Sep 2009 15

The TUC do their best to avoid a serious debate4

Adam Lent has written a frankly ridiculous blog for the TUC:

"I’ve just done a Sky News debate with Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.  He suggested a new way of cutting public spending which breaches a whole new frontier in economic illiteracy (even for the TPA).
 
His brilliant idea: the public sector should follow the example of some manufacturing firms and put all staff on a four day week!  By my calculations that would remove just over £30 billion from the economy in the particularly fragile area of household demand and cut about £7 billion from the Treasury’s income tax revenue (and this doesn’t include further tax lost due to reduced VAT and corporation tax resulting from the obvious decline in spending)."

Leaving aside transfer payments like pensions and benefits, paying staff is a huge part of public spending.  With massive deficits, there need to be cuts in public spending in order to balance the books without imposing a massive tax hike that would impoverish ordinary taxpayers or cripple the economy.  You can't do that on a sufficient scale without cutting staffing costs and, while part of that should take the form of a cut in pay, there also need to be cuts in the amount of labour the public sector is buying; the number of full-time equivalent staff.  We set out some areas where we think cuts could be made in our report (PDF) with the Institute of Directors.

Delivering those staffing cuts can be done in two ways.  The first is simply to make people redundant.  That will sometimes be necessary but has certain financial (redundancy pay) and social (potential unemployment) costs.  For that reason, the second mechanism, reducing the number of hours certain staff work, is an option that should be considered in some cases.  Matthew just pointed that out.  Trying to misrepresent such a quite reasonable point as a proposal for a blanket four day week across the public sector, which the TPA have never advocated, is ridiculous.

We never thought that everyone would agree with the proposals contained in our report.  But, we expected that opposition from the unions might at least have some substance behind it.  Instead, all we're getting is this kind of superficial nonsense.

As we pointed out in our response to Polly Toynbee's article yesterday, they appear to have got the numbers wrong in their own research on the costs of public sector pensions as well.  If the unions want to have any credibility in the debate over how we best respond to the fiscal crisis, they need to up their game.

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  • Paul

    Unions just aren’t worth having a debate with in the first place as they are part of the problem.

  • Hardeep Singh

    Are you kidding from an organisation that’s nothing more than selfish preservation at other people’s cost, what else would you expect informed debate? I doubt you’ll ever get either ‘informed’ nor ‘debate’ they want to simply show everyone who’s boss even though they fail to realise that their actions are actually directly or indirectly harming the members of other unions. These were the so called clowns that brought out the phrase “24hrs to save the NHS”, well that’s been proved pants (as if the TUC have a combined view of medical professions and chartered accountants). They wouldn’t even know what to do with a plaster!
    All they want is to simply rule the country like some Pharaoh whilst everyone else is whipped into higher and higher taxation even though these hypocrits live life along the lines of the same people they criticise.
    What baffoon would think that public sector spending cuts aren’t inevitable when every respected organisation both national and international has repeatedly called for restraint in public sector spending they seem to think they know better. Yet the defict gets larger and larger, here’s a clue you need to earn money in life not constantly borrow it and pass it off as wealth it’s nothing more than a short term illusion.
    I am all for improvements in the workplace but they need to be well timed, intentioned and balanced. Like any relationship both sides have to work at it, no one wants someone lounging around and not chipping but protesting at every opportunity.
    Now their latest act of stupidity regarding the double dip recession which many know and expect to take place in the UK yet the unions have used it as cover for their cause. It’s not the cut in public sector spending but the nation’s financial state that’ll probably cause it just like Labour loves to blame the bankers and convientently ignores it’s own sorry tax and waste policies for digging us into a hole. With the left it’s always everyone’s else’s fault never their own and have little shame in demanding others pay for everything.
    Sharpen up your act the ship is sinking and we only need it to list to one side for disasterous consequences. We are in a perilous situation besides I don’t recall any unions tears for the numerous bankers, pilots and management being made redundant.
    … And all this from someone who is SHOCK, HORROR a union symphathiser it’s just my view of unions is NO WHERE NEAR what the modern day ideal is. Thus my despair for the so called modern opportunist aka the union.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a5c9388f970c Zulqar Cheema
  • http://www.lubesetc.com Ed Martin

    What are you giving up for Lent?
    Ed Martin