The most savage public spending cuts in 50 years in the United Kingdom have been outlined by the Conservative government of David Cameron. UNISON, the UK’s largest public sector union, says the government is condemning the country to a dismal, downward spiral.
London (21 Oct. 2010) - Chancellor George Osborne has condemned the country to decades of hardship and people to unnecessary wholesale unemployment, with his “ideologically driven, no hope, no ideas, cuts”, warned UNISON, the UK’s largest public sector union.
"The government has failed to consider that there is a fairer alternative," said Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON.
The union says that the government's plan to cut £80 billion out of the budget over the next four years will result in 500,000 public sector job losses. That will prove to be a false economy and will cost the private sector a further 425,000 jobs. They could cost the Treasury around £4.6bn in lost tax revenue and £6.1bn in increased benefit payments - adding £10.7bn a year to the annual deficit and almost entirely canceling out the apparent £12.5bn saving to the public sector pay-bill.
Tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut in local government and it cannot afford to lose any more without hitting front-line services. The economy is also likely to be bitten by the negative impact of taking public sector workers’ spending power out of local economies and by the damage done to economic and social recovery from reduced public service provision.
Following the Chancellor’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Prentis said: “For CSR read Cuts Strangle Recovery. The Tories’ ideologically driven, no hope, no ideas, cuts agenda is poisoning the country’s chances of recovery, infecting the public sector and costing 425,000 jobs in the private sector.
“The much-trailed cuts come as no great surprise, but the scale is a devastating blow to workers and their families whose jobs are in the firing line," said Prentis.
“The Chancellor has tunnel vision, there are realistic alternatives that will get the country back on its feet. "But the truth is they are not interested in alternatives. They don’t care if the poor, the elderly, the vulnerable are the targets of cuts. If they did, they would see that they could claw back billions of pounds by taxing the banks that caused the recession in the first place.
"I am warning the Government today - the public can only take so much, working people will only take so much, and this union has already had enough. Make no mistake. If the Government doesn’t listen to us today, they won’t have heard the last of us. If George Osborne’s cuts go through – cuts that could mean a death sentence for our services and our communities – then we will be back."
NUPGE
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE
