Iso-Britannian suurlakko - 2 miljoonaa virkamiestä lakossa

[HaH]

Strikes over public sector pensions hit services across UK as 2 million walk out
David Cameron and Ed Miliband trade blows as 60% of schools in England are closed and 6,000 NHS operations cancelled

Dan Milmo, Caroline Davies, Polly Curtis and Hélène Mulholland
The Guardian

Wednesday 30 November 2011 14.18 GMT


Trade Unions and the government have traded blows over the impact of the biggest outbreak of industrial unrest in three decades, as up to 2 million public sector workers went on strike, forcing the closure of 62% of state schools in England and the cancellation of 6,000 hospital operations.

Heathrow airport reported minimal disruption as the mass rebooking of passengers helped reduce queues at border control, but the cabinet secretary, Francis Maude, acknowledged that the strikes over pension reforms had disrupted services. The impact includes:

• 19,000 out of 21,700 schools in England and Wales closed or partially closed.

• 6,000 out of 30,000 non-urgent operations cancelled.

• 135,000 civil servants on strike, representing just over a quarter of the civil service.

With the strike only halfway through, the prime minister and Labour leader battled to make political capital out of the unrest. At prime minister's questions in the House of Commons, David Cameron claimed that the strikes had failed to have a significant impact.

"At our borders the early signs are that the contingency measures are minimising the impact, we have full cover in terms of ambulance services, and only 18 of the 900 job centres are closed," he said. "So despite the disappointment of the party opposite, who support irresponsible and damaging strikes, it looks like something of a damp squib."

Ed Miliband said the government must accept blame for the strikes. He asked Cameron: "Why do you think so many decent, hard-working public sector workers, many of whom have never been on strike before, feel the government simply isn't listening?"

Maude said the strikes were irresponsible as he disputed union claims that talks over pension reforms had ground to a halt. One of the main union negotiators, however, the GMB's Brian Hutton, said discussions on the four pension schemes – health, education, civil service and local government – had either stalled or were insubstantive. "In most of the schemes there is really nothing going on at all," he said.

A spokesman for the TUC, which is co-ordinating the strikes, said up to 2 million workers had taken part in the biggest bout of industrial action since the 1979 winter of discontent.

"There has been magnificent support for the strike today. It is the biggest in a generation."

Referring to government claims of a low turnout and deliberate disruption of negotiations, the spokesman added: "The government is clutching at straws. The real question remains, how did this government provoke so many ordinary, decent people to go on strike for the first time in their lives?"

Mark Serwotka, the leader of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS), said reports from picket lines showed a huge turnout, with up to 90% of staff in some government departments, including Revenue and Customs, taking action. "I have been to pickets around central London and spirits are sky-high, with many other unions besides PCS out on strike," he said."

Britain's largest airport, Heathrow, reported no disruption as the busiest time of day for passport control and international arrivals at 7am passed without incident. Some 60,000 passengers normally pass through border control at Heathrow on a normal day, but major airlines including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic indicated that thousands of travellers had rebooked to an alternative date free of charge.

"Due to the effective contingency plans we have put in place with the airlines and the UK Border Agency over recent days, immigration queues are currently at normal levels," said the airport's operator, BAA. British Airways, Heathrow's largest customer, said passenger numbers were reduced compared with an average day while Virgin Atlantic said it was operating at 50% capacity.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, said that the action has had a "severe impact on schools across the country".

He released figures that showed 62%, (13349) of the country's 21,476 state funded schools in England had closed, with a further 3,351 (16%) only partially open, and 16% open as normal. The situation at the remaining 1825 schools is unknown.

Gove said: "Industrial action, today...has caused disruption to children's schooling and to parents and employers. At the same time, we know that many dedicated professionals have worked hard to keep schools open where they could."

In Scotland it was thought just 30 of the 2,700 council run schools remained open. In Wales around 80% were believed shut and in Northern Ireland more than 50% of 1,200 schools were closed.

