Pensions

The teachers union, the EIS has produced templates for letters you can use 'to write to your MP and MSPs calling on them to oppose any proposed increases to pension contributions.


It is also essential that we push for a proper valuation of the pension scheme, and for government to enter into meaningful discussions with trade unions.'

Please write to your MP/MSP now!  Templates HERE

BUILD PENSIONS STRIKE ON 28 MARCH

By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

22 Feb 2012

The fight to protect public sector pensions is far from over, despite the scandalous capitulation by leaders of the TUC, UNISON, GMB and some other unions.

Unions organising over a million workers are currently consulting and balloting members for united industrial action, including a one- day stoppage on 28 March. These include PCS (civil service), EIS, UCU and NUT (teachers), UNITE (NHS, civil service and local government) and the FBU (firefighters).
Although not the same massive force as those who massed the picket lines and streets on November 30, this constitutes a substantially bigger united strike than that of last June, which helped to drag the likes of UNISON and GMB leaders into calling united action on N30. It would pound the government on the eve of pension contribution increases that start this April, and would boost the efforts of the best activists in UNISON and GMB to salvage the situation in their own unions from the shameful surrender by the right-wing and fake-radical 'leaders' they are currently saddled with.
The government's plans still mean a three-headed monster attacking millions of workers, who will have to pay more, for far longer, to get far less on retirement. All because the Westminster Coalition wants to levy a double taxation on public sector workers, asking in billions more to fill some of the hole creat by the 2008 bankers' bailout; not one penny of the increased workers' pension contributions will go to improve or fund their pension schemes!
Unity in action is the best weapon against Cameron and Clegg's pension robbers - and against an SNP government that has merely delayed the misery of increased contributions for council workers, not even that for the rest of Scotland's 600,000 public sector workers, and which has no control over the delayed retirement age nor the 20 per cent pension cut through switching inflation indexation from RPI to CPI.
SSP members in these unions are joining with other trade unionists in vigorous efforts to win sweeping majorities in consultative ballots for united strike action on 28 March, as a way to rejuvenate this critical struggle over workers' incomes and deferred wages.

I spoke to a few of them on why they are campaigning for a huge strike that day.

"Despite everything the ConDems have said about the cuts saving the economy, the cuts in our public sector jobs and services have made things worse.
We now stand on the edge. Do we allow the government to tear down what has been built by generations of workers and face an uncertain future without these services, or do we defend our jobs, services and in fact our future?
We do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not we can take strike action. It is the only way to make a stand against the ruin the government is bringing on the people in this country."
JOHN JAMIESON, PCS NEC member

"Whilst the situation in local government remains unclear, the opportunity to resist the ongoing attack on our pensions alongside other public sector workers should be seized.
At the very least, UNISON branches can express solidarity to those on strike by sending delegations to demonstrations on 28 March."
COLIN TURBETT, chair, North Ayrshire UNISON (personal capacity)

"November 30 was the first time Scottish teachers had struck in over a quarter of a century and the strike was virtually 100 per cent solid.
This shows the iron determination to fight to defend our pensions.
Quite simply, we can't afford not to strike, for the sake of our profession and the children we teach."
LANARKSHIRE EIS rep

"Civil servants have already suffered years of pay restraint. The ConDem millionaire Coalition want to pass on another two years of pay increases limited to one per cent. They want pay cuts to be a fact of public sector life for years to come.
My members cannot afford this. When you factor in the planned increases in pension contributions, where they pay more and get less in return, it's totally unacceptable. We simply have to fight back!"
GERRY McMAHON, Glasgow PCS 

Attacking Teachers Professionalism...

A teacher's response to McCormac's review of Scottish Education...

Prior to the findings of the McCormac review I feared the worst. The reality is somewhat different; the 35 hour week survives (in theory) and the need for preparation time is acknowledged. However, to accept McCormac on a superficial level, and regard it as an innocuous document, would be naïve. The cynic in me says that it is both a monstrous perversion of the English language and a pernicious attack upon our conditions.

