The "industrial revolution" rolled over the people of Europe and for about the next 250 years or so, the ordinary people of Britain and the rest of Europe struggled to force little increments from the employers to try to improve their meager conditions. Inch by painful inch we won small concessions, and tried to hand those successes on to the next generation who would hopefully carry on the struggle for total emancipation from wage slavery.
The conditions that we have at the moment, though far from what we want, were won in hard fought struggles. People went to prison and in some cases were executed, as they fought to improved our conditions. Nothing we have today was handed to us by the employers or the state, it was always our endless battles that brought as what we have. Now this corporate fascist regime of millionaires that sit in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are determined to claw it all back and remove what little workplace rights that we have won.
The so called "deficit reduction" is a guise used by employers and backed up by the state, with which to tear up all agreements between workers and employers. The UK's corporate hatchet man, George Osborne, is attempting to bribe the workers with a handful of silver in exchange for all those rights won over the last 250 years of bitter and painful struggle. For a couple of thousand shares in the company, you can abandon all union protection, workplace rights, the right to a tribunal for unfair dismissal, redundancy payments and a host of other things. We don't have the right to give these away, we hold those rights as custodians with the obligation to hand them on to our children and grandchildren. They are not ours to sell for a quick buck.
The legislation will be optional at first, though you will, in all probability, be obliged to sign up if you want a job with firms that make it their policy. it will then be introduced to all new firms making it compulsory if you want a job with them. This is corporate fascism by bribery, it looks nicer than jackboots, but the result is still the same, all rights with your employer, to use you or dispose of you at will. Your freedom and self respect are at stake. It should be resisted with the same anger and ferocity as the jackboots on the streets, it is all limbs of the same vile beast.
