Richard Exell
I’ve recorded a short video blog looking into the employment figures for June. There’s good news overall, but the already bad news on public sector employment could be masking an even bigger problem.
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Richard Exell
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Philip Pearson
Will Defra require companies to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions? With a consultation now underway, the sorry state of corporate responsibility is revealed in a new Carbon Trust report: 40 of the FTSE top 100 companies don’t publish environmental targets. For the rest, there are “significant differences in the rigour and quality of those targets which have been publicly set and reported.” Defra’s somewhat flawed consultation – undervaluing the benefits and over –egging the costs carbon disclosure – points to more of the same.
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Brendan Barber
Unions representing many public sector workers are currently engaged in complex negotiations with the government over changes to public sector pensions. Now is a pretty critical time in the talks, and Danny Alexander’s comments in the Telegraph and on the Today Programme this morning are extremely unhelpful.
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Owen Tudor
One of the main arguments deployed against the Robin Hood Tax – and for that matter any tax or regulatory changes – by both politicians (left as well as right) and civil servants is that financial institutions will shift location.
Evidence continues to mount that this blackmail is a bluff: especially when there may be nowhere to go, because the institutions are ‘too big to bail’. Today, top US banker Thomas Hoenig gave the argument further weight in the Financial Times (£).
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Richard Exell
New statistics show that less than one per cent of benefit spending is lost to fraud. This is a terrific achievement – so why doesn’t the Department for Work and Pensions let everyone know how well its doing?
Today the DWP published a new edition of Fraud and Error in the Benefit System, taking the statistics up to September last year.
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Nicola Smith
New ONS data out today considers the impact that taxes have on income inequality. Key findings are (as Richard has previously explored in some detail):
- cash benefits play the largest part in reducing income inequality (including child benefit (currently frozen for three years) and housing benefits (soon to be subject to significant reductions)
- over recent decades taxes have had no net impact on inequality because indirect taxes (for example VAT) are regressive so have offset the progressive impact of direct taxation.
The likely impacts of the Government’s chosen package of austerity measures couldn’t be clearer.
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Owen Tudor
My colleague Sam Gurney, one of the fourteen trade unionists on the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has blogged about the new Domestic Workers Convention, adopted this morning at the ILO Conference by a thumping 83% vote (only 3.5% voted against – the rest were abstentions), at Left Food Forward. The TUC’s immediate response to the vote, apart from pleasure that the plight of domestic workers has been officially recognised, expressed concern at the CBI’s vote against, and the British Government’s abstention. Detailed examination of the vote shows just how isolated and extreme they both are, and the British Government, in particular, is keeping company with some very unpleasant bedfellows.
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Matt Dykes
“We want the words ‘Made in Britain,’ ‘Created in Britain,’ ‘Designed in Britain,’ ‘Invented in Britain,’ to drive our nation forward. A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers. That is how we will create jobs and support families” – George Osborne, Budget Statement, March 2011
Bombardier Transportation, part of the French-Canadian global manufacturing group, is the last remaining train manufacturer in the UK and the heart of a rail engineering and production supply chain which constitutes one of the largest manufacturing clusters in Europe. It employs 2,600 workers at its main plant in Derby, and more in its production centres in Crewe and Plymouth. It builds trains for London Underground, UK rail and overseas markets. It has formed groundbreaking learning agreements with its unions.
You would think that this is exactly the sort of company that will spearhead the government’s drive to rebalance the economy towards production industries and export-led growth. Well, think again.
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Nicola Smith
Ed Balls’ speech this morning highlighted that a significant proportion of annual jobs growth (69%) was a result net employment change of +259,000 between March – September 2010, with the last six months only seeing the net creation of 118,000 posts (31% of the annual rise).
There are some more facts behind this figure that it’s worth highlighting.
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Andrea Albertazzi
As well as a political blow to Berlusconi and his majority, the outcome of the Italian referendum on 12/13 June was a great democratic victory for the defence of common goods, health, and equality of citizens before the law. An overwhelming majority of 95% of voters said no to the privatisation of water, no to the exploitation of nuclear energy and no to the law that gave Berlusconi and his ministers immunity from trial proceedings.
Susanna Camusso, General Secretary of CGIL which endorsed the campaign for the referendum, said:
“there is no doubt that the government faces a political defeat. Italians have a different understanding about priorities and the policies Italy needs.”