Rhetoric and reality in TUC strike vote

The leaders of the Trades Union Congress will need to match rhetoric with deeds for a change if we are to take seriously the unanimous vote yesterday for co-ordinated strike action by public sector workers over pay and spending cuts.

Unfortunately, the experience of the last few years is not a promising indicator of great things to come from the leaders of Unison, the GMB and Unite, the major unions in the sector.

Take the daylight pensions robbery carried out by the ConDem government. Despite the heroic efforts of the civil servants PCS union to sustain co-ordinated strike action, they were essentially left to fight alone. As a result, the Coalition has more or less had its way, imposing higher contributions and reducing benefits.

Or the spending cuts, which have led to thousands of redundancies at local councils together with eliminated or poorer services to the public. Where were the leaders of Unison and the GMB when this was happening? In practice, nowhere to be seen. One of the consequences is a further slump in trade union membership to under six million.

Local activists found it impossible to get sanctions for strike ballots to defend jobs and services, carried out in the main by Labour councils acting as agents for the Tory-led central government.

                             

Where the odd Labour councillor refused to back cuts budgets, they faced disciplinary action. The notorious treatment of Kingsley Abrams in Lambeth is a case in point. He was thrown out of the Labour Group for opposing the cuts, which was bad enough.

It gets worse. Recently no less a person than Len McCluskey, Unite’s general secretary openly attacked Abrams at the union’s executive council. He told Abrams to bury his differences and get himself back into the Lambeth Labour Group. Shocking but true. 

Perhaps the best opportunity the trade union movement had in the past year was to mobilise in defence of the National Health Service, which the ConDems carved up by extending the market right into its heart. Apart from some website campaigning, there was no significant action.

As for opposition to the government-imposed public sector pay freeze, it has been non-existent.

So the auguries are not good. With 80% of the cuts yet to be implemented, food prices starting to rise, energy costs on the increase and rail fares due to shoot up in January, the prospect for low-paid public sector workers is for living standards to fall even faster.

That anger, not of overpaid, well-fed bureaucrats but of the rank and file, was reflected in yesterday’s vote at the annual conference in Brighton.

Now the manoeuvring begins. Despite a plea from PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka for early action “before it’s too late” to start after the October 20 TUC march, the earliest strike action will take place will be spring 2013.

The TUC leaders are using the threat of strikes in an effort to make the ConDems “change course” and abandon the 1% pay cap set for 2013-14 and the year after. But they must surely know that’s not going to happen.

Nor will the trade union movement get the backing of Labour leader Ed Miliband, despite spending millions to get him elected over his brother. Labour backs the government’s pay policy and Miliband told a TUC dinner that strikes were not the answer.

The worst thing would be for the TUC leaders to fritter away trade unionists’ resolve with half-baked actions that are essentially protest strikes which the government then simply ignores because they are not a serious threat.

Yet the ConDems are weak, kept in office by a feeble Labour Party that is for “responsible capitalism” and something weird called “predistribution”, as well as union bureaucrats who won’t commit to all-out action.

The rank and file has to be extra vigilant in relation to union leaders this coming winter and also be prepared to organise independently in local assemblies to bring together all sections hit by unemployment, inflation and service cuts. A key aim of assemblies would  be to get rid of the Coalition and develop real  political strategies and economic alternatives to a catastrophic capitalist system.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Pensions strike challenges austerity

The third major one-day strike in six months in defence of public sector pensions has received tremendous support from trade unionists around Britain. Over 400,000 civil servants, lecturers, health staff and prison officers have joined the action.

They have mounted picket lines at court buildings, job centres, museums, galleries and universities and organised rallies in major towns and cities. Prison staff in England are banned from striking but have defied the law to hold protests.

But with the ConDem government dismissive of the strike and refusing to reopen negotiations, the question is how can public sector workers win their struggle?

Lecturers are already paying far higher contributions unilaterally imposed by employers after negotiations stalled. Legislation announced yesterday will enshrine in law changes that mean working longer, paying more and getting less on retirement.

Major unions like Unison and the GMB have signalled a massive retreat since they joined the November 30 strikes. Together with the Trades Union Congress, these unions have weakened the united front displayed last winter.

As a result, there is a kind of stalemate or stand-off between those who want to continue the struggle and the government. Unions like the civil servants PCS won’t sign away their members’ interests; and the government won’t reopen negotiations.

This deadlock expresses exactly the real state of affairs and not only when it comes to pensions.

On the one side, is a government (with the support of Labour), insisting that public sector pensions are “unaffordable” a) because people are living longer b) there is a massive deficit to pay off.

While on the other side, millions of working people reject the government and all of its austerity policies, and have made this clear by voting for and taking part in mass strikes.

