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UK Labour and Goods shortages



There is a lot in the news about supposed labour shortages, with driving positions being unfilled and meat processing companies asking the government to allow them to use more prison labour, no doubt because they have fewer rights and can be made to work for less.

This is having a knock on effect on the economy, with empty supermarket shelves and restaurants closing. Some are attributing this at least in part to Brexit and Covid, with workers either leaving the country or staying at home.

While that's undoubtedly part of the picture, deeper causes should also be investigated. In a country of 70 million there should be no problem for the population to grow, prepare, distribute and where necessary import food for everyone. But in the UK a lot of food is wasted; every year 2 million tonnes of food, the equivalent of 1.3 billion meals, goes unsold but is still edible. Meanwhile 8.4 million people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat.

Even before Brexit and the pandemic, food bank use had exploded in the UK as a result of Conservative austerity. There is food going unused, people going hungry, and more than enough people to fill the jobs needed, as while unemployment is relatively low, underemployment has never returned to pre-recession levels and rose to 5.2% in 2020.

Given that there are vacancies in the labour market, does this mean that wages will rise? Labour, like any other commodity, responds to supply and demand. But capitalists may try to address this by bringing in prison or migrant labour so that they don't have to pay workers more. Even if wages rise slightly as workers are in a better position to bargain, they are still fundamentally at the mercy of their employers, who own the means of production they they need to produce goods and services. This means that the employers are still at an advantage, and will be able to extract a profit. Under capitalism, the working class will always be forced to work to improve the conditions of their employers, who live off the workers like parasites.

The workers shouldn't just wait and hope that the economy provides them with better wages and conditions. They should organise, fight for better conditions and rights, while ultimately knowing that the capitalists are in control for as long as capitalism continues.

The fight for the cause of labour is connected to the fight for "peace, land and bread", and there should be a public-wide political campaign including not just workers, but pensioners, the youth and the unemployed for a society where people don't good hungry unnecessarily.

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