A Wages Offensive Now

A Wages Offensive Now

The banks have slunk off with £1.3 trillion of our money, UK businesses, large and small, are hoarding £742 billion of profit amassed through the efforts of their workforces, the real producers of wealth, the con-dem government continually insists on reducing wages and cutting public expenditure, yet the "great and the good" scratch their collective heads in bewilderment as to why unemployment continues on its inexorable rise.

All of the mainstream political parties continue to promote policies which will emasculate the social wage to the level of the 1930's and drive poverty to depths not seen since the1920's.

It is time to give them all, bosses and politicians, their P45's and usher in an economic and social system built from scratch on the basis of meeting human need instead of greed.

If banks and businesses will not invest, if government refuses to intervene and direct investment, then it is up to the organised working class to step up to the plate, especially when thousands of families live in fear of the next fuel bill falling through the letter-box and parents struggle to feed and clothe their children.

Increases in wages and benefits are the best drivers of demand, generate a massive boost to economic activity and are most effective in redistributing wealth from profits to wages.

The rank and file trade union activity of the 1960's and 1970's, led by the shop stewards movement, recognised that demands for increased wages were the cutting edge of the struggle for economic and social justice.

The leadership of the Liaison Commmittee for the Defence of Trade Unions enhanced the role of trade unions, organised thousands of workplaces across the country and brought millions of workers from the public and private sectors into membership and action to progress their conditions of employment and living standards and repel the repeated attacks of the ruling class.

This tidal wave of resistance, supported by notable sections of the official labour movement eventually led to the defeat of the bosses and their political allies with the "Times" headline declaring "We Must Engineer the Engineers".

Such a wages offensive is desperately needed now to rescue our people and their industries and services.