The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.

via How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ | The Indypendent.

It requires – and fosters – a broader class consciousness than a union system built wholly around those who currently retain employment. There may be wrinkles, administratively, in a developing this concept within a craft union model – not least, figuring out what it means to retain these unemployed members as workers? What is asked of them, what do they get out of it, and where do they fit into a system that has been built around a contract model?

Of course, the trade unions, with members who often work by the job, and retain union benefits and seniority between spates of employment, may provide some guidance. What might, for instance, teacher unions learn from this approach?

I believe that the extraordinary literary tradition of this country should be marked by an annual public holiday around which a major festival of literature would be developed.

A public holiday to celebrate our literary heritage could also be extended to Northern Ireland because of its rich literary tradition too and could become an all island festival of literature and culture.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin pushes in another (though not incompatible direction, in noting the high level of problems with literacy in many parts of Dublin, and calling for a ‘culture of literacy’:

“Dublin has a rich literary tradition and is recognised the world over because of the brilliant writers we have produced. In addition, Dublin is also a Unesco City of Literature and we are home to the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It is now incumbent on this Government to ensure that we build on these traditions by greatly enhancing our children’s capacity for literacy.

“I believe that fostering a culture of literacy in this city would the most fitting tribute to our great literary giants. It is my hope therefore, that when we celebrate Bloomsday in years to come everyone on this island can truly appreciate the literary genius of Joyce and just maybe inspire a child to create a masterpiece of their own.”

Today’s Galway Advertiser also has an interesting piece from John Morley, providing a sketch of Joyce’s connections with Galway, via Nora.

This week the Irish government got that wrong. They lied when asked if there were any discussions with the IMF or the EU – or at least finessed their answers to mislead (rather than merely obfuscate or avoid).These developments can be seen as sensitive – because they are. Any information provided might influence short-term economic developments, affecting the availability of funds for Irish businesses, or whether a business will decide to proceed with an investment in the country. However, providing false information also has an impact – and arguably a longer-term negative impact on the reputation of the government and the state.

At a time when statements/leaks were flowing freely from other governments, the EU, and elsewhere – and when the development (while gut-wrenching for those of us watching from afar) was not farfetched, I cannot understand what it was thought might be gained by having the news dragged out like this.

And now, of course, government ministers are claiming that the only two things that can’t happen are that corporation taxes should rise from their current level [1] and that the government cannot fall. An election, or a change in personnel within the government, would signal uncertainty, which would make this process more expensive (as markets treat uncertainty as risk) and damage whatever authority the government still retains in its negotiations.

[1] The issue of corporate tax levels is an important one, and more nuanced in Ireland than elsewhere. As an island nation (with accordingly higher distribution costs), which built much of its growth (before the property bubble) on inbound foreign investment, having a tax rate lower than the rest of Europe has been cited by multiple observers as one of the keys to the country’s economic success. Beyond the palaver about English-speaking, well-educated populations (both true, but of diminishing significance/value), corporate taxes (and, until recently, high levels of European structural investment) were key elements in the country’s economic growth. However, whether this is the one issue of government policy that should be retained, untouched, beyond the reach of the bureaucrats who are about to take over running the country, is less clear.

Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, a former Ghanian miner and head of a miners’ rights lobby group, tells BBC Focus on Africa that African mining could learn valuable lessons from Chile’s experience. “It is a wake up call for all of us that we cannot take safety issues for granted,” he says. “They have survived because they had basic needs with them – some rations, probably some water. And this is a lesson to us.”

This strike, over waivers, which are a necessary element of making grad school accessible to those other than the wealthy (and, in Illinois, the well-connected), is clearly situated in a broader context of struggles over the future of public education, as recognized by Amy Goodman on today’sDemocracy Now!, where she was talking, in California, with some of those engaged in the struggle (with credit to Rich Potter of the GEO for making contact with Amy over this issue):

AMY GOODMAN: And Professor Roy, maybe you can comment on this and what is happening at the same time here at home with the state budgets, with our educational system. UC Berkeley is not the only one going through this. For example, the news from the University of Champaign-Urbana in Illinois: apparently, in this last week—let’s see if I can find the information—graduate teaching assistants at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign went on strike yesterday after the university refused to guarantee continuation of the teaching and grad assistant tuition waivers.

Strikes have many elements. There’s the ‘above the fold’ part, the most visible: the pickets, the rallies, and (in the case of the GEO) an amazing drum corps. There’s the bargaining: tedious, important in the formal process of getting an agreement that lets the strike come to an end. And then there’s so much background work. The people who planned and organized: both over the past months, and the many years of activism, work, and sacrifice that brought the union into being and made this week’s action possible, not only necessary. The people churning out press releases and materials, taking care of the administrative overhead and much more. Congratulations to my colleagues, my comrades, at the GEO, IFT/AFT 6300, for their success this week.