NHS managers estimated that some 6,000 out of 30,000 routine operations had been cancelled across the UK, as well as tens of thousands of appointments. The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said patients who had operations cancelled would still be seen within an 18-week limit.

London Ambulance Service told BBC London it was struggling and people not in a life-threatening condition might not get an ambulance.

The strike saw walkouts by tens of thousands of border agency staff, probation officers, radiographers, librarians, job centre staff, court staff, social workers, refuse collectors, midwives, road sweepers, cleaners, school meals staff, paramedics, tax inspectors, customs officers, passport office staff, police civilian staff, driving test examiners, patent officers and health and safety inspectors.

In Wales unions reported around 170,000 workers on strike, and in Scotland around 300,000.

Up to 1,000 marches and rallies were due to take place across the UK. Four arrests were made ahead of a national rally in London, two for assaulting an officer and two for possession of a weapon.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who was due to address the London rally later, said 30 November would go down as the day when the union movement and workers fought to protect the economic and welfare advances of the last 60 years. Working people were "being asked to pay for the economic mess caused by the greedy City elite whose behaviour this spineless government has repeatedly failed to tackle", he said.

Touring picket lines in London, he added: "The action today has been a brilliant display of courage and concern by public servants who are being demonised by a government that has lost its moral compass."

In Salford, Greater Manchester, around 20 council refuse collectors were gathered around a brazier waving placards, one of which read: "Do we look Gold Plated?". Unite organiser Neil Clarke said: "I don't think George Osborne could find Salford if you gave him a map."

Outside Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary nurses, lab workers and cleaners were joined by the veteran trade union leader Rodney Bickerstaff, a pivotal figure in the 1970s.

"These are people who work day in, day out. They wipe noses, they wipe bottoms, they teach unruly kids, work with dustbins and sewage works. They are services which civilise our society," he said.

In Liverpool Inspector Russ Aitken from Mersey Tunnel police was taking industrial action for the first time in 35 years. "I feel angry that I'm paying a 50% increase in pension contributions and I feel angry that I'm going to have to work longer and at the end of it get less."

Outside the Crown Prosecution Service office in Manchester city centre, a handful of lawyers were among those manning the picket line. The average annual pay of a CPS solicitor was £30,000 rising to £50,000, said strikers, but many low pay grade civil servants would get average annual pensions of £5,600 after 40 years service.

Courts across the UK were affected, said Norina O'Hare, who represents the justice and prosecutions sector of the PCS. "We've had a lot of support from judges who are, of course, also public sector workers."
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Tästähän oli isot jutut Suomen mediassa, eikö ollutkin?

[Fidel Von Infidel]

Saadaanko kunniakansalaisten tuet varmasti maksettua ajoissa, vai miten tässä nyt käy? 

[HaH]

Osborne's autumn statement shows a Britain worse than it was in the 1970s

Larry Elliott
The Guardian
Wednesday 30 November 2011 22.38 GMT


In the annals of British postwar history, the 1970s have always had a special place as the awful decade, a time of economic stagnation, industrial unrest and a squeeze on real incomes. It was the decade the postwar boom ended, and the arrival of a hit squad from the International Monetary Fund symbolised that the party was well and truly over.

The analysis on Wednesday of George Osborne's autumn statement by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggested it will soon be time to rewrite the record books, because what Britain is living through now is worse than the decade that gave us the three-day week and winter of discontent.

Until now, the worst 10-year period for living standards in postwar Britain was the period bookended by the David Bowie albums Aladdin Sane in 1973 and Let's Dance in 1983. It covered two recessions – in 1974-75 and 1980-81 – and by the end of it the unemployment figure had reached a postwar high of just over three million. Family incomes grew at what was then considered a snail's pace, rising by 14.4% in real terms over the decade.

