Lewisham NUT (personal capacity)
AS THE ELECTION campaign continues, Labour and the To.
ries try to outdo cach other in attacking the welfare state. Each week brines a new announce ment of how they will attack welfare in a bid to keep public socuains in cacck.
First we had John Major's January speeches attacking the 'nanny state'. These were quickly followed by Brown's announcement that an incoming Labour government would freeze public spending for at Icast the first two years ofits administration because it has "run out of control". In an echo of Brown's explanation that he would not engage in redistributive taxation of the rich "because of the value 1 place on work", Blair called four days later for an end to the "passive' welfare state and unveiled plans to get single mothers off benefit and into work.
The Tories have unlcashed such a crisis within the education, health, and social security systems that a radical programme of investment and rebuilding, and a massive change in how welfare is delivered is needed to rescue millions of working class people from misery.
There is nothing to suggest that Labour's pledge on spending will be quickly reversed in office - despite the pressure from public sector workers that will surely emerge.
Labour's policy of entering the European Monetary Union will tie it to the Maastricht convergence criteria that limit the public sector deficit income) to just 3 per cent and accu mulated debt to 60 per cent of GDP Attempts by other European Gorerments to prepare for EMU hare led to huge attacks on the welfare state across Burope (sce extensive coverage in last issue of Socialist OusAlllance Defence of the welfare state must not be left to those who work in it, or to local struggles of those who use its separate services. Only the broadest possible alliances of the working class and the oppressed - welfare state users and welfare state workers, the unions and unorganised workers - will be sufficient to defend the wel. fare state from the forces united to destroy it.
The increasingly bipartisan development of family policy is tied into the assault on the welfare state. One on the one hand this aims to buttress the institution of the family, while blaming individual families - rather than the way socicty is organised - for social problems.
The post-war welfare state represented some partial 'socialisation' of tc buraca Of lamilies. A huge burden of care was lifted out of the private sphere of the family and off che shoulders of individual women and shifted into the public arena.
Workers • ofter were then paid to do what had previously HONINGS Jr Coomer FEND DBS AND VICES ketisation in the NHS, Local Management of Schools in the education New management techniques have been brought into the public sector. The whole idea of public proattack and local authorities are infor private companies to find clients.
Many of these changes are carried out in the name of so-called client choice.
Women have been particularly af.
fected by both as workers in the wel.
fare sector and as users of the welfare Cuts in central funding have led to massive job losses and cuts in services in education, health and social services. Labour local authorities that scorned Liverpool and Lambeth Councils for confronting the Tories and preferred the politics of "deficit budgeting", and then "the dented shield" have ended up imposing massive cuts on the Tories' behalf.
Devastating
Kent county's Labour and Libcral Democrat coalition faces a 179 million shortfall in its funds. January it formulated its solution raising charges for domiciliary services by up to 400 per cent, closing ten old peoples' homes and cutting eighteen hundred and two thousand jobs. "The impace of the savings which I recommend in this paper will be devastating to the lives of many of the department's service users and their families" said Kent's director of social services.
Kent also is pre-empting the Tories' plans to force councils to conbasis that they can be more cheaply proviaca tor by privare companies Stephen Dorrell, increasingly to the fore as a spokesperson for the Tory party, has made clear that he sees the proper job of local council social services departments as commissioning social care not delivering it. He has said that the government's new White Paper may even propose that all 32,000 field social workers and managers be privatised.
Combined with their recent announcement that they will effecauthorities and end local control of schools, the Tories intend for local authorities to be left with little direct role in service delivery and instead be reduced almost solely to a commissioners of services provided by private companies.
Privatisation is cheap because the scrvice is olten poor and the workers, who are often on temporary or part time contracts, are poorly paid. By forcing the burden of care back onto the tamily. the offensive against the welfare state in itself creates the conditions for workers to be super-exploited in this way.
One third of Europe's part time workers are British and the vast majority of those are women. often work part time because it is the omy way in waica tagy can meet the demands of the family and child care Nursery provision in Britain is among the worst in Europe and is of course itself a target of privatisation through the government's nursery Cuts in central funding have been accompanied by increased marketisation and competition within and between services for a slice of an ever diminishing cake. Even once the slices have been allocated, competition continues - between wages and job losses, and between conditions for remaining employees and spending on other resources. In announcing that any increased pay in the public sector would have to be funded through efficiency savings, Labour is set to continue this policy.
Privatisation, trasmentation of services and competition have an impact on the ability of workers to organise, creating smaller and sepaThis has weakened union organisaton in many arcas, for crampic the destruction of the Inner London Associaton wiene breakup of ILEA, and the widespread contracting out of NHS support services to private companies (such as at Hillingdon Hospital).
Union density (the proportion of a given workforce that is unionised)
is lower among private sector workers than agnong those in the public 3C60Ea than full timers, among women rather than men.
Slow unions
Unions have been slow to respona to the coanges in the workforce, although some recent studies (cg Labour Research Department June 1996) suggest that union density is falling more quickly in the more traditional arcas than in these 'new' arcas of unionisation.
Another major area of attack on welfare state workers has been through the extension of new manshou A number of sham, have brought in "Capability' proccaure tat allow workers to De sacked after only a few weeks of genuine sickness absence.
Clearly capability procedures hit who tend to have higher rates of absence, harder than men. "Appraisal' and individual pay bargaining may also open women up to sexual harassment or to the perception by fellow workers that sexual favours are the basis for wage increases.
In the name of "'flexibility" work. ers are required to be available for work at all times, day or night, weekdavs or weekende "Care in the community" has been ovcrwacimingly an excuse for a re duction in services to those in need of them and for job cuts. It has also meant the imposition on health care workers, social services personnel and teachers of the need for 'multi-skilling' - often without any extra training.
For example teachers are now meant to meet the educational noods of a much broader range of pupils than would previously hate been the General assistants have reCasca placed individual support teachers at the same time as the needs of