My fears stem from the sheer number of contradictions contained in the report. The document claims to advance teacher professionalism. Introducing unqualified staff does not advance professionalism; it is the very opposite. Introducing a convoluted system of calculating class contact time will not be “flexible”- it will be exploitative. On the one hand it claims to want an end to hour counting; on the other, having to calculate their contact time on an annual basis will leave teachers with the choice of counting or being exploited. You can only fear the worse when they claim that they want teachers to be more “mobile”. What does that mean? Greater employment instability? More short-term contracts? In an attempt to simultaneously attack conditions yet be inoffensive to teachers, McCormac has ended up as a report that in many instances simply doesn’t make sense.

There is a saying that ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. Industrial relations in teaching have enjoyed a harmonious period during the last ten years. The report even acknowledges this. It states that Scotland has “a well-qualified and committed teaching profession that provides a positive and stimulating environment for young people's learning”. Nonetheless, the authors have launched a sustained attack on teachers, their conditions and, the corollary of attacking either of these two, the welfare of young people.

The McCormac Review’s official title is Advancing Professionalism in Teaching. The irony is that by scrapping the Chartered Teacher Scheme, and introducing non-qualified staff, the report is in fact eroding professionalism in teaching. From the outset the report exudes an arrogant assumption that only management control – as opposed to teacher autonomy – can offer greater professionalism. The proposed end of the right for staff to work off-site is indicative of this; the implication being that we are not professional enough to work outwith the guise of management.

54% of responses to the McCormac review felt that Annex E should not be revised. By this, the report acknowledges that a majority of respondents do not feel that teachers should be carrying out any of the duties in Annex E. So, in what must considered a wholly disproportionate act, McCormac has recommended axing Annex E altogether.

There are a handful of positives that can be taken. The introduction of a national system for annual review will be a relief to those of us who have had to negotiate the dissimilar ways in which respective local authorities handle these matters. CPD requirements will be linked to this system. However, it is not clear what the report’s proposed changes to CPD will look like in practice.

Probationers will remain on the same contact time but it is calculated over a four week period. This potentially opens the way for probationers being taken for cover. This forces the probationer to hour count, keep a log of when they are taken for cover, so as to prevent management from exploiting them. Once again we face hour counting.

Unqualified staff are to be allowed to work with classes on their own given the assent of the Headteacher. The GTCS are to approve which unqualified individuals are allowed to do this, but by using the money that we pay them each year. In other words, we are paying for a move that could potentially lead to our own job losses. In another of the report’s wonderful contradictions, it is interesting to note that unqualified staff are to be allowed to look after children unsupervised, but experienced classroom teachers will not even be allowed off-site to complete their marking!

Advancing Professionalism in Teaching, is a misnamed, misguided and for the most part unnecessary document. It has been composed to ensure that Scotland’s local authorities fall into line with David Cameron’s sustained assault upon the public sector. The changes to working hours will allow authorities to hire fewer staff. As with all decisions in the public sector nowadays, its recommendations are driven by cost; the welfare of young people is afforded only lip service. However, in a rather perverse way, we are lucky. While London governs in a dictatorial fashion, in Scotland the authorities have to proceed with caution. McCormac is not as detrimental as it could have been, but it is far from an encouraging development for the teaching profession in Scotland.

Glasgow June 30th Public Sector Unions Strike!

Scottish Education- A Socialist Response to Curriculum for Excellence

On the Eve of the EIS Conference, SFST member, Allan Armstrong analyses the CfE

The combination of the over 40% rejection of the latest EIS/COSLA/SEED pay and conditions deal, with the publication of the decisions of the the McCormac Review, means that socialist teachers are now presented with a real opportunity to advance a far-reaching alternative. Otherwise, if the SEED/COSLA and Moray Place get their way, teachers only face increased demoralisation and depression as greater and greater burdens are placed upon our shoulders, only to meet fewer and fewer of our students’ real educational needs.

Perhaps, the employers’ greatest victory, stemming from the 2001 McCrone Agreement, was the EIS giving up any critical assessment of ongoing governments’ educational counter-reforms. In the late 60’s and 70’s, many classroom teachers were avid participants in educational debate. Publishers, including Penguin, issued regular Education Specials. In these the latest ideas - some decidedly whacky, some divorced from any classroom experience, but many very stimulating - were read and debated by teachers, especially socialist teachers, many of whom entered education after ‘68’.

