The writing on the wall

Len McCluskey believes, “The writing has to be on the wall for economic injustices.”

In a letter published in today’s (January 26) Financial Times, Len refers to the paper’s January 21 editorial “UK’s labour regulations must stay light and easy”. Len writes:

Your editorial identifies a salient problem in today’s labour market — that low-skill, low-wage employment is not the solution to the economic problems faced by our nations.

However, it is remarkable that you then conclude that on the question of labour market regulations “the Tories are clearly right”.

When the share of the wealth created by workers and distributed to them through wages is now substantially lower than it was 30 years ago, and continues to fall, how can that be the case? The issue of rising inequality is now widely regarded as the most pressing issue facing western economies.

Don’t take my word for it, ask President Barack Obama, just the latest in a host of leading figures who have seen that the writing has to be on the wall for neoliberalism and its attendant spiralling economic injustices.

George Osborne, the architect of the UK’s economic race to the bottom, therefore cannot be the answer. Alongside the super-growth in zero-hours working, agency labour and phantom self-employment, on his watch there has been a systematic attack on basic employment rights and an entrenchment of widening inequality between the richest and poorest.

Nor is flexibility in the workplace some magic bullet; certainly not when it serves to drive down wages, blights lives with insecurity and drives up in-work benefits paid by the government, in effect subsiding poverty pay. Unfair on the employee and unfair on the taxpayer.

The orthodoxy underpinning your editorial is tired, and it is wrong. The solution is well-trained, well-motivated and well (fairly) paid staff.

The answer is an industrial policy that will see the high-skilled jobs and developed staff that countries such as Germany, Europe’s powerhouse economy, can boast of.

But if Germany cannot convince you, then perhaps the UK car industry can. Currently enjoying a 10-year high and regularly lavished with praise by David Cameron, these highly skilled, valued workers are all Unite members.

The success of the British car industry is proof that businesses can and do work positively with trade unions to improve productivity together.

Let’s learn from this. We need a tripartite solution — government, business and workers together building a better, fairer future for all.