As we move rapidly towards September 18th 2014 and a hugely historical day for Scotland, SSP Campsie remember another hugely significant September 18, that of 1959.
It was a day carved into the collective memory of Scots, and in particular those of us who live in the Campsie mining villages. It was on a shift down the mine outside Moodiesburn that a fire claimed the lives of 47 miners. 41 women were widowed and 76 children lost their fathers. Just one miner survived.
The death toll from the underground fire in Auchengeich Colliery, was the worst in the history of mining in Scotland.
SSP members, Willie Telfer and Mark Callaghan paying tribute to the miners who lost their lives in 1959
Next Sunday, 30th March at 2pm in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, the SSP will be showing solidarity with hard working miners across Scotland and the UK who were attacked and sold down the river by successive Governments and of course, Thatcher's Westminster's Tories. An independent Scotland could have nurtured and transformed coal into a clean industry and fair and safe employment for thousands of people was smashed by successive neo-liberal Tory and New Labour Governments.
There will be a screening of the film Happy Lands, based on the highs and lows of a Fife mining community during the 1926 general strike. The strike was called by the TUC for one minute to midnight on 3 May, 1926.
For the previous two days, some one million coal miners had been locked out of their mines after a dispute with the owners who wanted them to work longer hours for less money.
In solidarity, huge numbers from other industries stayed off work, including bus, rail and dock workers, as well as people with printing, gas, electricity, building, iron, steel and chemical jobs.
The aim was to force the government to act to prevent mine owners reducing miners' wages by 13% and increasing their shifts from seven to eight hours.
The industrial action came against a backdrop of tough economic times following the First World War and a growing fear of socialism and communism. The elites had to resort to open class war to stop working men and women being awarded fair pay for a hard graft.
The film will be followed by speakers relating their own experiences of the 1984 fight against Thatcher's Government, who it has been recently revealed, had plans from the off to close over 70 pits serving working class communities across the UK.
Local man, Tommy Canavan, arrested during the strike, who helped organize local miners in '84 will speak.
Local SSP Strathkelvin organiser,Willie Telfer said, "Many truths about the strike have only recently come to light, these new facts show how many families in the Kirky area were used by a government hell bent on smashing the trades union movement. Although it is 30 years on, many miners are still campaigning for justice and the disclosure of the facts behind the government's actions at that time".
Although ultimately defeated the event will celebrate the Strathkelvin sense of community and the solidarity shown to miners families during the dispute.
The 18th of September, 1959, was one of the saddest days for Strathkelvin folk and indeed, for all miners and the people of Scotland.
Let's hope September 18th 2014 is a day we remember the men and their families and vote to ensure our communities are rebuilt by a democracy and economy centred in Scotland and no longer in the hands of the Westminster Tories and New Labourites who have betrayed Scottish working class people for the past 35, and more, years.
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
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Campsie Scottish Socialist Party Branch meeting this Saturday 14 January at 11am in Kirkie Puffer.
Discussing issues such as this:
NO RETREAT ON CUTS FIGHT
By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser
11 January 2012
The experiences of 2011 and prospects in 2012 for working class people can be captured in one phrase: grim - and grimmer! Food bills, domestic fuel, transport costs and daily essentials rocket as wages are frozen.
The sick, disabled and unemployed are hounded and demonised by the Westminster millionaires' Cabinet, with threats of withdrawal of their measly benefits unless they find jobs that don't exist.
One in three Scottish children officially lives in poverty, with an appalling 52 per cent of kids in north Glasgow.
Meantime the richest 10 per cent of the population are on average £100,000 better off than they were in 2005.
Workers living in fear for their jobs are bullied by bosses into working massive amounts of unpaid overtime – the equivalent of working for absolutely nothing up until 24 February this year – and enough hours to create 2 million new jobs, whilst a million young people rot on the dole!
Workers whose faces don't fit are to be stripped of the paltry rights at work they currently 'enjoy', as the Twin Tories rail against health & safety 'red tape' and plan to charge workers £1,000 just to go through an Employment Tribunal against unfair dismissal.
Things can only get worse!
All this mayhem and exploitation even before the Coalition's fangs sink into jobs, incomes and services, as they have only just begun to do.
Last year 24,000 Scottish public sector jobs were lost; forecasts abound of up to 100,000 more to go in the next year or so. No wonder the SSP's warnings of 'another lost generation' - first coined three years ago - has now become the currency of many commentators and Labour politicians on the make, trying to appear anti-Tory after 13 years of acting as the New Tories in government. But as the multiple assaults impact, workers and communities have increasingly joined the resistance, challenging the axe-wielders with quiet fury, protests, and strikes. The most spectacular display of working class resistance in several decades was the November 30 strike by over 2 million public sector workers.
