the relentless rise of unemployment
WORKERS, JULY 2004 ISSUE
Unemployment in Britain is rising under this government, despite its efforts to convince us to the contrary. This is to be seen across whole sectors of workers. To stop this destruction, we need a strong national policy of investing in manufacturing industry and vital industries to increase the demand for labour, together with the commitment to retain investment and jobs in this country.
A report from the TUC last year, Inactive Britain, on working age inactivity in Britain and the rest of Europe (November 2003) gave the lie to all the sunshine talk about the British economy. It shows that eight million British people are not in work, or are seeking work — 22% of the working age population. This is the worst proportion in Europe: it is 8% in Germany, and 2.8% in France. This number has risen since 1992 and not fallen under Blair, or, as this report puts it, "progress...has been modest".
The government naturally prefers its definition of the unemployed: all those who looked for work in the last four weeks and could start in two weeks. This conveniently makes the unemployment level just 5%. It defines full employment as "employment opportunity for all", confusing a description with an ideal.
Keeping people out of work
What stops people from being in work? According to the report, one factor is that we have the dearest and least comprehensive childcare provision in Europe, so 51% of our lone parents are unemployed (13% in Sweden).
Only 49% of disabled people are in work here (compared with more than 60% in Norway and Switzerland), because Britain invests less in labour market programmes for the disabled than almost any other EU state.
The report says that there has been "no improvement in the employment rate for those without qualifications"; in fact this rate has worsened, down from 51.8% in 1997 to 50.8% in 2003. Also, between 2000 and 2003, the proportion of children in workless households fell from 15.7% to 15.2%; at that rate it would take 90 years to solve the problem.
The mid-1990s benefit "reforms" forced many older unemployed workers onto longer-term sickness or disability benefits, or into early retirement, rather than on to the unemployment figures.
Since so many workers want to work but cannot get jobs, we do not need to increase the supply of labour by, for example, importing workers from abroad. Nor do we need "strong regional policies", as this report urges, because every single one of Britain's regions has areas of high unemployment and poverty. We need a national solution to a national problem.
But the report is misleading on the key question of industry when it refers to "industrial restructuring" and when it criticises only "the previous government's approach to industrial restructuring". Industry is not being restructured — it is being destroyed. And the destruction has accelerated under Blair: 10,000 manufacturing jobs have gone every month since 1997, compared with 5,000 every month under Thatcher. No surprise, then, that Britain's trade deficit for April alone stood at £4.7 billion.
At the same time, Britain's financial services are under severe attack. In early June, Norwich Union announced that it was cutting 700 jobs by outsourcing its support service operations, including software development and IT manage-ment, to other firms in Britain and India. A further 250 contract worker jobs are also to be cut.
The insurance group Aviva, which owns Norwich Union, cut more than 5,000 jobs in Britain last year. Last summer, it cut 900 jobs in its general insurance division; in November, it outsourced 2,350 jobs to Asia; in February, it cut 1,200 jobs by closing its insurance broking arm, Hill House Hammond.
Lloyds TSB is to close its Newcastle call centre in November, axeing 960 jobs. Lloyds TSB is also threatening to "offshore" jobs from Scotland to India: its boss Susan Rice said, "Offshoring could be the best thing that ever happened to Scotland."
Last November, Scottish Widows, owned by Lloyds TSB, cut 800 jobs in Newcastle. On top of all this, there is the planned closure of Scottish Provident and the destruction of 1,000 jobs at Standard Life.
Amicus predicts that 200,000 British call centre and business services jobs will be exported from Britain by 2008, which will mean every banking and personal finance customer will be forced to allow their details out of Britain.
David Fleming, Amicus National Secretary for Finance, says, "Offshoring is an accident waiting to happen. It is only a matter of time before a serious crime is committed which would ruin the reputation of the British financial services industry."