There is a spoof newsflash
doing the rounds on social media, which claims that Priti Patel is setting up a
taskforce to deport any EU lorry drivers who happen to be enticed by the option
of temporary work in the UK on 24 December, when they
will, according to the government, no longer be required. It’s almost credible;
there does seem to be an attitude in government that the problem is not going
to be attracting lorry drivers in permanent jobs to come to the UK for lower wages,
worse conditions and a very temporary contract, but getting rid of them afterwards.
I suppose that, for those who ‘know’ that the UK is the best place in the
world, and that everyone everywhere else is desperate to come here, it is ‘obvious’
that getting them to go home on 24 December is far and away the
biggest problem. The newsflash is a spoof, but that underlying attitude is very
much in evidence, and the inability to understand why this amazing offer from
the UK government really is not too good to refuse is the main reason why the
scheme seems doomed to fail. And even if it were true, as they seem to believe,
that EU lorry drivers will be queuing up (presumably not the ones who remember being on a certain disused runway in Kent last Christmas Eve) to come to the UK and take up the jobs, 5,000 for
two months seems unlikely to make much of a dent in a longer term structural
shortage of 100,000.
But that underlying attitude of the
current government can also be generalised. Many of their policies clearly
start from the assumption that ‘workers’ exist solely to meet the needs of ‘the
economy’, where ‘the economy’ is a neutral-sounding term which is actually a euphemism
for the interests of capital and those who control it. In policy terms, it
means that the education system exists only to supply workers with the skills
needed by ‘the economy’; the government response to a pandemic is governed
first and foremost by a need to protect ‘the economy’ rather than people’s
lives; people on benefits are expected to take whatever jobs exist, wherever
they may be and regardless of personal preferences or find themselves without
any means of support; and foreigners are expected to come here as and when
required to fill any gaps and then depart promptly when no longer required. It
is a world view which sees people as ‘resources’ and values them solely in
terms of their economic usefulness rather than individuals with needs of their
own, and which sees government as a means of facilitating that. It is a deeply ideological
mindset, based around serving the interests of the few rather than the many.
It’s not the only possible view of the
world, though. Imagine an alternative which sees ‘the economy’ as existing to
meet the needs of people, education as a means of allowing people to seek
knowledge and personal fulfilment, and government as a means of managing the economy
towards those ends. The success of capitalist ideology is that so few seem able
to envisage that alternative – even the official party of opposition. Much of
what has come out of the Labour Party’s conference this week is about trying to
put a very slightly kinder edge on the application of the ideology rather than offering
any sort of alternative to it. But the truth is that the economic system under
which we live is a human construct which doesn’t have to operate as it does. Humans
built it, humans control it, and humans can change it. Just not the humans
currently in control.
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4 comments:
Your point regarding the market for "workers" is sound. Unless there is a massive recessionary period there will be freedom of movement and freedom to avoid working in certain occupations. Hence it is highly unlikely that EU lorry drivers will swarm into the UK to spend 2 months solving part of Boris' portfolio of serious problems !
However your statement that sees...."education as a means of allowing people to seek knowledge and personal fulfilment" falls short of the mark, as most of those people when they complete formal education have expectations regarding careers, rewards etc which the economy is meant to serve up. Works well enough for a lot of students from GCSE through to degree level where they can easily relate their studies to date with the knowledge/skills requirements of a prospective employer. Over recent years we have tended to allow people to pursue rather "specialist" academic subjects which do NOT bridge as easily into the world of work. And that is where that nasty old concept of competition creeps in. That leaves a number of graduates in particular with job options beneath their expectations when a more critical look at their chosen subject of study might have warned them of that outcome long before. By then they are burdened with debt and desparate, not a good place to be in when trying to dig your way out of a hole.
Dafis,
"...most of those people when they complete formal education have expectations regarding careers, rewards etc ..." But that's the point I was making, just seen from the other side. The 'success' of capitalist ideology is precisely that not only do those in charge see education as about providing the right people for the labour market, but many of those being educated see their education in similar terms, providing them with the skills for that market and giving them some sort of entitlement to a 'suitable' job as a result. It's all about people serving the economy rather than the economy serving people. There is a value to education, learning, and personal development in themselves, even if they bring no economic advantage to the individual or to the interests of capital. There is a danger that arguing that people should not be educated beyond reasonable expectations of what economic advantages that education might bring them (and/or society) ends up sounding an awful lot like telling people to know their place.
John The commercialising of education is a direct result of changes in society made worse by the intro of severe levels of fees in higher education. I don't mind people studying the most exotic combinations of subjects but they must come to terms with how that may disadvantage them. There was a time that I can recall it not mattering much at all what you studied but our expectations were not as sharply tuned as they appear to be today. Also way back then higher education was regarded as somewhat elitist which maybe eased the pressures of competition.
Now I have neighbours whose offspring have got some odd degrees and proceed to complain that they can't get the jobs they wnted, indeed felt entitled to get. Now much of that perception is generated by the prospective employers even in the public sector. Take sports science which often is a lot of sport and a veneer of science. Graduates end up at likes of Asda or if they are lucky they take yet another bridging course which can get them into sports admin, physiotherapy or a few other directions. But they all tend to be at a lower level than originally perceived and at further cost. Perversely one of the few bodies in the UK which doesn't get too picky about class or subject of degree are H.M Forces which is about as close as you can get to "cannon fodder". Civil Service will accept exotic subjects but with a very high level of honours.
Dafis,
I think you may be misunderstanding me. I don't dispute that, as things stand, education (especially higher education) has come to be seen largely in transactional terms, as being primarily related to subsequent employment prospects and salaries. As a result, people paying for higher education in a competitive marketplace have expectations about employment and salary when they complete their courses. Pushed to its logical conclusion, universities should only offer those courses which 'the economy' requires, because that's the only way those expectations can be met. And that is the direction in which things are headed, with courses considered to be 'trivial' belittled or even dropped, and universities marketing their 'success' in terms of the percentage of ex-students in employment within six months and average salaries of graduates. It also leads to the oft-repeated statement that 'too many young people are going into higher education', as though learning has no intrinsic value in itself, either for the individuals or for society as a whole.
The question is not whether things are that way, but whether they should be that way; whether that is the only (or even the best) way of society organising itself. It is capitalist ideology which treats us all as being there solely to serve capital, and the fact that so many are accepting of that is part of the pervasiveness of that ideology. A society which gave priority to the development and fulfilment of its citizens rather than the interests of capital wouldn't operate like that, and expectations would necessarily be different. There will always be some jobs which require particular training and skills - and that's as true for mechanics as brain surgeons - but the idea that too many people are 'over-educated' for their role in society promotes and reinforces the ideological perspective that we are all defined by our role and station in life rather then being human beings capable of a much wider sense of fulfilment.
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