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Owen Tudor

Owen Tudor

I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee.

  • International

    Davos told that stimulus and social protection vital for growth

    26th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The World Economic Forum (best known for hosting this week’s Davos conference) plays host to a number of Global Agenda Councils which bring together experts in a  particular field to produce reports summing up the best available wisdom on what to do next. There’s a GAC on Employment and Social Protection which has produced a report for Davos 2012 snappily titled “The Case for an Integrated Model of Growth, Employment and Social Protection“, introduced by a blog from the Chair and Vice Chair. But it makes some very pertinent recommendations for the global leaders gathered in Davos, and is part and parcel of the growing intellectual argument for growth and jobs to have a higher priority than debt and deficit reduction (see recent posts on ILO, IMF and OECD reports).

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  • Economics

    Why big finance is so hostile to Robin Hood

    24th January 2012 — Filed under: Economics

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Now that a financial transactions tax is almost certain to be introduced at some level in Europe, the chorus of opposition from within the finance industry is becoming more shrill and more frequent. Lavish research reports spell out the doom that will follow implementation of an FTT. But this is nothing more than special pleading by those who work in the transactions industry.

    It’s not just the impact an FTT would have on their bonus income they’re worried about, though. As the increased focus of attention shone on the practices of the hedge fund industry by Mitt Romney’s stumbling campaign for the US Republican presidential nomination demonstrates, hedge fund managers have been making a mint out of management fees as well as the growth in the funds they manage: and it’s that management fee income that they are desperate to protect from a Robin Hood Tax.

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  • International

    ILO warns world entering third phase of crisis

    23rd January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is warning today that the world economy is slipping into a dangerous third phase of the global economic crisis, where austerity leads to further job losses and lower growth. In its ‘Global Emloyment Trends 2012: preventing a deeper jobs crisis’ the ILO calls for stimulus measures based mostly on tax rises, to boost employment without raising public actor debt (the TUC shares the view of many economists that, with interest rates at historic lows, further borrowing which stimulates growth is still possible across most of the developed world and in emerging economies.)

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  • International

    World leaders’ advisers know global economy is heading for the rocks but fail to demand a change of course

    21st January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The leaders of eleven global economic institutions – like the IMF, World Bank, OECD and ILO - have published a pre-Davos statement which draws attention to the need for growth above all else. Much of their analysis echoes what trade unions and pundits like Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman have been arguing, and many of their prescriptions are the same too. But their sometimes coded language still gives succour to the deficit doom-mongers, and they cannot bring themselves to advocate a change of course away from the austerity they implicitly condemn (Larry Elliott was rather kind to them in the Guardian), or the policy changes that would deliver fairer societies by redistributing wealth from the rich to working people.

    The statement is described as representing the personal views of the institutions’ leaders – no doubt because it is so far removed from the views of the Governments whose consent would be needed to make these views the official policy of the institutions.

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  • Economics

    Ratings agencies outsource blame

    20th January 2012 — Filed under: Economics

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Philip Stephens’ Financial Times column today asks why credit ratings agencies CRAs are so influential, given that they only tell us what everyone is already thinking (although their recent admission that growth is more important than fiscal austerity suggests they can also buck trends too). But this misunderstands quite how pernicious their role is.

    It’s certainly true that CRAs like Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s perform what looks like a hugely important function – deciding, in global financial terms, who is up and who’s down – and that they do appear to have huge influence (but see below) on the markets, especially at the moment the market for sovereign debt.

    But the way they influence behaviour is not by revealing hidden truths to markets previously unaware, for example, that Italy or Greece have debt problems. They do have a tendency to encourage herd-like responses in the markets which ever so slightly undermines the intelligent markets hypothesis (as intelligent as, say, sheep) and more seriously, promotes bubbles and crashes.