At least 300,000 Scottish trade unionists came out in a fight to defend their pension rights. But that issue also acted as the vehicle for struggle against all other aspects of the unprecedented cuts to jobs, conditions and public services.
Crossroads
That battle is now at a critical crossroads, and the outcome will heavily influence workers' conditions for years to come. As the SSP warned in advance, the Tory/LibDem razor gang have used every dirty trick to try and derail a movement that, behind the smug arrogance, terrifies them.
On the eve of the historic N30 strike, Cameron & Co offered fake concessions, and tried to isolate strikers from the rest of society by issuing blood-curdling exaggerations of the economic ruin it would cause. That, and their hard-faced announcement of even deeper cuts in Osborne's autumn statement in parliament literally the day before, only hardened the resolve of workers and strengthened the strike.
Cameron then tried to demoralise workers by dismissing it as "a damp squib", but in the face of the derision and anger this provoked, had to then admit it was "a big strike". By taking united, militant action, the unions attracted 100,000 new members in the period of the St Andrews Day showdown; confirmation that decisive action is the way to build the unions as powerful weapons of resistance to the millionaires' butchery. Having failed to cow public sector workers, the government resorted to an age-old strategy; they sought to use the most right-wing, spineless 'leaders' of the TUC and individual unions to undermine the momentum and unity of workers taking action.
Right-wing treachery
Ten days after the biggest show of workers' power in generations, the TUC's Brendan Barber, GMB leaders and fake-radical UNISON leader Dave Prentis argued for acceptance of the government's allegedly 'new and final offer'.
In fact, as PCS union general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly said in point blank refusing to accept this deal, there is nothing new about it. It is a minutely-adjusted version of what was on offer prior to N30. Coalition Minister Danny Alexander subsequently boasted to the parliament on 20 December that their 'new' offer did not involve a single penny less in 'savings' than their pre-N30 proposals. It is merely a rearrangement of the misery, peppered with crude attempts to divide and conquer the millions of workers who had displayed such magnificent determination to fight the cuts.
Workers over 50 have been granted minor concessions, but will still lose 20 per cent of their pension through the switch from Retail Price Index (RPI) to Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a measure of inflation.
Retirement age is to be tied to the state pension age – 67 or 68. NHS workers earning under £26,000 are to be granted a year's delay in the implementation of the misery, but that will be funded by deeper attacks on NHS staff earning more. Likewise with local government workers - but only so the assault commences in 2014. A year's respite for a lifetime of cuts to their deferred wages!
Triple whammy remains
The three-headed monster attack on pensions - payment of more in workers' contributions, for longer, for lesser pensions - remains at the heart of this latest offer. It still seeks to double-tax public sector workers - not to improve the state of pension schemes (many of which are in the black, all of which are set to cost less over the next decade), but to fill some of the hole in government funds caused by the bankers' bailout and the recession that has been exacerbated by the ConDem cuts.
To their eternal shame, some UNISON leaders, keen to get back to their quiet lives, undisturbed by outbursts of action by hard-pressed members, blurted out the cynical opinion "this was always going to be a damage limitation exercise"! Not exactly the views of the pickets on N30! The spineless posture of more right-wing union leaders gave the government the opening to issue a monumental lie through the media at the height of the holiday period; that a deal had been reached. This, alongside repeated assertions that the pension plans were going ahead regardless from April 2012, was designed to browbeat workers into surrendering. And for good measure, the union that has spearheaded the battle in the wider movement - the PCS - was excluded from the so-called negotiations: an attempt to isolate and demonise them, and a back-handed compliment from the arch enemies of workers to this socialist-led union's success in inspiring others to join the fray.
Socialist alternative critical in unions
The obscene readiness of union leaders like UNISON's Prentis and GMB to cave in after the momentous scale of action by millions underlines the dangerous pitfalls of accepting the idea of ANY cuts.
Echoing Labour (and SNP!) talk of the cuts being "too deep and too soon", these union leaders lack a vision of measures that make ALL cuts entirely unnecessary, and so they are outrageously willing to capitulate in the face of a government that puts on a hard face. It is no accident that PCS especially have been firm in opposition to this deal; they have rejected the case for any cuts, calling for taxation measures and investment in jobs instead. The political viewpoint of unions becomes critical in determining what kind of fight they put up.
