UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Friday 2 July 2010

Tax Dodgers Alliance - masters of recycled misinformation‏

A basic war strategy is to act as a decoy or create a diversion. Such an approach is being practised today by the Tax Dodgers Alliance with its desperate and tiresome media spinning about the ‘union rich list’.

http://bit.ly/b4LOIX

Putting aside that this information is required by law to be in the public domain – in the Certification Officer’s annual report http://www.certoffice.org/annualReport/pdf/Full%20report%2008-09.pdf as well as in the union’s financial accounts presented to annual conference and be published in the union members journal each year. And disregarding the fact that (echoing ultra left critics inside the union) the right wing TPA conflates employer pension contributions with actual pay to create a ‘six figure salary’ , who stands to gain from the Tax Dodgers attacks?

The only possible answer to this question is the TPA’s millionaire corporate backers and others waging a war on public services and public service unions.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.org/

As the TUC stronger unions website notes of senior union official pay levels ‘it’s certainly not as hypocritical as a cabinet made up of millionaires saying we’re all in this together and then announcing a budget that has a disproportionately negative impact on the poor and vulnerable; or private sector Chief Executives preaching austerity for the many whilst they trouser huge bonuses and share options worth millions of pounds.’
http://www.strongerunions.org/

On the same day as the TPA anti union smear story mega levels of executive pay has been belatedly exposed in Government appointed Quangos: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/revealed-the-330-uk-fat-cats-paid-more-than-the-pm-1.1038731

But let no one forget that the obscenity of the real fat cats in the private sector boardrooms. A FT report a few months ago highlighted an IDS survey showing that Chief Executives of Britain's largest companies received  81 times the pay of their employees in 2009.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dabef092-3e7d-11df-a706-00144feabdc0.html