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| Workers fighting to keep Rover in 2000 - but industrial decline under Labour has been remorseless |
In July, the TUC published an important report: Manufacturing Now: Delivering the Manufacturing Strategy. It provides an accurate description of the murder of whole sectors of manufacturing in Britain, events that have been virtually ignored. But it fails to put forward any effective remedy, accepts EU policies which are harming and even destroying our manufacturing industry, and winds up merely begging the government for hand-outs.
Debate needed
We as a nation urgently need a debate on manufacturing. All too often, the entire party-political debate is about how to manage - actually, how to destroy - public services. Are workers supposed to assume either that our industry is safe - which the TUC has shown is clearly untrue - or that it is unimportant?
The report provides evidence of the severity of the situation, showing how the economy is still struggling to shake off the near recession conditions of recent years. Jobs are being axed at a remorseless rate with investment at an historic low.
Over this year to April, manufacturing lost 106,000 jobs, taking total manufacturing job losses since 1997 to just over 770,000, a fall of 18.6%. More alarming still is how widespread the losses are across not only the traditional industries but also those in high tech. The table (right) illustrates the point.
Investment
The report also provides the latest figures on manufacturing investment levels, which show a decrease in the first quarter of 2004 by 1.2% compared with the previous quarter.
Investment has fallen significantly every year since 2000, and is now 28% lower in real terms in the first quarter of 2004 than in the first quarter of 2000. Trade has suffered accordingly and in the three months to April 2004 the country imported nearly £10 billion more than we exported.
The trade deficit on manufactured goods for the whole of 2003 was just under £40 billion, and we are on course to at least match that deficit.
The report goes on: "In its manufacturing strategy of 2002, the government noted that manufacturing accounted for a fifth of the economy, employed around four million people, and was responsible for 60% of our exports and 80% of our R&D (research and development).
"However, significant weaknesses include that we invest less in capital equipment and R&D,
and our average skill levels are lower, than our competitors. Manufacturing in Britain has lost more jobs than other major European economies. Employers are going for job cuts as quick fix solutions to short term pressures, because it is easier and cheaper to close factories and shed labour."
Weakness
The report followed the draft TUC submission, Manufacturing Strategy Review (March 2004), which showed the TUC's refusal to face reality, its cargo-cult mentality of relying on the government and the EU to save industry.
The submission made no mention of unemployment. In Britain, no fewer than 7.9 million people of working age are economically inactive. Of these, 22% said they wanted work, compared with 8% of the economically inactive in Germany, and 2.8% in France. In Liverpool, for instance, only 55% of working-age people have jobs. Why the mass unemployment? Because manufacturing employers are sacking industrial workers in their millions, in Britain, as in Europe and the USA. It is destruction, not restructuring.
Britain has long suffered from underinvestment in R&D, production and skills. Why? Because the employing class is too greedy - it prefers to take value out to put dividends in its own pockets, rather than put value back in by investing in the development of workers' skills. Successive governments have destroyed apprenticeships, for which GNVQs, national "skills ladders" and "escalators", modules and two-week plumbing courses are no substitute. Our staying-on rates for post-16 education put us close to the bottom of the international league. Why? Because young people are not going to train for jobs that are not there!
| Jobs lost as manufacturing disappears |
| Employees UK | March 2004 | Change over year to March 2004 |
| Manufacturing | 3,390,000 | -99,000 | -2.8% |
| Electrical engineering | 378,000 | -20,000 | - 5.0% |
| Textiles | 169,000 | -19,000 | -10.1% |
| Ceramics, metals | 560,000 | -15,000 | - 2.6% |
| Transport equipment | 350,000 | -13,000 | - 3.6% |
| Chemicals | 223,000 | - 9,000 | - 4.0% |
| Machinery | 303,000 | - 7,000 | - 2.3% |
| Paper, print, publishing | 429,000 | - 5,000 | - 1.1% |
| Plastics & rubber | 211,000 | - 4,000 | - 1.9% |
| Food, drink, tobacco | 458,000 | - 4,000 | - 0.9% |
| Other manufacturing | 308,000 | - 3,000 | - 1.0% |
| Source: Office for National Statistics |
Regions and quangos
The TUC talks about regions, with no concrete proposals. This is a deliberate turning away from the necessary national solutions, and a willing embrace of the EU's proposed new regional structures, its quangos like Regional Development Agencies, Regional Skills Partnerships, and "devolved business support programmes".
The TUC refuses to recognise that the EU determines procurement policy, enforcing an exclusive focus on "value for money", overriding any consideration of the effects on British jobs. It even praises the EU's strict competition rules. It kowtows before the EU's employment laws - which have not stopped 20 million workers being unemployed. It ignores the fact that EU membership has lost us control of all our industries and utilities.
The TUC sees Britain as a lame duck and begs for bigger subsidies, mirroring the way that it approaches the Labour government, cap in hand. This is what corporatism means - incorporate us please, even though the employers and the government don't want the TUC in! It's like a whipped dog returning to its master, hardly a suitable role for the British working class.
The TUC makes no mention of finance capital's damaging role, how it flees abroad, and won't stay in Britain for anything less than a guaranteed return of 25% a year. It ignores the damaging role of venture capital - 70% of it is used to leverage management buy-outs, destroying existing value; only 30% goes towards helping company start-ups. And this government, like all previous capitalist governments, encourages capital flight, refuses to protect industry, and sells off our energy sources.
The TUC complains: "There is not one reference to manufacturing in the current set of Public Service Agreements targets between the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry. Nor is there any specific reference to manufacturing in the overall 2003 DTI Strategy and Business Plan Statement." Fortunately, this is soon remedied: Gordon Brown made a speech on 23 July mentioning manufacturing, so all's well again - "We've got Gordon back on side."
There is no sign that this servile report was produced by a working class. It is more like a think tank report, with its talk of "innovation intermediaries" and "workplace partnership".
It is an ever-so-humble submission, using equalities language, "level playing field" and closing "regional prosperity gaps". It talks of closing the gaps with the EU, seeking to reach the EU average - what a banner to march behind! We must all be equally unemployed!
The submission does not refer to any particular industry, not even to engineering; and it does not say what industries Britain needs to have as an independent nation.
The way forward
Instead, why doesn't the TUC send some transport workers to New York to see how they run their tube system? They have dedicated industries building their own rolling stock, track and signalling equipment. They have a computer-laden train constantly monitoring the track's condition, sending information to teams of skilled engineers who promptly respond to their alerts. Our representatives could learn from New York's achievements and come back with some proposals for a remanufactured London Underground.
The TUC could do likewise with all our industries, involving workers in finding out what we need to produce and how to do it.