But when the Tory and LibDem boot boys looked to the TUC right wing for salvation, they reckoned without the furious resistance of union activists and members, who have lobbied their leaderships with demands to not sell out their pension rights even before the battle properly engages. A whole succession of union leaderships has since rejected the deal: PCS from day one; the teachers' unions NUT and NASUWT; POA: university and college lecturers' UCU; UNITE sectoral committees in both the NHS and local government.
But the united front against the cuts has been seriously breached by the decision of UNISON to accept the ‘Heads of Agreement’ – the framework for talks - thereby suspending further industrial action for at least the short-term. The national leadership’s surrender pre-Xmas did enough to confuse and undermine the confidence of branch delegates to their sectoral committees. But UNISON members should still bombard their leaderships with demands that unless the attacks on pensions are withdrawn during the negotiations, rather than delayed by a year, the fight is back on, alongside other unions who have rejected this shoddy package.
Now is the time to fight, not flee
In a remarkable confirmation that now is the time to escalate the fight against an enfeebled government, the doctors' BMA has announced plans to consult 130,000 members in what could be their first industrial action in 40 years.
As the Voice goes to press, the TUC Public Sector Liaison Group meets. Union members who have fought to save the deferred wages of millions from grand theft by the millionaires' government are demanding that they name the day without delay for further, united strike action.
Despite UNISON leadership’s weakening of the united front, the other public sector unions should forge ahead with further united strike action – as PCS, NUT, UCU and UNITE appear to be committed to.
Such a day of action could also involve sections of private sector workers, who a increasingly up in arms at cuts to their own pension schemes, wages and jobs. For instance, the UNITE members in the construction industry, battling and balloting for strike action against mind-boggling 35 per cent cuts in their wages; and Unilever workers taking their first ever national strike action against abolition of their final salary pension scheme by the giant multi-national with a previous reputation for paternalism, high quality tied houses for their workers, model villages, etc.
In rejecting the government's not-so-new deal, the UCU called for another one-day strike before university half term holidays in mid-February. Time is of the essence. Another mass strike could include lobbies of council buildings, as councillors throughout the land set budgets, with demands that instead of wielding the knife on behalf of their paymasters in Westminster and Holyrood, they should set 'No Cuts' Defiance budgets, and help build mass movements that demand back the stolen £millions from central government, to save every job, wage and service.
Councillors once again face the stark choice: defy or destroy! Faced with mass strikes, even a single council taking this principled route would add another layer of rebellion, another front facing the troubled Westminster cuts Coalition.
And closer to home, an immediate mass strike of all public sector (and sections of private sector) workers would pound the SNP government with the demand that they stand up for Scotland, for services, for social justice - instead of Swinney and Salmond aping the Tories with their pay cuts, service cuts and job losses. The SNP rightly tell Cameron and Osborne to stop interfering with Scottish democracy on the issue of an independence Referendum; they need to be hammered into something of the same resistance to Westminster 'interference' in Scottish jobs, public services and pay packets...or be exposed as the Tartan butchers that they are.
The unions, with their millions of members - workers who are indispensable in providing critical daily services - are pivotal to the battle against cuts. The union leaders have a duty to lead, not surrender at the first threat of retaliation by the Tory bullies. If they capitulate on pensions, that would be a serious blow to the wider anti-cuts struggle. A serious battle to save pensions will require further, united, national strikes and demonstrations, which would embolden workers, communities and students not even in a union to join the resistance to all aspects of cuts. And at the heart of all this lies the issue of boldly advocating an alternative that explodes the myths that cuts a necessary or unavoidable. The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently broadcast the CSS for taxation of the rich and big business, and democratic public ownership, as the core of a socialist alternative. At critical moments, like right now, the socialist case against all cuts is the difference between confusion, division, and acceptance of very slightly lesser cuts - or unity, confidence and a sustained struggle that can defeat the Eton boot boys and their spineless local servants.
By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organizer
25 May 2011
The annual conference of the UK’s fifth-biggest trade union, the Public & Commercial Services union (PCS), marked a decisive turning point in the resistance movement to public sector cuts.
The delegates there, representing 300,000 members, with branch mandates behind them, voted almost unanimously to ballot for strike action and action short of strikes, on the issues of jobs, pay and pensions.
