I AM NOT convinced by Adam Hartman's argument that the left should drop the demand for Full Employment as one of the slogans we use when campaigning around the issues of workfare and unemployment.
The key point of the demand for Full Employment is surely to place the demand on the state to create jobs. We should reject any notion that full employment is no longer possible.
We should restate the basic arguments such as the obscenity of thousands being homeless at the same time as building workers are on the dole.
Public sector workers are not being sacked because there is suddenly no demand for teachers or home helps - they are being sacked because local authorities do not have the funding to pay them.
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The experience of the Hull campaign against workfare is that the Your marxist, internationalist view on a world of struggles and issues, 20 SPECIAL OFFER, one month only, 12 issues plus a copy of the new Socialist Outlook pamphlet Trade Unions in the Nineties (normal purchase price OVERSEAS SUBSCRIBERS: 12 issues for just £20.00. Please send me 12 issues of Socialist Outlook. I enclose a cheque/order for SEND JO, Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London 114 2UU single key demand of the unemployed is for a job.
When ASDA opened a new supermarket in North Hull, hundreds queued simply to get an application form!
We used the ASDA example to argue that the basic problem is there are not enough jobs and conversely the problem is therefore not individual unemployed people.
A number of British unions such as the GMB have adopted the demand for full employment - as did the recent Convention for Full Employment held in Brussels.
Socialists should welcome these developments and get involved in any initiatives, however limited, that arise from them.
The fight for Full Employment coupled with the demand for a national minimum wage are at the heart of the fight against workfare.
Keith Sinclair Hull
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