Con-Dem budget “attacks the purse” harder then the wallet
24 June 2010
Unite the union has branded the Con-Dem budget as an ’attack on
the purse’ as it will hurt women more then men.
With its sister union the United SteelWorkers (USW) in Canada
the unions which have formed the world’s first global union,
Workers Uniting, are warning that the plans by the UK government
for public sector cuts will hit women the hardest.
While ministers have emphasised the lessons they have learnt
from the Canadian cuts in the 1990s, the unions argue that the
Canadian experience demonstrates that those hit hardest from the
cuts were the most vulnerable, with the burden falling hardest on
women.
Gail Cartmail, Unite assistant general secretary who this week
met with Canadian public sector workers, said: “The experience of
women in Canada during the debt reduction program engineered by
Paul Martin as finance minister resulted in women paying the price
for the deep and permanent cuts to social programmes and public
services.
“In Canada, as in much of the world, carers tend to be women.
They are largely responsible for unpaid labour for services that
were a part of the spending cuts. Women were forced to keep working
more to make ends meet as fewer services were publicly funded, and
where the basics grew more costly.
“Now the UK’s Con-Dem government wants to make cuts twice as
tough as those made by Canada. The plans to gut the social programs
which women depend on for themselves and their families will be
deeply felt and the cost to working families will be
devastating.
“By hitting the purse in the brutal pursuit of ideologically
driven cuts the result will be a widening of the inequality gap and
reducing more women to poverty.”
Ken Neumann, USW’s national director for Canada, said: “Perhaps
the greatest lesson the UK can learn from Canada’s cuts to public
sector funding is that the cuts were a bad idea. Despite the
rhetoric, the reality is that many hardworking Canadians, including
some of our most vulnerable and needy – are still suffering because
of this bad policy, and there is no evidence that the cuts helped
us economically as proponents suggested.
"In Canada, important programs such as healthcare, housing,
unemployment insurance, children’s aid, services for abused women
and so many other areas were gutted. Today, much of those programs
remain under-funded or not funded at all and that leads to more
suffering and higher costs over time.
"There are other risks: job losses that will destroy families
and communities and lead to long-term consequences for the UK and
its people, particularly women.”
Research from the Women’s Budget Group has shown that women will
be hardest hit by public spending cuts because:
65 per cent of workers in the public sector are women, so the
majority of the jobs cut are likely to be women’s jobs,
as a proportion of all pay a larger share of women’s income is
made up of benefits and tax credits and
women use public services more than men- they use them to meet
their own health requirements which are greater than those of men,
because of pregnancy, longer life expectancy, and lower earnings
and assets; and women also in managing care responsibilities.
ENDS
For more information or interviews please contact: Saba Mozakka,
Unite press office: 07768 693 953
Notes to editors
Workers Uniting, the world’s first global union is a partnership
between Unite from the United Kingdom and the United Steelworkers
(USW) from the United States and Canada.
Armine Yalnizyan, ‘Britain don’t follow our lead’ (June
2010) said: “The Canadians hit hardest from the cuts of the mid
1990s were the unemployed, the ill, vulnerable children, students
in the post-secondary system, immigrants and women … .When it comes
to deficit-fighting and building resilience for the future, we
could all find a better model.”
Barbara Cameron, “Paul Martin, the devil women know” (June
2004) wrote: “Martin's budgets were not just about bringing
Canada's deficit under control; they were also about restructuring
social entitlements in ways that endangered the security of the
most disadvantaged Canadians and removed social supports essential
for women's economic autonomy.”
Andrew Jackson, ‘Beware the Canadian Austerity Model’ (April
2010) argues: “Access to benefits was restricted, and the maximum
benefit was frozen in nominal terms for a decade. Today, Canada has
one of the least generous unemployment schemes in the OECD. During
the current downturn, only one half of unemployed workers have
qualified for benefits, and the maximum benefit is just 60 per cent
of average earnings. The average unemployed worker qualifies for a
maximum benefit period of less than nine months. Most of the burden
fell on social programs under provincial jurisdiction, notably
public health insurance (which covers physician and hospital care)
and welfare or social assistance which provides basic income
support. The old formula under which the federal government paid
one half of welfare costs was scrapped, and welfare rates were
slashed in real terms in almost every province. Because of cuts to
unemployment insurance and welfare, poverty rates remained at near
recession levels through most of the 1990s and the incomes of the
bottom half of households rose very modestly, despite falling
unemployment.”
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