The Meaning of the Government’s "Modernisation Agenda"

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The Meaning of the Government’s "Modernisation Agenda"

Fire Service National Demonstration on Saturday

Modernisation

Unions say NHS Pay Deal Claim Misleading

"New World Disorder"

Since the start of its second term of office, the Labour government has put at the centre of its policy towards public services the demand that these must be "modernised" and that there can be no investment in these services without "reform".

This is a demand which applies to all social provision including health and education and which is at the centre of the present fire-fighters’ dispute. Speaking at a recent Downing Street press briefing on the fire-fighters’ strike, Tony Blair declared "the only serious negotiation. is one which agrees modernisation in return for enhanced pay". This was the same message which Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, delivered to the national conference of the Association of Colleges of Further Education in November. He declared that the sector needed to "modernise" and that the investment of £1.2 billion which he announced on that day would be implemented as part of a programme of "investment and reform".

But what is the essence of this "modernisation" and "reform" which the government and its spokespersons insist must accompany any investment in the social programmes? Why do they persist with their demand for the implementation of this "modernisation agenda"? What is the content they give to this agenda? The answers to these questions make it quite clear that the content of the government’s project of "modernisation" is not at all about modernising the social programmes upon which millions of people rely for their health care, education and safety. Rather than investing in these services to provide them with the most up to date techniques and resources, rather than paying those who provide these services their worth, the government is, in fact, seeking so-called prudently to cut funding where it is needed and to brand the public service workers who object as the "wreckers".

Defending the government’s vision of "modernisation" of the fire service, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott declared that with 20% of fire-fighters due to retire within three years, it was an ample opportunity to "create a 21st century" fire service. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) estimated that the government’s "modernisation agenda" would result in cutting some 10% of firefighting jobs and further endanger the public by reducing the number of fire-fighters on duty at night when most fatal fires occur.

Charles Clarke in his speech to the AOC argued that the "modernisation" of further education should enable employers to "fulfil their own needs and ambitions for their workforce" and assist the monopolies to "compete internationally". These are the real aims of the government’s "modernising agenda" and there is nothing modern about them.

The government’s "modernisation agenda" is, in fact, an agenda for putting the interests of the financial magnates in first place and wrecking the economy and society to ensure that these interests prevail.

Taken from Firefighter, the FBU Official Strike Bulletin, No. 11

Alan Milburn made much of the "modernisation" included in the 16% pay offer made yesterday [November 28] to health service workers. Support workers, will for example, be able to give injections, which are traditionally done by nurses. Nurses, in turn, will be able to prescribe drugs, currently a task reserved for doctors. There will be a more structured "reward" system for unsocial hours.

Health unions, with Unison in the lead, have rightly pointed out that the pay deal has been under negotiation for three years now and that the timing of Milburn’s "offer" is designed to attack fire-fighters – something they have no wish to be part of.

The government is intent on suggesting that while health workers are willing to change working practices to promote modernisation we are not. Yet, while our earnings have fallen behind many other groups of workers, we have been continuously taking on new responsibilities and upgrading our skills.

Encouraged by successive governments we have been doing more and more over and above our responsibilities as laid down in the Fire Services Act 1947 and the Fire Precautions Act 1971.

We no longer, as the army is currently doing, just fight fires outside buildings but take great risks in fighting the spread of fires internally too. We no longer just use crowbars and hacksaws to deal with road traffic accidents, as the army is currently doing, but complex specialist equipment. We have also taken on specialist activities such as offshore fire fighting, line rescue, animal rescue, heavy rescue. Many fire-fighters now provide trauma care and oxygen therapy. And we now carry out time- consuming Community Fire Safety initiatives.

All the new responsibilities, which have allowed us to become a pro-active force fighting and preventing fires wherever they occur and mounting rescues in a whole range of situations, require constant training to upgrades to our skills. But the government does not want to recognise this. Even though it says it believes pro-active firefighting is the future. Even though by taking on new responsibilities we have dramatically cut the amount of death, injury and damage to property.

Milburn’s offer to health workers also includes a standard working week of 37.5 hours. Contrast that with the government’s determination that fire-fighters, who already do a 42 hour week, do overtime, adding to our long hours. Moreover, as government ministers know only too well, this deal is a rarity among a string of above-inflation multi-year public sector pay deals signed over the past couple of years – and currently in the works - that have included few significant changes to working practices.

Scottish teachers, Scottish prison staff and workers at the Forestry Commission, for example, have received close to or more than 20% and the only major strings attached are a reduction in the working week – not an increase. And none of these deals have called for a cut in the workforce, which is what the government wants to do to the Fire Service to the tune of 15,000 jobs.

A complex three-year pay offer involving more than 1 million NHS staff ran into trouble as soon as it was announced on Thursday, November 28, as unions accused the government of making misleading claims, according to reports.

After more than three years of negotiations, involving 17 staff groups, ministers claimed victory in their battle to secure modernisation of the health service in return for rises worth up to 30 per cent for some staff.

However, the "Agenda for Change" offer is worth much less to many NHS workers, with an across-the-board rise of 3.225 per cent for all staff next April, repeated in 2004 and 2005, worth a total of 10 per cent over three years. Reforms that offer additional money for extra work will add a further 2.5 per cent to basic pay at the end of the three years, and more in subsequent years.

Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, said the reforms would bring radical transformation of the NHS pay system. "In essence it is about paying more to get more so that staff who take on new responsibilities get extra rewards. This is a something for something deal. Pay for modernisation," he said.

