Monthly Archives: February 2020

At Domain comes a freshly uploaded press release from some lobby or other:

The chief executives of two of the nations largest retail employers have blamed incorrectly configured software as a key cause of staff underpayments, arguing this issue also often leads to businesses overpaying workers.

Rob Scott, who heads up Bunnings, Kmart and Target owner Wesfarmers, and Anthony Heraghty, the managing director of Rebel Sports parent, Super Retail Group, both pinpointed software bought from offshore vendors and not configured for Australias relatively complex labour environment as a key factor in staff being underpaid.

Theres more from businomics moraliser, Jennifrer Hewitt, at the AFR:

the furore over what the ACTU likes to call wage theft is a bizarre example of the contradictions in Australias workplace culture and absurdly complicated industrial relations system of awards and entitlements. Now those contradictions are pushing employees and employers way back into last century instead of what was supposed to be a modern era of sensible, flexible work arrangements.

Theres plenty of blame to go around. Unlike New Zealand, Australias peculiar national skill has been to maintain and build on its arcane labyrinth of award classifications, minimum rates, overtime and penalty conditions. Its enough to confuse the sharpest mathematician, let alone a small business owner or even a corporate HR department.

Investment in payroll systems and technology and the human brain cant always keep up. Underpayment in corporate Australia is more often inadvertent than deliberate, insufficiently attentive about detail rather than overly greedy about profit.

Why do the errors always favour the employer? Hmmm

It seems everybody is using the same software, too, given Fair Work has identified one in five businesses are doing it.

This is all rubbish. Wage theft is not even a glitch in the system any more. It is the system.

Academic research finally caught up to this reality late last year. Below are key excepts fromChapter 13entitledTemporary migrant workers (TMWs), underpayment and predatory business models, written by Iain Campbell:

This chapter argues that the expansion of temporary labour migration is a significant development in Australia and that it has implications for wage stagnation

Three main facts about their presence in Australia are relevant to the discussion of wage stagnation. First, there are large numbers of TMWs in Australia, currently around 1.2 million persons. Second, those numbers have increased strongly over the past 15 years. Third, when employed, many TMWs are subject to exploitation, including wage payments that fall below sometimes well below the minimum levels specified in employment regulation

One link to slow wages growth, as highlighted by orthodox economics, stems from the simple fact of increased numbers, which add to labour supply and thereby help to moderate wages growth. This chapter argues, however, that the more salient point concerns the way many TMWs are mistreated within the workplace in industry sectors such as food services, horticulture, construction, personal services and cleaning. TMW underpayments, which appear both widespread in these sectors and systemic, offer insights into labour market dynamics that are also relevant to the general problem of slow wages growth

Official stock data indicate that the visa programmes for international students, temporary skilled workers and working holiday makers have tripled in numbers since the late 1990s In all, the total number of TMWs in Australia is around 1.2 million persons. If we include New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, who can enter Australia under a special subclass 444 visa, without time limits on their stay and with unrestricted work rights (though without access to most social security payments), then the total is close to 2 million persons TMWs now make up around 6% of the total Australian workforce

Decisions by the federal Coalition government under John Howard to introduce easier pathways to permanent residency for temporary visa holders, especially international students and temporary skilled workers, gave a major impetus to TMW visa programmes.

Most international students and temporary skilled workers, together with many working holiday makers, see themselves as involved in a project of staggered or multi-step migration, whereby they hope to leap from their present status into a more long-term visa status, ideally permanent residency. One result, as temporary migration expands while the permanent stream remains effectively capped, is a lengthening queue of onshore applicants for permanent residency

Though standard accounts describe Australian immigration as oriented to skilled labour, this characterisation stands at odds with the abundant evidence on expanding temporary migration and the character of TMW jobs. It is true that many TMWs, like their counterparts in the permanent stream, are highly qualified and in this sense skilled. However, the fact that their work is primarily in lower-skilled jobs suggests that it is more accurate, as several scholars point out, to speak of a shift in Australia towards ade facto low-skilled migration programme

A focus on raw numbers of TMWs may miss the main link to slow wages growth. It is the third point concerning underpayments and predatory business models that seems richest in implications. This point suggests, first and most obviously, added drag on wages growth in sectors where such underpayments and predatory business models have become embedded. If they become more widely practised, underpayments pull down average hourly wages. If a substantial number of firms in a specific labour market intensify strategies of labour cost minimisation by pushing wage rates below the legal floor, it can unleash a dynamic of competition around wage rates that foreshadows wage decline rather than wage growth for employees

Increases in labour supply allow employers in sectors already oriented to flexible and low-wage employment, such as horticulture and food services, to sustain and extend strategies of labour cost minimisation The arguments and evidence cited above suggest a spread of predatory business models within low-wage industries.37 They suggest an unfolding process of degradation in these labour markets

And below are extracts fromChapter 14, entitledIs there a wages crisis facing skilled temporary migrants?, byJoanna Howe:

Scarcely a day goes by without another headline of wage theft involving temporary migrant workers

In this chapter we explore a largely untold story in relation to temporary migrant workersit exposes a very real wages crisis facing workers on the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (formerly the 457 visa) in Australia. This crisis has been precipitated by the federal governments decision to freeze the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers since 2013the government has chosen to put downward pressure on real wages for temporary skilled migrants, thereby surreptitiously allowing the TSS visa to be used in lower-paid jobs

In Australia, these workers are employed via the TSS visa and they must be paid no less than a salary floor. This salary floor is called the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT). TSMIT was introduced in 2009 in response to widespread concerns during the Howard Government years of migrant worker exploitation. This protection was considered important because an independent review found that many 457 visa workers were not receiving wages equivalent to those received by Australian workers

In effect, TSMIT is intended to act as a proxy for the skill level of a particular occupation. It prevents unscrupulous employers misclassifying an occupation at a higher skill level in order to employ a TSS visa holder at a lower level

TSMITs protective ability is only as strong as the level at which it is set. In its original iteration back in 2009, it was set at A$45 220. This level was determined by reference to average weekly earnings for Australians, with the intention that TSMIT would be pegged to this because the Australian government considered it important that TSMIT keep pace with wage growth across the Australian labour market. This indexation occurred like clockwork for five years. But since 1 July 2013, TSMIT has been frozen at a level of A$53 900. ..

