Transcript Key Messages - Unison Scotland

Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages – Tell a pal
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
Challenges
• Cuts and privatisation. Ideological
opposition to public services
• Co-ordinated lobby to cut pay and
pensions
• Concerted plans to undermine trade
union rights and organisation.
• Explicit rolling back of the welfare state.
• Strategy designed to make changes
irreversible
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
Challenges
• Survey 2010: Most members believe
there is waste in public services
• Half believe huge cuts needed because of
national debt
• It is likely many members believe pay
restraint needed because of financial
situation
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
Positives: UNISON poll March 2015
• If govt was to raise £2bn by cracking down on tax
avoidance, 58% of Scottish public believe the money
should be spent on improving public services. Only
19% said it should cut borrowing and only 17% said it
should be spent on income tax cuts
• 68% believed that ‘public sector organisations (such
as local councils and the NHS)’ are accountable to the
public
• 72% believed all organisations seeking publiclyfunded contracts should have to pay at least the living
wage
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
What the experts say
The economists who actually predicted the crash …
Prof David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank of
England’s Monetary Policy Committee: “Austerity is simply
bad economics…. Austerity is all about spending cuts, which
hurt the poor and the vulnerable. This makes the UK
government’s recently announced £12bn of extra welfare cuts
an unnecessary disgrace in a rich country.”
Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz: “GDP per capita in the
UK is lower than it was before the crisis. That is not a
success”
Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman: “Spend now, while the
economy remains depressed; save later, once it has
recovered. How hard is that to understand?”
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
Some key messages
Country not broke – it’s just the money is in
the wrong place. (Equality Trust figures)
•The richest 1,000 in the UK have doubled their
wealth over last 10 years to £547bn, getting richer
at the rate of £892.55 a second.
•This is more than the combined wealth of the
poorest 40% of UK households (£452 billion) 25.6m people.
•The increase alone last year (28bn) could pay for
1,889,963 Living Wage jobs for a year
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
Some key messages
• Nothing inevitable about cuts – they do not make
economic sense – they are a political choice
• Economy depends on healthy public sector.
Public sector workers spend most of their money
in their local communities
• Austerity is not working. The debt has increased
from 1 trillion to 1.5 trillion since 2010.
• Post WW2 debt was over three times higher yet
we could build the NHS, housing and infrastructure
• Investment and growth, not cuts, reduced the
debt in the 1960s/70s
Scotland Communications & Campaigns Committee
Key messages
What can we do?
•Get key messages out to members and
the general public
•Challenge the Tory myths
•Publicise UNISON’s alternative budget
•Respond to press and media distortions,
especially in the local media
•Lobby elected members and MPs
•Build public service alliances at local level