Fight the Job Cuts

Don't Pay for the Bosses' Greed

NEW LABOUR ministers claim to have abolished mass unemployment. The percentage of workers claiming benefit is the lowest for 25 years, though this is largely due to a harsher social security regime.

But a small army of workers in industries up and down the country can see little to crow about. Over the past few years manufacturing firms have shed jobs steadily.

More jobs are now threatened at factories across Britain's industrial areas - including Biwaters in Derbyshire, Sony in South Wales and Vospers in Southampton (see page 11). Thousands of jobs are threatened by the Texaco-Chevron merger.

The jobs replacing those in manufacturing are mainly lower-paid. Labour employment minister Tessa Jowell said recently that 56% more people are working as receptionists and 43% more in childcare (mainly in the private sector) than in 1997.

The unions must struggle to organise these low-paid workers to demand better wages and conditions. They should also organise workers in the so-called new knowledge economy which now employs a million people.

While some people have made obscene fortunes in the dotcom industries, most jobs here are low paid. What's more, the whole e-commerce boom has ended with huge falls on the stock exchanges even before the Middle East crisis hits profits and jobs in the West.

If the bosses' system threatens our jobs and livelihoods, make the bosses pay! Fight to safeguard every job!

A few rich parasites run industry to make themselves a fortune. Then, when profits fall, they try to chuck out the workers who made them rich. Don't let their greed for profits wreck our lives.

Workers at hospitals in Dudley are striking against proposals which could lead to 170 job losses. The unions should fight every job loss.

If companies threaten closures or sackings, let's start by looking at their account books. Where have the huge profits, made from our hard work in the years of boom, gone?

The bosses should be forced to give over their inflated profits to keep the workplace open with no redundancies. If the bosses won't keep the plant open or the profits have disappeared, the unions should fight to get the company taken into public ownership, with the workers managing and controlling production.

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In The Socialist 20 October 2000:

Fight the Job Cuts