There is now a gap of more than A$26 000 between the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers and annual average salaries for Australian workers. This means that the TSS visa can increasingly be used to employ temporary migrant workers in occupations that attract a far lower salary than that earned by the average Australian worker. This begs the question is the erosion of TSMIT allowing the TSS visa to morph into a general labour supply visa rather than a visa restricted to filling labour market gaps in skilled, high-wage occupations?..

But why would employers go to all the effort of hiring a temporary migrant worker on a TSS visa over an Australian worker?

Renowned Australian demographer Graeme Hugo observed that employers will always have a demand for foreign workers if it results in a lowering of their costs. The simplistic notion that employers will only go to the trouble and expense of making a TSS visa application when they want to meet a skill shortage skims over a range of motives an employer may have for using the TSS visa. These could be a reluctance to invest in training for existing or prospective staff, or a desire to move towards a deunionised workforce. Additionally, for some employers, there could be a belief that, despite the requirement that TSS visa workers be employed on equivalent terms to locals, it is easier to avoid paying market salary rates and conditions for temporary migrant workers who have been recognised as being in a vulnerable labour market position. A recent example of this is the massive underpayments of chefs and cooks employed by Australias largest high-end restaurant business, Rockpool Dining Group, which found that visa holders were being paid at levels just above TSMIT but well below the award when taking into account the amount of overtime being done

Put simply,temporarydemand for migrant workers often creates apermanentneed for them in the labour market. Research shows that in industries whereemployers have turned to temporary migrants en masse, it erodes wages and conditions in these industries over time, making them less attractive to locals

A national survey of temporary migrant workers found that 24% of 457 visa holders who responded to the survey were paid less than A$18 an hour. Not only are these workers not being paid in according with TSMIT, but they are also receiving less than the minimum wage. A number of cases also expose creative attempts by employers to subvert TSMIT. Given the challenges many temporary migrants face in accessing legal remedies, these cases are likely only scratching the surface in terms of employer non-compliance with TSMIT

Combined, then, with the problems with enforcement and compliance, it is not hard to conclude that the failure to index TSMIT is contributing to a wages crisis for skilled temporary migrant workers So the failure to index the salary floor for skilled migrant workers is likely to affect wages growth for these workers, as well as to have broader implications for all workers in the Australian labour market.

The micro-economic evidence has been overwhelming for years:

I gave up listing is all eventually.

What we are seeing is the systemic rorting of Australian workers thanks to an out of control immigration system that has rendered industrial relations ungovernable.

It is loved by the Right because it delivers fat rentiers easier profits. It is loved by the Left because its not racist. It is loved by the media because it drives property listings. It is loved by Treasury because more warm bodies boost tax receipts. It is loved by the RBA because it doesnt have to account for its housing bubble.

Australias migrant slavery economy is the core of broader weak wages growth but that doesnt matter either. The macro-economic enabler is running mass immigration into material economic slack for the first time ever:

Its not just temporary visas. It is the entire mass immigration model:

These problems have been documented by MB for years (e.g.here,hereandhere).

The first best solution to Australias wage stagnation and theft is simple: cut-off the supply to cheap foreign labour by halving immigration.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

The rest is here:

Wage theft turns to truth theft - MacroBusiness

New York, NY The instigators behind the massive anti-cop subway fare protest in New York City on Jan. 31 are professors at New York University and the University of Buffalo.

The antifa group Decolonize This Place launched a social media campaign encouraging disruptive demonstrations in the New York City transit system on Jan. 31 as a reaction to the swearing in of 500 new subway cops who were sworn into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) earlier in the month.

The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours. How will you and your crew build and f--k shit up for #FTP3 on #J31 (THIS FRIDAY)? Issa mothaf--kin' movement, @decolonize_this tweeted on Jan. 28.

At the urging of Decolonize This Place, the protesters vandalized subway turnstiles and bus windows, causing more than $100,000 in damage to city property, according to the New York Post.

Campus Reform recently reported that Decolonize This Place, the group behind the violent protests, was founded in 2016 by New York University (NYU) Professor Amin Husain and University of Buffalo Professor Nitasha Dhillon.

NYUs website said that Husain teaches a class on militant activism at the university, the New York Post reported.

Husain and Dhillon were both actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In 2012, Husain spoke at an Al-Quds Day celebration in New York City and said he was from Palestine and had fought to free Gaza.

He talked about throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers and said that hed moved to the United States for an American Dream that didnt exist.

Husain talked about the same sort of violent uprisings in 2016 at a Pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, the New York Post reported.

The Decolonize This Place website features revolutionary manuals and a diagram that explains how to How to Shut Down the City.

The guides discuss how to overpower an opponent and have thought bubbles with the words nails, glass bottles, and masks, the New York Post reported.

"For us, decolonization necessitates abolition, the Decolonize This Place website explained. But what does abolition demand? Not only does it demand the abolition of prisons and police, bosses and borders, but as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write, its the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.

Husain led a protest in 2018 and 2019 that forced the resignation of a board member of the Whitney Museum of American Art after it was revealed that a company he owned manufactured the tear gas being used at the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Post reported.

The NYU professor uses movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Direct Action Front for Palestine as case studies for the course he teaches at NYU.

NYU appeared not to want a close association with Husain, the New York Post reported.

Our records reflect that he is one of the thousands of part-time faculty that are hired each year by schools and academic departments, NYU Spokesman John Beckman said when asked about the militant instructor.

Husains contact information was removed from the NYU website shortly after the New York Post contacted the university for comment.

The New York Post also reported that Husain had recently scrubbed his Twitter account and removed any references to his role in the incident on Jan. 31.

