On the first day of the 2012 STUC Congress in Inverness today, STUC president and UNISON Scottish secretary Mike Kirby used his address to stress why austerity is not a good choice.
Noting that, following the 2008 financial crash, neo-libralism had “re-asserted itself with a swing to the political right across the western world”, he described the coalition government as “set against everything which has general, and almost universal support, from the body politic and civic society in Scotland.”
Mr Kirby said that the challenge to trade unions has been immense, with manufacturing collapsed, attacks on the public services and on trade union rights.
He said that the unions were rising to the that challenge, “because we know that there is a better way.
“A better way for jobs, for services, a living wage and fair taxes.”
And he asked: “Why should the jobs and services go if the need still exists? The cuts we are facing across the UK are not about money but about politics.
“A politics that hates public services and loves to profit from privatisation.
“A politics that sees a workforce engaged in caring, educating, nursing – not as an achievement to be celebrated, but as a problem to be tackled.”
Mr Kirby stressed that, while there is a crisis, it is not of the public finances, as the Conservatives insist, but it is the “economic cost of high unemployment and stagnation”.
He called on Scotland’s councillors to find a “renewed political purpose” and find a better way than the cuts agenda.
And Mr Kirby urged the unions to change to meet the challenges ahead, saying that unions could do this by “providing a clear vision, by organising, by arguing that good and fair employment rights, a well-trained, competent confident and valued workforce can benefit business, and in the sector which gave me employment for 36 years, can put the ‘public’ in public services.
“That’s the type of place this labour and trade union movement strives for – because we know that there is a better way.”
To read the full speech, click
here
