Why are the socialist trade unions planing strikes because of the governments public sector cuts?
Stupidity Thousands of people have protested the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki against further government spending cuts. The protests, organised by unions, were largely peaceful though police used tear gas on a small group which broke away from the rally. On Friday, the government said there would be further austerity measures and Prime Minister George Papandreou, who is attending a trade fair in Thessaloniki, has said he is not going to give up on his government’s austerity plans. The centre-left government imposed a tough austerity programme in May in return for a 110 billion-euro bail-out from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, that helped it stave off bankruptcy. Official figures published earlier this week showed the contraction of the Greek economy is accelerating and is expected to shrink by 4% this year, the BBC reports. Inflation has also reached 5.5% – its highest level in more than a decade – and more than half a million people were officially out
Sean, the trade unions are there to protect workers – from the cuts being proposed BECAUSE there is now documented alternatives to the Tory budget. Times are hard – no-one denies it. But there isn’t a need to make the cuts they are threatening, which means that they are following an ideology = cutting jobs from the welfare state in order to diminish it. They (along with other posters I assume are in the same position) are rich enough never to need a state school, the NHS, to take the bus etc etc. They don’t want us to have it in order to reduce society to become poor and dependent on jobs they may give us for little pay and no rights. They have done almost nothing to address the higher echelons that avoid tax, take the banks on in any serious way or if you notice, reduce any benefits that they recieve (tax breaks). This is because this is them. The commonsense about making cuts is not apparent with their plan. They are happy to have millions on the dole – cut their benefit because they
The fact is that, if the government were anywhere near socialist, we would not be in the mess we are in today, as they would have regulated the antics of the capitalists who got us into this mess. Over the past 30 years, much of the work of the public sector has been outsourced and privatised to contractors with a resulting massive rise in costs and a noticeable drop in service quality For years, the public sector unions have not just been trying to protect the jobs and wages of their members, but to protect good quality services for the users, ie the taxpayers who fund them. Many functions and organisations in society need to be publicly run and funded, since private industry cannot be trusted to run them without making excessive profit for the owners of those industries. If you wanted to privatise say, the NHS, you would have to ensure that everybody had sufficient income to be able to afford to pay privately for health care. That would mean a much higher minimum wage, and much highe
