Philip Pearson

Today’s ambitious Government plans to cut emissions from its own departments by a third by 2020 are a major opportunity for unions to push for Green Whitehall demonstrator projects. Under the new targets, government will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 34 % by 2020 (from 1999 levels). 18 government departments produced a Carbon Reduction Delivery Plan (CRDP). Each plan sets out, in detail, the actions each department will take.

Complementing this announcement, on 1 April 2010 the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) kicks in.  Unions like PCS, and the TUC, are publishing Guidance on the scheme. The CRC creates a CO2 cap-and-trade scheme in 20,000 of the largest public and private sector organisations in the UK – central government departments, local authorities, hospitals, prisons, schools, universities, shops, hotels and banks.

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Pamphlet #9: The Red Tape Delusion

This new ToUChstone pamphlet challenges the neo-liberal assumption that economic success is contingent upon weakly regulated labour markets. Based on an extensive evidence review of the economic literature, it demonstrates that the case for unfettered free markets has been badly discredited and that fairer rights for workers are compatible with economic success – as well as bringing far better social outcomes.

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Howard Reed

The severe recession precipitated by the banking crisis of 2008 means the economy is likely to dominate policy debate in this election to a much greater extent than for any election since 1992, or even further back. But how will the economic crisis affect people’s views on the way the economy should move forward?

For thirty years, the mainstream economic orthodoxy was that  the way to economic success lies in deregulating product, labour and financial markets as much as possible. Given that the banking crisis was an object lesson in how deregulation could, in some circumstances, deliver not economic success, but instead near-armageddon, we might have thought that this would lead to some reconsideration of whether deregulation was always and everywhere the best policy after all.

However, the proponents of deregulation – including the Conservative party (but also some leading politicians in the Liberal Democrats and Labour parties), business groups such as the Institute of Directors, Confederation of British Industry and British Chambers of Commerce, and right-wing think thanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs have instead insisted that the economic crisis means we need to deregulate still further, particularly in the labour market.

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• Job Guarantees give hope to long-term unemployed
  Nicola has a guest post today on Left Foot Forward: "This is a truly progressive policy. It provides Government recognition that nearly all unemployed people want to work, and that unemployment is not the fault of lazy individuals, but a consequence of social and economic failures. It recognises that people facing unemployment need support and not punishment. And it is not just the sentiment that is sound. Evidence shows that job guarantee policies provide the greatest chance of preventing long-term unemployment destroying the lives of individuals and communities and enabling unemployed people to move into work."

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Richard Exell

We’ve been hearing a lot recently about ‘economic inactivity’ – people who aren’t in employment but don’t count as unemployed because they aren’t able to start work at short notice or haven’t looked for a job in the last couple of weeks.

The line is often something like: these unemployment figures may look good compared with other recessions, but look at all this economic inactivity, especially the number of disabled people. This proves that the government’s employment record is really very weak.

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Tim Page

As I’ve been leading the TUC’s development of science policy for a few years, it would be remiss of me to let today pass without wishing the best of luck to the many physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, on the French-Swiss border. Today is the day that scientists at CERN will attempt to collide beams of protons at high energy. The aim is to recreate conditions that occured microseconds after the Big Bang, when the earth was formed.

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Richard Exell

The Future Jobs Fund is to be extended to all long-term unemployed people, and there is to be extra support to help disabled people into jobs.

This welcome advance – which reflects intensive lobbying by the TUC and many others – was announced late this afternoon when the Department for Work and Pensions published Building Bridges to Work.

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Nigel Stanley

There’s a piece in today’s Sunday Times that plays exactly the same trick as the Mail article I wrote about on Left Foot Forward on Friday.

The true cost of Labour tax grab: small print reveals the extent of pain for workers

Yet read the story more closely and you find that these workers all earn over £150,000 a year.

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Owen Tudor

Thursday was a very busy day for the Robin Hood Tax campaign on the continent, with a tougher resolution than before in the European Parliament, the launch of an Italian campaign, and the beginnings of movement from the European Council of Ministers (ok, that meeting didn’t finish till Friday, but …). Robin Hood was even seen in Brussels!

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Owen Tudor

I’ve just heard that Labour will announce tomorrow (Sunday) that a future Labour Government would legislate to outlaw vulture funds, one of the most unacceptable faces of capitalism. A private members bill with support from people in all the major parties – and the TUC - was wrecked recently when an anonymous Conservative MP used a Parliamentary manoeuvre to throw it out. Hopefully the Conservatives will make amends and other parties will also pledge early legislation after the election. The TUC-backed Jubilee Debt Campaign has been calling on all parties to take this pledge since the private members’ bill was lost.

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