Whatever Cameron and his cronies may say about economic "recovery", record employment, or wages rising again, the facts tell a different story.
The present on-going dispute at Network Rail, the company which owns the railway tracks and stations, is a case in point. Wasn't it triggered by a grand 0% "pay offer" in the first place?
While some sections of workers may have got higher-than-inflation pay increases this year, this does not make up for the 8 years during which real wages were cut, year in and year out. Moreover, official wage figures conceal the real situation of millions of casual workers, many of whom are on the £6.50/hr minimum wage - not to mention apprentices on £2.73/hr! They must keep shifting from job to job, without getting any pay increases at all.
As to employment levels, well, job-slashing has never let up. Today, across the country, over 1,200 workers are made redundant every single day. Besides, job cuts do not always take the form of outright redundancies. Getting rid of jobs by not replacing those who are retiring, or those who leave on a more or less "voluntary" redundancy scheme, is nonetheless cutting jobs for the working class as a whole. Likewise, outsourcing is virtually always a means of decreasing the headcount, thanks to what the bosses call "synergies".
The job thieves
The plan announced this week by HSBC chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, to cut 25,000 jobs worldwide (8,000 in Britain) by "natural attrition" and to close an unknown number of high street branches, is another case in point. Regardless of the pacifying talk about lessening the impact of these job losses (how?), this still means 25,000 fewer paid jobs for the next generation!
In fact it is this same bank which is notorious for helping the rich and powerful to escape taxation, by hiding their cash for them, in Swiss coffers. As to Gulliver himself, who has already overseen 39,000 job cuts in the 4 years up to 2014, he was caught red-handed evading taxes by using a Panama-based bogus company.
But so what? Has Gulliver been prosecuted? Have HSBC's directors and shareholders been penalised for the bank's scandalous behaviour? Neither, nor. This was outright theft, but somehow it was "legal" theft. So, Gulliver and his bank remain free to carry on causing speculative havoc in the economy and depriving thousands of workers of their wages!
The fact that, like all the other big banks, HSBC has received billions of pounds in fresh cash from the state since the beginning of the financial crisis does not make it more accountable to the state, let alone to the population. While the bankers and their shareholders cream off public funds, the rest of us are meant to foot their bill by paying for the "deficits" they create and even to lose our jobs, in order to boost their profits. This is the logic of capitalism!
The ground we need to regain
But we do not have to accept this logic. The working class produces every bit of value in this society. It is our wealth-creating collective labour - and only our labour - which allows it to operate. And this collective strength could be used to throw a spanner in the works of this capitalist system, if only we decided to use it in earnest. Not only could we use our strength to defend our own material conditions and to regain the ground we have lost during the crisis - we could also use it to impose our control over the workings of society, especially, as in the case of HSBC, when it comes to containing the blatant parasitism of the capitalist class.
But for this, our collective fighting capacity has to be built up, so that those who have lost hope in the possibility of gaining anything through collective action can regain their confidence.
Of course, this is not what union leaders have in mind. In the Network Rail dispute, they have already managed to call off two 24-hour strikes at the last minute, using the pretext that there was a new offer on the table - only to admit that they had been fooled and to call for more action at a later date. But these bargaining ploys in which union leaders use workers as pawns at the negotiating table, can only demobilise workers and discredit the very idea of taking industrial action!
Since we cannot - and should not - rely on the union leaderships, this means that we will have to find within our own ranks the resources and energy we need. Rebuilding our collective strength is possible and necessary. It starts by organising to fight off the attacks of the bosses, and their stooges in government, even at the smallest level. If we do, we'll soon regain our ability to be a decisive force on the political scene, as a class.