In secondary education, as recently as the 1990’s, there were vibrant subject organisations, such as the Association of Media Education (Scotland), in which classroom teachers eagerly participated, discussed and debated the latest developments and practice, without any thought of advancing their careers beyond the classroom. These organisations weren’t insular and also sought out the most stimulating external speakers.

However, the SED and SEED completely failed to build on all this classroom teachers’ knowledge and experience, whilst the EIS leadership never took radical educational reform seriously - it was too associated with precisely those who contested them on pay and conditions.
Reforming Scottish education took a different course. ‘Experts’ were drawn from the senior promoted staff in the universities and colleges of education, aided by selected promoted teachers. They were prepared to accept the latest top-down changes in return for their own rapid career enhancement. Initially, there were consultation exercises, like that conducted around Higher Still. However, when classroom teachers challenged these top-down initiatives, they were just ignored. Higher Still was launched to a great fanfare, and crashed spectacularly in the first year of the new examinations in 2000.

Primary teachers offered similar warnings over National Testing. This would result in young school students being trained to pass through the requisite hoops (the national tests), at the cost of gaining the more rounded knowledge that could advance their education. Eventually, even the HMI’s (now employed solely to promote the latest government initiatives, and to cow and police teachers into doing so) cottoned on to what classroom teachers had long being saying. They eventually realised that the National Testing they had been pushing down primary teachers’ throats would have to go.

Therefore. the SEED came up with a new catch-all educational counter-reform to cover schooling from 3-18 - the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). A key feature of CfE has been the total non-involvement of class teachers in its formulation or development. The SEED decided to avoid the challenges from classroom practioners they had faced over their earlier reforms. Furthermore, another key aspect of CfE has been to make the actual nature of the changes as vague as possible. This means the SEED can continually change the goalposts, revealing new changes as they see fit, knowing that classroom teachers have been disarmed in advance, since they have never had any input into the process.

Following earlier precedents, CfE produced its own round of jargon (what was once essential knowledge for would-be careerists is now just as important for those trying to get a permanent contract). However, every classroom teacher realises that the four ‘capacities’ are a burdensome add-on extra, which do not help actual educational practice. Does anybody know one person in school, charged with promoting ‘responsible citiizens’ throughout the curriculum, who took the opportunity of all the brouhaha surrounding the recent royal wedding to promote discussion in school on what being a citizen actually means - as opposed to being a docile subject? For the authorities and school management ‘capacities’ are just another addition to their armoury of control - monitoring and measuring our compliance by ticking boxes and through regular teacher appraisal.

As local education offices and schools develop an ever-extended and privileged hierarchy of managerial posts, these people, far divorced from classroom realities, have to produce longer and longer paper trails to provide evidence to their immediate superiors, that they are in control of things. Since there is continuous downward managerial pressure, every effort is made to ensure, at each subordinate level, that the requirements demanded are met on paper. However, as the paperwork is passed up the managerial hierarchy, it reflects less and less of the reality in the classroom.

Our new managerial stalinists face similar problems to their now departed predecessors in the old USSR. At present, most teachers remain committed enough to the job that they try to deflect all the top-down imposed crap, the better to get on with the real job of teaching. However, if the McCormac Review were to be ‘successfully’ imposed, schools would likely become dysfunctional workplaces, where “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”. And school students confronted with more and more meaningless school work, and fewer and fewer decent job prospects, would be even more disaffected - a recipe for failure.

Most teachers would recognise the need for some administrative jobs to enhance our work in the classroom (e.g. curriculum development, pastoral care, dealing with necessary agencies). However, the reality underlying many of the new promoted posts is that they create work that detracts from the job of teaching. The more elaborate and dictatorial the managerial hierarchies weighing down upon teachers, the less teachers have meaningful control, and the less effective is the education we provide.

So what can teachers do? Developing meaningful education for our students means asserting teacher control over classroom education. Nobody has more interests in providing effective learning than teachers, since we soon know to our cost whenever we are unable to do this. The massively increased managerial pressures resulting from the McCormac Review, coupled to the worsened conditions and the pay freeze, have educational failure and breakdown written all over them. Furthermore, Scottish Labour*, the SNP and the Tories all have plans to protect the more privileged, especially from the middle class, from the consequences of their planned educational, social and economic measures. They want to develop a hierarchy of state funded private schools (which can set their own curriculum, pay and conditions) leaving behind a growing number of sink schools.