As Mark Serwotka of the PCS civil servants’ union says, it is wrong for the government to make workers pay the price for a financial crisis they did not create. “Ministers are making unpopular, unnecessary and unfair cuts to the livelihoods of public servants to pay off a deficit caused by greed and recklessness in the financial sector, and for more than 12 months have refused to negotiate on the key issues of paying more and working longer for a worse pension.”

But “fairness” has little to do with it, unfortunately. Austerity is an attempt to rescue a floundering economy by cutting living standards as well as the national debt that has soared since the recession kicked in.

The coalition is desperate to appease the financial markets first and foremost at our expense. And they have no intention of changing course, despite the drubbing they got at last week’s local elections.

In one way or another, this is the story right round Europe. There is no give or compromise in the situation, however militant the strikes and protests. Elections in themselves bring no relief, as the experience in Greece shows.

Governments that have fallen as a result of the capitalist crisis have been replaced by others dedicated to carrying on with austerity. Who could doubt that Labour, were it in office, would not be carrying out similar policies to the ConDems?

Yet the state’s grip on affairs is not as tight as it seems. In London, thousands of police are taking to the streets over job cuts and reduced pensions which may have weakened their loyalties, if only for the moment.

The turmoil at the highest levels of the state and politics can only intensify as the global economic crisis deteriorates. These institutions increasingly lack legitimacy and clearly have no plausible policies.

An open challenge to their power and the status quo is without question a credible opportunity. That would also create the conditions for ensuring that all workers have decent pensions. 

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

TUC divides pensions fight

At the first whiff of grapeshot, the right-wing leaders of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), history will show, turned and ran straight into the arms of the ConDem coalition over cuts to public sector pensions.

Yesterday the TUC ruled out any further co-ordinated industrial action along the lines of the November 30 strike which brought two million public sector workers out on to the streets.

A fear of what a repeat of this action could lead to was undoubtedly instrumental in the decision of the TUC’s public sector liaison group to block calls for more strikes and, instead, to seek a deal with the government through further negotiations.

Last year, Derek Prentis, secretary of the million-strong Unison union, was making firebrand speeches at his conference and got the backing to hold a strike ballot. As one suspected, it was hot air and no substance.

Prentis, supported by TUC secretary Brendan Barber, saw November 30 as something to get out of the way before making a deal on the terms set out by the government. This will mean higher contributions, working longer and reduced pensions on retirement.

Other unions, representing another one million teachers, civil servants, local government and health workers, have declined to sign up to the general framework agreement announced by the government just before Christmas.

Most are willing to resume negotiations but one, the civil service PCS union, doesn’t even have that opportunity. It has been excluded from future talks because of its outright rejection of the “agreement”.

PCS's national executive committee yesterday unanimously reaffirmed the rejection of the government’s plans to increase contributions from April, link the retirement age to the state pension which is rising to 68, and impose a switch in indexation that means a cut in the value of pensions of around 15% to 20%.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "We will continue to call for proper negotiations on the key issues of paying more and working longer for less.” The PCS will try and work separately with other unions holding out to organise more strikes.


Behind the split in union ranks, which will gladden the government no end, is undoubtedly the hand of Labour. The party distanced itself from the November 30 strike and wants no repeat. Prentis, who has refused to support action against spending cuts by local, often Labour-led, councils, would not have needed much persuasion.

It remains to be seen whether other Labour-affiliated unions like Unite take their resistance much further. Don’t put your money on it. Their aim is to wait until the next scheduled general election in 2015 (!) and hope that Labour is re-elected in the forlorn hope of a few favours returned. With Ed Miliband accepting that further spending cuts will have to be made and planning Labour’s very own austerity package, public sector pensions will stay under siege.

Ultimately, the TUC bureaucrats fear the consequences of the crisis of capitalism which is driving the government’s attack on the public sector. They hope that by appeasing the ConDems, ministers will back off. This is an illusion. As outright recession becomes a real possibility, the government is in no position to weaken its resolve, especially as it will have to borrow more not less on the international money markets.

The decision of the PCS to lead further resistance is welcome but it is in a position to go further. Politically, there are no solutions to hand, with a ConDemLab coalition taking shape, while the economy’s woes are revealed as a crisis of the system itself. By sponsoring a conference to initiate a discussion on creating political and economic alternatives the PCS could make a real contribution to the struggles ahead.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Fight the great pensions betrayal

Only a rank-and-file revolt in defence of their pension rights stands between leaders of most public sector trade unions and what will surely rank near the top of a long list of betrayals.

