Owen Tudor
On Friday 4 June, a joint delegation of European trade unions and employers met with the President of the European Commission to discuss the impact that cuts in public expenditure across Europe will have on employment. Unions and employers had agreed a joint declaration on the issue, which saw agreement that growth is the only sustainable solution to the problems of the budget deficits caused by the global financial and economic crisis. It is incredibly important that employers were willing to join the ETUC in calling for growth, thus rejecting the prevailing orthodoxy in Governments, the Commission and bodies like the OECD and IMF that cuts are the main priority. On the eve of the meeting, ETUC General Secretary John Monks warned that the current path risks repeating the errors of the 1930s, when co-ordinated cuts in public expenditure around the developed world turned the global recession into a profound depression. AS well as supporting growth and a sustainable industrial strategy, the ETUC is arguing for financial sector re-regulation, fiscal co-ordination and a financial transactions tax.
Trackback made by Tweets that mention European employers join unions in call for growth | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC -- Topsy.com on Jun 7th 2010 at 11:46 am:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ToUChstone blog, TIGMOO. TIGMOO said: ToUChstone blog: European employers join unions in call for growth http://bit.ly/cu35j3 [...]
Comment made by Sandwichman on Jun 9th 2010 at 1:26 am:
Maybe we’ll get somewhere when employers join unions in a call for shorter hours.
In a letter to the poet, T.S. Eliot, dated April 5, 1945, Keynes identified shorter hours of work as one of three “ingredients of a cure” for unemployment. The other two ingredients were investment and more consumption. Keynes regarded investment as “first aid,” while he called working less the “ultimate solution.”
A more thorough and formal presentation of his view appeared in a Treasury Department memorandum Keynes prepared in May 1943 on “The Long-Term Problem of Full Employment. In that memorandum, Keynes projected three phases of post-war economic performance. During the third phase, estimated to commence some ten to fifteen years after the end of the war, “It becomes necessary to encourage wise consumption and discourage saving, –and to absorb some part of the unwanted surplus by increased leisure, more holidays (which are a wonderfully good way of getting rid of money) and shorter hours.