THE Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, to which Irish churches are affiliated, strongly criticises the market-led economy and regrets the decline in trade unions.
In its document, Unemployment and the Future of World an Enquiry for the Churches, introduced in London yesterday, the CCBI says: "When the market is left to ... sort out the problem of unemployment it results in unacceptably low wages, poor conditions and social exclusion." Society "should not encourage or applaud avarice and greed".
There are doubts about the financial practicality of introducing a basic income. Taxation to pay for it "would be prohibitively high" and it asks if the separation of income from work "is what we actually wish to see achieved".
The council is anxious to avoid a partition of society into those who always give and those who always receive. The group which prepared the report was "shocked and saddened ... by the contrasts we have seen, everywhere in Britain and Ireland, between the favoured majority on the one hand and those on the other who are left out".
It showed how the market economy and the democratic process "fail many of our fellow citizens".
It criticises all political parties saying none had "put forward a programme which offers much real hope of improvement to those in greatest need". The main motive for reform "seems to be the reduction in public spending" which "confirms the feelings of most unemployed people that the Government is not on their side".
As for the British general election, "the political parties are competing for votes by promising low taxation". With so many living in poverty "it is wrong to give priority to the claims of those who are already well off", it says.
It laments the decline in trade unions, saying "they have been under sustained attack for nearly 20 years". And it wonders if union ambitions were not "perhaps in fact too modest".
Public opinion has not been effectively mobilised to demand a remedy for the unemployment problem, the report says. This is due to a loss of social cohesion, a lacking in a sense of community such as we had during the second World War and for a generation afterwards".
The income support system encourages long-term dependency "which offends human dignity, undermines moral values and threatens to produce social instability". It had become "a way of life for millions" but a regime under which performance targets set for officials reduce numbers availing of income support was "morally indefensible".
The CCBI "strongly supports" the national insurance principle, with entitlement based on history of work, not a means test, and with everyone in the workforce included.
This would encourage the use of more labour and fewer capital resources, it believes. "It makes more sense to subsidise employment than to tax it," the CCBI concludes.
It supports the principle of a statutory minimum wage "because we find the very low rates of pay now being offered unjust and offensive to human dignity".
Finally, the CCBI says what is needed fundamentally is "a sustained and large-scale expansion of employment, supported by public spending". The main source for the finance to make this possible should be "additional taxation", which it believes can be raised "without causing serious harm to the economy or treating any tax, payers with egregious injustice".
In summary the CCBl proposes:
∙ reform of the tax system to stimulate private sector employment.
. more employment in the public sector, to be financed by higher taxes.
∙ a programme to create jobs for the long-term unemployed.
∙ a national minimum wage.
. better working conditions and fairer pay bargaining.
. reform of social welfare benefits to reduce reliance on means testing.
∙ priority in education to giving basic skills to young people.
∙ a national employment forum where all interested parties might discuss what could be done.