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  • International

    Global inequality: Oxfam gets it partly right

    19th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Our friends at Oxfam have produced a heavyweight report which demonstrates that inequality is not inevitable, that growth alone is not enough, and that there are alternatives. But while they are right to point out that we can choose whether to have more equal societies or not, they concentrate on the role of the state, and – ironically for an organisation at the heart of civil society – ignore the role of the people. Even the OECD, in its recent report on growing inequality, identified the decline of collective bargaining as a major cause. Taking some of the examples in Oxfam’s report, the drive towards greater equality in Brazil owe as much to rises in the minimum wage and collective bargaining over pay as they do to the Bolsa Familia transfer payments, and South Korea’s increasing equality derives largely from its strong and assertive trade union movement.

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  • International

    UK more and more isolated as Spain backs Robin Hood Tax

    17th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Although this is not at all unusual for a European Union proposal, every time a country’s leader or finance minister announces their position on the EU proposal for a financial transactions tax (FTT), there seems to be a frisson around the social networks – and occasionally even the old media – about who’s for and who’s against. The positions of various member states are often spun by both sides (apologies from us!) and the nuances of every announcement are picked over like a soothsayer’s slaughtered chicken. The Irish Prime Minister recently emerged from a Council of the Isles meeting to announce that the previously little-remarked Dublin financial markets could suffer if an FTT did not cover the UK, and he was therefore against the idea (Irish trade unionists have remarked that he apparently isn’t bothered about the rest of the Irish economy suffering, but there you go…) But conversely, yesterday the Spanish Prime Minister, the newly elected right-wing successor to the FTT-supporting socialist government, emerged from a meeting with French President Sarkozy to announce his firm support for an FTT. So….

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  • International

    Why can’t Paul Collier understand why Nigerians rejected massive cuts in their living standards?

    16th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Paul Collier, one of the most influential development economists in the UK, wrote quite the stupidest article (£) in the Financial Times today. He actually argued that “Nigeria’s youth should have taken to the streets to celebrate” the Government’s unilateral decision to more than double the price of petrol from N65 to N141 a litre overnight on 1 January (from 26p to 57p a litre.)

    Apparently, Nigerians were duped into opposing the massive increases which resulted in the consequent doubling of prices right throughout the economy – basic goods, essential services, even medicines. Because in the long run, scrapping the Nigerian government petrol subsidy will create a better economy, releasing money currently creamed off by corruption for investment in basic infrastructure that cannot be prevented in any other way. Bizarrely, the people of Nigeria supported the unions’ call for a general strike. Maybe it’s because so many Nigerians exist on under £1.30 a day. If almost everything has doubled in price overnight, it’s not surprising poor people protest!

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  • International

    Given who’s opposed to a Robin Hood Tax, is it any wonder we’re in favour?

    14th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Opponents of the Robin Hood Tax are busy unplumbing the kitchen sink in order to throw it at the European Union’s proposals for a financial transactions tax (FTT). You only have to look through the hyperbole, cant and hypocrisy to see why its opponents are so opposed to it. The main charges currently being thrown at the FTT (there will be more to come) are that it will hit growth, see financial trading move out of Europe, and  even that pensioners will end up paying. There are some who say we should be concentrating instead on raising income tax, closing down tax havens and creating jobs (oddly, they never said that when we called for those things, but now they’re much better options!)

    But the people arguing this case are often paid by precisely the financial bigwigs who will end up paying the FTT, so it’s not surprising that – as the FTT becomes ever more likely to be implemented – they are beginning to fling every argument they can get their hands on against the tax. And interestingly, they offer no suggestions for reforming the EU proposals to mitigate the shortcomings they identify in the draft Directive, because they don’t want a tax that would work, they want it scrapped altogether.

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  • International

    Robin Du Bois? French Ministers advance plans for new tax

    5th January 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    This week, the French government has ratcheted up the pressure for a Robin Hood Tax, either at a sub-EU level or, it now seems, unilaterally. French and German Ministers plan to table new proposals later this month for an FTT covering willing EU member states (given the UK’s opposition to an EU-wide tax which would require unanimity) to take effect earlier than the European Commission proposed last autumn.

    And it now seems that Sarkozy’s government is willing to go ahead unilaterally anyway, and earlier still. Francois Fillon – the Finance Minister – this morning indicated that a French tax could take effect by the end of the year, apparently reversing the position the French centre-right took in Parliament before Christmas in response to a call from the left-dominated Senate for a unilateral FTT.

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