Jobs Not Dole

• For the right to a decent job

• We won’t pay for the bosses crisis

• No to job losses. Open the books to see where all the profits have gone.

• Bail out the workers not the bosses.

• Nationalise big industries threatening closure or job cuts under democratic workers control 

As the full extent of the recession becomes apparent, unemployment has surged past two million, the highest level since Labour came to power.   Universally expected to eventually exceed at least three million, these ‘official’ government statistics do not even take account of the many people on incapacity benefit, the increasing amount of underemployed no longer getting enough work to pay the bills, or those forced into casual labour for slave wages below the minimum wage as part of government initiatives such as Gordon Brown’s despised New Deal. 

by Luke Ivory, Youth Fight for Jobs Campaign

Billions of pounds have been spent in Britain – and trillions around the globe – in order to bail out the banks which are the pillars of the international capitalist system. However, while governments internationally race one another to come to the aid of ailing financial institutions in order to rescue capitalism, the ugly parallel to these measures are invariably that the rich can only be saved by forcing the working class, youth and the poor to bare the brunt of the problems created by the inherent contradictions of capitalism. 

Politicians from all the big business parties claim to be helpless to prevent the massacre of jobs now prevalent. The truth is that it is the right wing free-market ideology of the capitalist class – to which the politicians have become irreversibly embedded – which is incapable of preserving jobs and an adequate standard of living. While companies either go bust – despite being owned by directors with a combined wealth of billions – or flee eastwards in search of cheaper labour, it has become irrefutable that the only solution to defend jobs and living standards is through nationalisation and the establishment of a democratic planned economy.  

Socialists provide concrete solutions in order to safeguard jobs. We advocate the full nationalisation of the top 200 monopolies as well as any other company going to the wall. These would be carried through on the basis of workers’ control and management to ensure that the workforce benefit from the fruits of their own labour. The politicians will oppose tooth and nail these measures however workers in struggle have already began to show a way forward. 

The Prisme workers of Dundee refused to lay down to the bosses threat of redundancy without the redundancy pay entitled to them and have occupied their factory indefinitely as they seek the creation of a workers’ cooperative. The Visteon workers in Belfast, and in two plants in England have rightly also occupied their factories when faced with redundancies. Workers need to escalate these actions and pressure the trade unions into leading a coordinated and united campaign in defence of jobs and conditions.   

United in struggle it is possible for workers to send a message to the bosses that we are not going to pay for their crises!