"It's not banks we should be looking after, it's workers." Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary, Unite Trade Union.

With these words Tony Woodley sought to galvanise and enthuse the crowd of marchers who had braved the elements of torrential rain on this Saturday May 16 to march to Centennial Square off Broad Street in Birmingham to demand action on jobs.

Workers On the March

They had come from all over the country by coach and train from North and South Wales, from the threatened Corus plant in Redcar, from Jaguar Land Rover and LDV vans in the Midlands and from all other points of the compass. What a magnificent demonstration of anger over uncertain job prospects for working people!

The 'Put People First: March for Jobs' had been organised by the Unite trade union and attracted between 8,000 and 10,000 workers. Unite organised coaches had poured into Birmingham for the event. This is what one trade union managed to accomplish! What could have been achieved if the TUC had put its mighty organisation into action and campaigned and mobilised its seven million affiliated trade unionists to turn out on a day like this? Just over a month ago the Irish Congress of Trade Unions called its members out on a mass demo in Dublin and more than 200,000 responded. Translated into UK population figures we could have had a million plus on the streets of Britain's second city.

From the assembly point in Highfield Road, down the Hagley Road and into Broad Street the morale of the marchers was high. Here were working class people putting their stamp on the economic crisis unfolding before our eyes. What was surprising was the number of older workers who had turned out. It was as if the battle scars of the defeats of the 1980s and 1990s had been healed and the fighters of that era had been reenergised and were now mingling with younger workers, brothers and sisters in the struggle to protect jobs.

Rising Unemployment

It was also fitting that the march should take place in the centre of England as the West Midlands unemployment level at 9.3% is the highest in the country with another 67,000 joining the regional total in the last three months. Nationally, another 244,000 unemployed in the same period have brought the total to 2.2million.

The jobs crisis is real for working class families with homes being repossessed as the economic crisis hits home. As Tony Woodley said, "Workers did not cause this recession, but they are paying for it hand over fist with their jobs." He attacked the government as "no-brainers" for having handed over £900billion to the banks and still the crisis remains unresolved. He went on to say "It's not banks we should be looking after, it's workers... It's no good just bailing out the banks and the spivs and speculators who caused the global crisis. It's about the workers."

  Both Tony Woodley and TUC General Secretary Brendon Barber rightly condemned the actions of the banks and the bankers and millions of trade unionists and their families look to these labour leaders for a solution to the economic crisis and its impact on the jobs, livelihoods and security of working class people. But where were the solutions? Where was the programme to take on the banks, the spivs and the speculators? The main solution offered was to put some of the money given to the banks into subsidizing short-time working  in the factories to avoid job losses, thereby maintaining skill levels so that when the upturn comes, workers will be in place to aid the economic recovery! Tony Woodley wants to emulate the examples of Spain and Belgium. 

Bosses - Good and Bad?

The solution therefore for Tony Woodley is not to put such huge sums of public money into the pockets of finance capitalists in charge of the banking system but into the pockets of industrial capitalists in charge of industry. Whilst it is true that the capitalist system in the UK has been historically skewed to the interests of finance capital, to believe that subsidizing one section of these parasites instead of another raises a lot of questions. The crisis in both sectors of capitalism, the finance and manufacturing sides, are symptomatic of the general crisis of capitalism.

The present crisis began in the finance sector but as we know has quickly transferred to the industrial sector with a devastating effect on jobs. The prognosis too is that even if there is a slight economic recovery in the near future, and there are some emerging signs that some corners in terms of housing and loan applications for mortgages have been turned, the toll on jobs will continue apace. Employers will be seeking every opportunity to terminate contractual agreements, enforce wage cuts and reduce employee numbers. In other words further job cuts are on the cards even in an economic upturn as bosses seek to do what they always do and always have done - maximise profit levels from their economic activity. Let us put to one side the myth that there are some good or bad employers.

As Marxists we do not look at the morals governing the behaviour of the bosses. Production takes place not to provide jobs but to make profit for the owners, the shareholders. If more profit can be made by slashing workforce numbers and raising the rate of exploitation of fewer workers, then that is what will happen. The phenomenon of the past 25 years has shown that although there is an historical tendency for the rate of profit to fall given the nature of capitalism, the rate of profit has actually risen due to a greater exploitation of labour. In the coming economic upturn the same will take place. Stocks will be rebuilt and production will resume in the cheapest manner possible with the fewest workers possible.

Hand Outs To Banks

Tony Woodley's proposal to subsidize industrial bosses out of the public purse will mean in effect boosting shareholders' profits out of taxpayers' money with no guarantee that jobs will be saved. Let us learn the lesson of what happened to the banks. The government has just carried out a third emergency injection of funds to the banking system in the hope of getting credit flowing again. The first was last October with a hands-off part nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds from a £37bn cash injection. The crisis was stabilised, but bank lending did not increase. In January of this year a second package totalling some £600bn was injected with RBS being underwritten to the tune of £260bn and Lloyds by £325bn. In total some £1.3 trillion of public money had been pumped into the banks and they were still refusing to lend to industry and thus safeguard jobs. Some £400m of that injection is expected to be a loss paid for out of public money. Now a third package of £50 billion has been injected and we await the results. 

There have been no guarantees that public money would be used to protect the public from the ravages of this crisis and working people constitute the overwhelming majority if the public. The only public to benefit from the injection of public cash has been the bankers, the spivs and the speculators that Tony Woodley condemned in his speech at the end of the march.

Socialist Answer

What would be a socialist answer to the crisis? Firstly, the banks should have been nationalised with compensation to small shareholders being paid on the basis of proven need. To ensure public accountability the governing boards of the banks should be elected with representation from the workers in the industry, the wider labour and trade union movement and the government. Only then can we ensure capital is available to invest in industry, house building, schools and hospitals and social infrastructure. Let us learn from the fiasco of PFI. For ten years we were told that schools and hospitals could not be built with public money as the government's debt would exceed 40% of the total wealth we produce in the UK in one year, the GDP. With the bailing out of the banks the total government debt is now 80% of GDP, double what we were told it could not be. We can find money to bail out the spivs and speculators but not to build schools and hospitals.

Secondly, any company threatening job cuts must be met with decisive action. If the order books are low then share out the work with no loss of pay. If the company says it cannot afford it, then we must demand that the company books be opened. If finance is not available, then we must demand that the government nationalises the company, makes money available for investment from the now nationalised banking system and that the company is run under worker's control and management.The only way to prevent working people from paying the crisis of the system is by working people owning and controlling the system.

Decisive Action Needed

Darrall Cozens (Member of Coventry NE Labour Party and UCU.)