And central of all their plans is CfE. Here is the Wikipedia assessment of how teachers currently view CfE:-

“Many within the Scottish teaching profession, including the teacher's union EIS and it's members, believe that the Curriculum for Excellence is too vague, in particular with regards to its 'outcomes and experiences'. There exists a fear that this vague factor will result in teachers not knowing what is expected of them in the classroom. This has been further exacerbated by the confusion over assessment. As the implementation of the CfE continues, then assessment guidelines will be published. This includes assessment on literacy and numeracy from all subjects within Secondary Schools. The time required to complete such expectations risk taking time away from teaching subject content.”

And here is the official EIS response:-

‘EIS general secretary Ronnie Smith said the union, together with most teachers, supported the aims of the Curriculum for Excellence.

But he added they had "a number of concerns about how the process of implementation is progressing"’.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8039474.stm)

This reflects the fact that the EIS leadership, under McCrone, gave up the right to meaningfully criticise the nature of government educational policy. They can only confine themselves to negotiating the terms of its implementation (and thy have been lousy at doing that too!) This helps to explain why so much of the Scottish Educational Journal is indistinguishable from any SEED or Local Authority material promoting the latest government ‘education’ initiative. Moray Place has just become an additional personnel management service for our bosses.

On those occasions, Moray Place has been forced into taking action, it as been of a token nature, designed to let off steam. At the same time, as Moray Place was organising for teachers to attend the TUC’s display of trade union ‘unity’ against the cuts on March 26th, it was, at the same time, planning to be the first union to break that unity, with its latest sell-out. Putting demands on Moray Place is not sufficient. Socialists must argue the case now for independent action, which can not be recuperated and sold out by union officials. It may take a little time yet before we can make the sort of breakthrough achieved in 1975, with mass independent (unofficial) action, but the ground should be prepared. Scottish Rank & File Teachers were formed in1972, two years before this major breakthrough.

Therefore it is the gap between what teachers already clearly understand (see Wikipedia entry) and what Ronnie Smith and Moray Place oppose, that socialist teachers should address.

As a far from comprehensive starter, I suggest that the socialist teachers could initiate discussion around the following points:-

a) oppose the CfE on educational grounds
b) promote class teacher-controlled educational organisations (like the original AMES) to develop a meaningful curriculum and promote good educational material (pressing for resources and time from the SEED and Local Authorities - probably much cheaper than the current top- down, over-promoted and wasteful system, e.g. never ending costly glossy brochures, which just lie in cupboards, or are taken out before interviews, after their first in-service day airing!)
c) argue for democratising schools, with the scope and nature of necessary non-classroom work under class teacher control. Department (secondary) or Years Group (primary) organisers to be elected by the class teachers concerned (this would cut down unnecessary bureaucracy work to a mimimum) and to be subject to re- election.
d) reform the EIS, so all officials are directly elected, subject to regular re- election, recruited from amongst classroom teachers, and receive the average pay of classroom teachers (the impending replacement of the truly dire Ronnie Smith provides an opportunity to raise this issue).

Yes, this may seem like a ‘return to 1968’, however, I think it is such radical l thinking that is now required in the face of the ongoing economic, social and educational crisis we now face. Tahrir Square in Cairo may have seemed quite far away. However, when young students, workers and unemployed in Spain are joining daily protests in public squares, maybe ‘the spirit of 2011’ will once more take off across the world where ‘the spirit of 68’ left off. I still remember occupying Moray Place in 1974, as part of the movement which turned Scottish education upside down at the time. Bob Dylan may be 70, but perhaps ‘The Times They Are A’Changing’ again!

Allan Armstrong, 30.5.11

Tories, Liberal Democrats, SNP and Labour Unite to attack Scottish Education Again...

Teachers, after suffering the blows of last years cuts in education, are being asked to work an extra half an hour a DAY in front of classes. In a cynical move, Labour run Glasgow City Council has proposed this as a reduction of “marking time” and called for a re-negotiation of McCrone – the agreement that was supposed to ensure teaching staff worked a 35 hour week.

