Labour secretary of state for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall has talked about “spiralling economic inactivity” amongst workers. What does she mean? It all depends on your position in society.
For working-class people, unhealthy population stats are personal. It affects ourselves, our families, work/school/college mates and our communities. And not just when we’re ‘economically inactive’, it affects us as children and through to retirement. So, we are equally bothered about figures showing decreased life expectancy, with the UK falling in the global rankings. ‘Healthy life expectancy’ is declining. Child mortality is increasing. This doesn’t seem to be making the headlines.
Ill health affects our quality of life and our ability to survive economically. Working-class people’s income comes from working and when we can’t work or are retired, we have to depend on pensions and benefits, which may not keep up with the real cost of living (or of being ill). Ill health also impacts us as carers for family and friends, affecting our mental and physical health.
But under capitalism there’s a small layer of people in society who are removed from all this, not just because of their enormous wealth but because of how they make it. Billionaires don’t have to work to survive, its our labour which creates their wealth. They don’t see a health crisis – they see a threat to profits.
When Keir Starmer’s Labour government refer to our declining health as the “greatest employment challenge for a generation” they reflect the perspective of the capitalist class not the working class.
Their solutions address their problems of ‘tight employment’: increased costs connected to sickness and absence and the fear of increased taxes on their wealth to pay for our welfare, not the health and well-being of working-class communities.
We need a party which puts the health of the working class before the wealth of the billionaires.
Unite member
