RMT press release, issued today

THE DISPROPORTIONATE impact on working people of the economic recession underlines the need for the trade union movement to campaign for public ownership of public services and utilities and for a massive programme of council-house building, transport union RMT will argue at the TUC today.

In today's debate on the economy the union will urge Congress to make the economic, social and environmental case for public ownership and to highlight the inefficiency demonstrated by the huge sums being wasted by the part-privatisation of London Underground.

"It is not working people who have been stoking the debt mountain or gambling with people's homes in the sub-prime mortgage market, but the boss class expects us to pay for the results," RMT president John Leach said in Brighton today.

"Corporate greed knows no bounds, yet when the economy takes a nose-dive it is working people who are asked to exercise pay restraint and accept cuts in their living standards.

"The privatised utilities have been raking in millions and profiteering from high energy prices, and it is working people and their families who are being ripped off for natural resources that were stolen from them in the first place.

"We need to nail the nonsense that the private sector brings efficiency to services, because it doesn't - our members know that privatisation boils down to an elaborate scam designed to convert public money into private profit.

"The solution to Britain's housing crisis is staring the government in the face but rather than trigger the massive council-house building programme we need it is attempting to prop up the housing market's obscene prices.

"Public ownership will be welcomed by working people and would allow the government the strategic control it needs to end fuel poverty, harness the positive environmental potential of public transport and deliver efficient services matched to people's needs," John Leach said.