Teachers in Scotland already work an average of 10 hours unpaid overtime and have borne the brunt of cuts that have meant class sizes on the rise and fewer adults in the class. Glasgow has already cut support workers and assistants jobs that help with children needing extra educational input.

Glasgow has also quietly shed 500 teachers in the past two years, and the Labour council also presided over closures of 22 schools last year under the previous scandal riven Labour provost, Steven Purcell.  All of this has impacted on teaching and learning.  Children are being made to suffer because of the neo-liberalist ideology of the combined forces of the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour and the apparent capitulation of the SNP.

Locally, this has been a complete capitulation to the Tories and Liberal Democrats by a so called Labour Glasgow Council. Not only have they quietly cut education provision through staffing, but now they are essentially asking teachers to take a pay cut.

Labour along with the Tories and Liberal Democrats are peddling the lie that cuts are necessary. The SNP are keeping a cynical silence and after Salmond and Cameron met shortly after the election of the most reactionary Government since Thatcher (and actually becoming more reactionary by the hour), the SNP seem powerless to criticise the ideological cuts they are telling us are necessary. This is not true. There are huge amounts of money around – but in the hands of the bankers and billionaires who caused this crisis (including the RBS who recently have launched an incredible campaign saying they are giving thousands of pounds to Scottish Education, when in fact they were one of the major factors that have led to the crisis in Education  over the past two years!)

SSP members in EIS wish to unite with other trade unionists in decisive campaigns – including coordinated industrial action – to defend jobs, pay, educational expenditure, and national action to enforce maximum class sizes of 20 across the board, as a pre-requisite to improved education and better conditions of work.

How will this be paid for?

The SSP have long been campaigning for a Scottish Service Tax in place of the Council Tax. This would mean the poorest families would pay nothing, but the highest earners would pay more – a fair tax in other words. The richest would pay a modest extra 10% in tax – which when you realise their income grew by 30% last year alone – is a drop in the ocean. The revenue generated by this tax alone would save our Scottish Education System, save jobs in the Public Sector and ensure the Tories and Liberal Democrats do not return us to the eighties when Thatcher and Major had public education on it’s knees.  See also our alternative budget

The SSP support the ballot for strike action the EIS are calling in March – but urge the union to unite with other unions and stand together in solidarity against these attacks on the working class.

Upcoming events at which teachers and the EIS can unite with others against the Tory and Liberal Democrat cuts:

Sat 4th Sept UNISON-convened anti-cuts strategy conference – aimed at all public sector unions and community groups. More HERE

Weds 29th Sept European TUC anti-cuts day of action.

Sat 2nd October Street Rally against cuts… as a Scottish contribution to the European TUC action, AND as a stepping up of efforts to bring members from across different unions and community groups together – as a means of building towards the STUC demo (see below), AND to begin to crank up unity in action BEFORE either the Tories and Liberal Democrats OR SNP govts set their spending cuts in concrete.

Sat 23rd Oct STUC Scottish Demo (more details soon)

EIS conference backs fight against cuts

In light of what happened in East Dunbartonshire over the last fortnight (the shortest and most effective campaign in the history of the Campsies?) it is fantastic to come to the conference of Scotland’s overwhelmingly largest teaching union – the EIS – and find that teachers are ready to stand up for our communities and services beyond the classroom door.

If there was a theme to day two of the conference, it was the opposition of teachers to the cuts, and like the small political parties, highlighting the fact that there IS an alternative to them other than the solution given by the large, mainstream parties. Motion 51 was passed unhindered. It calls for a ballot to strike to fight the budget cuts next March. If the membership vote for this, this will give a clear message to the mainstream parties and millionaire run press that even the professional middle classes are not “getting” the need for these cuts.

David Cameron and the Tories have been very clever in how they are playing public sector worker off public sector worker. They have re-framed their message from “cuts are inevitable” to “who do you want to suffer rather than you?” Trying to play off profession against profession, worker off worker – building on the disgusting Thatcherisation of society begun back in 1979. Thank Marx that the Scottish people do not buy this selfish and self defeating message. The last time we had a debt as huge as this (one not created by millionaires, but by World War Two and the fight against fascism) the government took the only line that could ensure no-one starved and everyone benefitted – they set up the welfare state, and indeed our wonderful NHS, the envy of the world. Unfortunately all of the mainstream parties are wanting to get rid of what was the countries saviour in those debt ridden and austere times in order to save the rich from paying for their crisis.