Graduate employees have been working without a contract since August, as the University offered regressive proposals in response to the union’s call for a living wage, protection for tuition waivers, and improved conditions for families. In recent meetings, as the threat of a strike has increased, the GEO has reached tentative agreements on a number of items, but the administration continues to refuse both a living wage and a guarantee that tuition waivers will continue to be a condition of employment. [The University tried to unilaterally remove waivers from those on 25% appointments earlier this year.]

Call Interim Provost Robert Easter and new BoT chair Christopher Kennedy this Wednesday, and urge them to reach a fair contract with the GEO. Then pass this message to colleagues and friends.

WHEN: Wednesday, November 11

WHERE TO CALL:
Interim Provost Easter: (217) 244-4545
Christopher Kennedy: (312) 527-7890 x7890

WHAT TO SAY:
It’s useful if you can put your message in your own words, but the following provides a basic template for you to use. (My text suggests leaving a message, but if you can talk directly with these men, even better.) Remember, what’s most important is that the message of support for the GEO position be communicated to administrators.

Hello, my name is __________. I’m a graduate of the University of Illinois, and I’d like to leave a message for [Provost Easter/Mr Kennedy.]

I want to urge him to reach a fair agreement with the Graduate Employees Organization, and ensure that graduate employees, who teach a quarter of classes at the University, receive a living wage.

Thank you.

OTHER POINTS YOU MAY WANT TO USE:
Graduate employees have voted for strike action, but there is still time to avoid that if the administration engages positively with the wage concerns of those employees.

The campus budget grew by 7% in FY09, but the percentage devoted to instruction grew by only 0.8%. I urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that the university lives up to its responsibilities as a land grant institution that serves the public good and is committed to high quality instruction and research.

The public higher education system has a responsibility to ensure accessibility to all. The GEO’s requests for  a living wage, secured tuition waivers, better health care, and better support for working parents, would increase access to graduate education and would also improve the quality of instruction and research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

[I should note that I'm using two sets of data here - first the latest live register figures, which records those receiving Jobseekers Benefit and Jobseekers Allowance. As the CSO notes, it doesn't measureunemployment directly as it also includes some part-time and seasonal workers. However, insofar as we might think of these people as underemployed (particularly when we see such a rapid increase in numbers) it suits our purposes. The second set of data, the CSO's 'principal statistics' for Labour Market numbers, are, I believe, drawn from the Quarterly National  Household Survey (QNHS), treated by the CSO as the most reliable ongoing measure of economic activity/classification.]

Using the QNHS the CSO has estimated the ‘Standardised Unemployment Rate (SUR) at 10.4% in January – up from just 5.0% in February 2008, and just 9.4% a month ago.

Now, my first thought was that men make up a greater portion of the workforce, so one would expect them to make up more of those losing employment. But men, in 2007 (the latest figure I could readily find on the CSO site) made up 57.7% of those in employment in that year, so they are obviously over-represented in those losing jobs.

How to measure that over-representation. I figure ‘% chance of losing employment’ is a reasonable measure. Taking those 2007 figures as our baseline for ‘numbers in employment (not precise, but good enough for our purposes), the 164,952 increase in the live register last year represents 8.19% of the total number ‘at work’ in 2007 (2,013,300). Men stood a 10.4% chance of moving from work to the live register, while women stood a 5.66% chance.

That means male workers are 77.38% more likely to have moved to the live register than are female workers.

Maybe the fact that the proportion of women in the workforce has increased significantly over the past decade or two is playing a role here – perhaps older workers were more likely to lose jobs, and men were over-represented in that part of the workforce. Looking at a breakdown of age and sex for the 164,000 people we see that men under 25 made up 14.78% of the 164,000, while women under 25 made up 7.34% (just less than half as much as the men). Of the over 25 population, men made up 56.02% of the 164,000 while women made up 21.85% – about 40% as much. So, that would tend to support the suggestion that it’s jobs held by older workers,who are  disproportionately men, that are being most affected.

But that doesn’t account for everything. In February 2007 the number of women under 25 on the live register was about 67% of the number for men under 25. Now it’s 52% – the number of women under 25 on the live register has doubled in those two years, but the number of men has increased by 168%. In the 25-and-over population, in February 2007 the number of women on the live register was 66.62% of the number of men. Now it’s 47.04%. The number of women on the live register (in this age range) has increased 73.68% in this period, while the number of men has increased by 146%.

