THE TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, in his New Year’s message said that his two fears for 2008 were the dangers of a banking collapse and the simmering anger of workers at the wage cutting policies of Premier Brown.
The two issues boil down to the chronic fear of the chief of the British trade union bureaucracy that the sharpening crisis of capitalism will drive the working class to revolution and to the overthrow of the capitalist system, in which Barber functions as a well paid and pensioned labour lieutenant for the boss class.
This has been his role throughout his trade union ‘career’.
In his latest TUC press statement he bemoans the fact that as ‘Unpaid overtime increases across the UK – employees are missing out on £4,955 a year’.
He adds: ‘The number of employees working unpaid overtime increased by 103,000 in 2007, bringing the total to nearly five million, according to a new analysis of official statistics published by the TUC today.’
He adds: ‘About one in five of the working population work unpaid overtime. The TUC has calculated that if everyone in the UK who works unpaid overtime did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be Friday 22 February.’
Is he angry and threatening action by the 7 million strong TUC trade union movement to stop this barbarous treatment of workers – Not on you life!
His appeal to the employers is for them to say thank you for at least once in the year for all of this unpaid overtime.
He bleats: ‘That is why the TUC has declared this “Work Your Proper Hours Day” and is calling on employers to say thank you to staff for putting in the extra hours and to ensure that they work their proper hours on this day.’
This is not even an example of ‘lions being led by a donkey.’ This is a servant of the boss class asking his masters to be a little more appreciative of their wage slaves.
The New Year resolution of the working class for 2008 must be to get rid of this type of creepy crawly reformist leadership for good, and to build a new and revolutionary leadership to put an end to the super-exploitation of the working class by the bosses, and to see to it that the whole burden of the deepening capitalist crisis is not unloaded onto the backs of the working class and the middle class by the Brown government, with Barber as its chief helper.
This is precisely what the Brown government intends to do.
It plans to add to the £50bn that it has ploughed into the Northern Rock Bank by advancing the same facility to other stricken banks when they start to fall like ninepins.
At the same time the bankers will be raising their mortgage interest rates, thus threatening the homes of up to 1.5 million people who are coming off fixed rate mortgages.
The Brown government plans to appease the angry military men, smarting from their defeat in Iraq, by spending tens of billions more on the armed forces budget.
All of this massive expenditure is going to be raised from huge cuts in the health and education budgets and huge cuts in the wages of millions of public sector workers. It is to be a treat yourself NHS!
Brown will expand his ‘government of all the talents’ into a national government with the Tories and the Liberals to force this austerity programme through.
These massive cuts are going to take place at the same time as the cost of living – food bills, heating bills and petrol bills – escalate out of control after oil rockets to over $100 a barrel, turning billions of working class and middle class families into paupers.
Facing this situation, the working class needs a new and revolutionary leadership that will organise the workers to put an end to capitalism. The WRP must be built up rapidly in 2008.
Capitalism has failed. It is trying to drag humanity over the abyss with it. It must be overthrown and replaced by socialism and a planned economy based on meeting people’s needs.
