Michael Gove's call for parents to break strike provokes union fury

[stockholmer]

Source: The Guardian UK

Education secretary accuses unions of militant strike action as Vince Cable intervenes over 'war-like rhetoric'

A war of words has broken between Michael Gove and the teachers' unions in an echo of the bitter divisions of the 1980s on the eve of crucial talks to avoid mass strike action on Thursday.

Teaching unions reacted with anger after the education secretary accused them of risking their members' professional reputations by taking "militant" strike action and suggested that parents could volunteer to break the strike and keep schools open on Thursday.

Thousands of schools – along with colleges, universities, ports, courts and jobcentres – are expected to close in the walkout over pensions. Crunch talks with ministers are scheduled for Monday, with some unions billing them as the government's last chance to avoid strikes. Ministers have extended the deadline for negotiations into the summer.

Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday: "I do worry that taking industrial action, being on the picket line, being involved in this sort of militancy will actually mean that the respect in which teachers should be held is taken back a little bit." He said he didn't want to ratchet up rhetoric against unions, but added: "The public have a very low tolerance for anything that disrupts their hard-working lifestyles."




Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/26/michael-gove-teachers-unions-militant-strike

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The US needs to emulate this mass strike ASAP. It is the only way to get the issues driven into the heads of the sheeple. Higher wages are a chief way to combat this death spiral of an economy driven by debt inflation. All else is utterly futile.


Neoclassical Wage Restraint Madness a must read
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/03/neoclassical-wage-restraint-madness/

snip

Economic modellers reckon cutting aggregate wages growth by a percentage point boosts employment growth by half a percentage point. Some think it boosts employment more. In the current environment that could save more than 50,000 jobs.

Let’s extrapolate a bit here: given the standard increases in productivity and population, employment growth of about 2.5 percent is needed to keep the unemployment rate constant. So “economic modellers” (i.e. neoclassical economists) reckon that a 5 percent cut in the rate of wages growth would translate into a 2.5 percent boost to the rate of growth of employment.

Since those same modellers are also anticipating growth slowing to about zero (but not negative of course–that would mean a recession, and as we all know, Australia is special and won’t suffer one), all we need to do to make sure Australia lucks out with both no recession AND no rise in unemployment is to … cut wages by one percent (since the current rate of growth of wages is close to 4 percent).

Nonsense. This is standard neoclassical economic thinking that if one lowers the price for a product (in this case, labour), more of it will be demanded. This thinking has some relevance when the market in question is that for, say, apples (though the basic “supply and demand” mathematics is false). But when the market you are talking about is Labour, even in the absence of debt, the thinking is only half baked.

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1. Steve Keen

for anyone who doesn't know is the author of the above post - and debtdeflation blog.

He is probably the most technically savvy and widely respected economist outside the neoclassical realm - he is an absolute genius and aynone who has any interest what so ever in what is happening to their life and economy absolutely MUST READ THIS GUY - he is amazing.