They explicitly named 30th June for a one-day strike, and are seeking simultaneous strike action by other public sector trade unionists. Teaching unions – UCU, NUT and ATL – seem firmly committed to this day of united action. Other unions – UNITE and UNISON- have signed agreements with the PCS to combine and collaborate in anti-cuts action. Their leaderships should now move without delay to ballot members in affected areas for strike action to coincide with the plans for 30 June.
Build 30th June strike
And every other union in the public sector should be pressed from its branches, union reps and membership to follow suit. Even a partial general strike of public sector workers – numbering over 600,000 in Scotland alone – would be an industrial and political hurricane that could begin to blow the axe-wielding governments off course, at Westminster, Holyrood and local council levels.
There is no shortage of reasons for united action. Most people have yet to feel the full force of the storm of cuts descending on our workplaces and communities – apart from some of society’s most vulnerable, the sick and disabled, and big swathes of council workers.
Cameron and Clegg’s cuts orgy of £81billion includes £9bn being chopped off benefits for the sick and disabled. Over 5,000 of those hammered by these cruel cuts braved all obstacles to demonstrate in London last week. Protests in Scotland are being mounted against the vulture capitalists of Atos, the company hired to hand out callous, unprofessional, cost-cutting medical judgments that throw people off slightly higher rates of benefit.
Hurricane hits Scotland
But the looming assault on jobs – with economists predicting up to 100,000 job losses in Scotland – local services, pay and pensions are a cocktail about to explode and cause terrible social and human wreckage. The generalised nature of the attacks require a generalised response – a potent combination of direct action protests, united strike action, and hard-hitting arguments that explode the lie that cuts are either necessary or unavoidable.
Everyone would welcome the pre-election pledge of ‘no compulsory redundancies’ in the public sector from the Scottish government. But nobody should have to pay the price demanded for this promise – years of pay cuts and effectively a no-strike deal.
And one of the unions whose leadership was most craven in bowing down to a pay-cutting, conditions-hacking deal with COSLA – the EIS – has been given a rude lesson in the simple fact that weakness invites aggression. COSLA now wants to increase teaching hours; lengthen the working week; wipe out time protected for vital lesson preparation and marking; slash holidays and make them training days instead; and bring in fixed-term contracts for promoted teachers. All this on top of a two-year pay freeze 9at least a 10 per cent cut in reality).
Nobody is safe
Whether it is teachers facing this warfare from their employers, lecturers and students facing wholesale course closures and job losses, disabled people confronted by closure of their centres, or civil servants hit by closure of local offices in areas officially declared to be the unemployment blackspots of Scotland, nobody is safe. And that’s even before the £3.3bn cuts demanded of the Scottish government over the next two years.
The outcome of the Scottish elections was an attempt by besieged communities to find shelter from the storm of cuts issuing from Downing St. Mostly they entrusted the SNP to stand up for Scotland. The SNP made a good job of luring people into thinking they would do precisely that, and hid from view their spineless failure to stand up in defiance of the Westminster butchers’ £1.3bn cut to the Scottish budget last October.
And they cunningly disguised their plans to carry through cuts, not by defying and refusing to implement them, but by delaying them beyond the recent elections, stockpiling them, creating the conditions for a ‘double whammy’ of cuts over the next 2-3 years.
Demand SNP resist cuts
Now the SNP are in power, with hopes and expectations of protection raised. So anti-cuts campaigners – and in particular the STUC and various mass-membership trade unions – should demand the new government fulfils the hopes invested in them, use their popular mandate, declare unequivocally that they will refuse to pass on Westminster’s butchery, and mount a mass campaign of the Scottish people demanding the powers and the money to defend every single job, service, community facility, pay packet and pension.
Alex Salmond quite rightly immediately demanded of the London government an extension of powers for the Scottish government – including control over excise duties and Corporation Tax. But instead of demanding the latter to slash tax on big business to Southern Irish levels of 12 per cent – as Salmond clearly wishes to do – the unions should demand this extension of powers for Holyrood, not to reduce but to increase Corporation Tax to its pre-Thatcher level of 52 per cent – a policy that the PCS union shares with the Scottish Socialist Party.
Tax big business and the rich
That would enormously expand the funds available to the Scottish government, in order to build the best public services and welfare system in Europe, with a vast expansion of jobs, mopping up the criminal waste of a young generation left jobless, turning talent to the use of society as a whole.