Excerpt from:

NYU Professor Involved With Anti-Police Protests That Caused $100K In Damage - Blue Lives Matter

Donald Trump addresses supporters at a rally in central Pennsylvania in May 2019. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

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The Democratic nomination contest is at a pivotal point, especially for the left. Progressive issues are ascendant, moderate candidates are vote-splitting, Bernie Sanders tops the polls, and Elizabeth Warren just had a very strong debate performance in Nevada. And yet despite the tantalizing proximity of progressive victory, there remains a glaring hole at the heart of the lefts strategy: the failure to prioritize the fight against white nationalism and racial resentmentthe sources of this presidents power, and the cornerstones of capitalisms structural inequality.Ad Policy

If the structural change that Warren espouses and the political revolution that Sanders champions dont explicitly address the racial realities that lie at the heart of this country, then their movements could fail to inspire the kind of transformation the candidates say they want. My research has found thatnearly half of Democratic voters are people of color, and a dramatic drop-off in African American turnout in 2016 was a principal factor in Hillary Clintons defeat. Conveying the urgency of the fight against white supremacy could be critical to propelling the kind of turnout that will help Democrats win in November.

Donald Trump is obviously unlike any president we have seen in a long time. Trump, who famously said he could shoot somebody on New Yorks Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, seems to defy the laws of political gravity. But many fail to appreciate what has kept him afloat.

White identity politics are at the foundation of the United Statesenshrined in slavery starting in 1619 and codified at the nations conception, with the passage of the 1790 Naturalization Act restricting citizenship to free white persons. Typically, political appeals to white racial resentment have come in more implicit and coded dog whistles, such as Ronald Reagans demonization of black welfare queens. It has been a long time since someone with Trumps stature openly and unapologetically embraced the racist right wing; many might have assumed it would be political suicide to brand Mexican immigrants rapists, enact bans on Muslim immigration, or whip up a xenophobic mob chanting, Build the wall! Trumps speech and policies have unleashed deep wells of racial resentment, and myriad academic studiesmost of them ignored by Democratic consultants and leadershave shown that this is a motivating factor for many of his supporters. (I have started a list of these studies here.) The engine driving the Trump machine is white supremacy.Related Article

Despite this, the most progressive candidates in this race have spent far more time critiquing other, more moderate candidates and supposedly race-neutral aspects of Trumps time in office, such as his tax cuts for the rich, than they have fighting white nationalism. (Ironically, moderate Joe Biden may be the only one who has directly refuted Trump on this point: One of his early campaign ads challenged the presidents 2017 defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.) Warren and Sanders are correct to decry the rise of corporate interests within the Democratic Party. Its admirable to fight for a higher minimum wage, universal health care, and aggressive action to save the planet from climate catastrophe. But in doing so, both progressive voting groups and candidates like Warren and Sanders are missing the strategic and moral imperative of reframing this election.

With upcoming primaries in the more diverse states of the South and Southwest, candidates are starting to bump up issues pertaining to voters of color. Yet none of the remaining candidates have made Trumps drive to make America white again a centerpiece of their campaign. This would go beyond talking about issues that resonate with communities of color. It would require ably and enthusiastically countering Trumps vision of a white America with what it really is: a proudly multiracial country. When progressive candidates fail to call out Trumps appeals to white racial resentmentor to match the force with which he makes themtheyre allowing him to reap the benefits, without paying the price.

The default playbook for too many Democrats is to talk around white supremacy, usually for fear of turning off white voters. But there is compelling evidence that the best way to blunt racist dog-whistling is to call it out. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans use of coded racial messages, and their impact on voters, lost power when the implicit was made explicit. In studying voluminous survey data on the 1988 presidential elections when George H. W. Bush used ads about Willie Hortonan African American who committed a crime after being released from prisonMendelberg noted that Democrats feared that if they [spoke] explicitly about race they [would] lose crucial white votes. But her research found the opposite to be true: when campaign discourse is clearly about racewhen it is explicitly racialit has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion. Even Trump usually prefers to talk about a border wall than about the pro-white immigration agenda advanced by Stephen Miller, one the White Houses most enthusiastic white supremacists.Current Issue

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The through line between this Novembers election and the long-term goal of transforming this unequal nation should be an agenda that speaks to the pain so many Americans feel: the pain rooted in the racial wealth gap. The average white family now has more than 10 times the wealth of the average black family, and 7.5 times that of the average Latino family. That is a direct consequence of centuries of public policies that have sanctioned white wealth creation by seizing land from indigenous people, importing Africans to do backbreaking unpaid labor, and exploiting Mexican and Central American farm workerstopped off by government-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing and hiring.

Although its not widely discussed, Republicans are, in fact, experiencing some blowback from Trumps actionsespecially from white-collar suburban voters who gave Trump a chance in 2016 but defected to the Democrats in 2018, contributing to the Democratic takeover of the House and seven previously Republican-held governors offices. Groups and leaders on the left have an opportunity, and an obligation, to push their preferred candidates to lead on the fight over Americas racial identity. Warrens and Sanderss speeches are replete with references to Wall Street, big corporations, and corruption in Washington, DC. Although both have been critical of Trumps deportation policies and ICE, they have not distinguished themselves in a field of candidates who tiptoe around the issue of immigrationeven though children are still in cages at our nations borderand dance away from reparations, ignoring the gargantuan racial wealth gap that cleaves the fabric of our society. None of the candidates onstage in Las Vegas on Wednesday even mentioned immigration until late in the evening. It was clearly not top of mind, even in a state as Latino as Nevada.

It is still not too late for these candidates to course-correct. There are at least three concrete steps that progressives could take to make a meaningful difference:

Forge a united front to demand that the Democratic nominee choose a person of color as their vice presidential pick. For all the appeal of hoping Sanders and Warren would team up, an all-white ticket is not what will inspire and mobilize the most racially diverse electorate in the history of this country. None of the current candidates have been willing to make this commitment, and a chorus of voices from the left on this issue could push them do so.

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Create a common war room to drive the narrative about this administration and its enablers white-supremacist priorities. Progressive and left groups could each dedicate staffers to this joint effort, which could provide tools, information, and coordination for activists. This could lead to creative, attention-getting actions in cities across the country, exposing both the presidential reelection campaign and key Senate elections as the referendums on whiteness that they are.

Launch a joint petition to demand a Democratic campaign budget and plan that reflect the actual demographics of the voters they need to reach. The default focus of much Democratic spending remains on running television or digital ads targeting white swing voters. The organizations and committees in the Democratic ecosystem typically spend significantly more than $1 billion in a presidential election year; a coalition of progressive groups could demand that half of those funds go toward organizing and turning out the vote in communities of color.

