TUC: Unemployment key to 'real' economic recovery
Brendan Barber said low unemployment is the key to a "real" economic recovery
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By Matt Fortune. |  |
Monday, 14, Sep 2009 02:00
By Sarah Garrod.
The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has said low unemployment is the key to a "real" economic recovery.
Brendan Barber said the green shoots of economic recovery recently reported "mean little when thousands of people a day are joining the dole queue".
Mr Barber also said the TUC believed it was wrong the government was spending money on ID cards and nuclear weapons when child poverty targets were not being met and unemployment had reached millions.
Mr Barber criticised bankers, who he said were "back at the bonus trough" and warned of "another generation of joblessness" as thousands of under-25s found themselves out of work.
Speaking at Congress in Liverpool, Mr Barber warned of the devastating effects caused by unemployment: "We are suffering the effects of the biggest financial crash since the 1920s. The resulting recession has been as deep as any we remember.
"When the crash first hit, there was much talk of a classless recession. But each month since makes clearer that while the causes are different, it's the same people paying the highest price. Manufacturing workers hit hard. Vulnerable workers hit the hardest."
He welcomed the increased income taxation for those earning over £150,000, but said the system was still unfair and was particularly "tragic" for the younger generation just starting out in the world of work.
"Almost one in five young people without work; 140,000 under-25s long-term unemployed. But behind the facts and figures lies a human tragedy of talents wasted, horizons diminished, aspirations stubbed out.
"Britain cannot afford to write off another generation to mass unemployment."
He also questioned government spending, which he said needed to be concentrated better on getting the work force stimulated again:
"Rising share prices count for little when a million and more young people can't find work. And bumper bonuses are an obscene joke when it was our money that rescued the banks, and it is our public services that are now being told they will have to face the consequences.
"If times are tough, then why are we splashing out on ID cards that people don't want and experts say won't work?
"And if times are tough, and our defence needs are now profoundly different in a new terrorism-threatened, post cold war world then why are we planning a new generation of nuclear weapons?
"Spending countless billions on new nukes when we are failing to achieve our targets on child poverty is wrong, wrong, wrong."