That, though, looks like positively explosive growth compared with the decade Britain is living through at the moment. The IFS says that in 2016 real household disposable incomes will be lower than they were in 2006.

It is impossible to say if such a dismal performance has ever occurred before because records don't go back that far.

Spending squeeze

The IFS also looks at the squeeze on incomes in another way. It examines what is happening to the real spending power, after inflation, of a household smack in the middle of the UK's income distribution. Here the position looks even worse: real median household incomes will be no higher in 2015-16 than they were in 2002-03, a 13-year period of stagnation.

In today's prices, a couple with no children would have had real disposable income of £437.35 a week in 2002-03, and if the economy pans out as the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects, such a couple will have £432.99 a week to play with in 2015-16.

There have been periods in Britain's history – the famine of the 1340s, followed by the Black Death – when there were colossal falls in living standards, but what the IFS has described has no precedent in modern times.

Even in the period leading up to the financial crash of 2007, real incomes were growing at a sluggish rate. They had been buoyant in Tony Blair's first term as prime minister, between 1997 and 2001, when growth was robust and the strong pound made imported goods cheaper, but in his second term the pace of income growth moderated, and in his last two years in Downing Street, up to 2007, it petered out almost entirely.

Families were able to consume more, but only by using their homes as cash machines. In the five years from 2002 to 2007, equity withdrawal from UK real estate exceeded £300bn, which kept spending and the wider economy going but only through borrowing growth "from the future".

When the recession broke in 2008 real incomes then fell sharply. Many workers accepted pay freezes, even pay cuts, to avoid losing their jobs, and pay awards failed to keep pace with rising prices. Taxes also went up as first Alistair Darling and then Osborne announced plans to right the damage to the public finances caused by the recession.

Real median household income for a couple with two children is on course to be almost £50 a week lower in 2012 than it was in 2009.

Deep slump

The reason the squeeze has lasted for longer than expected is that inflation has been a lot higher than forecast over the past 18 months. The 25% drop in the pound's value has made imports dearer at a time when global commodity prices have surged, pushing up the cost of energy and food, and when VAT has been raised in two successive years, first to 17.5%, then last January to 20%.

Inflation has been running at 5%-plus since the summer at a time when average earnings have grown at barely 2%.

And consumers can no longer compensate for the hit to their real incomes by using their homes for cash, since house prices are no longer rising. So household consumption, falling in 2011, will barely grow in 2012.

The expectation is that real incomes will pick up again in subsequent years, partly because the weakness of the economy will lead to a sharply lower inflation rate.

But even assuming the economy performs no worse than the OBR expects, the recovery will be slow and it is likely to be well into the next parliament before the average household finds itself better off than it was shortly after the turn of the millennium.

Nor does there seem to be an immediate prospect of real income growth at the high levels seen in previous periods of UK economic recovery, such as the 1980s, unless the credit bubble is reinflated.

The OBR assumes now that the economy has suffered greater permanent damage in the recession than was previously thought.

That has two consequences. It means that Britain's trend growth (the rate at which output can expand without inflation picking up) is now considered to be lower than it was before the crash, at 2.3% a year. And it means that Osborne, or the next chancellor, after the election, will have to carry on cutting to sort out the budget deficit.

The IFS has pulled no punches, confessing it had little good news to impart. Indeed, news that recovery from a deep slump will be slower than imagined, of a lost decade of real income growth, and austerity as far as the eye could see, could make you quite nostalgic for the 1970s. When at least there were Fawlty Towers and the Clash.
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[HaH]

Tästähän oli isot jutut Suomen mediassa, eikö ollutkin?

No Hesarin websivuilla nyt ainakin oli useampikin juttu aiheesta.

Kappas. Olivat maininneet. Ja minä kun olin lehtiä seuraamalla luullut, että maailmassa on taloussosiaalipoliittisia ongelmia vain Euro-maissa. Kummaa että muuallakin ollaan suossa, ihan ilman Euroakin.