We won’t pay for the bosses’ crisis

Front page article from the new issue of the Socialist, the paper of Socialist Party Scotland

The UK economy collapsed by 20% in April. The largest monthly drop in GDP since records began. The Bank of England predicts at least a 13% contraction in 2020 as a whole.

There will be no rapid bounce back for the capitalist economy. Increasingly workers are facing job losses and wage cuts, as well as continued fears over the coronavirus pandemic.

An estimated 750,000 workers in Scotland are on the Job Retention Scheme or the scheme for the self-employed. With furlough support due to end in October, bosses are carrying out plans to slash jobs at a rate not seen in decades.

Firms like BP, Rolls Royce and British Airways have already announced tens of thousands of job cuts.

Unemployment is expected to rise to over 10% over the next months. Up to 100,000 jobs in Scotland could go in hospitality and tourism alone. Youth unemployment will explode as a result.

It is essential that the trade union movement fights for every job, demands continued government support for workers who cannot work – at 100% of their wage level – and the nationalisation of companies threatening mass sackings of workers.

Those firms who say they cannot afford to maintain staff must open the books for worker and trade union inspection.

Capitalism has entered an unprecedented crisis. There has been a siezing up of both supply – as workplaces closed down and distribution chains atrophy, and demand – as workers stopped spending, except on food and essentials.

Even the free market Tories have been forced to throw billions of state money at the economy, even carrying out temporary nationalisations. This is only to try to save their system of course.

We say: “don’t subsidise, nationalise”. We need socialist policies to avert an economic crisis. If the government is going to invest public money, those industries should be run in the public interest, under democratic workers’ control, as part of a plan of production to meet the needs of society, not producing for the profits of a few.

Covid-19 may have been the trigger for the economic collapse, but capitalism was failing even before the pandemic hit. Any attempts by the Tories and the SNP to implement yet more council and NHS cuts must be met with an explosion of class struggle.

A new economic depression is inevitable under capitalism. But not if socialist measures were taken.

The trade unions must lead the fightback to save jobs and defend workers’ incomes. As well as resisting all attempts to force workers back to unsafe workplaces. We say the workers must control the workplace.

A new party to represent the working class needs to be built. One that fights for public ownership and socialist planing as the only way out of the economic, environmental and health crisis.

The Covid-19 crisis has changed everything. Nothing will be the same again. Join the fight for socialist change.