Workers' Liberty

As we go to press workers on London Underground are balloting over strike action to defend job cuts and pay.

London Underground is cutting more than a thousand jobs in administration grades. Transport for London is due to cut around three and a half thousand jobs over the next eighteen months.

PROBATION SERVICE: Probation areas up and down the country are facing huge cuts in government funding.

According to the bosses’ Confederation of British Industry unemployment will reach 2.9 million by 2010 — an unemployment rate of about 9 percent — up from 1.8 million now. That is nearly as high as the figure reached under the Tories in 1982 and 1992.

In a recent ballot organised by the National Union of Teachers for discontinuous strike action, 29.7% of eligible members took part and of these 51.7% supported strike action with 48.3% voting against. At an Executive meeting on 6 November we were provided with regional and association (branch) breakdowns of results. In my opinion this made our decision a lot clearer. Together with all but three Executive members I voted to accept the recommendation that we do not proceed to call action. Here are the main reasons why:

This is the full text of the PCS leadership's explanation to union reps of why the 10 November strike was called off.

The Socialist Workers Party has three members on the NEC as part of the Left Unity slate – Sue Bond, one of the National Vice Presidents, Andy Reid, and Paul Williams.

In November 2004 PCS members struck in support of six demands, including national pay. Yet pay never featured in the propaganda for the dispute.

In 2005 the PCS leadership said, “We have persuaded the Government to introduce a fairer, more coherent pay system…” It was typical of the spin that has come to characterise the PCS’s would-be Marxist leadership.

The PCS national dispute is a necessary strike against a gratuitous government pay policy that is squeezing public sector workers at a time of sharply rising costs. It is a fight we have to win if civil servants are not to have their living standards slashed this year and in coming years.

The PCS National Executive Committee's decision to "suspend" the national civil service one day strike planned for Monday 10 November is at best a dreadful mistake. Or it may be a prelude to abandoning the action, possibly on the pretext of some relatively minor concession.

In the ballot for strike action on pay by the National Union of Teachers, which closed on 3 November, 51.7% voted yes, on a turnout of 29.7%. The NUT Executive on 5 November decided to call no action.

The PCS civil service union has called a strike for 10 November, and the teachers’ union NUT will announce the result of its strike ballot on 3 November.<--break-->

On 20th August and 24th September local authorities throughout Scotland were shut down by 24-hour strikes jointly staged by UNISON, UNITE and the GMB.

If anything sums up New Labour as a Government for the rich, a cuckoo in the labour movement nest, it has to be their year-on-year drive to keep public sector wages below the rate of inflation.

Unbelievably, it looks as if the pay strikes by civil servants (PCS) and teachers (NUT) in November could be on different days.

The two day strike by hundreds of thousands of local government workers [on 16/17 July 2008] has demonstrated that there is a real mood to defeat the government’s imposed pay cut.

The National Union of Teachers Executive met on 17 July and unanimously agreed a timetable for a ballot on discontinuous strike action as the next steps in the pay campaign.

The 16th and 17th of July was the first time I have ever been on strike and I picketed outside the council building where I work with a couple of other workers.

As we go to press (20 August 2008) a 24-hour strike action by local government workers, members of UNISON, UNITE, and the GMB is taking place.

20th August sees a 24-hour strike action by members of UNISON, UNITE, and the GMB.

London:

Less than a week after the government’s own measure of inflation jumped to 3.3% and after the Governor of the Bank of England penned a letter warning of further increases to come, Chancellor Alistair Darling continued to insist that: “Pay awards in both the public and private sector have to be consistent with our inflation target, which is 2%”.

On Thursday 26 June, over 700 London Underground cleaners organised by the RMT union, who voted 98% in favour of strike action, will take on multinational cleaning companies ISS, ICS, Initial and GBM in a 24 hour strike. This will be followed by a 48 hour strike from 1 to 3 July. With no cleaners at key depots and stations, the health and safety risks of running a railway without cleaners could paralyse the Tube.

Page 1.
Local government workers:
VOTE YES FOR ACTION!
Workers won’t pay for bosses’ losses
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Our Pay is a Political Issue

Page 2.
School Support Staff:

Pay will be the major issue before this year’s PCS national conference. Given the general pay squeeze across the public sector and high inflation rate everybody expects that civil servants will get below inflation offers;

The National Union of Teachers Executive met on 8 May for the first time since the 24 April pay strike. For a while it looked like there would be no discussion or vote on proposals to develop the pay campaign.

Workers in the housing charity Shelter are on strike again on 24-25 April against enforced cuts in pay and conditions. Previous strikes on 5 and 10 March forced Shelter bosses, who at first insisted that they would never negotiate, to put the cuts on hold and talk at ACAS. But their ACAS offer was only a one-off “compensation” payment.

Civil service by Workers’ Liberty PCS Members

A number of Groups (sectors) in PCS are striking on 24 April alongside the teachers and lecturers.

Our strike will make the news and will undoubtedly worry the powers that be; how much better if the whole of the PCS union was on strike.

The picket line at the Shelter office on Old St, London, was good. On the workers' third day of strike action - after a long pause, a lot of pressure from management, and a lot of foot-dragging or worse from full-time union officials - picket numbers were still buoyant, and the mood was defiant.

For many years now, inequality has soared, but intimidation by employers and foot-dragging by sluggish trade-union leaders have pretty much kept a lid on wage battles.