That was aimed squarely at the fire-fighters, commentators have said. The announcement of the NHS offer was rushed out in advance of the re-opening of formal negotiations the next day between the employers and the fire-fighters.

NHS unions have insisted that there is a long way to go before a deal is reached and accused the government of going too far in a press statement it issued headed: "Agreement reached on NHS pay reform".

Paul Marks of Unison said: "The press statement is misleading. What has happened is that we have negotiated a final set of proposals for a new pay system. It is a very complex package and it affects different people in different ways. There are still a lot of details to be sorted out."

Beverley Malone, the General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, refused to say whether she would recommend the offer to the college's 400,000 members. "It has been a very tortuous long process. So far so good. But now there are two key steps – council has to be convinced and the membership have to be convinced." She said the college might call a ballot on the deal.

The package put forward by the government involves sweeping away the system of pay and allowances covering the 17 staff groups and replacing them with two pay ladders, one for nurses and similar staff and one for other staff, each with eight pay bands. Staff would in future be able to move up the pay ladder as they take on extra duties.

But the new system for non-medical staff could leave one in six as losers, whose rates are reassessed to lower levels, while phasing could mean that any gains would not be seen for three or four years. The date for full implementation has also slipped back six months, to October 2004.

Annual leave will be equalised and hours are set to be standardised at 37.5 a week – a figure which is said to mean that some groups of staff will gain while others would need protection for some time.

There is no doubt that Alan Milburn’s statement had been driven by the government's need to offset pressure from the fire-fighters' strike with news that it was successfully controlling pay elsewhere in the public sector.

"The reason he's doing it is because of the fire-fighters," one source said. "For three-and-a-half years it has gone at a snail's pace and now he's telescoping it all."

In an article in LiP Magazine of November 18, 2002, its co-editor, Brian Awehali, raises the question of the vast sums expended on "military aid" for regimes fighting an ill-defined "war on terror", and asks: "Does this makes the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love them?"

From 1991 to 2000, the US delivered $74 billion worth of military equipment, services and training to countries in the Middle East, according to a September 2002 General Accounting Office (GAO) report. Military aid to Saudi Arabia, for example, topped $33 billion for the period.

On July 13, 2002, the New York Times reported that US Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, the Halliburton Company, is "benefiting very directly from the United States' effort to combat terrorism". From building cells for detainees at Guantanamo Bay ($300 million) to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the New York Times reported, "the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root". KBR is the "exclusive logistics supplier for both the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation".

The Carlyle Group, a Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace companies, was described by The Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm," with more than $12 billion in assets. It stands to make a substantial sum of money from a global "war on terror". Former US President George Bush, Sr. works for the firm.

According to the Baltimore Sun, so do former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Bush Sr. campaign manager Fred Malek. Former Republican Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci (a college roommate of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), is the Carlyle Group's chairman and managing director.

One of the more disturbing aspects of post-9/11 arms sales is the wanton redefinition of various dissident groups around the world as "terrorists", Brian Awehali writes. Even longstanding conflicts such as the 38-year-old civil war in Colombia have been re-cast as a war between Colombian allies of the US and "terrorists".

In the Philippines, "counter-terrorism aid" has been released to fight the Islamic organisation Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), despite the fact that even government analysts admit the ASG poses no credible threat to the US. In Nepal, counter-terrorism aid has been allocated to help the Nepalese military quell dissent, despite State Department testimony that there's no evidence that the dissidents are connected to al-Qaida. Military aid flowing to Central Asia is also another case in point.

What seems clear from a close look at military aid policy over the past year is that the US military is using the threat of terrorism to garner support for its ambitious goals for extending its reach around the world, the author writes.

Perhaps nowhere is the correlation between arms sales and violence more apparent than in the Middle East, where the US sells an enormous amount of weapons, according to LiP Magazine.

According to an August 6, 2002 congressional report on arms sales to developing countries, "The Persian Gulf War.... played a major role in further stimulating already high levels of arms transfer agreements with nations in the Near East region. The war created new demands by key purchasers such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) for a variety of advanced weapons systems."

"The Gulf states' arms purchase demands," the report continued, "were not only a response to Iraq's aggression against Kuwait, but a reflection of concerns regarding perceived threats from a potentially hostile Iran."

The US dominated the arms market in the region from 1994-2001, selling more than $13 billion worth of weapons to Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Russia and China also sold $8 billion worth of weapons to Iran, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

2001 marked a slump for arms dealers, Brian Awehali writes, as sales to developing nations dropped 43 percent, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

Israel, despite a declining economy, was the number one US arms importer in 2001, purchasing, among other weapons, 52 F-16 fighter jets and six Apache helicopters.

Given that Israel has repeatedly violated international humanitarian law with its advanced US weapons systems, it is clear that profits – and geopolitical advantage – trump human rights when it comes to selling weapons, the magazine says.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," proclaimed former US President Dwight Eisenhower. "The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

The US military-industrial complex is a giant enterprise, employing hundreds of thousands of people, raking in billions of dollars in profits every year, with a veritable army of lobbyists and Washington insiders to maintain its dominant position in the US economy. As such, the struggle to wean the country from its dependence on the defence industry has been – and will continue to be – a difficult one.

The agency once called the Bureau of Export Administration, which controls weapons exports, recently changed its name to the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). The BIS is part of the Commerce Department, and although lip service is paid to the office's responsibility for controlling arms exports, the BIS is also charged with promoting arms exports.