The black Marxist author Manning Marable wrote in 1985 that at the heart of the American experience is a series of crimes: the violent theft of the land itself, the violent theft of millions of people from Africa and their subsequent bondage as chattel, the bloody conquest of the Southwest from Mexico, and the government-sponsored war on Native Americans. That series of crimes has created the conditions which the left is now working to transform. But during this campaign, they have done it wearing racial blinders. That could lead them to failure. The resurgent progressive movement could both win this electionand lay the foundations for a better societyby tackling the existential threat that white supremacy poses to this countrys social contract and democratic institutions. It is not too late, but the clock is ticking.

The rest is here:

If Progressives Want to Win, They'll Have to Talk About White Supremacy - The Nation

Tuesday, 18 February 2020, 9:25 amOpinion: Dr Nayvin Gordon

Class domination has not alwaysexisted in human society, but once established, socialhierarchy has deeply penetrated and permeated culture tocreate both implicit and explicit biases for social status,for hierarchy. Returning to an egalitarian society requiresboth systemic-institutional change and change in ourconscious and unconscious minds.

As long as classsociety has existed, it has been a social dominancehierarchy. Hierarchy is a social construct, used to justifydomination and exploitation. Myths have always been used tojustify the rule of the few over the many. Kings and Lordsmaintained that God gave them the authority to rule overpeasants. Slave-owners declared that non Christians could beenslaved. Today capitalists say that they are smarter andworked harder and thus have the right to privately ownproduction and pay workers wages. They made themselvesrulers, and then they sought to divide those whom theyruled.

The brutal economic system of slavery inAmerica required social control to prevent the unity ofblack and white labor. The slave-owners created the lies andlaws of racism. Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist,wrote: The hostility between the Whites and the Blacks ofthe South is easily explained. It has its root and sap inthe relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides bythe cunning of the slave masters. Those masters securedtheir ascendancy over both the poor White and the Blacks byputting enmity between them. They divided both to conquereach. The demonizing myths of racism created aculture of race hierarchy in the general population. Whenindustrial capitalism began to expand it used the racistideology to divide black and white to exploit and profitfrom the wage worker.

Today we live in a capitalisteconomy where the 1% owns controlling interest incorporations, industry, finance and land, while the 99% areexploited. A few thousand years of social hierarchy hascreated a cultural environment where it is largely acceptedas natural. It is in the air, consciously andunconsciously embedded in our culture. We generally acceptthe oppressive system of social dominance. Children as youngas six are implicitly (unconsciously) awareof status.

Social status is widely acceptedimplicitly even among those whohold egalitarian world views. Studies have shownthat status is more important thanmoney.

Significantly, social status isstrongly linked to fear in our brains emotional center.The 1% use their power to deflect and divide the 99% bypromoting stereotypes and mass propaganda to dehumanizecertain groups which impact the limbic system, theprimitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear andhate When status is threatened the emotion offear is generated leading to hatred and violence.History reveals that when the 99% begin to organize forprogressive social change that could create more socialequality, the ruling class feels threatened.Confrontation is inevitablesince it is invariablyinitiated by the forces of reaction whosee their power threatened. A famous economist oncewrote: the most violent, mean and malignant passionsof the human breast, the Furiesof private interest.

The top down dominance ofcorporate capitalism continue to divide and subdivide the99% into those who are considered worthy and those who areless worthy --race, nation, religion, sex, immigrant, tribeand more, ad infinitum. The power systems of dominancehierarchy are built into the major institutions andorganizations of society- corporations, the state, thepolice and the military for example. It is not a few badapples, but the rotten barrel of the barrelmakers .

There are those who maintain that itis in human nature to dominate and exploitthey sayit has always been so. Nothing could be further fromthe truth. Anthropologists have repeatedlydemonstrated that humans have lived for thousands of yearsin egalitarian societies. In fact many have practicedreverse hierarchythose who sought to dominate asdespots were punished,banished or killed.

Social hierarchy is acreated oppressive social construct as isracism. It can be abolished. Socialdominance hierarchy and the fear of losing status are notinevitable. We have the potential to unite the worlds 99%and create a society of equals. It is crucial that thoseseeking to transform the political and economic systemacknowledge not only must they build a movement foreconomic, social and political equality but also struggle toovercome their own implicit hierarchical biases. If not,social hierarchy will be carried into the futurewhere leaders will become rulers whoundermine and corrupt the egalitarian world view. Historyhas clearly shown that only eternal vigilance of the rankand file mobilized against social hierarchy has thepotential to win and maintain the solidarity of anegalitarian society. We must change ourselveswhile also seeking to changesociety.

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Class Domination, Social Hierarchy And The Fight For Equality - Scoop.co.nz

The competition for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a focus of political life in the United States. For revolutionaries debating how to view this campaign, we must answer the following questions: What is the class character of the Sanders movement? What is the potential impact of the Sanders movement on the worldwide interests of the working class and the oppressed? How can this development lead to a broader revolutionary upsurge in the heart of the U.S. empire? From there we must chart a plan of action.

Character and context of Sanders movement

The rejuvenation of social democracy and liberal reformism, most notably in the rise of the left in the Democratic Party, comes as a response to the decline of the U.S. empire and the inability of the U.S. capitalist economy to provide decent, well-paying jobs to a majority of the working class.

On one hand, the Peoples Republic of China has risen as a clear economic and geopolitical challenge to U.S. imperialist world domination. On the other, the U.S. remains plagued by endless imperialist war, mass incarceration, low wages, enormous debt, underemployment, sexual and gender-based violence, and outbursts of racist, fascist terror. A major financial collapse looms, threatening to finally reveal the weaknesses of the real economy and then unleash a deeper ruling-class assault on workers quality of life.

In struggle against neoliberal economic terrorism by U.S. banks and corporations and their client states, our class has taken to the streets across the world. Tens of millions have fought against austerity and the capitalist ruling class in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, France, Colombia and elsewhere; hundreds of millions if India is included. The desperate attempts of the U.S. empire to maintain its stranglehold on the world economy have caused anti-imperialist reactions in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and Palestine.