Speeches from the EIS podium called for redistribution of the billionaires and bankers wealth. People called for the scrapping of trident, and one speaker even called for the disbanding of the army, asking the question, “what has the military ever given us only the death of our soldiers?” Others spoke about the waste of people and resources in the Afghanistan theatre of war and others said “keep the dustmen and sack the spin doctors – who would you miss first?”

Amongst other superb debates, one that stood out, and will be revisited I am very sure, was one on banning the BNP, SDL or EDL from educating our children. Even though this motion was defeated (only just- and because some people were unsure banning was the most effective way to fight the fascists), what emerged from conference was an overwhelming distaste for the fact that fascists are allowed near our children. Those who led and spoke on the anti-fascist side on this issue were brilliant, emotive (one delegate spoke about the recent anti-Semite threats her daughter had received) and persuasive.

All in all, the conference has shown our teachers to be progressive and are definitely on the side of the working classes – and PTA’s – in this fight against the unrepresentative ConDemNation.

To see bigger version of SSP EIS Voice, please click on the images below.

BUILD A MASS, UNITED PUBLIC SECTOR DEMO ON 10th APRIL

Make the rich pay – bail out all public services, not bankers’ and billionaires’ profits

By Richie Venton – SSP national workplace organiser

9th March 2010

Photos: John Lanigan




Two major trade union events in the space of 48 hours demonstrate the seething anger at public sector cuts, the potential for a united resistance across the trade unions, and the potency, increasing popularity and urgent necessity of the Scottish Socialist Party’s alternatives to this assault on jobs, services and conditions.

EIS 10,000 march

On Saturday 6th March, 10,000 teachers, lecturers, nursery staff, parents, pupils and other trade unionists poured out of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park, snaking their way round a mammoth route to the EIS union’s rally in the SECC.

This was the first national demo called by the EIS in decades. The overwhelming majority of the marchers had never been on a demo before. The age profile was a whole cross-section, from toddlers in buggies and primary kids, through trainee and newly qualified teachers, to bearded veterans of the profession – united in their fury at education budget cuts, whilst bankers’ bailouts, renewal of Trident weapons and bloody war cost the public a fortune.

Anger at that obscene contrast was reflected in speeches by the EIS president and others at the rally. They denounced the governments of Westminster and Holyrood for regarding these expenditures as more important than the education of our children, who represent the future, and lambasted the SNP government for now confronting children with the choice of either free school meals or smaller classes, when they had promised both and children deserve both.



SSP on the march

The EIS march is part of a campaign they have entitled “Why must our children pay?”

The SSP was the only party with a leaflet that directly dealt with the issues of the march, demanding “make the rich pay – not our kids; bail out education and all services – not bankers’ profits; 20’s plenty in any class – give our kids a chance.”

People snapped up the leaflets, smiled and murmured their agreement with the headlines, turned and quoted it to their friends as they assembled to march off.

The lively SSP contingent was joined by parents and children who fought the heroic Save Our Schools Campaign in Glasgow last year. As we marched we led the chant “Twenty’s plenty in any class – give our kids a chance”, which caught on with the crowd marching and bystanders on the pavements.

As the 10,000 trod towards the end of their marathon march to the SECC rally, we improvised an SSP “street meeting” on the pavement as they passed us! We belted out our message on a very loud PA system: “The SSP demands that the government tax the rich, to bail out education, not bankers’ profits and bankers’ bonuses.” Several sections of the march shouted back their agreement with us as they marched past, and even more contingents applauded us as they marched past. A sign of how profoundly the bankers’ bailout has changed people’s consciousness, including their open-ness to the SSP’s unashamed socialist demands.

The EIS leadership promised in speeches that this mass demo is just the start of the campaign, which is to be welcomed, and which EIS union activists and members will make sure is the case.

