Rebuilding Collective Prosperity - Tackling Poverty and Inequality

Jane Carolan "We need to stop believing that there is no alternative and believe in our own solutions."

"We need not only to oppose cuts in our public services but to assert that public investment in public services is the only way forward. We are still one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It's time that the wealth was used for the many not the few. That is how we tackle inequality", UNISON's Jane Carolan told the STUC today as she seconded a detailed strategy for a living wage, tax and benefit reform and a blitz on excessive earnings and tax avoidance.

"The challenge for trade unions is that we take the words of this motion off the page, start to believe in them and act on them", said Jane.

"It is vital that a key element of a trade union strategy should be tackling inequality and should be fundamental to our approach".

"We need to stop believing that there is no alternative and believe in our own solutions."

The motion noted that Britain is one of the most unequal in Western Europe. 30 years ago sociologists starting rediscovering that despite the foundation of a Welfare State after the second world war Britain was divided by class.

"And thirty years ago Britain elected one of the most vindictive class warriors to the position of prime minister. Thatcher was the first high priestess of neo liberalism. She told us there was no such thing as society.

"The philosophy was simple. Let the markets work their magic. Let capital have its way. Let the wealthy become ever more wealthy and everyone will benefit by trickle down.

"And the Trade Union movement said Aye that'll be right. We spent the 80's and a good part of the 90's fighting against her."

But the tragedy is that the demise of the Tories was not the demise of neo liberalism, said Jane.

"There are a number of vital measures that require to be taken and are listed in the motion. But the most vital of all is that as a trade union movement we need to challenge the idea that our prosperity depends on an unfettered financial sector that should have died with the banking failures of 2009. We need to reassert that our economy has to be run on the basis of providing for the common good rather than to feather bed the bankers.

"We need to reassert that our welfare state is not a safety net that all too often fails those who fall into poverty but should instead be a comfort blanket that guarantees real human rights. Like the right to a home. The right to health. Like a living wage. And if we can have a minimum wage commission why not a maximum wage commission? How many millions can one human being need?

The strategy includes:-

• impose a minimum tax rate of 50% on those earning more than £100,000 a year;
• introduce a financial transaction tax;
• introduce a new law called a 'general anti-avoidance principle' that treats all tax avoidance as unacceptable and therefore open to challenge;
• tackle income shifting by reforming the way in which small companies are taxed;
• reverse HMRC staff cuts;
• significant and progressive increases in the rate of the Minimum Wage and increased punishment of those companies found to be in breach of Minimum Wage legislation;
• Government at all levels to become Living Wage employers, both in relation to its direct employees and those employed through services it directly procures; and
• the UK Government to enact legislation limiting the salaries, bonuses, pensions and other payments of executives of all companies, in which the state has any stake, or which have been financially supported by the state.

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