The unifying issue of this global struggle is the declining prospects for working-class youth who live in capitalist societies. A multinational youth movement has identified neoliberal capitalism as its primary enemy. In some ways, the second presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gets its popular energy from and provides a voice for part of the U.S. wing of this working-class youth movement.

The viability of any reformist movement like the Sanders campaign, in the face of a weakening global capitalist system, can be debated. Can social democracy and progressive reformism be revived? Insecure about maintaining its profits in a capitalist economy that is declining relative to other world powers, the U.S. ruling class has increased its exploitation of the working class, taking an ever larger proportion of the wealth the workers produce.

Without the material basis provided by the expansion of U.S. imperialism and its reaping of superprofits, any rebirth of social democracy would find it difficult to deliver meaningful benefits to the workers, even should it win an election. What is needed instead is a movement that seeks nothing short of the end of capitalism.

Ruling class attacks Sanders

Earlier this month, Sanders said: In many respects, we are a socialist society today. Donald Trump, before he was president, as a private businessperson, he received $800 million in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing in New York. The difference between my socialism and Trumps socialism is I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires. (Axios, Feb. 9)

As communists, we are well aware that Sanders holds political positions we cant support: his lack of solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, his lack of support for reparations for slavery along with Black Lives Matter, his vitriolic attack on pro-socialist leaders like Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro in Venezuela, his support for laws criminalizing sex workers and much more.

Sanders program is more like Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty in the mid-1960s or Franklin Roosevelts New Deal in the 1930s. Sanders social democracy is only seen as a radical socialist project because the U.S. ruling class has imposed such right-wing, pro-capitalist ideology and programs on the population.

The U.S. ruling class may own finance capital, oil, pharmaceutical giants and the health profit industry, be landlords or real estate investors, own big data, agriculture and/or other sectors. Their slightly different specific interests are reflected by the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Most big capitalists, however, are overjoyed with Trumps transfer of wealth to their pockets. Others may see Trump as a loose cannon and consider Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg or another politician as more competent to protect and expand their interests. Yet they all unite against Sanders, not just because of the potential impact on their profits, but because they fear a greater social movement could develop that will call into question the elites plunder and profit.

Thus, we can expect anti-communist attacks against Sanders to continue to escalate if his campaign continues to gain steam. This red-baiting must be met with an active campaign to popularize real socialism, one that goes beyond Sanders deflective statement (in the Axios quote) about how socialism already exists for the rich.

Our movement must unequivocally defend the necessity of socialism and the obvious, documented superiority of workers ownership of the means of production, paired with planning that prioritizes human needs and the life of the Earth over profits.

Internationalism is a necessity, not an inconvenience

Along with the red-baiting, the attacks on Sanders from pro-Israeli forces similar to the outrageous attacks on former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by the British media will continue. This is even though Sanders limits his statements on Palestine to support for basic human rights.

Sanders himself is Jewish. Yet this will not stop the attacks on him for alleged anti-Semitism simply because he doesnt give full backing to Israels murderous campaign to annihilate the Palestinian people. These attacks must be met by a strong, anti-racist movement in defense of the Palestinian peoples right to exist, from the river to the sea.

Sanders claims to be against U.S. wars in Iraq and beyond, yet his voting record doesnt reflect that. Sanders support for U.S. imperialism must be fought by those who wish to see his domestic program be successful. The domestic and foreign policies of the empire are directly connected. Both policies are about the balance of power between the oppressed and the oppressor.

While liberal politicians may fear taking anti-war positions, socialists must expose the foreign policy of the empire as directed by the needs of capitalism. Ruthless sanctions and murder must be contested in the name of international solidarity and the survival of the more than 7.5 billion people in the world threatened by the most violent ruling elite ever, based in Wall Street and Washington.

Our struggle, that of the working class in the U.S., is primarily against the U.S. billionaires, not against other countries. The strategy of revolutionary defeatism to defeat our own ruling class as expressed by V.I. Lenin during World War I, should be elementary for revolutionaries and must be learned by a resurgent left that, for too long, has been infected by bourgeois pro-war propaganda.

We must also learn how to resist the imperialist attacks on China, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and beyond. Working-class internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed are central to our long-term goal of socialist revolution.

Allies of the U.S. working class abroad may view the election of Sanders as a victory against the empire. A Sanders victory could open serious struggles over the need to dismantle the U.S. empire in order to save the planet, to rebuild the global economy and to pay reparations to those dispossessed by the U.S.

To the extent, however, that Sanders gives public support for closed borders, sanctions, U.S. air strikes and other measures, this would alienate his popular base a base he would have to rely upon to beat back the inevitable attacks from the right. This contradiction could give rise to a greater level of struggle.

Elections: A barometer or an organizing tool?

As revolutionaries, we know that socialist transformation is necessary for humanity and to sustain life on Earth, and we know this transformation cannot come about by using the masters tools described in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, we view capitalist elections as a limited survey of the attitudes of the multinational working class and the other classes in U.S. society. Every four years, about 55 percent of the voting-age population with a greater proportion of voters from the less oppressed and older sectors of the working class choose a president from either of the two major parties, both of which are owned and operated by the capitalists.

Sanders campaign has attempted to use the Democratic Party to raise issues in the interests of the working class. Many Democratic Socialists of America members view the Sanders campaign, and electoral politics more generally, as the primary channel to engage and radicalize the working class. This is unlike the period from the 1930s to the 1970s when the left looked toward the labor movement or other social movements as the centers of politicization and class identity development.

The argument of DSA and other left groups that have worked alongside the Sanders campaign is that the campaign a shortcut to building mass consciousness. Many young activists have hit the streets in the name of the Sanders campaign to promote classwide solidarity against the billionaire ruling class and to try to win supporters to their socialist organization.

Ruling-class ideology insists that the primary arena of politics is bourgeois elections, particularly national elections for president. Thus, when the left plans a political strategy, the question of whether to run in elections is a question of what is the most effective type of mass organizing that can build revolutionary socialist consciousness.

The Sanders campaign has prioritized the central tenet of the Occupy movement from the last decade: the struggle of the 99% versus the 1%. Sanders has put forth stronger positions on racial justice, migrant rights and many other policies that reflect the hard work of organizers in peoples movements.

