Coming home to roost

For five years under the Coalition government manufacturing faced a tough time with our automotive industry providing the growth in the economy due to strong exports, which was also supported by our Aerospace Sector.

Now we have a full blown Conservative government the position is clear.

The Tories do not have or want a manufacturing strategy and indications came early with the appointment of Sajid Javid, as secretary of state at BIS who having hung a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall, downgraded the term Industrial Strategy to “Industrial Approach”.

Soon after, along with George Osborne, they posed a question why productivity in the UK was low compared to Germany, France and the USA and arguing that it took UK workers five days what German workers produced in four.

Unite’s own study into productivity in manufacturing shows the reason that Germany is so far in front is that they defended their manufacturing base, they value skilled workers and have a well structured and well understood apprenticeship system – and importantly – workers have a say in the future of their companies through strong unions and strong industrial structures.

Compare this with the Tory government who is attacking employment rights in a race to the bottom, who has withdrawn funding from skills partnerships in automotive, aerospace, science and chemicals all in the name of austerity and introduced an apprenticeship levy which it has not as yet explained how it will work.

Steel

Make no mistake the lack of an industrial strategy has contributed to the collapse of the UK steel industry.

UK steel is faced with extraordinarily high energy prices, with the dumping of cheap Chinese steel on the world market and high business rates.

When the unions and the industry have raised these issues with the government they merely shrugged their shoulders and expected us to walk away – that was until they were forced into doing something, including going to Brussels to ask for assistance.

Other countries in Europe support their steel industry, a foundation industry without which we can’t have a successful manufacturing economy.

Germany, Italy, France and Holland have all provided help – with the support of the European Union for their steel industries.  The Tories response to this has been to say “Europe won’t let us do it” – Not true!

In the past few weeks our steel worker members have fought back to save their jobs and communities.

We now face a similar situation in other parts of manufacturing including the tyres industry where there is evidence of dumping if cheap Chinese truck tyres on the UK market and we have seen other companies declare redundancies, no longer confident about the future due to a lack of an overall industrial manufacturing strategy.

This week Unite’s sectors will be discussing their own individual industrial strategies which will look forward to the next four years under the Tories – who will oversee the signing of trade deals, TTIP and CETA, which will disadvantage UK manufacturing; market status for the Chinese economy, allowing more dumping of goods on the global market; the trade union Bill which will lead to a “race to the bottom”; and massive changes in technology through the use of cyber systems and digitisation.

Unite is impressing on Labour that they need to prepare for the next general election with a robust and interventionist manufacturing strategy. We in Unite are prepared to fight for a high pay, high skills economy with decent employment and a better future for all of our members and their families.

Tony Burke is Unite assistant general secretary for manufacturing

 

This article was first published in the Morning Star, November 24