Local government bosses launch class war offensive

Submitted by Matthew on 7 October, 2010 - 10:55 Author: Darren Bedford

Several local authorities have sent out redundancy warning notices to large numbers of workers, in some cases to their entire workforce.

There aim is to set the unions a choice: accept cuts in pay and conditions, or job cuts, or both.

Councils in Sheffield, Croydon, Neath and Port Talbot, Walsall and Birmingham — as well as the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority — are all employing the tactic. The message from the bosses is explicit: “accept the changes we’re proposing or you’re sacked”.

The public sector is the main bastion of organised labour in Britain. The meaningbehind this kind of belligerence from local government bosses is clear: if the public sector unions can be smashed then the road is clear for cuts. Unfortunately, however, the war tactics of the bosses have not been matched with equivalent war tactics from the unions.

Within Unison, a union in which is it notoriously difficult to get any industrial action organised and where the leadership spends more time witch-hunting the union’s left than fighting bosses, the focus has been almost exclusively on closed-off negotiations.

In Neath and Port Talbot, talks around the issue have been rumbling on for months (the notifications were first issued in late June), with the authority now asking to wait for the outcome of October’s Comprehensive Spending Review before proceeding. It had previously been looking for £24 million worth of savings; whatever the CSR produces it is unlikely to tell Neath and Port Talbot council that it no longer has to save this money.

Unison has failed to organise any significant public protest in the area, and sources within the local union bureaucracy confirm that it will continue to focus on negotiations rather than other means of action or pressure.

Unison activists in Croydon have had a slightly better experience. Council bosses there have threatened to cut 35% of the workforce, although they claim it won’t be “all in one go.” Bosses are attempting to clash £70 million from spending as well as finding £60 million in “efficiency savings.”

The Unison branch resolved to “use all available means to oppose [the cuts’] implementation, to include public campaigning and industrial action.” After Croydon won an overwhelming yes vote in a consultative ballot, Unison head office sanctioned a ballot for industrial action.

Local activists suspect that this may well be because Croydon is a flagship Tory council, so the political lines of are clearer for the Labour-loyal Unison leadership. A lobby of the council’s meeting on October 18 is planned.

The GMB, the other union with a significant number of members involved in these battles, has displayed somewhat more truculence than Unison. In Sheffield, the local GMB branch is mobilising for a TUC-called demonstration outside the Town Hall on October 23. In Birmingham the GMB’s Roger Jenkins asserted that the union “will do everything in our power to protect our members’ jobs, and the provision of frontline services to the people of Birmingham.” (See below for an interview with Stuart Richards of the GMB in Walsall.)

Unions need to organise real fightbacks, both industrially and politically. Unison and the GMB are both Labour-affiliated and should use that link to apply maximum pressure to Labour councillors.

They should gear up for an autumn of direct actions including demonstrations and, where possible, strikes. The bosses are on the offensive; workers can only resist that offensive if we gear up our unions to fight in a similarly belligerent fashion.

“We won’t accept any cuts that hurt our members”

Stuart Richards from the GMB in Walsall spoke to Solidarity.

There was no indication at all that the council was going to go down this route. We were engaged in a process of negotiations which they've decided to break away from. Birmingham council's decision to pursue a similar course of action has given other councils the confidence to do it as well; they definitely see it as a way to undermine collective agreements and avoid the need to negotiate with trade unions.

We had commitments from councillors than any changes to pay and conditions would be negotiated collectively and they've reneged on that.

It's unclear at the moment exactly how things will develop. The council are adjusting the time-scale they started with so we're waiting until we have a clearer picture of their plans before we work out a detailed response. We think those changes in time-scale might effect whether the employer has actually fulfilled the legal obligations associated with Section 188 notifications so we're investigating that avenue as well. On the whole though unions in Walsall have taken a very solid stance. We won't accept any changes that will be detrimental to our members.

Our local activists are mobilising politically; we're already engaged in a process of lobbying our GMB councillors and other Labour group members to use the link between our union and the Labour Party to put pressure on those councillors to vote and campaign against any cuts that hurt our members.

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