Unions must lead fight for cost-of-living action
Take the wealth out of the bosses’ hands
Eleanor Donne, Essex Socialist Party
Labour prime minister Andy Burnham has toured the UK, bringing the people his message of a ‘ten-year plan to bring back hope’.
Many working-class people are dreading the upcoming winter months. After a summer in which we boiled due to the capitalist climate catastrophe, energy prices are going up again by 4% in October. As the weather gets colder, many people will again face the prospect of ‘choosing’ between heating and eating.
We can’t wait ten weeks, never mind ten years!
Over the last few years, the price of basic foods like milk and bread has risen by a third, eggs by a half. Rents have gone up by a staggering 58%, largely driven by private landlords. The Renters Rights Act, in force from 1 May, helps make private tenants more secure in their tenancies. It limits how frequently landlords can raise rents but lets them increase it to the already unaffordable open market rate. We need real rent controls now!
Burnham has announced small cost-of-living measures to ‘give people some room to breathe’ such as capping single bus fares at £2 a journey, reducing business rates for pubs and scrapping VAT on domestic electricity bills from 1 October – an average reduction of less than one pound a week! Your energy bills will still be higher this time next year.
Meanwhile, the energy companies continue to make obscene profits, polluting water bosses too. Burnham speaks of getting ‘more control’ over privatised services. What is needed is nationalisation under democratic working-class control.
The bank balances of the super-rich are healthier than ever. But we are told of the need for ‘fiscal responsibility’. Burnham talks of the “biggest redistribution of power this country has seen”, but without taking the wealth and power out of the hands of the big capitalist bosses, fiscal responsibility is code for yet more cuts. We need a working-class fightback.
When inflation let rip in 2022, workers took strike action to make sure their wages kept pace with rising costs and resisted a fall in our living standards. The Tory government had to intervene with the Energy Price Guarantee which capped fuel bills, alongside other measures.
Trade union leaders should not give Burnham ‘breathing space’ but step up and lead, starting by naming the date for a Saturday demo against austerity, building towards industrial action on public sector pay. They should demand that Labour immediately removes the 50% strike ballot turnout threshold, and fully fund pay rises in the public sector and demand no job losses. Unions should campaign for the TUC policy of at least £15-per-hour minimum wage with no age exemptions to be implemented immediately.
Trade union leaders are under growing pressure from members to fight nationally, and to coordinate across unions. This pressure must be carried through and linked to the need for the working class to have its own party to fight in our interests against big business.