Sanders 2016 primary campaign took on the right-wing establishment Democratic Party and had a major impact in winning thousands of new people to socialist organizations. The DSA and others have joined this years campaign with the goal of recruiting new members and pushing the campaign to the left, riding the wave and seeing where they will end up.

What happens when or if the DNC steals the nomination from Sanders? Will organizations to the left of the Democratic Party still insist on voting Blue no matter who? Will there be a political fracture in which the Sanders movement, even despite the refusal of Sanders himself, decides to make a dirty break from the Democratic Party and form a new socialist electoral third party?

What if Sanders were to get the nomination and then win the election against Trump? Who will defend him from the wrath of the capitalists and a stock market that could be in free fall? Will a mass movement emerge and move in a more radical direction, emboldened by the results?

Will the mirage of capitalist democracy be revealed as a fraud? Will that demoralize the masses or radicalize them?

While the fate of the Sanders movement is yet to unfold, the most pressing question for revolutionary socialists may be: What is the most effective way to agitate, educate and organize this Sanders movement into an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement?

Which road to socialism?

Workers World Party believes that the goal of revolutionary parties when entering capitalist electoral politics should be to advance a revolutionary program in order to shatter illusions of capitalist democracy and win broad working-class support. The Democratic Party in the past has been the graveyard of social movements. Still, bourgeois political campaigns can reflect and show the significance of peoples movements.

The question of critical support for or independence from the Sanders movement is one we plan to answer through action. We will attend Sanders campaign rallies in order to meet this movement and push for revolutionary socialism. We will be in the streets with this movement, raising demands that speak to young people looking for revolutionary change. We look at this development with revolutionary optimism and we will study it closely.

WWP is still considering how to intervene in the 2020 presidential campaign. We will definitely run a major ideological campaign, entitled Which road to socialism? With this effort, we will put forth our revolutionary socialist perspective in a wide variety of ways. We will organize regular discussion groups in our branches across the country to engage these questions, all the while reaching out to the Sanders movement and those to its left to discuss the contradictions of social democracy and attempt to win people to fight for revolutionary socialism.

We will challenge the weaknesses of Sanders movement and push it in a revolutionary direction, not by being sectarian or opportunist, but by waging an honest ideological and mass struggle that speaks to the needs of the working class and the oppressed to go further.

Even moderate social reforms can take place only under the pressure of mass movements in the streets and in our workplaces. Real revolutionary socialism, including the seizure and liberation of private property in the means of production, cannot occur by amending the U.S. Constitution. It must be the result of a worldwide mass movement that uses various tactics and strategies to defeat capitalist rule.

With this in mind, we will launch a series of mobilizations to fight the racist, anti-worker policies of the Trump administration. That the Democratic Party has enabled these policies for example, the U.S. sanctions that have terrorized hundreds of millions of people on the planet will expose the imperialist character of both parties.

Currently we are working with hundreds of organizations to launch an international campaign against U.S. sanctions, entitled Sanctions Kill. Campaigns like this allow us to connect with those directly impacted by U.S. sanctions passed by Democrats and Republicans. We will mobilize on May Day to unite the movements against capitalism, imperialism, racism and all the crimes of this system with a show of solidarity on this socialist-inspired, international day of struggle.

We will continue to mobilize against U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations, as part of our devotion to our worldwide class. We will continue to organize for the most oppressed of our class for incarcerated workers, for political prisoners, for low-wage workers, for people with disabilities, for the homeless, for those oppressed because of gender or gender expression or national origin, and for migrants and refugees all with the goal of building a broadly popular communist party steeled in combat and the day-to-day struggles of our class.

Finally, we will use this election to push for real democracy. While this election may be seen as a referendum on Trumps social and economic policies, we will push to make this election a referendum on the crimes of capitalism. Imagine, a peoples referendum in which we vote with our feet, by withholding our labor and by fighting for a real future, a socialist society.

See more here:

A revolutionary view of the Sanders campaign - Workers World

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) Democratic presidentialcandidate Tom Steyer spoke one-on-one with News 2s Brad Franko to discuss hiscampaign and performance in the Palmetto State.

Recent polls from Real Clear Politics shows Steyer is now among the top three democratic candidates for president in South Carolina.

But is South Carolina the end-all-be-all for his campaign? Steyer says diversity is key and feels his campaign is appealing to everybody across the spectrum.

Nevada and South Carolina are the first two states that arediverse, he said. There are a lot of black people and there are a lot of Latinos,a lot of Asian Americans, Native Americans as well as white people. I know thatanybody, who wants to put together a coalition of democrats needs to appeal to everybodyacross the spectrum and if anybody wants to beat Donald Trump in November of2020, then they have got to be able to relate to those people and have everyoneshow up to the polls in November.

Steyer admitted that South Carolina has special importance. Itabsolutely does, and Ive said that for a long time.

Running for president is a cutthroat process. Recently in South Carolina, a newspaper talked about Steyers financial investment in the state and a former party chairman said what he is doing isnt investing but paying people off.

What were doing in South Carolina, we have the most peopleon the ground of anybody in South Carolina. If you call hiring people andpaying them for doing work, paying people off I think thats what they callthe American way in fact, we have a diverse group of people, take a lookwhose working for us, who is endorsing me, if youre asking people to do workfor you, to do community organizing Im a community organizer, I know thebest way to do community organizing the only really effective way is havepeople go into those communities that they are a part of and that they know.So, the idea of paying people off; people are doing work and so they getpaid. Thats entirely appropriate andthats the way community organizing works.

He went on to say, My wife moved to South Carolina for goodness sakes. My being on the ground more than any other candidate, our having a bigger group of people working on the ground than anyone else, the fact that Im the only candidate that will say he or she is for reparations for slavery, the fact that Im talking honestly about race, willing to take on Mr. Trump on the economy, saying I think his economic policies stink for working people and I can show it. Im talking about a completely different kind of economy with a much higher minimum wage; a tax cut of 10% for everybody who makes less than $250K and the creation of over four and a half million good-paying union jobs across the county to rebuild it in a climate-smart way I think what Im doing in South Carolina is resonating because in fact people can get a chance to see me, see who I am, see who my family is, they can listen to me and know that what I am talking about is a real-world and its much better than this kind of Mar-a-Lago economy that Mr. Trump has been promoting.

