Fight for every job, resist every cut

Sammy Wilson wants to slash public services to pay for the mess the bankers created. Assembly politicians were willing to go to the wall over the devolution policing and justice but won’t lift a finger to defend our public services. In fact they are wielding the axe with gusto. They want to make us pay for the recession.

The NI Executive Budget for 2008/2011 introduced cuts of £1.604bn across all Departments in Northern Ireland. Now the Executive is planning for an additional £370m in cuts before the end of the current financial year. 

In the Belfast Trust alone, this will mean an extra cut in the order of £25m and the closure of 150 beds in the two largest hospitals in Belfast. The threat of additional water charges has been raised again.

On November 6th, trade unionists across Northern Ireland protested against the cuts and to defend our public services. Peter Bunting, ICTU Assistant General Secretary, spoke at the Belfast rally: “We need to challenge the consensus that cuts are inevitable in our public services. In a recession like this, the only source of demand in the economy is coming from the public sector. We hear much about how well-paid the public sector is compared to the private sector, but tell that to a cleaner, or a classroom assistant or a nurse, or a dole clerk.”

“We do not recognise false distinctions between workers in the public or the private sector. The real pay gap is not between the private sector and the public sector in Northern Ireland; it’s the 20% difference between private sector workers here and private sector workers across the water.  If low wages created jobs, we would not have 350,000 of our citizens unemployed or economically inactive. Low wages create poverty.”
The Assembly spends more on corporate welfare than it does on paying public servants. Consultants, PFI projects and service contracts take a bigger slice of the public budget than the health workers and the fire fighters and the teachers and all the other public servants put together.

Extra money can be raised if the Assembly politicians are willing to tax the rich. Abolishing the cap on the regional rate would go a long way to raising the money. 
On top of that, the Assembly should demand an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The money saved would more than fill any hole in the public finances.

None of the parties in the Assembly will raise these demands. That’s why we need a real alternative for working people – a party that puts people before profit.