by Kate McFarland | Aug 28, 2016 | News
The 148th annual UK Trades Union Congress will be held this year in Brighton from September 11 to 14 — and will include a vote on whether to endorse universal basic income.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is, as it were, a “union of unions”. As the TUC itself puts it, “Just as individual workers benefit by joining together in a union, so unions gain strength by acting together through the TUC. The TUC brings unions together to draw up common policies on issues that matter to people at work.”
The TUC represents a total of more than 5.8 million workers from 51 unions. Its member unions range in size from small specialists unions of a few hundred members to the UK’s largest trade union, Unite, with around 1.4 million members. The TUC states that its mission “to be a high profile organisation that campaigns successfully for trade union aims and values; assists trade unions to increase membership and effectiveness; cuts out wasteful rivalry; and promotes trade union solidarity.”
The largest member, Unite, endorsed basic income this past July. It has now introduced a motion supporting basic income for consideration at this year’s Congress.
This is the full text of the motion on which the Congress will be voting (available in the Congress’ Preliminary Agenda, pp. 49-50):
Universal Basic Income
Congress notes the growing popularity of the idea of a ‘Universal Basic Income’ with a variety of models being discussed here and around the world. Congress recognises the need for a rebuilding of a modern social security system for men and women as part of tackling poverty and inequality.
Congress believes that the TUC should argue for a progressive system that incorporates the basis of a Universal Basic Income system paid individually and that is complementary to comprehensive public services and childcare provision.
Congress believes that such a system would be easier to administer and easier for people to navigate than the current system which has been made increasingly punitive and has effectively been used to stigmatise benefit claimants. The operation of sanctions pushes people into destitution for trivial reasons.
Congress recognises that until the housing crisis is resolved there would also be a need for supplementary benefits to support people on low incomes with high housing costs and that there will always be a need for supplementary benefits for disabled people.
The transition from our current system to any new system that incorporates these principles should always leave people with lower incomes better off.
Congress believes that our social security system must work in tandem with our agenda for strong trade unions and employment rights and secure, decently and properly paid work.
Reviewed by Robert Gordon
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Toban B.
This basic income news made possible in part by Kate’s supporters on Patreon
by Kate McFarland | Aug 23, 2016 | News
The 16th “BIEN-nial” Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network was held at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea from July 7-9, 2016. (For details, see the congress website and the then-live Reddit reports.)
Videos of many sessions of the congress are now available on YouTube, including the following:
Plenary Session I: Visible Basic Income (Chair: No-Wan Kwack, University of Seoul).
- Philippe Van Parijs (Université de Louvain): “Why Is Basic Income More Relevant Today Than Ever Before?”
- Jan Otto Andersson (Åbo Akademi University): “Does Basic Income Fit the Nordic Welfare States?”
Plenary Session II: Basic Income, Socialism and Emancipation (Chair: Seung Kyung Yoo, Institute for Political and Economic Alternatives).
- Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University): “Basic Income as a Component of Liberal Socialism”
- Sarath Davala (India Network for Basic Income): “The Emancipatory Power of Basic Income: An Optimistic Note from Indian Experience”
Plenary Session III: Basic Income and Human Emancipation (Chair: Dongtaek Kim, Sogang University).
- Nam Hoon Kang (Hanshin University): “Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Universal Basic Income”
- David Casassas (Universitat de Barcelona): “Basic Income and Social Emancipation: A New Road to Socialism”
Plenary Session IV: Basic Income and Social Protection (Chair: Pablo Yanes Rizo, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe).
- Almaz Zelleke (NYU Shanghai): “Everyone a Capitalist: Basic Income and Redistribution”
- John Roberto Scott Andretta (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social): “Basic Income and Social Protection in Mexico”
Plenary Session V: Basic Income and Grassroots Feminist Movement (Chair: Barb Jacobson, UBI Europe).
- Toru Yamamori (University of Doshisha): “What Can We Learn from a Grassroots Feminist UBI Movement?: Revisiting Keynes’s Prophecy”
Plenary Session VI: Basic Income and Politics of Democracy (Chair: Hyosang Ahn, Basic Income Korean Network).
- Katja Kipping (German MP): “Das Grundeinkommen – Eine Demokratiepauschale” (“Basic Income: A Generalization of Democracy”)
Affiliates Roundtable. At the time of the congress, BIEN had 29 international affiliates; presenters from 18 affiliates participated in the roundtable.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Thanks, as always, to my supporters on Patreon
by Toru Yamamori | Jul 7, 2016 | News
The 16th Basic Income Earth Network Congress has just started on 7th July in Seoul, Korea. People from around the earth are attending.
Karl Widerquist, a co-chair of BIEN, is posting live reports on Reddit. He is encouraging everyone at the conference to contribute their perspectives to the thread as well.
