders.
The trade unions must be organised to defend jobs with a policy of occupations to fight mass sackings, and a national campaign for the nationalisation of all failing industries.
Not a single trade union member must lose his home, repossessed because of increases in mortgage interest rates. Instead the trade unions must demand the nationalisation of the banks and the abolition of all mortgage debt.
Above all the trade unions must organise a general strike to bring down the Brown government to go forward to a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bring in socialism
