Maintaining Relevance: Labour, the Unions and Modern Politics

As we enter the early days of conference season attention turned towards Bournemouth as the Trades Union Congress meets to discuss its agenda for the next year. However, members of all unions meet against a rapidly tarnishing backdrop.

In the last few months notable members of the TUC have struggled to stay out of the headlines following the Falkirk by-election debacle, Labours funding switch and the threats of industrial action over pay and conditions.

The major question, from alternative perspectives depending on your political orientation, is how relevant are the trades union in the modern age.

After all we now have health and safety, equal pay, labour and discrimination laws, minimum wage and employment rights. What more can the unions actually achieve in the era of private companies in the public sector?

Labour, whose leader was elected largely thanks to trade union backing, now want to slash its own funding by rejecting trade union donations, while the Conservatives, who have never liked the unions, argue they are out-of-date, out-of-touch and, with regard to strike action, out-of-order.

This is not helped by what is arguably all trades union biggest headache, their poor public image.

When any of the major union leaders go on television they appear like shouty, football hooligan types, who complain about pay and conditions when almost every non-union worker suffers with the same issues.

After all, we no longer live in the age of cotton barons, child labour and worker exploitation and mainstream politics has moved to the centre ground where a balance must be struck between big business and employee rights.

Even the far-right of the Tory party is not going to suggest abolishing the minimum wage.

No matter how suicidal Ed Miliband’s stance on union funding might be for the Labour Party, many on the 

left would agree it is an undue influence, verging on the unacceptable, on the modern geopolitical and socioeconomic landscape.

However, disregarding the unions is in itself short-sighted. After all workers will always require protection and there are examples today of where unions would be better off focusing their attention.

Zero-hours contacts are a prime example of this. This kind of contractual agreement could clearly be used, if it has not already, by companies to exploit workers.

Similarly, at a time of private and public sector cost cutting, it is not a huge leap for this to result in unfair dismissals, worsening work conditions and health and safety violations.

Then there is the decline in living standards across the country as wages fail to keep pace with inflation.

Foreign workers, who may not know what rights they are entitled to in the UK, are also heavily at risk and need a union-based set up to ensure they are not taken advantage of.

These are, for the moment, all just hypothetical, but, in the same way the European Court of Human Rights is there to ensure another fascist dictator cannot start randomly imprisoning dissidents, the trade union movement is needed to guarantee UK workers never have to face industrial revolution style working conditions.

This shows the trades union are far from irrelevant, but suffer from three main issues, a lack of focus, a lack of discipline and a bad public image.

Over the years many unions have split, fractured and even sub-divided to the point where the delegate list at the TUC is an unholy spectacle of acronyms with several unions representing the same interest groups.

Industry specific unions are vital for industry specific issues, for example ensuring teachers have the relevant training, but need to be brought back under a single umbrella union so each sector can pinpoint specific and wider raging areas to deal with.

A major reason for this, and a cause of the trade union movements seeming irrelevance, is because a large number of people, many not associated with, or even lacking access to, a union struggle with the same problems.

With this in mind it is time for the unions to rethink how they operate and stop being the fire and brimstone style agitators they were during the 70s.

As the UK has developed as a country many of the issues unions were formed to fight have been solved, however the movement as a whole still campaigns in the same way as when they were opposing child labour in cotton mills.

What this leads to are regular strike threats which are never taken forward because industrial action is the first weapon taken out of the bag.

Having the right to strike is important, but low voter turnout at the union ballot boxes results in it being more of a legal battle of legitimacy of the action rather than the issues they are fighting for.

If unions restructured themselves along the lines of think tanks, lobbyists or focus groups, with industry specific unions offering greater focus and the TUC offering oversight on all UK workers, they would bestow a level of legitimacy not seen for many decades and be able to achieve some good for the workers of Britain, not just its card carrying members.

To reach this point however the unions need to address the biggest issue. Its PR problem.

Put any of the major union leaders in a debate with a politician and the union leader ends up looking like a foolish, badly behaved child, not because their arguments have no validity, but because they appear like a football terrace hooligan.

Instead of criticising the New Labour years maybe they should take a leaf out of Tony Blair and Alistair 

Campbell’s book and polish up its communication skills so they can become the strong, legitimate force for good they could be in British politics.

In the political world there are some people who are never let in front of a television camera, because they do not come over well on screen, the most damaging problem for the unions at the moment is they have no one who looks good and sounds intelligent on camera.

What this comes down to in the end is not a case of whether or not the trades union are relevant in the modern world, but a case of how can they make themselves relevant to today’s workers as a whole, not just its traditional membership.

New World Order – Pensions, Retirement and Saving

Worried about your nest egg?

The financial crisis has not had the seismic effect many were expecting on the capitalist system, but in its wake is it time for us to rethink how we go about living and saving?