The South Carolina Democratic Primary will be held on Saturday,February 29th.

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Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer speaks one-on-one with News 2 - WCBD News 2

Like you do, perhaps. Our societies means Anglo ones: America, Britain, Australia perhaps. You can judge for yourself if your society is on the list. What underlies all this? How did we get here? To things like today: a fresh-faced new government advisor supports eugenics, because he thinks minorities are genetically inferiorall of which, of course, isa literal form of genocide as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He was hired.by the wayfor hisblog comments. What the? What on earth?Genocide stalking the halls of powerby way of the comments section?

Such stuff isnt just horrific. Its surreal and absurd.It makes the jaw drop like a stone and the head spin in whiplash. Its now just as if we now live in a dystopia written by pedophiles, wannabe basement-dwelling fascists, militant authoritarians, men who put kids in camps, silent majorities who shrug at it all, elites who wonder what the problem is, billionaires who profit in glee at all the above, and other assorted forms of human failurewe do. But I digress.

When I look at our societies, I see three obvious patterns. They tell me our societies arent going to make it. Not just because, well, those patterns are therebut also because as societies we dont seem capable of understanding or acknowledging theyre therewe wont own up, confront, recognize, admit them. All that put together is the stuff of something very much like an inevitable social collapse. How do you treat a patient who wont admit how sick he really is? My patterns link the hard stuff to the soft stuff economics, politics, society, to values, priorities, what we genuinely consider worthy. They are subtle things. Theyre aboutwhywe make and go on making the astonishingly foolish choices we do.

The first thing I see when I look at our societies is a pattern of staggering economic mismanagement.How is it that we had endless money for wars, for aggression, for intelligence agencies to launch covert plots to install dictators (Im not making that up), for rage, for violence? For bank bailout? But none to bail outthe working class, the middle class, the average family? How is it that hedge funds get endless free money from the government, every single nanosecond of every single day but literally a full half of American work low-wage jobs? What the? You see what I mean by staggering economic mismanagement.

And yet elites, as a whole, refuse to own up to this.Just today I saw Barack Obama tweeting how successful his economic policies were. Sorry, reality says the opposite: 75% of Americans struggle to pay the bills, 80% cant raise a tiny amount for an emergency, incomes have stagnated for decades. Hardly the stuff of an economic miracle. But when Barack says it, you probably believe it. I get it. Hes a nice guy. His heart is in the right place. But thats not enough to create a working society, much less economy. Every pattern Ill speak about is a hidden one we refuse, as a society, to own up to it. And so what can we do about it?

Underlying that pattern of staggering economic mismanagement is a set of values.We value, as a society, violence, cruelty, aggression, hostility, over and above everything else, especially their opposites: kindness, decency, gentleness. What kind of society do those values build? Can they yield anything but the dystopia we live in?

The second pattern I see when I look at our societies is a history of shocking institutional failure, built on moral degradation.Were the societies who built an international slave trade. We literally plundered a continent for its people, and made them our slaves. We then put them to work, and created the kind of society so horrific that escapees were hunted down by informers and police. Can you imagine? Or have you blocked it all out?

(Go ahead and tell me what moral atrocity ranks up there with building a centuries long slave trade that engulfed the planet. But morality isnt, as we think, a thing of no consequences, a thing to have on a Sunday, and then forget about on Monday. That is our big mistake, perhaps our biggest.)

That history of horror shapes us to this very day: it deprived us of ever being able to build the institutions of a functioning modern democracy.Why are we literally the only societies in the rich world without working healthcare, education, retirement, and so on? Why do what of those we have degrade by the day? Because the residue of slavery haunts us: too many (white) people think: I wont invest in them! Theyre dirty, filthy subhumans! Why, their grandparents were my grandparents slaves! Maybe they dont say it. But they certainly think it. Its hardly a coincidence the societies which pioneered the global slave trade and then segregation are today the ones without decent public goods, which require a whole society to cooperate, and accept one another as equals. Its a relationship. Slavery and segregation were to mean that America would never develop any functioning modern social systems, really.

And yet that thread of institutional failure, too, we refuse to accept and own up to.When have you seen the obvious link above discussed seriously that a) public healthcare, retirement, college, childcare etc are what make a society civilized, and b) our barbarisms long hangover is what prevented us ever becoming a civilized society? I havent ever, really. Maybe its hinted at, or intimated. Maybe we go so far as condemning our brutal and sordid past. But we dont really own up to the social consequences of our history of horrific immorality: that such immorality had profound real-world effects. It left us institutionally stunted, underdeveloped, broken, unable to treat each other like human beings.But societies who cant build institutions to treat each other like human beings can scarcely ever progress beyond exploitation, abuse, authoritarianism, tribalism, and hate. Wait isnt that exactly where were trapped?

The third pattern I see is a kind of shattering mismanagement of social norms and expectations. Who else in the world denies their neighbors things like healthcare, education, and retirement? Nobody especially nobody in societies that have the means. Yet we do. Why is that? Why are we so indifferent to each other? So cruel, so aggressive, so hostile?

Probably because we are too busy teaching our kids, and each other, that the only point in life is something like this: to be more competitive than the next person, so you can accumulate more stuff than them, so you can make them envious, so you can feel supreme. The point of life isnt to care for your neighbour, to do great and beautiful things, to write a world-changing book or make a life-changing discovery its to make more money. Why? Because thats how you show you are strong. And weakness is death. Because only the strong deserve to survive, after all.Capitalism and patriarchy and supremacy intertwine to make the survival of the fittest our deepest and only true moral law.

Thats what I mean by a kind of shattering mismanagement of social norms and expectations. Weve internalized that value, most of us: that the weak deserve to perish, and the strong survive. We might not think we have, and we might not say we do, but our actions belie us. We grin at our reality shows and long for our perfect pecs and boobs and sigh wistfully over this billionaire or that celebrity. My God! Arent they a perfect person? Well happily spend a small fortune on the plastic stuff of self-aggrandization. But invest in healthcare or retirement for all? LOL.

