Richard Exell

Figures released today by the Labour Party show that the government’s National Insurance Contributions ‘holiday‘ has been a damp squib. The scheme was supposed to help 400,000 new businesses and create 800,000 new jobs in worse-off regions; the results so far: 5,137 firms have been helped to create just over 10,000 jobs. Of the £940 million set aside for the scheme, the government has so far needed to spend … £10.3 million.

Now, it’s not good form to shout “told you so”, but …

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Richard Exell

There’s been one good thing about the DWP incapacity benefit statistics - the response it’s provoked from disabled people and disability organisations. Take a look at these excellent posts from Batsgirl and Latent Existence; and there’ve been some excellent posts on the lefty sites – such as this particularly brilliant one from Declan Gaffney. And now there’s a particularly important intervention from the Disability Benefits Consortium – a coalition of fifty charities and campaigning organisations. (Full disclosure: the TUC is a DBC member.)

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Ben Moxham

How do you bring about the longest and largest strike in the history of the South Korean banking sector? Attempt to impose a British model of individual performance pay that would ruin the South Korean tradition of workplace co-operation.

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Sharon Sukhram

Secrecy is not something we would usually associate with the London Olympics. But when you try to find out exactly where Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville were made in China – and the working conditions in which they were produced – the chatter and sparkle of the Games quickly becomes a dark maze of dead ends.

The Playfair 2012 campaign – which the TUC coordinates – has long been calling on the organisers of the London Games to disclose their supplier list, as part of our aim to encourage the sportswear industry and the Olympic movement to ensure that workers making their goods are not exploited.

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Richard Exell

There’s more bad news about consumer confidence, with the release of the July figures for the GfK NOP Consumer Confidence Barometer, which dropped five points. This follows another fall lost month and a mini-recovery earlier in the year has now been wiped out. Nick Moon, the Managing Director of GfK NOP Social Research, noted that all the elements of the index fell and that:

Before this year, the index has only twice been lower in its 37-year history: during the recessions of early 1990 and mid-2008.

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Philip Pearson

One of the biggest green downers of the coalition government so far is turning the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme “into a money-making scheme for the government and an administrative burden to participants.” Labour’s scheme designed to encourage businesses to reduce their emissions,  by recycling the revenues to good performers, is now a £1bn annual tax, says ENDS in its annual consutlants’ survey.  

Public spending cuts – and surely, green taxes like this – are harming the UK’s environmental progress and tarnishing the government’s green image.  

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Laura Cohen

A new report (pdf) for the  TUC and Energy Intensive Users Group  says that  energy intensive companies must innovate to survive, and calls on the government to make sure there is a place for them in its plans for the low carbon economy of the future.

Employers and unions want to support the successful transition of these key industries to a low carbon economy, and as a trade association, we were keen to contribute to this study.

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Nigel Stanley

US academic Lane Kenworthy gets a lot into this post.  Is there a viable progressive politics that doesn’t hinge on a strong labor movement? (hat tip Chris Dillow)

And Chris Dillow in his own post points out just how cheap it is for the UK government to borrow.  As he says:

The average yield on index-linked gilts with a maturity of over five years is below 0.4%. When borrowing is so cheap, doesn’t it make sense to do more of it?

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Nigel Stanley

Someone has now sent me some more of the leaked Andrew Lansley letter on pensions that I dissected on Monday. Thank you. You know who you are, even if I don’t.

It’s even more interesting than the original leaks suggest!

We also now know that it was written in late May. So to be fair I should note that the government’s position has shifted a little since then, but not by a huge amount or in ways that deal with the points raised in the letter.

So here’s a bit more from it with some further analysis.

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Philip Pearson

Don’t we need to stop talking airily about “rebalancing” the economy and start talking about manufacturing in the terms we use for food or energy supply: manufacturing security?

Manufacturing security should be turned into an objective of national policy. It’s the central message from stakeholders who took part in the new TUC/EIUG study of our energy intensive industries, those heartland producers of iron and steel, aluminum, ceramics, cement, glass, paper, chemicals that directly employ some 125,000 people. They are at a crossroads of the government’s making: uncertainties over energy costs, carbon pricing, and public finance for new low carbon technologies persist. This study calls for government leadership in a new low carbon technology strategy to help secure their place for the long term public good.

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