MILIBAND’S Labour Party yesterday said that if it was the government it would offer the long-term unemployed a guarantee of a six-month job. This would be 25 hours of paid work a week, at the minimum wage rate, that would still require the receipt of benefits if such workers were to be able to pay their rents and feed their families.
Businesses would be given subsidies to hire workers on this temporary basis. Unemployed workers who refused to take part in such a cosmetic scheme – that did not provide real permanent work or a living wage – would have their benefits taken away and face the consequences, which could well be eviction and starvation, with their children taken into care.
The benefit to the Labour Party leaders from this announced scheme is that they are seen to be offering workers six months of cheap labour, and if the ‘scroungers’ refuse they are to be starved.
Labour will therefore appear to be just as tough on the ‘scroungers on benefits’ as Duncan Smith and the Tories.
To emphasise the announcement is just a propaganda ploy and a hoax of the unemployed, the Labour Party yesterday would not commit to carry out even this feeble excuse for a jobs policy if it became the government in 2015.
In other words, the Labour pledge is just for the sake of propaganda and, in office, a Labour government would only offer what capitalism could afford, and if that be nothing, so be it.
Labour yesterday said its plan, intended to help 129,400 people out of work for two years, would be funded by restricting tax relief on pension contributions available to higher-rate taxpayers.
Its Shadow Work and Pensions spokesman Liam Byrne said the long-term unemployed needed to be ‘working or training and not claiming’.
At the end of Labour’s six-month scheme, workers would have to find a permanent job or revert to claiming jobseeker’s allowance.
Next Tuesday there is to be a vote on the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill, which will ensure that most benefits and tax credits will rise by only one per cent for the next three years – in other words be massively cut.
After much thought about what damage this would do to its working class support if it voted for the measure, Labour is to vote against.
Labour Shadow Chancellor Balls refused to say how Labour would vote on the measure during the debate on Osborne’s November Autumn Budget statement. Labour now says that it will vote against, and use the six-month scheme proposal to show that it is just as tough on the ‘scroungers’ as Duncan Smith any day.
Once again, just to make sure that this message is understood, Labour has stated that it cannot pledge to introduce the six-month cheap labour measure if it becomes the government.
Labour is obsessed with propaganda manoeuvres, to try to make sure that it can be seen to be just as right-wing as the Tories.
This is why its latest plan – which, however feeble, it cannot pledge to bring in if elected as the government – is an insult to the army of the unemployed that has been built up under capitalism.
The reason why it cannot pledge to carry out the measure is that, for Miliband’s Labour, capitalism and its requirements come first.
The economic situation in 2015 will be a lot worse than it is today, meaning that a Labour government under Miliband might have to mount another rescue operation for the bankers and bosses which the workers will have to pay for. This is why he cannot pledge a single policy for 2015, outside faithfully serving the UK’s ruling class.
There is only one policy that can assist the working class and the youth in this crisis situation. This is that the trade unions must mobilise to bring down the Coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism.
To provide the millions of jobs that the working class requires, the banks, the land and the major industries must be nationalised and put under workers management.
There must be an economic plan drawn up to build the millions of homes that are required, and new road, rail, air transport and anti-flood systems, as well as the huge task of bringing the water and energy provision systems up to date.
A socialist economic plan will employ millions of workers and create the conditions where the masses of unemployed workers and youth can learn new skills and old and new trades, at trade union rates of pay, to benefit society and develop civilisation and socialism.
This is the way forward. To clear the way, capitalism must be overthrown.
