Apologies for the clickbait headline, but you really won’t. In the last week, someone called on the government to: ensure annual pay rises for public sector staff; introduce mechanisms to get profitable companies to raise wages by more than inflation; and push workers from insecure work…Read more…
IMF & World Bank should change course on growth & austerity
The global trade union movement is pressing the ‘international financial institutions’ (IFIs) to switch track, abandoning support for austerity, and replacing it with a global recovery strategy consisting of public investment stimulus and coordinated wage increase; investments in…Read more…
Economists who just can’t give up & learn to love workers’ rights
We are gradually winning the argument that workers’ rights (known in the academic literature as Employment Protection Legislation, or EPL) are not only good for the workers concerned, but also beneficial – or at the very least not harmful – to the economy as a whole. See this OECD…Read more…
Solving the IMF’s concerns about stronger unions
I have blogged at Touchstone about this week’s bombshell news from the International Monetary Fund that declining unionisation leads to ballooning inequality (which the IMF accepts is damaging…Read more…
Want to reduce inequality? New IMF research says unionisation is key
Through gritted teeth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has this week issued a ‘staff discussion note’ which contains a bit of a bombshell. The ballooning inequality that results from rampaging top people’s pay is not, as previously thought, an unfortunate by-product of…Read more…
Syriza’s struggle is our struggle
The Greek Syriza government is still locked in crisis negotiations with ‘the group formerly known as the Troika’ (the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission) over releasing…Read more…
Union membership density and link to income going to the very wealthy
Check out Mind the Gap for further information on this USA chart which I think will mirror what has happened in the UK and other countries as well.
It is also about something I constantly go on about at work. The more of us in the union – th…Read more…
Labour market deregulation: When the facts change…
The famous remark, commonly attributed to Keynes, that “when the facts change, I change my mind…” could be about to face a stern test. The IMF is about to publish the findings of research by staff members that finds no evidence that labour market deregulation promotes growth. This…Read more…
IMF: looking on the bright side, or the ‘right side’?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) doesn’t have a fantastic reputation around the world for the damage it did to developing and Asian economies during the years of the neoliberal ‘Washington consensus’. Confessing to getting its analysis of the Greek economy catastrophically…Read more…