One of the best possible ways of holding the newly elected Scottish government to account, of demanding they give material reasons for the “hope” and “vision” which they astutely preached to win the election, is to build a mass strike and rallies on 30 June. Public sector workers, students, communities, disabled people, pensioners … an army of resistance to the cuts on that day showing their angry determination, would not only rattle the severely weakened and divided ConDem Coalition, but also put the SNP government on the spot – not to mention an array of council leaderships who are busy slaughtering jobs, conditions and services.
Victories through action
In campaigning for 30 June to become a mass show of unity in action, we should be encouraged by several recent victories against cuts. Cameron, Osborne and others have been spewing out bellicose, bloodcurdling class warfare against workers and their unions, with for instance Osborne advising the Institute of Directors to “get stuck in” with even worse attacks on workplace health and safety regulations and more vicious anti-union laws than even Thatcher dared to wield. But alongside that, the ConDem government is executing more U-turns than the average professional ice-skater.
A mass petition frightened them into dropping plans to privatize the woodlands – but now they want to slash one in four Forestry Commission workers’ jobs.
As the interview with Willie Telfer of PCS [see below/box] reveals, their plans to crucify the coastguard service have been thrown into rapid meltdown by a powerful community and trade union campaign. And bosses in the Driving Services Agency have capitulated in the face of threatened strike action by PCS members against a brutal array of cuts they’d planned. Action works!
BA battles
Twin lessons on this theme arise from the 2-year-long battle conducted by BA cabin crews, members of the UNITE union.
These workers originally had no option but to strike against multiple attacks on their jobs, pay and conditions – including reduction of staffing levels for in-flight crews, and the introduction of new cabin crews on far worse wages and conditions, all imposed without even seeking talks with the union.
The UNITE members were driven to strike to defend union recognition, in order to defend their conditions against blatant attempts to wipe out both.
The tenacity of the cabin crew UNITE members has been remarkable, but a combination of anti-union laws and failure by the national union leadership to rapidly spread the action to the wider BA workforce left them in a dangerous stalemate, ruthlessly exploited by management, who launched a vicious press propaganda war, and meantime victimised strikers.
They disciplined and sacked UNITE union reps, ripped up union facilities previously agreed, and withdrew travel concessions from staff who had taken part in perfectly legal strikes. The battle went from defence of staffing levels and pay to one for the very survival of the union as a workers’ defence organization.
Now, faced with further strike ballots, BA bosses have conceded on most of their witch-hunt against the union, its reps and its members, restoring travel concessions to the strikers; restoring wages docked from crew off sick during the strikes; conceding union facilities again; and agreeing binding arbitration through ACAS on all the union reps who were victimized. A victory for the tenacious action of union members on those issues – but no concession whatsoever has been won on staffing levels and the galloping introduction of lower-paid new starts.
The twin lessons for other workers from this protracted struggle is that action forces concessions out of even the most hard-faced exploiters, but action in isolation from wider workforces severely weakens the chances of outright victory.
All out 30th June
Over 250,000 civil servants striking on 30 June, alongside tens of thousands of teachers and lecturers, would be a powerful body-blow to those in government hell-bent on making ordinary people pay for the bankers’ and billionaires’ wrecking ball to the economy.
But what an infinitely more potent weapon it would be if they were joined by EIS members facing the worst assault on their conditions in generations from COSLA; plus Scottish NHS staff who face 3.3 per cent cuts to health care this year and a future with redundancies, as Heath Boards seek to cut their deficits, according to new research by the British Medical Journal; and council workers who are already facing the brunt of pay cuts, work overloads and savage job losses?
Action and arguments
Every opponent of cuts, all who yearn a decent, civilized society that raises hopes fro the future and protects the most vulnerable, should work flat out to make 30 June the biggest and widest possible day of strikes and rallies.
Direct action protests against the perpetrators of cuts, combined with arguments for taxing the rich and taking wealth into public, democratic ownership, will help to raise the sights of people who otherwise despair at what the future holds.
The SSP will not flinch in helping build such actions and popularizing socialist alternatives to the cuts. We will stand up for Scotland – and demand the newly elected SNP government do the same, rather than asking for the power to cut taxes to the obscenely rich whilst sharpening the knives for the jobs, wages and public services that ordinary Scots depend upon.
Richie Venton spoke to Willie Telfer, PCS Dept for Transport Group Assistant Secretary
“There are 18 Coastguard stations in the UK. The government planned to centralize them into two super-stations.
There was huge uproar, for instance in Stornaway and Shetland, with mass community campaigns.
