Adam Lent

In a recent post I wrote that the view, as espoused by Stephanie Flanders, that protectionism did not cause the Depression would be used by those seeking to promote protectionism today.  And so it has proved.  I have heard this argument now made a number of times in meetings I have attended and, most disappointingly, it was made by The Guardian’s Larry Elliott in a rare off-form moment. And the economist Ha-Joon Chang makes a similar if more considered appeal for “limited protectionism” also resting on the same historical argument.

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Owen Tudor

Unions in the global south don’t get the support they deserve from development agencies (governments, foundations and NGOs) because they are seen as “too political, too bolshie and too difficult.”

I’m blogging from the Department for International Development (DFID) conference on the future of international development the quotation is from Dr Mike Edwards, formerly of the Ford Foundation. He doesn’t agree with the people who say that, but he was honest enough to reveal what northern funders want from civil society. They want us to be polite, grateful and compliant!

George Bernard Shaw wrote in ‘Pygmalion’ about the deserving and undeserving poor, and the concept is still common. Trade unionists often strive to portray their members as the deserving poor, but our activists probably have more than a sneaking regard for (and a lot in common with) the undeserving poor. And that certainly seems to be the way others see us!

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Owen Tudor

The Prime Minister addressed the DFID conference yesterday, and set out some of his themes for the London Summit on 2 April. Among them were commitments to boost demand worldwide, tackle tax havens, reform the International Financial Institutions to give the global south a bigger say, and re-commit to the Millennium Development Goals (in particular, his joint pledge with President Obama to get the remaining 75 million children into primary education).

And President Lula of Brazil, in a Financial Times article today which paid tribute to his roots in the trade union movement, summarised succinctly what progressives should hope for from the London summit, and what we want people to demonstrate for on Saturday 28 March.

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Adam Lent

George Osborne has been banging on again about the dire state of the UK’s public finances.  But how bad is the situation really compared to equivalent economies?

IMF data  provides a clue and is proving a very useful way of cutting through the fog of misleading political debate in the UK .  The IMF’s various comparisons of international responses to the economic crisis show four key things about the UK:

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Owen Tudor

Christopher Caldwell from the right-wing US journal The Weekly Standard has returned to the theme of protectionism in the Financial Times today (referring to the ‘Buy American’ clauses in the US rescue package). He takes a sideswipe at requiring labour (and environmental) standards in trade agreements. His argument is that anything which raises prices for consumers is a bad thing, and that labour standards are one of the causes of keeping prices high. But that’s not always the bad thing he makes out, and sometimes prices can be too low for our moral welfare.

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Owen Tudor

Boston University Professor Kevin Gallagher has written in the Guardian about the IMF’s crazy pro-cyclical policies, demanding that the countries who apply for assistance cut their public sectors and welfare states in return for bailouts. Yet this is precisely the opposite, as he points out, of what the rich countries which fund the IMF are doing in their own economies, pumping money into public sector expenditure to keep their economies afloat. As he says, if that’s good enough for the developed world, why aren’t poorer countries allowed to do the same.

Sadly, it’s another example of old-think interfering with the radically changed, re-Keynesian approach we need to tackle today’s crisis. The TUC and our partners in the Put People First platform are calling on the IMF to adandon its tired old dogma of conditionality. We are making that point to politicians and civil servants, and on Saturday 28 March we will making those points in public as we March for Jobs, Justice, Climate through Central London.

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Adam Lent

The latest pointless distraction from the spiralling global economic crisis after Fred Goodwin’s pension is whether Gordon Brown should apologise for the mess.  Whether he says sorry or not won’t make one iota of difference to the situation but if he does then so should the Tories and Lib Dems. 

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Nigel Stanley

Last weekend’s Modern Liberty Convention was clearly a great success, and has provoked a lively debate on many blogs. 

The TUC took part, and we share many of the concerns expressed among the broad range of speakers who contributed. Our Congress took a strong line (p167 of pdf) against ID cards and the plan to introduce them into airports first puts trade unionists in the front line.

But while the wide participation from across the political spectrum is both a source of strength and an indication that these are issues that do not fall neatly into a left-right spectrum, it also raises problems.

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Nicola Smith

UK unemployment continues to rise steeply. Today, with the Federation of Small Businesses, we have published our proposals for a short-time working subsidy – which we believe could provide a quick and effective way to cut costs for struggling businesses and provide vital financial help for hard-pressed employees.

While we welcome recently announced measures to support those facing unemployment of over six months we believe that further action is necessary to prevent jobs from being unnecessarily lost in the first place. For a cost of around £1.2 billion annually (excluding training costs) up to 600,000 workers each year could receive support.

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