‘Industrial action’, ‘labour militancy’ and opportunistic press reporting.

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‘Industrial action’, ‘labour militancy’ and opportunistic press reporting.

One of my friends who had just travelled to Greece for her much deserved (according to her) vacation was apparently appalled by the strike action that was carried out by the workers in Greece. She, like many of her fellow travellers, saw that industrial action of the workers as an act of dissident and got no connection or what so ever with the lives of the ordinary people. 

Here in Britain, the series of anti-austerity protests marked by important events like the March for the Alternative, on the March 26, 2011; essentially a Trade Union march, with more than half a million organised working class people and their supporters taking on the streets of London and the June 30th popularly known as the “J30” among the protesting Teachers and the public sector workers who staged a walk out,  a one day strike action against the government's politically and ideologically motivated attacks on their pension plans and retirement policies, including unilaterally raising the retirement age from 60 to 66 and replacing the final salary pension schemes with a career-average system.

The politically aligned British press and media are not ready to sympathise the industrial action of the working class people and with their specialist spin doctors/ journalists started a smear campaign against this so called “labour militancy” (often commonly used by the media). 

The much researched account of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988)”, employs the propaganda model, analyses the mass media- the news media in particular- and reveals that the multimillion corporate possessed news communication media, the press, radio and television are profit oriented businesses subject to commercial competition for advertising revenue and profit.  Manufacturing consent uses the terms “distortion” or “editorial bias” as an inherent part of the news reportage. The news that are being reported and also how they are being reported are all direct outcomes of the profit motives, commercial interests of those big media moguls’ and the level of its dependency over the involved parties in the news reportage.  There are also state-owned or more likely state oppressed media institutions that serve the role of the propagandist for the government/ state policies and also fulfil their need for public relations. 

It is often a Good News paper Reading Practice to analyse the various stakeholders involved in any particular bit of news of your concern. With this outlook if we analysed the recent industrial action and the way it has portrayed amongst the people suggest that the interest of the vast deprived majority is in direct conflict with a far tiny privileged minority. 

The increasingly pro business and neo liberal political parties along with the media which serves the purpose of the big business along with its own, cast the workers as the enemy of the people and ironically the vast majority of them are the working class itself.

The developments in the living standards in Britain and other western European countries like France and Germany have deep roots in their working class struggle. All those industrial actions like the general strikes, picketing, demonstrations and their quest for political representation have only made possible the welfare society and the social security existing in the western Europe which is put into a grave danger by their governments who conveniently penalised the ordinary people for the gamble played by the bankers upon their greed.

It is those rich businesses that lay off its work force for its operational profits, those multimillion corporations which scavenges on the increased prices of their finished products and those casino banks which fill our lives with uncertainty and instability through recessions throughout our lives, are to be feared and appalled upon and certainly not the workers who are struggling against these exploitations of the system based on greed and thrives on profit.

-Sajith Attepuram