Apparently these cuts will create jobs, boost the economy and generally improve everyone’s well-being and happiness.
How did we get here? The irresponsible actions of the banks, the money markets, the big corporations and the insurance companies. How are they being affected by these cutbacks? By taking taxpayers’ money to bail themselves out and by only giving themselves millions in bonuses this year instead of tens of millions.
How is the average worker/taxpayer (the ones who had their pockets rifled for the bailouts) being affected by the cutbacks? Well, the majority of public sector workers have had to take a compulsory five per cent pay cut, changes to labour laws now make it easier for companies to fire people, severance pay is being cut by a third and both health and education are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks.
Not surprisingly, a great many people in Spain are somewhat angry at this. And that’s why yesterday hundreds of thousands of people across the country took part in a general strike. The second, in fact, to be held in Spain since September 2010.
Flights were severely hit, factories closed, public transport cut back to a bare minimum and thousands of businesses and many schools shut for the day.
Let’s be clear here. We are in this mess because of greed, deregulation and irresponsibility by the banks and the big institutions. The reforms being forced upon us will only serve to make the rich richer by taking more money out of the pockets of those who have already lost a lot. All that these reforms are doing is repairing the damage caused by bailing out these people so that we can be in a position to bail them out again next time.
But I’ll be honest. I’m not sure what the general strike will have achieved yesterday. A one-day general strike in September 2010 didn’t change much. A one-day general strike in March 2012 probably won’t change much either.
There is no doubt that striking is the working person’s strongest and, ultimately, only real weapon. Withdrawal of labour. But one-off strikes will not, I believe, achieve much apart from symbolic gestures of resistance.
When the banks want to go on strike they withdraw their money by denying credit to businesses and individuals and by repossessing houses after having put up mortgage rates to unaffordable levels. They do it all the time. With impunity and without care for anyone or anything except their balance sheets. If taxes go up, they go on strike by taking their money elsewhere or by finding ever more creative ways to avoid and evade tax. They are ruthless and they are consistent. This is the way it has been for so long.
And this exactly where the average working person, small and average sized business has been going wrong all this time. We should be learning a lesson from the banks. We should be following their lead. We should be acting in the same way they act. With ruthlessness and consistency.
There shouldn’t be one-off general strikes. General strikes on a more consistent basis should be seriously considered. The more who join them, the more effective they will be. But not only that. We should, through the people we elect to government, be passing tighter and more ruthless regulation of banking system, the financial markets and more ruthless with the regulation of tax laws and the closing of loopholes which allow big corporations to get out of paying the tax they should be paying. We should also crack down on the growing number of repossessions the banks carry out. After all, it’s our money they’ve got. So the houses belong to us. And if people in every country started doing the same, the big money would run out of places to go.
This is not about damaging the small and average sized businesses that treat their staff with respect and decency. And there are many of them out there. This is about redressing the balance of democracy so that everyone has fair and equal rights.
Now I know what you’re thinking. I’ve got my head in the clouds. I’m talking out of my backside. The average working person can’t afford to go on strike all the time. And even if they did, all that would happen is that the banks and the big corporations would just take their money back out on strike again and find somewhere else to put it.
Not so fast. Because we’ve already seen the seeds being sowed of just the kind of action which will make people sit up and think. It’s called the Occupy movement and what it does is mobilize one of the working people’s biggest untapped resources. The unemployed, the retired and the students. It’s already happening and it needs to continue. If we want fundamental change in our society, if we want to see a rebalance of power away from the big institutions and back to the people, back to true democracy, then this is what we need to keep doing.
The power of striking is more effective than you might think. And if you need specific examples, let me give you two from the UK.
The RMT union, which represents many transport workers and has over 80,000 members, has had long-running battles with London Underground bosses over pay and conditions. It’s because of their actions that London tube drivers and staff have decent pay, decent working conditions, decent holidays and job protection. It’s no secret that they may piss a lot of people off when they go on strike in the capital. But they get results.
Then there’s the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) which represents more than 200,000 people in the UK. It’s through their coordinated action and unity over many years that many postal workers have very good pay and conditions.
“Union” and “strike” are not dirty words, as much as the establishment has worked hard to have us believe, particularly over the last 30 years. Let’s not forget that it was the unions who fought for people to have a decent working week, decent protection and decent conditions to work in. It’s union agreements in Spain that give working people decent rights and conditions but much of which is now being eroded by the very public spending cuts that are being forced on us directly and indirectly as a result of the bailouts.
You might think I’m some extremist lunatic spouting revolution. But if you do, you couldn’t be more wrong. All I’m doing is expressing what a growing number of normal, sane, reasonable people are saying and doing. The evidence is there to see. On the contrary, I’m not suggesting anything extreme or unreasonable. I’m simply suggesting a re-evaluation of our perspective and a realization that we do, in fact, have more power than we think we do. Change is long overdue. So stop feeling guilty and start getting your rights back.
There are other things you can do too apart from pressuring the politicians to take action through strikes. One thing is to remove your savings, mortgages and investments from the big banks. There are a growing number of smaller, more "environmentally-friendly" banks you can invest with. It´s easy to talk about it, but actually doing it is what will make the banks sit up and listen.
ReplyDeleteIt´s going to be a hard year for workers. A million people more will lose their jobs because of the cuts. Those people who earn thousands of euros per year(even millions of euros) tell us austerity measures are necessaries. And I say: Yes, they are necessaries for paying your millionaires salaries!!!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree that ‘union´ and ‘strike´ are fundamental words. The labor reform means a backward movement in workers right of fifty years. But times are changing and perhaps we must think about other kinds of fight against the system. Wikileaks is a good example.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, what we all are really waiting for it´s the storm passes, I mean, spanish people voted for a completely different government and we are at the same point, with the same unsolved problem, the unemployment. The european zone has the rules of the game and we are part of it. Probably our future is in their hands more than we think and, at the same time, financial markets use the european governments to get their own profits. I don´t pretend to any expertise in economics but it seems we are part of the game a few.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but the fact is that I don't trust too much on our two big trade unions, UGT and CCOO, because they are very well positioned in the main companies. Their workers don't suffer the cuts, the boss of a company can't make them redundant and so on. They have special rigths that the average worker doesn't have. They are only at the workers' side when a big and impressive impact has to be done for the audience, just trying to justify their role in this performance. Lots of changes have to be done to the whole system, not only in the financial world but also in the labour one.
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