Friday, January 30, 2009

Strikes and foreign workers

I suppose that it will be all too easy for the BNP and co. to jump on the bandwagon and to try and transform understandable frustration into racism.

Fact is, though, that the issues have very little to do with race or even nationality, and everything to do with low wages.

Foreign workers are not recruited because of their additional skills, but because they can be paid more. This is the outcome of, first, neo-liberal economics and the free market, and secondly, uncritical globalisation

Labour should be saying - we got it wrong, that undercutting established workforces is not acceptable, and that the neoliberal experimnet has failed and is over.

Lets start with nationalisation of the banks - without compensation. Permanent in order to control and plan the economy. Then we need to transform the EU into a social democratic network, overturning its free market failings.

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