[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]T[/dropcap]he TUC have decided Britain no longer needs trade unions.
Not that we have had them for a while. This is from the TUC’s statement with the CBI about unpaid work and workfare:
The Traineeship programme is supported by both the TUC and the CBI. Good quality Traineeships have the potential to provide young people, who might otherwise struggle to enter the labour market, with a route into an Apprenticeship or other sustainable employment, and can help businesses attract and develop enthusiastic young men and women. Traineeships are a collaboration between a young person, an employer and a training provider, working together to develop the skills and competencies needed to flourish in the workplace….
Although employers are not required to pay Trainees, they may provide allowances or cover expenses (such as transport or meals) for Trainees. Where the young person is on benefits, training providers will be able to liaise with Jobcentre Plus to ensure that the provision of any financial support is compatible with the young person’s benefit entitlement.
Let me explain what this means.
We have had an expansion of welfare to the working population. Once a worker is welfare dependent, it doesn’t actually matter if they have a trade union because the government can tinker direct with the economy and their income without ever consulting one. The transfer of welfare spending to the working population, combined with the easy availability of credit, has driven wages to the floor. Now everyone’s wages will be depressed, and the percentage of the labour in the economy done for benefits and benefits alone will increase.
This will continue until we have a no-wage economy of people with no democratic or legal representation.
The power of labour to challenge capital is to be absorbed into the benefits system. Trade unions are no longer necessary.
The TUC are umbilically linked to the Labour Party, who are umbilically linked to finance. The TUC now exist to undermine paid labour, and to drive down wages. The effect: the working population are disenfranchised, and unable to survive, so vulnerable to exploitation.
They did this because Frances O’ Grady is on 90k a year, and why the fuck would she give a shit? The TUC have worked hard to prevent all opposition to austerity, unless it can be harvested for the Labour Party and the finance sector in whose interests it is done. They are vicious with people who challenge them. Old union bullies, they have delivered austerity for the Tories.
This is a message. The trade unions are fair game. The Tories never needed to ban trade unions or strikes, the trade unions are so locked into their fat trough they abandoned us years ago. Existing ONLY to steal our money, and provide lefty bullshit to prevent the discussing of our economic policy, its relationship to our social policy and inequality faultlines.
Illustration by Dan Booth not to be reproduced without his express prior permission