So we go on dehumanizing ourselves, and everyone around us, as a necessary consequence. We buy into the systems of our own undoing. Sorry, you arent good enough, pretty enough, tough enough, mean enough, selfish enough. Youre just not competitive enough to make it, son. We dont value things like gentleness and humanity and decency not really. Theyre a sure way to get fired or demeaned or picked on or bullied, if you dare to show them, really. The storys the same, from grade school to working life.

Weve become societies of bullies, in other words. But societies of bullies are also societies of cowards.And that cowardice is easy to see. Were happy to call out celebrities for using the wrong pronoun. But calling men who puts kids in cages fasciststhats over the line. Were happy to spend hours a day on Facebookwhich makes us feel miserable and unhappyand who do we take our fury out on? Each other and ourselves, mostly. We dont stick up for people much. We dont put ourselves on the line. Why bother, when the stakes or life or death? Ah, but that is the precise moment we accept that rule of the strong over the weak, too. Cowards and bullies, united in predation.

Were the worlds great materialists, and materialist individualism of this kind has been our downfall.It has led us, through greed and selfishness, to settle for the moral law that the strong should survive, and the weak perish. What other destination can materialist individualism yield? When enough of us say: the only that counts in life is my happiness, and my happiness is a function of how much stuff I havethen by definition, our society cant be a place that has things like healthcare, retirement, education. We cant really have a democracy, in which equality, freedom, and justice are valued. We cant have a society in which things like inherent self-worth exist and are given by all to all.Societies of bullies and cowards, competing to accumulate more things they cant afford in the first place, like the ones weve become, are doomed to exploit and abuse and prey on each other all the way down the abyss. And that is where we are self-evidently heading, fast.

Let me sum up my thre patterns.We mismanaged our economies, because we valued violence and aggression and cruelty over simply, gently, wisely, investing in each other. We mismanaged our institutions and moral possibilities because we valued comfortable denial and numbing complicity and dim-witted pleasure over growth, forgiveness, self-understanding, the struggle of becoming something truer and better, the test of maturity. We mismanaged our societies because we chose individualism and competitiveness and greed over cooperation and fellowship and generosity. Those choices have now caught up with us. How are we to unmake them?

Those patterns outlive any one leader.Or party. Or institution. They are so, so deep in us its hard to see what could excise or extricate them. They are inoperable tumours of the soul, not just little flaws in the mind. They arent simple or easy or straightforward to understand much less transcend. Is there a blade sharp enough to cut them out of us?

That is why I dont think our societies have much of a future, my friends.Societies dont often rise to the challenge of reinventing their foundational values, their defining sets of priorities. Rome was brought down by its callousness and hunger for empire in the end. Soviet Russia, by its craving for power and control.

What about us?I dont think that we are going to transcend what by now are so visibly our foundational values: hostility, aggression, cruelty, violence, selfishness, greed, individualism, materialism, pleasure-seeking over truth-telling. They seem to be the only things we really, genuinely care about as societies, cultures, people. Give enough of us enough of those and there is no level of degradation and despair we wont settle for. And so I think the real story of our collapse is that those old, old values are toppling us, eroding our foundations, while corroding our pinnacles. And we are becoming dust in historys wind. Perhaps, in the end, that is all we deserved.

(Umair Haque writes for Eudaimonia and Co where this perspective was first posted.)

-cw

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This is What a Society Without a Future Looks Like - City Watch

Fears have been raised over what the Governments plans to introduce a points-based immigration system would mean for Merseyside.

Radical plans introduced by Boris Johnsons government on Wednesday would mean blocking immigrants set to earn under 25,600 a year from entering the country - with that group considered low skilled.

As well as earning that amount, immigrants will also need a job offer - and to speak English to a certain level in order to get a work visa.

Now, industry experts on Merseyside have said the new cap, to be introduced from January 1, could mean not only spiralling numbers of unfilled vacancies in already struggling sectors such as care - but also opening the door for employers to operate under the radar.

That's despite the government saying there would be some exceptions for people earning close to the 25,600 figure and applying to shortage areas such as the NHS.

Employment and business experts at Liverpool John Moores University have said the points-based system will present a double jeopardy for the city.

Dr Patricia Harrison told the ECHO: Stopping low paid immigration to Merseyside could simply exacerbate the already dire situation of unfilled vacancies in sectors like distribution, care, agriculture and manual tasks like labouring and car washing.

According to recent ONS figures, the Liverpool City Region has approximately 30% of workers in jobs paying less than 25,000 per year.

Our research shows that many of these job are low paid and insecure. Depriving local economies, like Merseyside, of capable and willing immigrant labour is not going to produce more money for wages.

When announced, the plans prompted an outpouring of fury from businesses and council who warn sectors like social care face "disaster".

The Home Office, who said there will be some exceptions for people who earn 20,480 to 25,600, told businesses they should simply end their "reliance on cheap, low-skilled labour".

Tom is Business Editor for the ECHO, Business Live and the Liverpool City Region Business Post

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Dr Harrison said that Liverpool, like the rest of the UK, has significant skill shortages in care workers.

She added: Whilst special provision for 10,000 seasonal workers to take low paid harvesting jobs is proposed, there is no such provision for other occupations, and we could be facing a black-hole in care provision against a backdrop of an ageing population.

As Wirrals director of childrens services Paul Boyce recently warned that in order to attract social care workers, local authorities were having to outpay each other on salaries. As if they had the money.

Dr Harrison and colleague Helen Collins conduct research into low pay, zero hours and the gig economy.

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Ms Collins said: In all likelihood, for areas such as Liverpool, this post-Brexit immigration planning runs the risk of driving such jobs further into precarity, in turn, enabling less scrupulous employers to operate under the radar of employee protection mechanisms such as the Modern Slavery Act.

If, and its a big if, this potential boost to training is the genuine motivation behind the Governments vision then this needs to be properly financially planned between the Home Office and Number 11 before the Budget, whether it happens on March 11 or later.

A policy statement published by the Government on Wednesday said free movement would end, laws surrounding this would be repealed and a new Immigration Bill would be introduced.

That would mean a "firm and fair" system which would "attract the high-skilled workers" to create a "high wage, high skill, high productivity economy".

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Devastating impact Tories' new immigration policy will have on Merseyside - Liverpool Echo