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Austerity and public services: The strategy for resistance

Scotland’s public sector is in dire peril under the coalition’s austerity agenda, says LILIAN MACER

Scotland deserves the best public services, but apparently this is not the government’s view.

Unison has consistently opposed the government’s decisions to slash and burn public spending, inflict swathes of job cuts across the public sector and penalise welfare recipients in a lurch back to the poor laws.

And all the time, behind the scenes of suffering communities, the tax burden on the rich and powerful is being lowered.

While the government would have you believe these choices are necessary — “We’re taking tough decisions,” “We’re all in this together — and that the economy has turned the corner, the reality for

Unison members, their families and their communities is far from that.

The real fact from the government’s austerity programme is that public-sector job losses across Scotland have reached a devastating 49,500.

The majority of these (39,300) are in local government, which has a damaging impact on the ability to provide quality services to local communities.

On the week of the February 10 councils across Scotland announced their budgets. Their decisions have put public-sector workers’ and trade unionists’ jobs in peril and have placed vital community services under threat.

Unison recognised the need to highlight the cuts and the impact they are having on our communities.

We consider it vital that we get our message over that high-quality public services are essential to our economy and that there is a real alternative to the cuts.

The Unison survey It’s Time To Care has highlighted the shocking reality of Scotland’s care service.

The majority of workers polled in the Unison survey believe the service is not sufficient to meet the needs of elderly and vulnerable people, both in terms of the time they can spend with clients and the quality of care they can provide.

Almost half of carers (44 per cent) said they were limited to specific times to spend with their clients.

One in two workers are not reimbursed for travelling between client visits, while three in four said they expected the situation to get worse over the coming year.

We have always campaigned alongside our communities for equality and social justice. But our focus is now clearly on defending the essential services on which our communities rely, across health, social care, early years care and housing services, whether these are provided directly by public agencies or outsourced to housing associations, charities and not-for-profit or private organisations.

We are asking local authorities across Scotland to sign up to our Ethical Care Charter, which highlights the need for good-quality care and includes a pledge to avoid the practice of notorious 15-minute visits.

Worth It is Unison’s UK-wide, cross-service group campaign on pay. It aims to raise the profile of pay within the membership, with influencers and the wider public and to find a new way of talking to people about the impact of the continued pay injustice — making pay about people.

This in a climate where month on month the real standard of living of all public-sector workers is in decline and the average private-sector pay settlements continue to outpace the public sector.

In Unison we have been supporting public services and the staff who deliver them by, for example, making a strong case for the Scottish living wage across the Scottish economy.

As a consequence of our campaigns we have seen the introduction of the living wage for all NHS workers in Scotland and a significant number of local authorities have now been persuaded of the benefits of this policy.

It is good for employers since it reduces turnover, improves productivity and attracts better staff through reputational gain.

The wider community benefits through lower benefit costs, less stress on the NHS and cash being injected into the local economy.

But don’t just take my word for it. Even Boris Johnson, the Tory mayor of London, said: “I believe that paying decent wages reduces staff turnover and produces a more motivated and productive workforce.”

Austerity is not working and it’s not just my own or Unison’s view.

Assessed against its own terms, the coalition’s five-year programme of austerity has not lived up to its promised outcomes.

While the 2008 financial crisis created the economic world in which we now find ourselves, it has been the coalition’s decision to dramatically cut public spending too quickly and by too much that has failed to get the economy working again.

High-quality public services are affordable and can be funded through fair taxation — this is the basis for decent services provided by properly rewarded staff and is the key to achieving our social objectives. Indeed, it is the hallmark of a civilised society.

The economy may be beginning to show signs of some sort of recovery, and claims that austerity “has worked” seem a little overgenerous.

Some economists have recently suggested it is possible that the economic recovery has been weaker with austerity than without it.

At a macro level, some economists are beginning to argue that economic recovery has been weakened by the austerity medicine.

Whatever the economic theory, the reality for Unison members and their families in Scottish communities is far from enjoying the benefits of the green shoots of recovery from the trickle-down impact of the austerity experiment.

Ask those whose welfare benefits are being withdrawn or those now queuing at the burgeoning foodbanks.

Scotland and its cherished public services are in desperate peril under the yoke of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.

Lilian Macer is Unison Scotland convener.

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