Alliance Programme for
Health, Peace and Social Justice
2. Employment And Economy
2.1. Full employment instead of mass unemployment
Employment is a human right. Mass unemployment and poverty amongst millions of people is an unsustainable scandal in view of rising company group profits and investment returns. While the big company groups achieve outstanding business profits and pay out high investment returns to their shareholders, millions of people are not only financially ruined by inhuman technocracy programmes, but their human dignity as enshrined in articles of basic law is profoundly violated. What is especially outrageous here is that those who supposedly represent employee interests allow themselves to become the eager enforcers of company group interests.
A socially just economic system starts with employment for all. The chief goal of our employment and social policy is full employment. This is also possible, provided one makes the effort to correctly analyse the real causes of mass unemployment in countries around thw world. For example, the chief problem in industrialized nations is the rising burden of ancillary wage costs on companies and employees. These, in turn, have a clear prime cause: rising expenditure on sickness costs and health insurance provision.
Current health systems are conceived, constructed and controlled by an investment industry – the pharmaceutical industry – which has a vested interest not in the eradication but in the perpetuation of disease. When one observes this simple fact, one quickly recognises that working people, the economy and the whole system of government and welfare is being damaged in multiple ways by this fraudulent business:
- The pharmaceutical industry promises to deliver the commodity “health” but in fact supplies the commodity “disease”. Patients do not recover their health but remain ill or develop ever new illnesses due to the side effects of harmful pharmaceutical drugs.
- Patients, companies and the welfare system have to continue to fund this fraudulent commerce. Health insurance premiums are rising and driving up ancillary wage costs ever higher.
- Since illnesses are continually on the increase, costs also continue to rise, thus creating an upwards spiral with dire consequences. The profits of the pharmaceutical business are ruining public and private economies, and exponentially increasing ancillary wage costs inevitably lead to mass unemployment and poverty for millions of people.
2.2. Reducing ancillary wage costs instead of impotent taxation debates
Most current ideas for tackling unemployment in countries around the world focus either on raising or reducing taxes. We decisively oppose the illusion that more work places and full employment can be created through tax gifts to company groups. But nor is raising company taxes a viable alternative in an economic crisis characterised by uninhibited globalisation. This leads to the emigration of companies and transferring abroad of work places. The survival of smaller and medium-sized companies which do not have this flexibility is thereby put at risk.
Effective combating of mass unemployment requires radical rethinking and a new focus of political action. The first and most important precondition for creating new work places and for full employment is reduction of ancillary wage costs. We will achieve this by ending the pharmaceutical “business with disease” as described above, and by thus saving billions in health insurance and national insurance expenditure.
In this way we will break through the vicious circle embodied in the impotent debate on reducing taxation, which does nothing to end mass unemployment and merely deepens the social divide between employees and company groups.
Ending the pharmaceutical “business with disease” and consciously developing a health system based on prevention and the eradication of endemic diseases will, on the one hand, create work places through a reduction in ancillary wage costs. At the same time, higher tax revenues from a functioning economy that serves the people will give the public purse the funds it needs to maintain a healthy community, including infrastructure, education, leisure time and cultural activities.
For working people themselves this policy not only means effective reduction in unemployment and full employment in the long term, but also an opportunity to create more humane working conditions, with purposeful work, establishment of new models for working hours, shorter working hours, more leisure time and more time for cultural and socio-political activities.
2.3. Co-determination by employees
Co-determination rights of employees in businesses will be extended. Welfare state advances must not be sacrificed to supposed material necessities and the needs of global economic interests. Unions and other employee representation bodies are the result of historic movements. They are a necessary tool for public control of big economic units, and an indispensable principle on the path to a socially just world.
2.4. Promoting a just economic system
Economies must serve the needs of human beings and the interests of society. The goal of every economic system must be full employment, based on the principle of common interest before self-interest.
While this basic right forms part of the political programme of many parties, the opposite has in fact occurred. The interests of people, their right to employment, health and a life of dignity are increasingly sacrificed to global financial interests. This globalisation of financial interests is given an air of legality, and serves as a pretext for ever greater restrictions on the needs and rights of millions of working people.
The proponents of economic globalisation have already conjured up the picture of an 80:20 society. They predict that 80 percent of people will be long-term unemployed, and will need to be provided for by the 20 percent who still have work. It is up to us either to succumb to this globalisation vision or, instead, to reject it decisively and oppose it with a socially just future.
What is certain is that an economic system focused exclusively on satisfying the greed of individuals and providing them with economic advantages cannot do justice to the interests of the majority. Companies’ success should no longer be measured by their stock-exchange value, but above all by whether they create employment opportunities and meet their social obligations.
2.5. Analysis not ideology
We have analysed the causes of mass unemployment and mass poverty worsening over decades and documented them in this programme. There is no objective alternative to the following programme for a socially responsible economic system, including public control of big company groups.
The decimation of work places is not a ‘blip’ in the system but an intentional and merciless measure implemented to increase company group profits. Every programme for long-term reduction of mass unemployment is an illusion if it does not succeed in controlling those forces which increase their profits by means of mass redundancies. Public control of big company groups employing thousands of workers is an urgent precondition for full employment for this and all future generations. The actual causes of mass unemployment are clearly discernible to all. The conclusions to be drawn are not a question of ideology but of healthy common sense.
Our goal is a socially just economic system applicable throughout the world. Funding must be made available for such a comprehensive development programme which enables all of the world’s people to lead a life of dignity. Those who are unable to propose a credible funding concept are not serious about promoting human dignity either. The following programme is the only directly realisable means known to us that is capable of achieving social justice on a global scale.
2.6. Promoting private initiative in the economy
Promotion of private initiative should take place with a view to its contribution to the general good. Associative forms for smaller and medium-sized private initiatives, such as cooperatives and collectives, must be promoted in a targeted way. These can facilitate productive participation in economic life for a large number of people currently unemployed, and thus make an important contribution to full employment. As part of the concept of a mixed economy, a variety of company forms both private and public in nature can co-exist side by side and on equal terms.
2.7. Promoting small businesses
Small trading and industrial companies have a special function as practitioners of socially responsible enterprise. This is the basis for a considerable amount of economic value creation, and at the same time fulfils further important functions in country’s social frameworks. In recognition of this role, small businesses should be promoted in a special way.
As a company grows its responsibility also increases for contributing to the well-being of working people and the community in general. This can happen in a variety of ways: through greater co-determination by company employees; through their participation in commercial success; through transfer of yields to a charitable foundation or through other models which place social responsibility above private interest.
2.8. Public control of big companies and multinational groups
The profits of big companies should no longer fall into the laps of small groups of shareholders, banks or speculators, but benefit the people who achieve them and society in general. Mass unemployment and economic crises will continue for as long as big multinational companies determine economic life and the policies of national governments. The only means to prevent this is to place these company groups under public control and to transfer them to public property.
The assets of company groups found guilty of committing crimes against humanity will be confiscated and used to compensate for damage or loss caused by these crimes. In this context it will be necessary to scrutinise the conduct of pharmaceutical groups knowingly selling pharmaceutical drugs to millions of people, which rarely have any benefit but are almost always associated with severe side effects.
Cartel law must be examined and tightened where necessary, to break up big and multinational companies, and place them under public control as described above. To achieve this we will work intensively with people and organisations from many countries that work for these same goals.