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Next week is the start of Fairtrade Fortnight
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A welcome report from the Work Foundation showing the importance of manufacturing to today's economy and to our post-recession future
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New research on the investments and policies that will be needed to meet the Government's child poverty targets
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Nicola Smith
New JRF research has found that jobs fail to solve child poverty. Helen Barnard, policy and research manager at the foundation, concludes that:
The sharp rise in the number of working families in poverty is a reminder that low-paid and casual labour does not usually help in pulling families out of deprivation
This in a week that a BERR spokesperson defended the immediate dismissal of 850 agency workers at the mini plant by telling us that:
It is important that we provide protections for working people without removing the important flexibility that agency work can offer both employers and workers
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Owen Tudor
Amid all the clamour about bankers bonuses, top British civil servants have voluntarily given theirs up. Sue Cameron in the Financial Times wonders why they’re bing punished this way when they’re not to blame for the crisis. But giving up these bonuses shouldn’t be seen as punishment, even self-inflicted (and it would be unfair to point out that bonuses paid to civil servants are far, far lower than bankers’ bonuses). What the mandarins have done is an understandable and laudable response to an economy in crisis, as the top civil servants’ union the FDA has recognised.
In a recession, the poor will suffer far more than the well-off (and far far more than the rich, which doesn’t include top civil servants). So the better off in society should be prepared to make their contribution. A better solution would undoubtedly be a more progressive tax system, but given that not even the mandarins can mandate that, only politicians, giving up their bonuses is a good, collective, example to set. What a different world we would live in if top bankers were similarly minded….
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Nigel Stanley
This blog doesn’t do God. I have no idea about the religious beliefs or lack thereof of most of my fellow contributors – the subject has just never come up.
But bishops have been speaking about the recession, and that is something on which we do have views.
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or why so much stuff about unions and the workplace in newspapers and on the media is uninformed at best.
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Evidence from CABs and unions that some employers are seeking to avoid making redundancy payments.
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Our monthly round up of the most recent economic data around the recession. This issue focuses particularly on the impact on trade union membership
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Nicola Smith
These is increasing evidence that the most vulnerable workers are set for the toughest experiences of unemployment. Job losses at the mini factory today are different from some other recent redundancies – workers are on agency contracts for services, so despite having many years employment at the firm have no entitlement to redundancy pay or to any formal notice of their impending unemployment. These workers will not have a lump sum to fund retraining, or to buy them a little time to consider their options and find a job that can make use of their skills. Instead their talents will be lost to the economy and they will be forced to take the first jobs that they can find – or to spend months on benefits.
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Nicola Smith
Today we have published our fourth recession report. The figures are bad – although they could have been worse. The unemployment rate is now 6.3 per cent (up 0.4 points on the previous quarter) and the number of job vacancies has fallen by 76,000 over the last three months.
As well as charting the UK’s rising unemployment rates we also consider the way that the recession is affecting particular sectors. Between March – September 2008 (the most recent data we currently have) we show that there were significant job losses for women and for men – but greater job gains for women as a result of public sector employment.
We also consider how different age groups are being affected, and find that while the over-25s made up a majority of the increase in unemployment the under-25s saw a far greater increase in the risk of losing their jobs. From Jan-Mar to Oct-Dec 2008 the unemployment rates for 16-17 year olds and 18-24 year olds increased by 4.1 percentage points and 2.3 percentages points respectively. The rates for 25-49 year olds and for the over 50s have increased, but at a lower rate (a rise of 0.8 percentage points for each group).
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Owen Tudor
The Financial Times is replete with articles on the perils of protectionism these days. This morning there is an editorial which accuses the G7 Finance Ministers’ communique of fine words but no action. And Wolfgang Munchau warns that the single market is being dismantled. But the one thing that unites these is what, when he was still a European Commissioner, could have been called the Mandelson Fallacy, which is that the way to stop people (or Governments, who are often in practice more prone to it than their more pragmatic citizens are) being protectionist is to tell them how wrong they are! The TUC is opposed to protectionism too, but we don’t think hectoring lecturing will work. Instead, we need to understand why politicians and other people are prone to protectionism, and come up with an alternative.
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Owen Tudor
In the 1980s, when working in the finance sector was considered next to godliness, Oliver Stone made a film called Wall Street in which the anti-hero, Gordon Gekko made “greed is good” a catchphrase for the era of masters of the universe. It was meant ironically of course, but many people in the finance sector seem to have had an irony bypass, as well as a moral-compass bypass and, as we have found out in the last year, a being-any-good-at-your-job bypass. The rest of us, of course, know that greed is a sin. And we also know that envy of those bonus-boosted bankers is also a sin (Former Cionservative MP Angela Knight wins today’s “They just don’t get it” award for arguing that).
But I’ve decided it isn’t. I’ve read some of what big bank bosses said to the House of Commons Select Committee and like most people I know I was appalled at their lack of contrition. We’ve all been pussy-footing around about this and we ought to stop.
We should indeed be very, very envious, and very, very angry – not so much about the bonuses as about the impunity with which top bankers have survived the crash they caused. It is quite different to the punishment that is being meted out to ordinary people in the US, the UK, and especially in the developing countries. March with us on 28 March if you agree.
