PRESS COMMENTARY on Blair's first months has emphasised the pace of change. What has been overlooked is the substantive continuity with Tory policy in certain areas, notably the labour market. Hostile to both trade unions and the unemployed, Blair's government is continuing and developing the main lines of Tory labour market policy, although with a new attempt at ideological legitimation. The attack on the working class continues on three fronts. The first is a hardening of the work discipline to be imposed upon the unemployed. The second is to postpone even what little improvement in trade union rights had been promised, giving employers a space of time in which to ensure that rights to trade union recognition will not bite. The third is to embrace the neo-liberal ‘labour market flexibility’ agenda, resisting most attempts to improve social protection of labour at European and at UK level. The exception is the prospect of a national minimum wage, although exceptions now seem likely for participants in the youth ‘welfare to work’ scheme.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, Perry (1997) ‘The Europe to Come’, in P. Anderson and P. Gowan, (eds.), The Question of Europe, Verso, London.
2.
Amin, A., and D. Thomas (1996) ‘The negotiated economy; state and civic institutions in Denmark’, Economy and Society, vol.25/2: 255–81.
3.
Field, Frank (1995) Making Welfare Work, Institute of Community Studies, London.
4.
Finn, Dan (1995) ‘The Job Seeker's Allowance; Workfare and the Stricter Benefit Regime’, Capitale Class57: 7–12.
5.
Gray, Anne (1995) ‘The flexibilisation of labour and the attack on workers’ living standards’, Common Sense, no. 18: 12–33.
6.
Gray, Anne and Tom Bewick (1997) The gatekeepers, unpublished research report on London employment agencies, for the Haringey Employment Commission.
7.
Mandelson, Peter and Roger Liddle (1996) The Blair Revolution, Faber and Faber, London.
8.
Rhodes, Martin (1995) Subversive Liberalism, Market Integration, Globalisation and the European Welfare State, European University Institute, Florence.
9.
Rosewarne, Stuart (1997) ‘Labour's Travail; the Australian Labour government's management of the Australian political economy’, paper given to the CSE conference, June 1997.
10.
Working Brief (July 1997) Project Work to go ahead under the Labour Government: 2.
11.
Working Brief (August/September 1997) Implications of new study rules announcement: 7–8
12.
Working Brief (June 1997) Local authorities join forces against Project Work: 7.
