Cameron’s Big Society is really Greedy Pig Society, says McCluskey

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual congress kicked off yesterday in Liverpool. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady has already made the newspapers this morning; in her keynote speech she’s expected to say that there’s “no sign of the economic recovery in most people’s lives” and the Tories are creating a Downton Abbey-style society, where “the living standards of the vast majority are sacrificed to protect the high living of the well-to-do”.

Len McCluskey – General Secretary of Unite – also speaking at the congress, has said to combat the ongoing falling value of wages, collective bargaining should be reintroduced. McCluskey outlined how 40 years ago collective bargaining covered 80% of the workforce but now it merely covers 20%, meaning many workers who work in jobs where employers pay “poverty wages” have little power to do anything about this.

He also said Cameron’s Big Society is a sham (dubbing it instead Greedy Pig Society), stressing that the Tory’s policies benefit those at the top of the economic ladder:

“It was a Tory – Benjamin Disraeli – who said that Britain was two nations.  He would certainly feel right at home today. Workers in our country are today facing the longest drop in their living standards since the 1870s when Disraeli was Prime Minister. But to be fair to him – he saw the class divisions in Britain as a problem to be solved.  His Conservative successor in Number Ten seems to rejoice in them. Because every measure David Cameron and George Osborne take is designed to increase the squeeze on workers’ living standards and widen the already scandalous inequality gap.

“David Cameron used to talk of the Big Society. The truth is he’s created Two Societies – a society of Bullingdon Bullies, country suppers with Rebekah Brooks, tax cuts for the rich, a society which is a happy home for the hedge fund managers who fund the Tory Party. That’s not so much the Big Society, more like the Greedy Pig Society.

“On the other hand there’s a society of people in fear – fear of losing their jobs or their homes, fear of paying the heating bills, fear over the future of the National Health Service, where the government strips away any protection the poorest can still cling to.

“The Tories will tell you that it’s all going to come right – that after six lost years for the economy we will all feel the benefits soon. But the truth is that trickle down has dried up.

“For the first time in anyone’s memory we have an economy which is apparently growing – while living standards for ordinary people are still falling. To misquote another famous Tory: `Never, in the field of human economics, has so much been produced by so many to the benefit of so few’.

“We need a social rebalancing and only trade unions can deliver that – because all the power is on one side of the negotiating table. Most economists now recognise that this is the biggest structural obstacle to sustainable growth in a modern economy.  Collective bargaining can ensure that workers get back more of the wealth they produce. Trade unions stand for the productive economy and the people who are the real wealth-creators. In Downing Street they represent only the parasites.”