The continued devastating loss of jobs in manufacturing industry runs alongside the increasingly transparent efforts at asset-stripping by multinational corporations, and is linked with the intensification of global competition. There can be no winners in a never-ending "Dutch auction" in which sections of workers around the world are played off against each other to force down wages and conditions.
The lack of co-ordinated national and international resistance to job cuts and plant closures hands the initiative to the corporate bosses, and serves only to undermine any future fight.
We say that unions in plants facing redundancies or closure should immediately fight for elected committees, working with their own expert advisors, to gain full access to the books of the parent company. The information must be used to expose the way in which assets are being cynically transferred, and figures manipulated to maximise profits at workers’ expense.
The run-down of productive capacity in the car, shipbuilding and engineering industries comes at a point where new vehicles and equipment are desperately needed to reequip and expand public transport services. The committees which open up the books can also begin the process of drawing up an alternative workers’ plan for the use of the affected factory, and use this as part of the campaign to keep the plant and equipment intact and in working order. This may require the occupation of plants threatened with rapid closure.
In place of redundancies, which pile the bosses’ problems onto the backs of workers, we call for a policy of work-sharing without loss of pay. A company or a multinational industry seeking to bolster its profits by slashing jobs and setting one plant to compete with another should be obliged to share the available work amongst its whole workforce - cutting hours as necessary, but maintaining existing pay levels.
Unions must link up on a national and international basis to fight for a shorter working week, and challenge the global strategy of the corporate chiefs. And governments must be called upon to step in and nationalise the assets of firms and multinationals which are shown to be dodging taxes, sacking staff and relocating work in order to cut their pay bills.
Banks and insurance companies are also slashing back their workforces in blatant moves to boost their profits and their share prices, while the expansion of call centres to replace high street shops, banks and offices has emerged as the principal form of sweatshop working in the 21st century.
However there are also desperate shortages of key staff to rebuild and work in public services - especially health care and education. A crash programme of council house building, and government funded schemes to rebuild schools and hospitals can also create useful jobs.
Instead of leaving redundant workers to take low-paid jobs or engage in pointless Mickey Mouse "New Deal" training schemes, there should be a concerted investment to resource major retraining exercises, to enable people to train for well-paid jobs as bus and train drivers, nurses, health professionals, teachers and lecturers.
Such schemes must pay a living wage, and run alongside the abolition of student fees and an upgrading of pay in the public services to match the rises that have taken place in the private sector.
The minimum wage, which ministers are proposing to raise to just £4 from the present £3.70, must be increased to at least £7 - the European Decency Threshold, and rigorously enforced by the threat of hefty fines and sequestration of cheapskate employers who flout the law. Fines and prison sentences on employers for breaches of health and safety regulations, especially where the result has been a serious accident or incident, should be massively increased, with rigorous enforcement of these regulations.
The present historic low levels of price inflation have to a large extent been achieved through increased exploitation of the working class: but official figures understate the rising cost of living for working people - especially housing costs - and there is no guarantee that inflation will remain at its present level. Tight-fisted employers in both the private and public sectors keep trying to push through below-inflation pay rises and pocket the difference.
We say that pay rises must at very least keep pace with the genuine cost of living. This is why we demand from the bosses a sliding scale of wages - so that if prices go up working people should not pay the price of this. We campaign for trade unions to fight to ensure improved living standards and real terms increases for their members.