Stop these Banksters

Fight for a socialist alternative

Top bankers worldwide are awarding themselves obscene ‘bonuses’ to feed their greed-fuelled, decadent lifestyles. Goldman Sachs in the US have announced $160 billion in pay and bonuses for their top earners.

Ian Leech and Philip Stott

Here, in Britain, Stephen Hester, the boss of RBS, will earn almost £10 million for three years “work”. And this is at a bank that is 84% publicly owned and had to be bailed out with tax-payers money. Even Stephen Hester’s mum and dad have expressed their opposition to this blatant greed.

RBS are reported to be planning to hand out £1.3 billion to their investment bankers later this month. Dozens of banks, the same ones that are largely responsible for the economic crisis that we are in today, are planning to do the same.

They have taken our money in bailouts and are now using that money to speculate and make massive profits, salaries and bonuses as a result.

The workers and poor people of Haiti have recently suffered conditions of unimaginable horror. The billions of pounds, euros and dollars the banking fat cats are taking for themselves should be confiscated and used to meet the desperate needs of the injured, orphaned and homeless in Haiti!

And in the richer countries of the world in which the major banks are based, how about some of the excessive banking profits going to the victims of the recession, an economic crisis that these banks have worsened through their profiteering and speculation? For instance, to the rapidly growing number of unemployed and to all those who can’t make ends meet, through no fault of their own?

In the US, Barak Obama, has announced he wants to take action to stop banks using their assets to carry out hedge fund and other speculative activity. His proposed action to curtail bankers bonuses are also pitifully weak, and will barely affect the income of this pampered elite.

However, in Britain Brown and Darling have even refused to ban outrageous top salary levels and bonus payments in the failed banks it was forced to take effective ownership of, like RBS.

Working class people are used to politicians promising to make things better. But never before have we seen, in the run up to an election, party leaders trying to out do each other with pledges to make us all worse off.

Alistair Darling’s has announced his intention to introduce a cap of 1% on public sector pay. The Tories have responded by promising to cut in real terms the pay of all public sector workers who earn over £18,000 a year. New Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems are falling over themselves promising massive cuts in public spending.

In the firing line is worker’s pay and the jobs and the services they provide. It is a clear case of making working people pay for an economic crisis not of our making!

But for the bankers and the bosses who created the economic crisis in the first place it is business as usual.

RBS boss Stephen Hester claims bankers need to be paid huge salaries and bonuses because “we are a prisoner of the market.” There are many workers and young people without a job who would like to be a prisoner under those conditions. For us, being “prisoners of the market” means a future of mass unemployment, pay cuts and attacks on essential services.

During the course of the last months it has also been announced that the public sector pension scheme will also be ‘revisited’ in light of the economic crisis. This is clear notice that the scheme, successfully defended by a united public sector trade union campaign against an earlier attack, will be targeted once again.

Unfortunately the response of the trade union movement to these attacks has been muted. So wedded to New Labour and removed from the rank and file are some of the leaders of the trades unions that they are unable to genuinely articulate their member’s anger and plan an effective fight back.

Instead there is a call to ‘vote Labour’ at the next election to keep the Tories out. They argue that Tory cuts will be much worse. Admittedly there is a grain of truth in this, however a cut is a cut whether Tory, SNP or Labour!

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

The announcement that the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) led by Bob Crow of the RMT and other left leaders of the trade union movement will be standing to offer an alternative in this election is a step forward.

This is a chance to put the interests of trade unions and working class communities to the fore and campaign for policies that meet the needs and aspirations of working class people.

The capitalist market is a failing system. It’s time to build support for a socialist alternative that defends jobs, wages and public services from the onslaught that is coming – whichever party wins the general election.

A socialist alternative that puts democratic public ownership and a socialist plan of production centre stage. Help us build that alternative today.

In 2010, many trade unionists will take industrial action to defend their living standards. Civil service workers and railworkers are among those planning to take strike action in the next few weeks.

TUSC argues for taxing the rich and for the banks to be brought into “true public ownership and democratic control, instead of huge handouts to the very capitalists who caused the crisis”.