Billion for bankers – Pay freeze for workers
“Bonuses are back.” That’s the new slogan running round the City of London and the bankers’ boardrooms today.
Philip Stott and Brian Smith
As unemployment races towards 3 million and working people face an avalanche of demands for pay cuts and job losses top bankers are greedily swallowing billions in bonuses.“Getting a nine by three” – that’s £9 million for three years work – is the benchmark for these parasites.
Take the near death RBS, kept alive through a £20 billion bail-out from public money and now 70% owned by the government.
They have recruited a new gaggle of highly paid executives on huge salaries and bonuses. Stephen Hester, new chief executive of RBS is in line for a £9.6 million pay out if the share price reaches a paltry 90p within three years. And that does not even include his salary which is being kept secret.
The words of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling at the height of the financial crisis to end the bonus culture in the banking system have turned to dust. Only by bringing the banks into public ownership under democratic control and removing the fat cats can we end this obscene rip-off.
The impact of the capitalist crisis on Scotland’s local government services and the workers who provide them is becoming acute. Predictions are that local councils face a loss of resources over the next three years of up to 15%.
Cuts to vital frontline services are obviously on the cards. Services such as social work, addiction projects, educational support services and anti-poverty initiatives face cuts just as the social consequences of the bosses economic crisis are about to bite.
Many of these services are already overstretched and will be cut further just as demand from local communities increases.
Council workers will also be targeted, with job losses and pay freezes being proposed by almost all council leaders. Threats from the employers include a possible 5 year pay freeze.
In Glasgow, the ruling Labour Group support a pay freeze for their workforce to help meet the council’s £68 million “financial gap” in 2010/11.
Once again, workers are being asked to pay for the bosses crisis. CoSLA, the Scottish local councils ruling body, are likely to adopt a pay freeze policy.
Council leaders should be organising resistance to the cuts instead of managing them. They should set “peoples’ budgets” that protect services and the workers who provide them. However, the current crop of Labour, SNP, Tory and LibDem led councils are in the pockets of national governments and big business.
The trade unions must lead the defence of services, jobs and wages. A national one day strike should be campaigned for across the public sector and beyond to put pressure on the SNP and Labour Governments to come up with more funding.
If New Labour can spend more than £1 trillion to bail out the banking system and the SNP offer millions in public money to the drinks multinational Diageo then why can’t we have the money to defend public services and a decent living wage?
