The following comes from the web site of the Class Think Tank, of whose advisory board I am a member:
The importance of the labour movement in tackling inequality
Professor Richard Wilkinson and Professor Kate Pickett
Drawing on a range of evidence, this short Think Piece looks at the role of the labour movement in achieving a more equal society. Our own research, and that of many other researchers around the world, shows that almost all the health and social problems which tend to be more common lower down the social ladder also tend to be worse in societies with higher levels of inequality.
The widening gap between the incomes of the richest and the poorest are primarily a reflection of a tendency for top incomes to grow faster than incomes throughout the rest of society. This widening gap seems, in the absence of strong trade unions and an effective labour movement, to reflect a lack of any effective democratic constraint on top incomes. If that is so, then part of the solution is to build effective constraints by extending democracy into our economic institutions.
Some of the more equal societies gain their greater equality by redistribution, but others start out with smaller differences in pre-tax incomes. A more fundamental approach to reducing inequality is needed to reduce differences in people's incomes before tax. This paper shows that the weakening of the labour movement during the last quarter of the 20th Century has had a significant impact on the ability of working people to influence their standard of living and quality of life.
This paper argues that we must now recreate a movement with the political and social influence that enabled the former labour movement to achieve the major reductions in inequality during the middle decades of the 20th Century. A fairer and more sustainable future is possible.
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Wrote this about co-determination a while back
So Vince Cable has warned Britain`s biggest companies that employees might be given a “say over executive pay and perks” if they dont stop ignoring the law intended to improve transparency and to “link pay to performance”, whilst at the same time, taking into account the “pay and conditions of the average employee”. (Cable warns 30 biggest firms over executive payouts,26/03/14) Well, it`s not before time, especially as bosses are now earning “133 times more than the pay of their workforce”, and that figure presumably has not figured in the minimum wages, or less, earned by cleaners and such-like who have been outsourced. As co-determination has worked well in Germany since the early 1950s in limiting levels of inequality, union representatives on companies` boards are long overdue in this country.
Following the launch of the Fair Tax Mark, an award for businesses paying the correct amount of tax, a similar one could be initiated by a government targetting inequality. Provided a company paid at least a living wage to its lowest earners, including those outsourced, and did not pay oscenely high amounts or bonuses to those at the top, it could qualify, and include it in its advertising and publicity. Shareholders will undoubtedly object, as they already have to Cable`s threats; Sarah Wilson of Manifest might well complain that such issues are “more appropriately looked at by government”, but if everyone washes their hands of the affair and denies having any responsibility for the appalling inequality in our society, things can only get worse! How disingenuous of her to justify the current situation of excessive pay by saying any change will threaten pension funds; there is no empirical evidence to suggest that obscene pay leads to improved performance, and plenty to say it adds to a country`s inequality, whilst doing next to nothing to drive the economy forward.
I believe I’ve shared something with you on the subject of predistrbution. As more activist than think tank, it was a paper in 1996 on the strategic threat of inequality that began our work. Notably the matter is explored in the Wilson/Pickett examination known as The Spirit Level.
Here’s a small part of the story of a movemement in progress which by 2004, had recruited US Senator John Edwards. In his presidential election campaign Edwards makes a call to legislate against payday lenders, institute a living wage and suppor trade unions.
I became a messenger to Edwards during our founders 2003 hunger strike for economic rights and after we incomporated in the UK Edwards opened the Center on Poverty Work and Opportunity on the campus at UNC in Chapl Hill where this had all begun.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/60
From my letter to London’s Lord Mayoer, you may have noted that Clinton, the target of the original paper showed up here in London for a conference on Inclusive Capitalism.
Jeff- we have a strange phenomenon at present which the Government has managed to manipulate very effectively, that is, a largely lethargic, dumbed down and indifferent populace. Research is showing that communal solidity and empathy is declining and the UK’s foul and depraved Government has successfully vilified the poo/ill/vulnerable and created a new scapegoat. The oligarchy and corruption of the financial sector is largely unchallenged so we now have less that a ‘one-party-state-‘ but a ‘none-party-state’ with Westminster a mere tourist attraction.
Until the left adequately looks at how this has come about and its psychological roots there will be no way forward.
This really is the most incredible surprise. Union funded think tank suggests that it’s very important that unions should have more power.
I wonder how they managed to reach that conclusion?
On the basis of the evidence
That’s what we on the left use
There is no labour movement while there is free movement of labour.
A little kid could understand that.
And Marx certainly did (though he was talking about the reserve army of the unemployed)