Since 2009 salaries in both the public and private sector have stagnated, while inflation has risen making everything from the weekly grocery shop to housing costs more expensive.

Pension funds took a battering on the stock market, with many now planning for retirement with much less in the bank.

House prices, particularly in London, have continued to rise, and the cost of renting in the capital has become unsustainable for those on lower salaries.

All this has resulted in low consumer spending as people scrimp and save to afford life’s basics.

However, for younger people in particular should this actually be seen as an opportunity to change the way we pay for life and more specifically cope with retirement.

A recent press release by financial advisors deVere suggested people should be saving over £800/ month by the time they are 30 to afford to maintain their lifestyle during old age, while a Barings Asset Management survey suggested people under 35 expect just 40% of their retirement income to come from a traditional pension.

The key issue with both of these statistics is they assume what could be a called a “traditional retirement”, but the kind post-work lifestyle our grandparents, or parents will be able to enjoy will not be available to the current groups of under 30s.

The main reason for this is the current crop of whippersnappers is the first generation who will probably never be able to afford to buy a house. This might seem extreme, but it is true.

Currently statistics suggest people are having to borrow, on average, £200,000 to get on the property ladder and pay about £50,000 up front as a deposit. For the vast majority of people this is unrealistic.

In the past this was less of an issue as people could expect to inherit a property, but with these conditions our children, and even us, might not even have this luxury.

However, panic not, because this could end up being the saving grace for our generation.

House prices are high because developers are not building anything affordable. Instead they build more expensive houses which are then sold as buy-to-let properties, which are rented out at highly inflated prices.

Although there has been outcry over the cost of renting, so far little has been done to tackle the problem, but this is likely to change.

The last 10 or 20 years have proved no amount of well-meant rhetoric is going to get low-cost housing built in this country, because private developers make more profit with selling to the buy-to-let market, which realistically could result in a renters, rather than a buyers, market.

Over the course of your lifetime renting is of course more expensive, however, on a month-to-month basis is not as financially challenging as saving for a deposit or paying of a mortgage.

Renting also ticks the social mobility box. With jobs likely to start migrating from the capital, renting rather than owning offers a level of flexibility the younger generation is keen on in their working lives.

People who own a home are far more socially immobile as they have set roots, whereas renters are able to move much more freely, particularly when it comes to taking a new job, or moving to a different part of the country.

Germany offers an interesting comparison here. In das Vaterland home ownership is not the obsession it is in the UK. For example, in 2011 90% of the residential property in Berlin is rented.

Even in German states where buying is the most popular option, renting still accounts for 40% of the market.

There are many reasons for this, including Germany not experiencing a housing boom like the UK, but rental costs are still 30-45% lower than UK equivalents.

How they have managed this is quite simple. There is so much competition for rented property landlords put prices down, not up.

This model is something the UK, and other countries suffering from similar problems, will have to look at.

Admittedly it would be impossible to recreate the situation in Germany, but a sensible approach to how much rent can be charged (maybe based on Council Tax brackets) could help make housing far more affordable and remove the rather out-dated concept of home ownership.

Pensions are another area where the current crop of under-35s could manufacture for themselves a better future by ignoring traditions.

Every survey and statistic is based on leaving the workforce at the current retirement age, but this assumption corrupts the results.

Hopefully this will come as no surprise to anyone, but anyone under 40 will not get to retire at 65, mainly due to the pressures an aging population is putting on the public finances.

When President Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal in the 1930s people were only expected to live 10 years after retirement. Today, thanks to medical advances, better nutrition and generally healthier lifestyles, people could quite reasonably expect to enjoy 20 or even 25 years after leaving the workforce.

Although no concrete legislation has been passed on this issue, those yet to reach the big three zero can probably expect to be working until their mid-70s and possibly longer.

This results means, unlike our parents, the younger generation will have at least a further 10 or even 15 years to save for a shorter retirement, with the only unknown factor being the increase in life expectancy, which many experts expect to rise at a much slower rate in the coming decades.

In fact we have already started to see this happen, with older people staying in work longer, or taking part-time work during retirement to get themselves through the financial crisis, a factor which is having a detrimental effect on the employment prospects of those just entering the job market.

The idea of having to work later into life might seem depressing, but this is not just a vague theory, it is in fact an economic reality we will all have to learn to live with.

While the raising of the retirement age will come in naturally over time, moving the UK on from the addiction to home ownership and towards a rent-driven housing market is a much tougher proposition and will not be easy to implement.

However, as fewer and fewer people become able to buy a house this too might end up happening naturally.

For the first time in modern history, due to high house prices and the cost of old-age care provision, children can no longer expect to inherit a home, which consequently harms their chances of being able to get on the housing ladder.

