Local government workers and most school support staff (members of Unison, GMB, and Unite) will strike again on Tuesday 14 October, following the mass strike on 10 July (which involved a greater number of unions).
Members of Unison, GMB, Unite, and the Royal College of Midwives in the NHS will also be balloted for strikes from late August, and could join a 14 October strike if the ballot returns a yes vote.
For those of us in Unison, it had appeared that, for the first time in years, an attempt was being made to set out a serious strategy on pay. This involved:
• A clear industrial demand (a £1 per hour increase, or the Living Wage, whichever was higher), rather than nebulous opposition to some government attack which in practise simply amounted to a demand for further negotiations.
• Coordination with other unions, not just in local government but with an NUT strike in schools, as well as with the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), who had their own live disputes.
• A planned escalation with Unison’s Local Government Service Group Executive discussing a two-day strike on 9 and 10 September.
• A strike ballot of Unison members in the NHS, opening up another front in the pay battle against the government.
We have now faltered. The 14 October strike will almost certainly involve fewer unions, will be for just a single day, and will take place after a pause of three months during which much momentum will be lost. So what went wrong?
Unfortunately, what goes on in union headquarters is rarely shared with members. Instead of calling cross-union meetings of activists in branches, regions, and national committees to discuss strategy, it has been left to full-time officials, largely outside of democratic control.
The Unison officials dropped their plan for a 9-10 September strike (it’s not clear why), and announced a 30 September strike instead. But only days after, NUT said it would not strike, and GMB and Unite said they would not strike until mid-October. The 14 October strike was then announced jointly with GMB and Unite. The dispute has been deliberately de-escalated.
Following “legal advice”, Unison decided not to ballot thousands of its members in schools (perhaps up to 50% of its schools membership), as they were employed by Academies or Free Schools. GMB did ballot their members in these school. Was their legal advice different from Unison’s? Do union leaderships even communicate about these matters? Unison’s decision not to ballot those members meant the dispute was weakened.
While a Unison-only strike would certainly have been less effective than a joint strike (particularly as GMB often has higher density among certain groups of local government workers, such as refuse collectors, whose strikes put more immediate and visible pressure on employers), whether the abandonment of the 30 September strike, and the delay until 14 October, was, in the final analysis “the right decision”, is a moot point. The question is: how were these decisions made, and where was the accountability?
The lack of an independent rank-and-file network within any of the local government unions, or across them, is a big problem. Such a network could have acted to demand members’ meetings to discuss strategy, and put pressure on the union leaderships to escalate the dispute. We are seeing the same democratic deficit that hobbled the 2011 pension. Union members cannot allow ourselves to be treated as a stage army for our leaders.
Where now?
Every local government union activist should build for 14 October to be as strong as possible.
We should demand Unison and other NHS unions announce, in advance, that health workers will also join that strike if their ballot returns a yes vote.
Unions should put their full resources into upping the momentum in the dispute: calling local actions, including members’ meetings, public rallies, demonstrations, and regular stalls and leafleting, between now and 14 October to raise the profile of the issue, and help NHS union activists turn out the vote in the strike ballot.
Crucially, strikes beyond 14 October — for more than one day, and considering targeted and selective action — should be announced in advance.
Health ballot: vote yes!
NHS workers will be balloted for strikes from late August until mid-late September.
Unions are demanding a decent pay deal, after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to implement even the 1% increase recommended by the NHS Pay Review Board.
Unison’s ballot runs from 28 August to 18 September and Unite’s from 26 August to 26 September. The Royal College of Midwives has said it will ballot members “during September”. GMB will also be balloting its members across August and September.
Activists say that some union officials have hinted that, if the ballot returns a yes vote, walkouts of only 2-4 hours, rather than a full day’s strike, will be called. Some officials argue that this will still be disruptive, but will hit lower-paid staff less than a whole-day strike.
No form of action should be fetishised, and if workers genuinely feel that shorter walkouts will be more effective than full-day strikes, they should be considered. But the financial hardship argument could be eliminated at a stroke if unions levied strike funds to support lower-paid members.
And if unions dedicate their full resources to mobilising a high turnout and a strong yes vote in the strike ballot, they could also build up workers’ confidence to strike for a full day.