With the honourable except of Mark Serwotka, leader of the PCS civil servants’ union, virtually every other official – leader is definitely the wrong term in this context – signalled in one way or another the end of the short-lived campaign over pensions.

They almost fell over themselves to meet a pre-Christmas deadline set by the ConDem coalition to reach a negotiated settlement covering more than two million local government workers, NHS staff, teachers, lecturers and civil servants.

Whatever agreement is reached, it will inevitably cut further into the living standards of public sector workers who are already the victims of a government-imposed pay freeze (which union officials, with their own fat pensions preserved in aspic, have meekly accepted).

On the eve of the talks, the government announced that it would unilaterally impose higher pension contributions on teachers and civil servants. Most civil servants and teachers will pay an extra 0.6-2.4% from April. Did the teaching unions walk away in the face of such a provocation? Not at all.

The only outright opposition yesterday came from the PCS which said it had rejected “the government’s latest attempt to force public servants to pay more and work longer for less in retirement”. It was promptly excluded from further talks.

And so the apparent unity of the 29 unions who staged a one-day strike of at least 1.5 million workers less than a month ago was fragmented at a stroke. The government’s strategy of divide and rule proved more successful than this feeble coalition could ever have imagined.

At a meeting at the Trades Union Congress headquarters, general secretary Brendan Barber, who has been in secret talks with the government throughout, stressed that further industrial action was off the table and negotiations would resume in the new year.

“We have reached a stage where the emphasis in most cases is in giving active consideration to the new proposals that have emerged rather than considering the prospect of further industrial action.” The proposals include the abandonment of the final salary basis for pensions in favour of career average salaries.

To seek a negotiated settlement after giving it everything you’ve got is honourable; to run up the white flag with a hardly a short fired is nothing short of cowardice in the face of an enemy that is waging open class warfare.

For all the fiery talk of general secretary Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, it was predictably hot air. The union’s head of health, Christina McAnea, admitted that “we always knew this would be a damage limitation exercise aimed at reducing the worst impacts of the government's pension changes."

The TUC and union bureaucrats have implicitly accepted the principal reason for the attack on pensions – the government’s budget deficit that is the result of a recession precipitated by capitalism’s financial meltdown.

Public sector workers are, in effect, being told to pay for the crisis through higher contributions and worse pensions. Behind the scenes, the leadership of the Labour Party has worked might and main to get unions to abandon further strikes and do a deal with a government.

The last thing Ed Miliband wanted was a long-running strike campaign that could have fatally wounded a weak and divided coalition whose policies his party barely opposes (except to demand a harder line on crime).

PCS general secretary Serwotka, urged unions to fight the changes: "We should call further industrial action in the new year because this is so unfair, we have got to stand up against it... Our message really is that those unions will have to be accountable to their members for what they do."

A campaign to reject the sell-out over pensions (and the wage freeze) has to mobilise rank-and-file anger in ways that are linked to the removal from their posts of all those involved in this shoddy surrender. In some ways, it’s a last chance to save the trade union movement from total disaster.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

ConDems will stand or fall over pensions

The largest and most powerful strike for a quarter of a century, in defence of public sector pensions, must lead to a movement to bring down the ConDem government or it will have no chance of success.

Prime minister Cameron has nailed his colours to the mast over pensions, claiming that they are “unaffordable”. In practice, the attack on pensions is part of a calculated two-fold strategy.

The first part is to make civil servants, teachers and council workers pay for the financial crisis in higher contributions to help reduce the government’s budget deficit. Secondly, by making people work longer before getting a pension of any kind, exploitation is being extended closer to the grave.

With the Lib Dems on board over pensions – unlike the NHS changes now mostly abandoned – the coalition has chosen to stand or fall over pensions as well as other cuts imposed by chancellor George Osborne

The magnificent response yesterday by 750,000 teachers and civil servants from four trade unions in response to a one-day strike call shows that workers are ready to fight to finish on this issue.

Up to 100,000 took to the streets of Britain’s town and cities in demonstrations – more than 20,000 marched in London – and shut thousands of schools in England and Wales. Over 90% of the police support workers in the capital went out on strike. Courts were shut along with many museums.

The action by four unions came on the day that doctors overwhelmingly backed a ballot on industrial action over NHS pensions plans. The Royal College of Nursing, representing more than 400,000 members, warned that it may end up doing the same.

Mark Serwotka leader of the Public and Commercial Services union hailed the turnout as proof of the anger felt towards the government by public sector workers, and said of the government:

"What they now need to do is get around the negotiating table and try to negotiate an agreement. They haven't done that yet, but hopefully having seen how strongly feel today they will have a change of heart.

"It's a very, very clear signal to the government that they have been rumbled. This is not about pensions, this is about making public sector workers pay for the economic problems, and we are determined to keep going until they change direction."

