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It's time to beat the bosses back!
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Britain's big companies ended 2011 having paid a record £67bn worth in dividends to their shareholders, while sitting on a cash
pile worth over £240bn.
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By contrast, working class households ended the year with record low savings and record high debts. Even those workers who
managed to remain in work, had their standard of living slashed, as their wages were increased by far less than the 5%+ official
inflation figure - when they were not frozen or cut. And to make matters worse, the new year started with another raft of price
and fare increases.
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A general attack on wages
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Over the past year, inflation has, together with job and pension cuts, been the capitalists' preferred way of making us pay for
their crisis.
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Inflation allows the bosses to kill two birds with one stone. They can protect (or even increase) their profit margins by
increasing prices in line with, or above, rising costs. And, at the same time, they can use inflation to reduce their real wage
costs. This leaves workers to foot the bill, with reduced purchasing power. And, despite the Bank of England's repeated pledge
that the inflation level will "soon" be brought down to its 2% target, there is no sign of this happening in the near future.
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Now, however, there are more and more attempts by employers to go further than that, by imposing outright wage cuts on workers.
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The first attacks in this new wave came in the public sector, especially in local government. In Birmingham, Southampton and
Doncaster, among others, council workers were given the "choice" of signing up to new contracts involving lower pay rates, or
facing the sack.
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More attacks have emerged since, this time in the private sector. In construction, over 5,000 electricians and other skills are
threatened with a wage cut which could reach up to 35% for some.
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Likewise, just as it was hailing rising sales and profits, car manufacturing giant Ford announced plans to introduce a 2-tier
system within its workforce, whereby, among other things, future recruits would earn 25% less for the same job.
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Similar attempts at cutting wages are being made by smaller companies up and down the country, using the same blackmail over
jobs that was common in the first year of the crisis.
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Other companies, including big ones - like some train operating companies and car manufacturers BMW and Jaguar-Land-Rover, among
others - have taken advantage (or are trying to) of a tailor-made "loophole" in the European Agency Workers directive, to create
another form of 2-tier system in the shape of lower paid "permanent temps".
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The class struggle is the answer
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Whether we listen to the ConDems or to Labour, we hear the same tune: solving unemployment depends entirely on the "goodwill"
of private companies. New jobs, they claim, will only be created if profits start rising again and, therefore, if labour costs
go down. The only difference between them, is that the ConDems claim companies need to be "encouraged" by slashing workers'
rights, whereas Labour proposes to do this by granting them a National Insurance Contributions holiday.
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As if the bosses were part of the solution, when, in fact, they have been the real problem, since long before the crisis even
broke out. Today, profits have regained a level which, for most big companies is comparable to what it was in the run-up to the
crisis. Has this led the bosses to re-hire the hundreds of thousands they made redundant over the past three years? Of course
not!
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Far from investing and creating jobs, companies carry on closing facilities and extracting as much sweat as they possibly can,
out of a much reduced workforce. This is how they have restored their profits - thanks to increasing the level of exploitation
of the working class.
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And what the present wave of attacks against wages shows, is that having boosted their profits by reducing headcounts as much as
possible, the bosses are now aiming at boosting them even further by butchering the wages and pensions of the remaining workers,
in addition to screwing more work out of them.
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Cameron has made a point of telling us that the coming year will be "difficult". But we can make it "difficult" for the
exploiters too. The capitalists can be forced to use their huge stockpile of wealth to create the jobs which are vitally needed
and pay decent, inflation-proofed wages. 2012 could be the year when, by using the weapons of the class struggle, workers stop
the bosses' profit drive and start regaining lost ground.
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