So, what’s up – why do men appear to be harder hit by the economic fall-out, if one looks at live register figures? Are women less likely to appear on the register if they become unemployed? Are sectors with greater male involvement being harder hit? What other measures should we look at to examine the impact of the economic decline – poverty rates from the QNHS and elsewhere? The QNHS, when it’s next published in June, may also allow us to break data out by family type. Earnings reports for the public sector and construction are due out by the end of March, with ‘business services’ numbers due in April. That will give us more granularity on certain industries and sectors – though the decline is now so rapid (from 9.6% to 10.4% in one month?!) that the numbers become out of date as they become available to us.

Following on from news that the economy fell into recession in the second quarter of 2008 (with two consecutive quarters of declining GDP), new figures out today (but not yet reported on RTÉ!) put the exchequer deficit for the year to date (the Irish government now operates on a calendar financial year) at €9.4bn, with full year predictions of €11.5bn. Some of that deficit is for capital spending, which is, of course, seen as an investment, and therefore worth borrowing for (on the basis that increased capacity in the future will more than counteract the cost of borrowing the money today). However, much of the – unforeseen – deficit is for current spending, and results both from cost overruns and decreased tax revenues.

There is, of course, a difference between government spending and the broader economy, but in this case the government figures reflect trends in the economy that are quite worrying, as well pointing to the contribution of government policy to our current difficulties. Tax revenue is already €3.6bn behind budget, reflecting declining economic activity (as VAT and stamp duty revenue declines), weaker markets (with falls in capital gains taxes), and substantial job losses. Current spending is €600m above target, despite well-publicized spending freezes, due at least in part to the increase of 80,000 in the live register (=unemployed). The Irish government will breach the EMU deficit limits this year, with, as Joan Burton of Labour notes, “a General Government Deficit of 5.5% of a falling GDP.” Figures would be worse were it not for significant increases in non-tax revenues (which includes dividends from semi-state companies among other things).

A large part of the problem for Ireland has been that Ireland is a small ‘open’ market economy, making us particularly responsive to changes in the global economy. When the dot com bubble burst, the spectacular economic growth of the mid-1990s disappeared. Now that the global economy has entered a period of serious crisis, the Irish economy risks catching pneumonia.

With a 50% rise in the numbers unemployed in the past year – to their highest rates in 10 years – the St Vincent de Paul Society (one of the larger charities providing aid to the poor in Ireland) has seen a 40% increase in calls for help to its offices in Dublin in the past year, and expects to spend €50m on aid this year. Next year, for the first time in a decade, Ireland is expected to have net outbound migration.

The government response so far has been to bring forward announcement of next year’s budget (widely expected to be an austerity budget) and to issue guarantees on savings in Irish-owned banks – itself not a bad way to calm nerves and improve confidence, but not a well-thought out plan, as it immediately fell foul of EU rules, which means the government is going to have to extend guarantees to banks with an Irish presence (though hopefully only on savings held by Irish residents), which will bring the potential exposure to well over the initial estimate of €440bn. By contrast, Irish GDP last year (and remember, it’s dropping) was €190bn.

Anyhow, while simultaneously cursing my luck, trying to think of solutions, eating my lunch, and feeding my news junkie habit, I came across a BBC article on lunch-breaks. Specifically, the declining number of English workers who take them, and the proven benefits associated with taking them. Noteworthy:

In the 1970s the British were the laziest men of Europe. Now they are considered the workaholics of Europe, thanks to an adoption of the American work ethic in the mid-80s, says Professor Cooper. But tellingly, productivity per capita in the UK remains lower than many of its European neighbours.

Now, I’m already familiar with the fact that the US performs well on productivity per capita, but less well on productivity per hour worked, as does Ireland (which is something like 2nd on productivity per worker, but 5th on productivity per hour worked). Essentially, the US and Ireland do particularly well in productivity because of the large number of hours worked per person – linked to fewer holidays and longer work weeks – but not so well, relatively, on productivity per hour. There’s obviously a trade off made between extra hours worked per person (which leads to higher per capita productivity, allowing higher wages/pensions) and increased time away from work (which is, so to speak, good for the soul) – though the decision is often not made at an individual level, but by a mixture of employer dictates, public policy (mandatory paid leave, public holidays, etc.), and social mores.

What’s interesting to see here is the claim that despite erring towards more hours of work per person, the UK hasn’t necessarily reaped the reward of greater productivity. I’m having difficulty locating easily digestible statistics online today – the OECD and Eurostat sites, while comprehensive, aren’t always the easiest to navigate, and I don’t want to spend that much time right now – but I’d love to see some historical trends for several countries, including the UK. Maybe there’s something in the Baker book, which I’ve been relying on as a wonderful compendium and tool ever since we used it in teaching Media, Money, and Power…