This, in time, should result in a competitive rental market where rents are driven down by increased long-term demand, rather than up as landlords try to appeal to more affluent tenants.

Overall, the most important factor in this change may be growing demand for flexible housing as people travel further for work and as a result require more leeway in their housing arrangements.

There are already numerous economic and human resource studies which indicate generation Y in particular will change jobs more frequently and demand increased workplace flexibility.

People should certainly not be discouraged from aspiring to own their house or even taking early retirement if finances allow, but the underlying point here is these economic forecasts are fundamentally flawed because they assume a static retirement age and a maintained level of home ownership, one of which is impossible and the other undesirable.

So next time you start worrying about how you do not earn enough to buy a house or start saving for retirement take a deep breath a remember the basis of society is changing and making assumptions about your life 30 or 40 years in the future based on current conditions is a pointless exercise. 

Hail To The Chef – Jamie Oliver’s Social Policy

By really short via Wikimedia Commons

Anti-Turkey Twizzler celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has come in for criticism this week after he claimed poor families should spend more on healthy meals and less on big-screen televisions.

His comments, published in the Radio Times, led to a massive backlash against the healthy eating campaigner, with critics claiming he was out-of-touch with the reality of poverty stricken families.

The article quotes Oliver as saying "You might remember that scene in Ministry Of Food, with the mum and the kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers, and behind them is a massive TV. It just didn’t weigh up."

“I meet people who say, 'You don’t understand what it’s like.’ I just want to hug them and teleport them to the Sicilian street cleaner who has 25 mussels, 10 cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, and knocks out the most amazing pasta. You go to Italy or Spain and they eat well on not much money. We’ve missed out on that in Britain, somehow.”

His detractors might have a point about Oliver being out of touch with the problems facing the modern family, especially when you consider how much he charges for what is essentially beans on toast in his restaurant, but does he have an underlying point?

Amazingly, people in lower paying jobs, single parents and the unemployed are able to afford an iPhone, the latest gaming console and a large flat screen TV, but when it comes to meal time are tucking in to unhealthy processed food and ready-meals.

While this is a generalised statement and is by no means stated as an absolute fact there is undoubtedly some truth in this.

The most obvious thing to criticise here is the UKs consumer culture where we are judged, unfairly, on the brand names we wear, the entertainment system we use and what kind of mobile phone is permanently in our hands.

Is it fair children are destined to a life of highly salted, sugared and processed foods (and the health problems these caused) just so they can have the latest gadget?

This is an entirely modern problem, which makes analysis difficult as there is no historical reference point.

If we were to travel back 50-years poor families would spend most of their much lower income on food, which they would prepare and cook themselves, but back then there were no “must have” accessories or microwave meals.

However, it might even be unfair to blame consumer culture for this behaviour.

Ask anyone who enjoys cooking fresh meals and they will tell you making anything from scratch is cheaper than buying the ready-made alternative.

A 400g Tesco Everyday Value lasagne for example costs £0.95p and, to ensure shelf life, is packed with salts, sugars and saturated fat.  Anyone who knows there way around a kitchen would be able to make a far better tasting and much healthier version for at least the same price and probably less.

This dependency on microwave meals is not replicated on the continent and anyone who has travelled to France or Spain will tell you how different the eating culture is and how much more adventurous European children are in trying different foods.

So is the problem simply about people not knowing how to cook, or could it be plain laziness?

Yes, it is certainly easier to blast a plastic packet in the microwave for three minutes than it is to create a homemade bolognaise sauce, but a basic spag bol can easily be made in under half an hour, which is not exactly going to destroy your evening.

Something like chips is a prime example. A bag of frozen chips cost about £1, which is about the same as a bag of unpeeled potatoes.

However, with just five minutes effort, and the same cooking time, your bag of potatoes can make a much larger number of healthier wedges than you can get out of any freezer aisle bag.

In fact there is a certain irony when people are being so careless with the processed foods they are consuming at a time when the public are spending more and more on gym memberships, fitness DVDs and all the paraphernalia associated with them.

Could the underlying point here be that, unlike our European neighbours, the Brits simply do not know how to cook?

The main problem seems to be the two misconceptions where people think buying and eating fresh is more expensive and time consuming.

Both of these notions are ridiculously inaccurate.

In an almost laughable comparison in the aftermath of Oliver’s comments, people criticised him by saying it was impossible to recreate his recipes for less than a ready-meal.

Oliver’s books, like those of his TV cooking rivals, are not full of everyday recipes, but are to be made on a special occasion or, even more importantly, inspire you to cook.

The Naked Chef in fact made his reputation by showing people you did not need the gastronomic flair of a Michelin starred chef to make lovely food at home.

The question remains however, about how do we convince people to leave the ready-meals on the shelf and head to the fresh food aisles?

