Barber: Economic recovery depends on decent jobs
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Your support makes all the difference.The UK's economy has "fallen off a cliff" and will only start recovering when unemployment starts coming down and decent jobs are created, a union leader said today.
Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, warned that bad economic news was not over as he hit back at suggestions that the economy was recovering.
"Green shoots mean little when thousands of people a day are joining the dole queue," he told the opening session of the TUC Congress in Liverpool.
"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.
"It is only when unemployment starts coming down, only when we create decent jobs that pay decent wages and only when vital public services are safe from cuts that we will be able to talk about a real recovery."
Mr Barber said banks were still not lending as much as they should, businesses were not investing and consumers were slow to spend.
The union leader said people talking of a recovery wanted to pretend that the financial crisis was no more than a "little local difficulty", so it could be back to business as usual, and "bonuses as usual".
He continued: "Just as young people should not pay the price of the recession, nor should those who depend on vital public services foot the bill for reducing the deficit."
Mr Barber warned that tax increases were "inevitable", but argued for "fairness", saying tax loopholes should be closed as a matter or urgency.
"While we welcome the higher taxes on those earning more than £150,000, there's much more to do to make the tax system fair.
"If times are tough, why are we spending massively more each year on pensions tax relief for higher rate taxpayers than we are on public sector pensions?"
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