Nigel Stanley

Financial Adviser reports:

Harry Katz, principal of London-based Norwest Consultants, said public sector pensions are paid for exclusively by the taxpayer. He said:

“The government is an employer and wants to attract an employee, for most people in business that has to be paid by the employer. The government promises to pay the employee a pension, but does nothing about it to pay for it, which is a pretty lousy way to go about things. Years ago government employees did not get paid as well as those in the private sector, so it was made up giving them a pensions promise, but that is no longer the case.”

Well fancy that! Something provided by the public sector is paid for exclusively by the tax payer. Isn’t this something of a definition of the public sector? It doesn’t get any better either:

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Philip Pearson

I have picked up a copy of the latest draft texts this morning at the Barcelona Climate Change talks – the wordings of which will go forward to Copenhagen next month. It was looking really touch-and-go for a while there on the inclusion of our Just Transition framework terminology, but I’m glad to say that thanks to a number of interventions and assurances, including some great support from people at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (and of course sustained lobbying from all parts of our international union delegation), the key language on Just Transition that we wanted to protect lives to fight another day.

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Richard Murphy

The UK economy remains in crisis. It is still in recession. Any recovery, when it comes, will be fragile. The capacity for a foreseeable disaster to become a nightmare depression still exists.

Two things could precipitate the crisis that creates depression. The first would be any serious attempt to cut government spending at this moment. If this were to happen the fall in demand would leave unemployment spiraling, government debt escalating and deflation a significant probability. When that combination occurs the chance of getting out of depression is limited.

The second crisis that could cause depression would be international failure to cooperate on tackling this issue. Attempts to restrict trade at this moment, to impose tariffs or to simply rely on the action of others to stimulate the economy could all create the inertia that tips the balance downwards.

Both possibilities exist: because of the threat of a Conservative government dedicated to slashing public services irrespective of the social and economic consequences for the people of the UK, and elsewhere, the risk of the former outweighs the latter by some way right now.

The Green New Deal seeks to tackle these issues, but does something that few other strategies offer: that is an integrated short and long term view of the way in which the economy should develop.

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Philip Pearson

Frustrations of developing countries here in Barcelona spilled over into a temporary suspension of all contact meetings on Monday. The Africa Group successfully called for a pause until the emission reduction commitments of developed countries were on the table. Talks in the so-called “numbers group” are meant to deliver the next round of Kyoto Protocol commitments – i.e. the level of CO2 cuts the the run up to 2020. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wants CO2 emissions reduced by between 25% and 40% by 2002. No wonder the Africa Group is concerned. The combined commitment to date is a mere 16% cut in CO2 by 2020, says the UN.

Grace Ukama for the Kenya delegation said: “When we ask why they are not willing to put numbers on the table, they said it is economically and politically difficult. But for us it is a question of life and death, due to climate change impacts brought about by actions and lifestyles in the north.” China, India, Brazil and Grenada on behalf of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) all support the call. Talks have resumed, but concern remains over progress.

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Brendan Barber

Here’s a piece originally published in Society Guardian today:

National debate has undergone a seamless change. Only a few months ago, talk was of a recession caused by a financial crash, building a greener economy less reliant on finance and dealing with unemployment. Now the public sector deficit is the big priority.

It has been a neat ideological trick. Those who preached free markets and deregulation have not been daunted after their policies were tested in a near-total meltdown of the world’s financial system.

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Nigel Stanley

David Cameron is to say today that he wants to “repatriate” employment and social law. I do not see how this can be done without changes to the EU’s treaties. It would therefore require the unaminous support of every EU member. Every other EU country has a veto.

Ireland is constitutionally required to hold a referendum on treaty changes. So Ireland would have to have a referendum on a new UK opt-out. That would be an interesting campaign.

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Philip Pearson

To the splendour of the Salo de Cent, Barcelona’s 16th century city hall in the old town, where 400 trade union and environmentalists gathered on Monday 3 November for a rally on Achieving a Just Transition in Copenhagen, ahead of this week’s Barcelona Climate Change Talks. The strong platform included leaders of both Spain’s trade union confederations CCOO and UGT, Joel Decaillon of the ETUC, national directors of Greenpeace and Oxfam, heads of regional Government and Elena Espinosa, Spain’s Minister of Environment.

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• Councils set to cut 4,500 jobs
  Left Foot Forward have more confirmation of public sector job cuts
• Through Thick and Thin: Tackling Child Poverty in Hard Times
  A new report on the impact of the recession from the End Child Poverty campaign. Author Donald Hirsch said: “We couldn’t afford to let the banks fail and now we can’t afford to fail our children, our future. Rising unemployment has created a new poverty crisis which could leave children scarred for life and cost society some £25 billion a year. This dwarfs the investment needed to hit the target to halve child poverty by 2010.”
• Remuneration and electric shocks
  Tom P at Labour and Capital has a novel explanation for why top pay just keeps rising

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Richard Layard

Previous recessions show that the main danger is the build-up of long-term unemployment. Once people are long-term unemployed, they become increasingly difficult to place back into work. So the build-up of long-term unemployment makes it difficult to have a quick recovery that is not also inflationary.

One significant new policy that could make a big contribution here would be the introduction of a Job Guarantee. This would be a system of placements in temporary jobs, created and paid for by government.

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Nigel Stanley

According to an IPSOS-MORI poll (pdf) for the Fawcett Society, a narrow majority of men think that we have a fair pay system while a bigger majority of women disagree.

But when prompted with the size of the pay gap, both men and women want to close it and back equal pay audits.

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