Showing posts with label Caroline Lucas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caroline Lucas. Show all posts

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Green Party supports tomorrow's PCS strike

GREEN Party leader Natalie Bennett will tomorrow (Wednesday) morning be speaking at a PCS Union rally outside the Euston Tower in Central London in support of the union’s budget day protest, expressing support for PCS members on strike that day across the country.

Natalie said: “The union is rightly calling for decent pay for all civil servants this year, while pointing out to the government that this – and many other steps to reverse its austerity programme – could be paid for by serious action against wealthy tax dodgers.”

A union report has demonstrated that since the start of recession in 2008 the real value of wages has fallen by 7%, more than £50 billion a year. The report also found that median pay in the civil service is 4.4% lower than direct private sector comparators. In some grades, the gap was 10%. It is calling for a 5% rise in civil service pay this year to keep pace with inflation, and an end to reduction in pension rights.

The union represents, among others, customs, immigration, benefits and Jobcentre staff.
Natalie said: "Congratulations to the PCS for rightly identifying the importance of tackling tax evasion in rebalancing our economy. David Cameron has said he wants to act on the issue, but has failed to take any meaningful concrete steps.

“To save time, I’d point him to Green MP Caroline Lucas’s 2011 Tax and Financial Transparency Bill, which set out how the government could force companies to ‘publish what tax they pay’, requiring all companies filing accounts in the UK to include a statement on the turnover, pre-tax profit, tax charge and actual tax paid for each country in which they operate, without exception. He could simply move that as a government bill, and take a big stride towards collecting money the UK is owed.”

Natalie added that the PCS call for fair pay for all civil servants and for all contracts to be underpinned by the living wage, would be a small step towards rebalancing the UK economy, in which the wage share had fallen from around 60% to 55%, with a great increase in the inequality of the distribution of those wages.
“We need to make the minimum wage a living wage – that is an immediate step the government should take, but in the meantime, ensuring that government outsourcing meets this basic standard is an important step.”

Natalie added: “It is clear that we need to not only reverse George Osborne’s austerity agenda, and invest in the infrastructure we desperately need – including energy conservation, renewable energy, but also to move towards a living wage economy with jobs that workers can build a life on.”

Saturday 26 February 2011

Lucas: Greens are the REAL opposition

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has positioned herself as "the real opposition" to the coalition Government.
Speaking from her party's spring conference in Cardiff, she said: "How can they oppose the market in the NHS when they first introduced it?

"How are they opposing tuition fees when they first introduced it? How do they oppose the selling off of the Royal Mail? That was (former business secretary) (Lord) Peter Mandelson."

Ms Lucas added: "I've always been a bit ambitious, but I do think the Green Party is the real opposition.

"The Lib Dems are part of the Government - they can't speak out about proper constitutional reform or nuclear weapons or nuclear power or many of the things they stood for.

"Labour is utterly contaminated by the fact they pursued many of the policies which now the coalition Government is simply taking to their logical conclusions, so I think people are looking for a genuine opposition - and you won't be surprised to know I think that's the Green Party."