Sack the Fat Cats Not the Workers

MANUFACTURING IN Britain is now officially in recession. But this cold fact seems to have escaped Britain’s fat cat bosses who continue to let the good times roll for themselves.

Under this New Labour government Britain has among the richest bosses and the lowest-paid workers in the developed world. And the gap is getting wider.

After pay rises averaging 29% over the last two years, top company executives are now paid £100,000 a year more than their counterparts in Europe. A Management Today survey says that British chief executives now take home on average an annual salary package of £509,000. And it tends to be the worst-performing bosses who get the highest rewards.

Only the USA with salary deals around £1 million a year pays its top executives more.

In Britain the rapidly declining number of manufacturing workers earn the lowest wages in any of the world’s developed economies – £20,475 a year on average for more hours at work than other workers in Europe. Executives whose incompetence helps destroy these jobs get about 25 times as much.

Instead of defending grossly under-rewarded workers and fighting the bosses, the New Labour government staunchly defends capitalism. In fact Blair wants to be just like the top bosses, that’s why he increased his own pay by £47,000 a year recently.

While the whole UK economy is not officially in recession, because of the performance of service sector companies like the financial institutions, it won’t be long before a full-blown recession is under way.

Throughout the world an economic recession is gathering pace. Another survey estimates that two million jobs will be lost in Asia in the rest of this year. This follows huge job losses there in the last four years.

When these fat cats start demanding belt tightening and job losses because of their system’s recession then we say they should be the first to lose their jobs. Their companies should be taken into public ownership and run under workers’ control and management.

Then jobs could be saved by introducing a 35-hour week and a socialist economic plan could start rebuilding the crumbling health, education and housing system and produce socially necessary goods and services.