The conference will run for 3 days, until 9th July.
by Kate McFarland | Jun 16, 2016 | News
The 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress was held at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, from May 12-15.
Ric Lim videotaped most (although not all) of the panel discussion and paper presentations for informational and documentation for the forthcoming documentary Mincome: Manitoba’s Great Experiment. The videographer has also uploaded these videos to vimeo for our viewing pleasure.
You can find the list of speakers and sessions, with links to the videos, here: NABIG 2016 Videos.
Image: University of Manitoba campus; Teles via Wikimedia Commons
by Guest Contributor | Jun 8, 2016 | Opinion
Karl Widerquist, co-chair
Louise Haagh, co-chair
We, the two co-chairs of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), have made the following proposal to BIEN’s 2016 General Assembly: “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them.”[*] BIEN has held Congresses once every two years since its inception in 1986. The Congress in Seoul will be BIEN’s sixteenth. In this op-ed we explain why a move to annual Congresses are so important to BIEN at this time, and we address some concerns people might have with annual Congresses.
The main reason that BIEN needs yearly Congresses is that the Basic Income movement has grown enormous. In 1986, when BIEN began, it is hard to say there was a movement. There was a small tight-knit group of researchers; most of them came to every conference. Although some activists were interested in Basic Income, public opinion was not at point to make a real activist movement viable in many countries. Today Basic Income has millions of supporters around the world with many more joining every day. The topic has entered mainstream political debate in dozens of countries, many of which had no previous history of high-level discussion of basic income.
BIEN has to keep pace with the growth of the movement. Its role is to get people involved, to exchange ideas, to give people a chance to build on each other’s ideas. It’s missing too many opportunities to do that with such infrequent Congresses.
The second most important reason to begin having yearly Congresses is that BIEN has grown. BIEN was constituted as the Basic Income European Network, and its geographic reach was limited almost entirely to Western Europe until BIEN expanded to become the Basic income Earth Network in 2004. Even then, for several more years, most of its membership and most of the people attending its Congresses were European. But with BIEN’s expanded reach, it had to have Congresses in other parts of the world. BIEN has had successful Congresses in Africa, South America, and North America, and we expect it will have a successful Congress in Asia this July, but the expansion of geographical reach of BIEN’s Congresses has meant fewer Congresses in any region. Only the world’s most privileged people can travel halfway around the globe to attend a conference. We need to have more conferences in more regions so that more people have the opportunity to attend a one now and then.
We see very little downside to this proposal. Most organizations that have conferences have them yearly. The amount of basic income literature and activism going on today ensures that there is no risk that we will run out of new ideas to discuss at the congresses.
The most likely concern that might make people hesitate to endorse annual Congresses is the fear that they might be too much work and that BIEN might outstrip its resources. Obviously, two conferences are twice the work of one conference, but two conferences are not necessarily more work for any one person. Each BIEN Congress is run by one of BIEN’s affiliate networks. They take on the responsibility of raising funds, finding facilities, inviting participants, creating schedule, and virtually everything else involved with running a conference. The BIEN Executive Committee’s role is limited to overseeing this effort to ensure consistency.
When BIEN began in 1986, it had no affiliates, and there was only one national basic income network—the Citizens Income Trust[†] in the United Kingdom—in existence in the world. Today BIEN has about two dozen affiliates on all six habitable continents. Most of them either have hosted a BIEN Congress or would like to if they got the chance. Many more networks, many of them potential affiliates, are springing up around the world. In its affiliates and members, BIEN has far more resources than ever before. Many networks would like to get more involved in the movement by bringing the BIEN Congress to their country or region.
In 2014, three excellent proposals were put forward to host the 2016 Conference—one each from Finland, the Netherlands, and (South) Korea. According to BIEN’s rules at the time, the General Assembly could only pick one. That meant that we had to turn down two others. It was little consolation to those groups to say, “although you can’t host a BIEN Congress in two years, if you reapply, maybe one of you can host it in four years and the other can host it in six years.” That is an extremely long time to wait. We had to turn away groups that were willing and able to put on great conferences.
As the co-chairs of BIEN, we have been in touch with several groups that are interested in hosting the next BIEN Congress, and some of them are interested in doing it as early as 2017. We are, therefore, confident that we can move to yearly conferences right away. If in any year we do not have an affiliate network capable of hosting a conference, we have written the proposal in a way that allows us to skip a year.
Therefore, we see very good reason to support—and very little reason to oppose—a move to annual BIEN Congresses. We ask all of BIEN’s members to join us in supporting this motion.
— notes —
[*] The full wording is, “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them. If BIEN cannot find affiliate networks to organize Congresses yearly, they will continue with Congresses once every two years.”
[†] Then called the Basic Income Research Group.
BIEN Congress
