Economic Crisis - We Need a Workers' Plan!

Posted in Tubeworker's blog on ,

During this economic crisis, working class people are being made to go without, while the government finds billions to fund the banks. The ruling economic system, capitalism, has exposed its own inbuilt cycles of booms and busts and the government has shown that its main purpose is to prop up this deeply flawed system. If nobody stands up for the working class and we are left to suffer the most. We can not leave 'politics' to the politicians. We have to stand up for ourselves and make demands. Here are some things we should be fighting for and some of the ways the working class would achieve them:

Fight every job cut. Jobs for all could be achieved by working a shorter week without loss of pay. Firms declaring mass redundancies should be taken under public control. More jobs could be created by expanding public services, eg. more teachers, more nurses, more building workers.

No wage cuts! Wages, benefits and pensions should rise with inflation or more. Tube workers are already preparing our fight for above-inflation pay next year. Workers should calculate what inflation really is for us and fight for wages that rise automatically as prices rise. Cut taxes for the least well off; tax the rich.

Decent homes for all. No evictions; every home-owner facing repossession should have the option to convert their home into rented social housing so they can stay. A massive programme of council house building. Council should take over empty properties to provide quality housing at cheap rents.

Energy companies have been profiting, while working class people have been unable to afford our bills. Energy and public transport should be nationalised and run as an affordable public services.

Take control of the banks. The entire system of banks, pension funds and other financial institutions should be made into a single, public, democratically-controlled banking, mortgage and pensions service whose resources can be used to protect the jobs, pensions and homes of working-class people.

Open the books. We need to be able to challenge the bosses' version of what is and is not "affordable" and crack down on tax evasion by the rich. For example, we want access to London Underground's financial information so we can expose where management's snouts are in the trough and challenge the figures they use to justify under-staffing and displacements.

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None of these things will be possible without a strong working-class fight. Workers have been crippled by years of defeat. We need to fight to abolish the anti-trade-union laws that prevent effective strike action. Unions can grow stronger by organising the millions of workers not yet in unions and increasing democracy within their structures, allowing rank-and-file workers control over their action.

A working class divided by racism, sexism, grade chauvinism and other prejudices will not be strong enough to take up the fights we need. The far right usually gains from capitalist crisis; it feeds on the lie that 'immigrants' and other minorities, not the capitalists, are to blame for peoples' suffering. The labour movement needs to challenge racism and organise all workers, whether 'legal' or 'illegal' to challenge immigration laws that divide us. The labour movement needs to take up the fight of women's liberation, as pressure on household budgets, and the rise in domestic violence that often accompanies economic crisis, will hit women hardest.

New Labour will deliver none of these measures. We need to start thinking of politics as our concern, confront the current government and build a party that represents our interests. A workers' party should aim to form a workers' government, made up of workers and answerable to the labour movement – this is the only way that the working class will see measures that will meet our needs. It will be a government which serves our class as the Tories and New Labour in power have served the rich.

Tubeworker topics
Marxist Theory and History

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