Oliver, as well as his peers such as Delia Smith, Rick Stein and the Hairy Bikers to name just a few, have for years demonstrated just how easy it is to cook basic meals without breaking the bank, but apparently there are still far too many who have not got the message, probably because they decided to watch the latest mind-numbing exploits from a reality TV show while munching on an extra value meal.

Unfortunately little can be done to physically change people’s attitudes, but it does make you wonder why people instantly went on the defensive about Oliver’s comments.

Eating fresh is, at worst, not much more pricey than ready-made, but if poor families did forsake the gizmos, gadgets and brands they could minimise their debt problems  and provide a better life for themselves with a minimal amount of effort.

In the same way their parents did, people should strive and save to be able to afford nice things, not buy them first and figure out how to pay for them later.

We could certainly learn a lot from our parents and grandparents generations about how we have let our pursuit of material goods get in the way of basic common sense.

The point raised by Oliver here is poor people are spending more on buying wide screen televisions, PlayStations and smartphones, while at the same time buying more expensive and unhealthier ready-made foods.

This concept is actually insane, when, with what would not be a massive cultural shift, we could improve the health of the nation, relieve the plague of debt on poor families and improve their overall living standards.

Overall Oliver’s comments may have been misplaced or even misinterpreted, but, as with all things like this, there is an underlying truth about how we choose to fund specific parts of our lifestyle and ignore what are the more important things, such as ensuring our children get nutritious food.

Problems in Peru – UK Drug Traffickers Overseas

The morning after watching the (not so) ably hosted “Cocaine Capital of the World” about the booming drugs trade in Peru, many of us woke to the news of two British teenagers having been arrested at Lima airport for attempting to smuggle drugs back to Europe.

It is hardly surprising this caused a lot of commotion in some areas with people calling for the UK government to help them avoid a lengthy stay without trial in what are regarded as some of the worst and most violent prisons in the world. 

Sadly this is not an isolated case. Recently Lindsey Sandiford, a British grandmother, was sentenced to death in Indonesia for smuggling an alleged £1.6million of cocaine into the country.

Sandiford’s case, if anything, caused more of a stir and led to various groups being formed to take donations to fund her legal defence.

Nobody would wish the conditions these women, and the hundreds of other UK citizens held across the world on similar charges, find themselves in on their worst enemy.

Peruvian and Indonesian jails are notorious for violence and bad treatment, Sandiford is likely to spend years, if not decades on death row, and Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum will be forced to wait around three-years before they appear in front of a judge.

This undeniably bad treatment leads to many public and political campaigns to free these people and repatriate them back home, however, this view is bizarrely hypocritical.

For a long time now all western governments have actively encouraged countries like Columbia, Mexico and more recently Peru to act against the drug cartels operating in their countries and crackdown on smuggling.

This is the way things should be done. Tightening border checks in the UK to stop drugs getting into the country is certainly important, but inconsequential if the supply of drugs is increasing.

Hisotry shows the trade is so lucrative the smugglers simply find more and more ingenious ways of shipping their product, for example the submarines which have been found in recent years.

Naturally these countries, who cannot afford high-tech air and shipping port controls, sniffer dogs, specialised police or undercover intelligence, react to this by increasing the checks they carry out and imposing very tough sentences on those caught.

Of cause there are flaws in this plan. Without an efficient and incorruptible legal system you end up with situations where people spend years waiting for a trial, but then again they were caught smuggling drugs.

If Sandiford, Reid or McCollum was caught dealing drugs in this country nobody would have any sympathy for them.

All three of the women mentioned and no doubt many, if not all, of the people languishing in foreign prisons claim to have been physically forced or coerced into doing something they did not want to do.

This may be true in some cases, although it would be rather naive to think it was as common as claimed.

However, claiming ignorance or coercion has never been an effective legal defence.

In an admittedly bad comparison, war criminals often claim innocence because they were just following orders and there are numerous examples of wives and girlfriends who covered up for their partners illegal behaviour.

The reason for these being such ineffective pleas is because the law is an absolute state. If you were aware you were committing a crime you are guilty, regardless of the motive.

The problem when people react like this is it appears to make a distinction between foreign drug traffickers and British drug traffickers. As if by somehow holding a UK passport is a get out of jail free card for when things go wrong.

Essentially what has happened is the UK has asked for something and then people are criticising the result.

Everyone agrees more needs to be done to stop cocaine smuggling out of South America, but then are outraged when its UK citizens get arrested.

We cannot have both in this situation. Either the South American governments crackdown on trafficking and we accept some Brits will spend time in unpleasant prisons, or you have to live with ever increasing quantities of drugs ending up on the streets.

As residents of a developed nation it is right our government affords us help when we are wrongfully persecuted overseas, but this privilege should not be extended to those who have genuinely committed crimes.