ON Thursday the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, made an emergency statement to parliament on the international economic crisis that is engulfing British capitalism to the point of collapse and, in particular, the Bank of England revising down its growth forecast for 2011.
With trillions of dollars being wiped off share prices on the world stock markets virtually every week, the once mighty US economy in meltdown and state bankruptcy sweeping Europe, Osborne was called up to give answers as to what the coalition government intended to do to survive this onslaught.
Osborne’s response to this catastrophe was to insist that there would be no change in the policy of savage cuts to public expenditure, no let-up in privatisation of the welfare state, and a continued attack on jobs and wages.
The one thing that he did emphasise as a main plank of the coalition’s policies was an all-out assault on the trade unions and on the employment rights of workers.
According to Osborne, the only factor that is preventing growth in the collapsed economy is the ‘vested interests’ of the trade union movement.
Osborne’s solution to the whole crisis is to stimulate the UK economy by the simple expedient of overhauling the employment laws and taking on and smashing the trade unions.
In May this year Osborne set out his plans, to do away with the red tape he claims is preventing businesses from creating vast numbers of new jobs, in a speech to the Institute of Directors.
These plans involved making it financially impossible for workers to take their employers to industrial tribunals for unfair dismissal by imposing huge costs on them should they fail.
At the same time, fines on companies found to be illegally discriminating against workers on the grounds of race, sex or trade union activity would be severely limited to a small financial slap across the wrists.
In addition, Osborne is committed to repealing the legislation enshrining the Transfer of Undertakings Protection Employment Regulations (TUPE).
The regulations insist that workers who find their jobs taken over by a new employer have the right for their old terms and conditions, including wages, taken with them into the new company until such times as they are re-negotiated.
This has been a particular source of anger to the privateers who have taken over public services and want to maximise their profits by immediately instituting wage cuts.
Osborne is also determined to do away with the statutory redundancy consultation period employers are obliged to enter into with the unions.
All these plans are designed for one purpose – to make it easy for employers to hire and fire at will.
As for the unions, the coalition is on course to make striking illegal through the imposition of impossible ballot regulations.
The ultimate aim of Osborne, Cameron and Clegg is to turn the clock back to the 19th century when workers had no rights and no trade unions.
These were the days when casual labour was the rule and workers turned up every day in the hope of being picked for a few hours work.
It was the fight by the working class against these conditions that led to the formation of general trade unions like the Transport and General (forerunner of the Unite union).
Today the fight against this attempt to re-introduce hire-and-fire regimes and the casualisation of work will be at a much higher level – not to build trade unions but to build a revolutionary leadership in the unions that will take on the government in a general strike and bring it down, replacing it with a workers government that will advance to socialism.