It is absolutely right that as the union representing 60,000 members in education they should take up the cudgels in defence of that service. But what would be tragic, and totally divisive and counter-productive, is if the EIS leadership argued for cuts in other services to save education; unity of opposition to all service cuts, combining the power and scale of members of all public sector unions and the communities they service is what is urgently needed to stop the slaughter.



Biggest civil service strike since 1987

It was therefore encouraging that an EIS representative (as well as speakers from the FBU, UNISON and STUC) addressed the 8th March strike rally in Glasgow, called during the 48-hour stoppage by all civil service workers, members of PCS.

This was the biggest civil service strike since 1987. Across the UK, over 250,000 workers brought services to a halt in tax and customs offices; Job Centres; driving centres; the Courts; the MoD; passport offices; the Scottish parliament (for the first time ever); Westminster … to name but some. 30,000 of these strikers were in Scotland.

They are overwhelmingly low-paid workers, whose partial compensation for low pay has been a modest average pension of £6,500 and a reasonable redundancy scheme – which is now under assault. The government has set in motion the legislation to slash the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, cutting the package that most workers would get on being made redundant by up to one-third, tens of thousands of pounds each. A sure sign that the Labour government (backed up quite openly by the Tories on this) want to slaughter tens of thousands of jobs on the cheap – in addition to the 100,000 already shed in the past 5 years – and usher in privatisation by making the prospect more attractive to the privateers.

The response to the 48-hour strike was absolutely overwhelming – forcing management to stoop to tricks like jetting in a handful of scab managers from Newcastle to open the Glasgow DVLA office.



Socialism in the civil service

Again, not only did SSP members in PCS play an instrumental part in building the strike, but our policies were more widely and eagerly embraced than for a long time: on the picket lines, at the PCS strike rallies in Glasgow and Dundee, and at the SSP public meeting in Glasgow after the union rally. This was a really large meeting, with over half those present attending their first ever SSP meeting. And strikers were enthusiastic in their support for our socialist aims – many commenting wryly that if only we could get a fair hearing in the media, imagine how popular our case would be – as well as our proposals on how to build public sector unity against all cuts in the immediate future.



Unity against the carnage - build 10th April Demo

Alongside a rolling programme of further industrial action by the PCS, railway workers are striking (Scotrail) and balloting for pre-General Election strikes (Network Rail). Numerous anti-cuts campaigns, involving council workers’ unions and communities, are campaigning against the brutal council cuts that loom. Already 5,000 council jobs face the chop, with hair-raising predictions of 32,000 jobs (one in every eight!) being butchered by 2014. And community centres face closure up and down Scotland.

So an immediate opportunity to tie all these strands of struggle into a rope to restrain the axe-wielders presents itself on Saturday 10th April. Scottish UNISON is calling a mass, national demonstration in Glasgow that day, in defence of public services.

SSP members in all the various trade unions – alongside other union members – need to move heaven and earth to make this an almighty display of the power of a united working class on the march, by calling on their unions to mobilise members into an event that dwarfs even the brilliant 10,000 on the EIS march.

As Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and SNP politicians sharpen their knives in a grisly pre-election competition for whose cuts are the deepest, the SSP in contrast will stand up for public sector workers and the communities that depend on public services.

We will build for a united march for public services – not private profit, demanding the governments tax the rich and bail out all public services - not bankers’ and billionaires’ profits.

We will campaign inside the unions for measures that would fund these services, protect and create jobs, and begin to re-distribute wealth from the millionaires to the millions.

Measures such as a 10% tax on every millionaire (to fund 80,000 new jobs in Scotland alone, on £25,000 a year for 3 years!); restoration of income tax on the rich to pre-Thatcher levels (83%) and likewise Corporation Tax on big companies, from the current paltry 28% to the 52% it was at before Thatcher and then New Labour made this country a tax haven for the tax-dodging rich.











A sea-change has begun in the outlook of workers in the frontline of public sector carnage by the parties that back big business and the profit system. Socialist measures – including full-blown public ownership of the entire banking sector, natural wealth, services and big industries, but with democratic control – are increasingly convincing to people whose future is under threat.

The time is ripe for the potential power of a united trade union movement to be mobilised – starting with 10th April – and for socialist demands to be boldly advanced amongst an increasingly receptive crowd of angry workers. The SSP will do its part, emboldened by the events of the past 48 hours.