There was contempt for Labour leader Ed Miliband who denounced the strikes as “wrong”, saying the “the public have been let down by both sides”. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told the London rally that his comments were a "disgrace”. Bousted, whose union has never before gone on strike, said Miliband should be ashamed of himself. "If our strike is a mistake, what has he done to oppose this devastating attack on our pensions?"

The four unions who took action yesterday are not affiliated to Labour and Serwotka called on the major unions who were not out yesterday to join a big strike movement in the autumn if talks fail.

But suspicions are mounting that the leaders of Unison, Unite and the GMB – urged on by Miliband – are desperate to reach an agreement with the government and avoid a confrontation that could assume general strike proportions.

They may not get the opportunity to do a deal, however. "If Cameron backs down on this one, he's a busted prime minister," Nottingham University politics professor Steven Fielding told Reuters. "He's nailed his colours to the mast."

In this context, calls for a one-day general strike to browbeat the government are seriously wide of what is required. Such actions have had no effect in Greece, for example. An all-out confrontation is looming, despite behind-the-scenes manoeuvres.

Those unions who took part in yesterday’s action have to mobilise the rest of the labour movement and the community at large to bring down the ConDem government. With Labour clearly no alternative, this would create the conditions to create fresh political solutions to deal with the capitalist crisis.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Resistance must go beyond opposition

The question of how to stop the Con-Dem government’s programme of cuts lay on the table, but remained unresolved at the massively attended Coalition of Resistance conference in London on Saturday.

Around 1,300 people from around the country thronged in and out of the overflowing conference hall to hear dozens of speakers in different parts of the building and nearby halls.

The opening plenary featured school students and heard the newly-elected UNITE leader Len McCluskey leader of Britain’s biggest trade union. McCluskey pointedly ignored calls by Bob Crow of the transport union RMT and Mark Serwotka of the PCS civil service union, who spoke in favour of co-ordinated strikes.

Earlier last week, McCluskey breathed fiery words calling for "an alliance of resistance" he claimed would “rock the establishment” and force the Con-Dem government to step back from its plans to "decimate the very fabric of the welfare state".
But, adhering to the Coalition of Resistance’s founding statement, which talks only of general “opposition” to cuts, the notion of taking effective action to disrupt the state’s plans, was not part of his script.

CoR co-founder former NATFHE General Secretary Paul Mackney said it was in transition from being a pressure group to becoming a mass movement. Its success, he said, will be measured not by “programmatic elegance but by the breadth of the movement” – implying that united action was everything and clarity of purpose unimportant.

There were a few references to the raging crisis in Ireland which brought together EU finance ministers in an emergency summit in Brussels yesterday. But in practice, participants struggled to go beyond the low-levels aims set out in the CoR’s founding documents. From the platform, there was a studious avoidance of using the “capitalism” and “crisis” in the same sentence.

In the “analysing the crisis” debate, a wide range of people discussed the nature of the crisis: was it only financial, was it deeper, was it systemic? Keynesian and Old Labour solutions such as increased state spending, more taxation flew thick and fast as did proposals for various levels of protest up to and including General Strike. Film maker Ken Loach, who denounced the trade union leaders and Ed Miliband, was one of the few to point out that there was a crisis of the capitalist system that could not be remedied by policies such as “taxing the rich”.

A group of campaigners from North East England put forward a resolution proposing a “representative structure based on democratically elected representatives from local/regional groups”. In the event, the 120 people were nominated to a national committee due to meet in the coming weeks.

The big turnout and open spirit of the conference, despite its generally limited politics, shows a huge willingness to build a united movement against the government. The ongoing campaign by school students, some of whom will be picketing with rail and tube workers in London today and rallying in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, shows the enormous determination of a new generation not to cave in and to take their struggle to the wire.

They, and millions of working class people who are being offered only mealy-mouthed words by their leaders, are owed a lot more than patronising support. They deserve a real explanation of the crisis and a way out of it that can mount a serious challenge to the bankrupt capitalist system.

The raging debt crisis in Ireland, which on Saturday saw 50,000 people on the streets of Dublin on a bitterly cold day, with their leaders calling for a “campaign of civil disobedience”, was up against the fact that the mainstream opposition parties are signed up to the same cuts as the discredited Fianna Fail-Green government.

Struggles around Europe – from Portugal to Ireland, from students to public sector workers – are up against the same brick wall. The strategy of taking the struggle against the cuts forward to the formation of People’s Assemblies that can become the vehicle for transforming economic and political relations, is the red-hot issue of the day. Come to the December 11 event and start to go beyond resistance.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary