DESPITE all the lip service on the National Budget. A labour agenda cannot ignore this picture. The immediate needs of workers push trade unions towards a defensive “bread and butter agenda of protecting jobs, often wage concessions.
The stakes must be high. Will employers’ hostility to workers’ rights increase. Trade unions thus face a tremendous challenge. The pressure on wages and employment requires immediate responses and solutions. More regressive tax systems, cutting on corporate income tax and personal income tax, while taxes still hit working families’ front such as VAT.
What does this mean for labour? Will employment recover to previous levels? Can labour markets provide sufficient jobs to absorb an increasing labour force?  We will soon see a major debate in the National Assembly on the National Budget over the pros and cons of fiscal austerity. We must call for a deliberate strategy of public investment-led growth, and the gradual enhancement of fiscal capacity to pay for a more equal society. Information Communication Technology (ICT) has been identified as a key form of technology which can help very significantly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the whole of the economy. In the long run, ICT are seen by many as essential tools in the world’s response strategies to climate change.
There are some major challenges ahead, which the world community will have to tackle together. What has to be is frighteningly radical. We have to decouple economic growth from energy usage. ICTs have a significant role to play.
One goal of privatisation policy is the erosion of democracy. The public are to be deprived of increasingly more decision – making opportunities as well as participation in important areas of life. Their actions and decisions are to be replaced by those of international companies, which exercise not only economic but also political power. People are kept in constant fear of their economic security, thus making them ‘willing’ tools.
Powerful companies, in particular, are pushing economic democracy ever further to the background. Economic democracy involves investment decisions, restructuring of work as well as methods relating to the provision of services. It calls the unrestricted right of management to manage into question. After all, many problems faced by workers are due to poor management and in the public sector in particular FITUG and GTUC should clearly voice their demand for good management.
There is a tremendous lack of democracy in many large commercial and financial organisations. Therefore, when trade unions fight against the power of these companies and economic control, they are at the same time fighting for more democracy.
In Guyana, with respect to the national programme for health and social services, FITUG and GTUC must commit itself to supporting public health and working to avoid social hardship and marginalization, stating that ‘the health system structures must not be determined by the economic interests of private service providers’. The objective of the programme is to develop, expand and ensure comprehensive, free – of – charge public health service for everyone. A comprehensive public health system has to cover the need for outpatient and inpatient healthcare services, in particular in the following areas:
* Combating infant mortality and improving maternal health
* AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria education
* Education for worker health and safety
* Hospital and general care that meet the people’s needs
* Follow – up and outreach care programmes (rehabilitation, nursing care, integration of sick and disabled persons into society).
Social services have to include assistance to workers and their families, affording them protection against risks such as accident, disease and disability, and ensuring adequate care and income for these contingencies. Occupational health and safety services have to reduce dangers to human health in the workplace.
One quarter of the world’s population has no access to clean drinking water. Every three seconds a child dies of an avoidable disease. The reasons for growing poverty in the world are closely related to inadequate public services. Everybody is committed to the war against poverty. Even the World Bank’s 2000/01 World Development Report stated that the creation of social security would have to be a priority in the fight against global poverty. The European Union is also committed to combating poverty: its priorities include participation in gainful employment, access to all services such as housing, education and training, healthcare, as well as cultural and social support. The fight for public services is also a fight for survival of people.
The growth in world population will require a further increase in public services. As resource, water will not only become more scarce but also dirtier, and thus it will be necessary to build functioning potable water supply systems. More will also have to be done in the field of sewage and waste disposal. There will be an increasing demand for doctors and basic health services, for teachers and family planning services. After all, more education and information can put a brake on population growth. The care of the elderly will also have to be extended. The energy will rise, and more energy will be consumed.
In other words, public services are necessary for the world’s survival; without them the world is heading for a social and ecological catastrophe.
The state sector has tended to grow because economic and social life has become more complex and because democracy, as an ideal and a process, has been widely seen as the right path to take. Collective decision – making, collective accountability and collective responsibility are an integral part of democracy. And this collective activity is most equitably carried out by properly accountable public bodies.