National Delegate Conference 16-19 June 2008

Putting people before profit

Jane Carolan

Delegates united around a detailed and comprehensive strategy to put people before profit and defend public services through the economic crisis.

The programme of action will be built up around the Putting you first: a million voices for change campaign.

UNISON will continue to oppose public service spending cuts, will call for an affordable and social housing programme and for more progressive taxation.

Jane Carolan, NEC, condemned "the merchant bankers, financiers, private equity fat cats, the bonus boys, Sir Fred and his entire ilk"

With the blame for the current crisis fairly and squarely on the greed of the City of London, she said, "Reintroducing public and democratic control of the financial markets now seems like plain common sense. But even now when their mismanagement and disgrace is plain for all to see, the money men resist.We can't let them."

On job losses, Jane questioned, "How do we fight against the increasing tide of unemployment? A tide of job losses across the public sector that seems to grow daily? Not just in Local Government and the NHS but in housing associations and across the voluntary sector, amongst those outsourced. Redundancies all round,"

The answer - a wealth tax and a crack down on tax avoidance, said Jane, "Where I come from we believe that the broadest backs should bear the hardest burden. That those who have, should also have a responsibility to give back. Use the same fervour to pursue the tax cheats as is used on so called benefit fraud. Cancel all the grandiose projects like Trident and see what that does for the public finances."

Jane explained that it is the public sector workers who will have to deal with the fall out of today's economic crisis and that they needed the investment and the resources to do their job, and that aid was required in manufacturing, and in creating new employment.

Privatisation has no place in public services, said Jane, "We need an end to privatisation, an end to the millions spent on consultants, an end to PFI projects that suck the public purse dry. Jane declared a war on poverty. We want real guarantees that no child will be left, no pensioner will be left in the cold because they can't afford heating, that no-one in this country will have to choose between food and fuel.We need a public housing programme now."

With the government bailing banks out to the tune of billions, delegates could have been forgiven for voting for the amendment calling for nationalisation without compensation.

But as the NEC’s Bob Oram pointed out, life is not that simple. Quoting an impressive range of statistics, he showed how such a move would threaten our own pensions and savings.

North West’s Glen Williams likened the amendment to ‘feeling good’ on a night out, a few drinks, dancing like Travolta but sobering up quickly when you wake up on the beach with a pebble pillow as reality sets in. Conference carried the motion unamended.

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