Alice Hood

Lord Adonis made the much-anticipated announcement of plans for a UK high speed rail link today. Detailed plans for the route between London and Birmingham have been published for consultation, along with proposals for a £30bn “Y” shaped network also taking in Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and there is future work to come on extending the lines to Scotland and the North East.

The TUC’s immediate reaction was to welcome the plans as bringing a great boost to the economy, jobs and skills, although we warned about the danger of neglecting the rest of the network. As we digest the government proposals and the enormous HS2 report, we will be looking to see whether the proposals can answer these five questions:

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Nicola Smith

Today we’ve published our 16th and final Recession Report. From next month we will be moving to a shorter monthly Labour Market Report and a bi-monthly Economic Report. The latest labour market figures cover the
period October to December 2009, and show that 2,457,000 people were unemployed by the ILO measure − down 1,000 (effectively unchanged) compared with last month’s release, which covered September – November. Youth unemployment fell a little, with 725,000 18 – 24 year olds unemployed – 3,000 fewer than last month. Overall, these are quite good results – especially the fall in youth unemployment – but it is far too early to say we no longer need to worry about employment.

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John Wood

Looks like we had it wrong all along. It must be a middle class recession – the Job Centre have just launched an iPhone app.

Meanwhile, outside the Twittersphere…

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Nicola Smith

We’ve just published a new review of the impacts that the recent downturn has had for women at work, and examining how proposed public sector cuts might have a heavy impact on working women and families.

I’ve written a post about the issue for Progress Online, which you can read over here.

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Ben Moxham

The UN Secretary General’s office has just released a draft report on progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It makes for sober reading.  Given the scale of the global financial crisis, “over 300 million new jobs will need to be created over the next five years” and that’s just to “return to precrisis levels of unemployment.”

Pre-crisis, some 633 million workers, or 21.2% of the world’s workforce, were struggling to feed their families on less than $1.25 per person per day. Thanks to the global financial crisis our planet is now home to an extreme 215 million workers living in absolute poverty.

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Nigel Stanley

Unions are increasingly working with the environmental movement. We represent – or stand in solidarity with – many of those most likely to be badly hit by climate change. Union campaigns for health and safety in the workplace have always had much in common with wider campaigns against pollution. Many environmentalists have a similar commitment to social justice and internationalism that inform the best kinds of trade unionism – the victims of environmental degradation are usually the people for whom unions speak. Unions know that we need big changes in the way the economy work – and have helped put the concept of just transition on the international agenda.

But there are problems too.

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Nicola Smith

International Women’s Day has seen the release of a fascinating range of women focused facts. These range from the concerning (twice as many men than women think the sexes are equal when it comes to getting the top jobs with men also twice as likely to appear on TV) to the political (Boris Johnson aims to eradicate violence against women in London while Gordon Brown has called for dramatic change to increase female representation on company boards) and the slightly tangential (a higher share of women than men use internet banking in Estonia, France, Latvia and Lithuania).

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John Monks

The old joke “what’s a Greek urn?” has a new and depressing rejoinder: “a lot less than they did before the speculators arrived”. Throughout Greece, wages, pensions and services that ordinary people rely on are being slashed, and higher sales taxes are hitting their pockets, in an effort to compensate for the greed and speculation of a few ‘Lords of Finance’.

At the ETUC, we’re increasingly concerned that Greece seems to be alone to face a renewed wave of financial market speculation, as heavily leveraged speculators take advantage of Greece’s debt crisis, exacerbating the country’s situation for a heavy profit. The European Council, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are giving an entirely wrong message: The speculators are to be left alone, whilst workers and governments are being pressed to cut wages, social benefits and public services.

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Tim Page

I would really have liked to be positive about the CBI’s Budget Submission, given the gravity of the economic situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are, probably two months before a General Election, holding our collective breath and hoping the next growth figures will show the economy still recovering, rather than back in recession. It would have been great if we could agree on the major challenges facing us. Sadly, that is not to be.

The CBI’s prescription is wrong because its objectives are wrong. Running through its submission seems to be a belief that only the economy matters. The needs of society are not worth a mention. What’s more, the most important things about the economy are those that the markets think are important.

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Sophia Parker

Today the Resolution Foundation launches two reports exploring the financial health of low earners. The Low Earners Audit takes an overview of how the UK’s 7.2 million households living on below median income but independently of state support are faring in the recession. Behind the Balance Sheet complements this overview by going beyond the front door and exploring how low income households juggle their money on a daily basis.

Month after month the Labour Market Statistics drive home the point that it is the UK’s 9.4 million working age low earners, not the middle class bankers, who have been worst hit by this recession. As a report we published last year showed, unemployment increases have been steepest in industries and occupations where low-skilled, low paid work is concentrated. People in typical low earner occupations are more likely than others to remain out of work for more than six months.

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