Coastguards tend to be ex-fishermen or seafarers, and live locally. There are also retained coastguards, with jobs ranging from the local church minister to civil servants. The service is a matter of life and death, and local communities know that. They know how absurd the government plan is, to leave only two stations, near Aberdeen and Southampton, over 600 miles apart!
So the fury was deep-rooted, with, for example, 250 at public meetings in Stornaway.
It was a mostly community-led campaign, with the scattered PCS membership (coastguards) joining in – with the open threat of strike ballots by PCS across the entire department for transport if there are any compulsory redundancies; driving examiners standing up for coastguards.
Faced with this uproar, the government has made it clear they are not going to stick to their original, crazy plan of only two stations, though it’s still unclear how many will be saved. This goes to show what pressure can achieve.
In another section of the Dept for Transport – the DSA – we have won an outright victory, this time led by trade union action.
The Cardiff DSA office does the admin for driving tests in England and Wales, and includes the Welsh language unit. DSA management wanted to close it down, to get their hands on the building, and made it plain there was no way they would back down.
PCS balloted and won a massive vote for strike action. The Cardiff PCS DSA branch led the big anti-cuts march to the Welsh Assembly; were prominent on the TUC’s 26 March demo, and won the backing of politicians from several parties.
This high profile campaign, and the mere threat of strike action, has forced the intransigent DSA management into a total capitulation, saving our DSA in Cardiff, but also winning five other union demands, including a moratorium on plans to shed 40 per cent of the Driving Test centres.
Fighting the cuts, you often run into those who say ‘it can’t be done’. These two examples prove the government and employers can be stopped – even before generalised, widespread action.
This government is a coalition, divided and weak. So June 30th is not just a show of strength, but another step on the road to halting the cuts. And within PCS, we are not just building for national action, but also encouraging action locally and within groups/departments. Whilst defending ourselves from the government sledgehammer we are not going to allow ourselves to be tickled to death!”
(Watch Willie Telfer speak at an anti-cuts rally in a personal capacity)
Below - PCS Voice and details about tomorrows PCS strike. Also, a link to the new Scottish Socialist Voice - now available FREE online!
PCS plans.... Edinburgh Gather at the Mound from 10.30 am - head for the PCS banner Alternative Budget declaration - don't cut civil and public services, and a noisy protest (whistles and other noisy items will be provided!) Public leafleting Speaker - PCS national president Janice Godrich
Glasgow Gather in the Iron Horse, 115 West Nile Street from 10.15 March to Labour Party HQ and hand in a letter to Ian Gray Public leafleting Speaker - Scotland Committee Chair Derek Thomson
ARTICLE BY SSP WORKPLACE ORGANISER, Richie Venton, ABOUT STRIKE HERE
CLICK ON THE LEAFLET TO READ A BIGGER VERSION:
CLICK ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE VOICE TO GET INSIDE!
Andy Bowden speaks about youth unemployment - and his own experience of it. It's not the crisis thats to blame... it is the greedy bosses...
Richie Venton speaks about how the bosses are piling their debt blackhole onto the workers and how they are saving their millions by casting workers into the misery of long working hours, low pay and ultimately, unemployment.
by Richie Venton & Eddie Truman ________________________________________ On Wednesday 28th January 2009 workers for Shaw’s construction contractors at Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire were told by their shop stewards that the new contractor, IREM, an Italian company that a part of the contract on LOR's HDS3 plant had been awarded to, was refusing to employ UK labour. IREM planned to house hundreds of Italian and Portuguese workers in accommodation barges in Grimsby harbour, bussing them to and from the plant every day. They were explicit in their policy of not hiring any UK workers as contractors. This was particularly offensive to local skilled workers against the background of Shaw’s having issued 90-day redundancy notices in mid-November, meaning that they would become redundant mid-February, whilst IREM was herding Italian workers like cattle on a boat (rumoured to be a prison ship), keeping them well away from trade-unionised UK workers. The entire LOR workforce, from all subcontracting companies, met and voted unanimously to take immediate strike action. The following day over a thousand construction workers from LOR, Conoco and Easington sites descended outside Lindsey Oil Refinery's gate to picket and protest. Thus began one of the most remarkable episodes of industrial action in the UK since the uprising in the North Sea in the late 1990's. Workers the length of the UK began a series of unofficial and therefore illegal actions from Grangemouth oil refinery and Longannet power station in Scotland, Sellafield and Heysham nuclear plants, Fiddlers Ferry in Widnes to the Drax power station in Yorkshire. In just 3 or 4 days the UK's anti-trade union laws, some of the most oppressive in Europe, were swept aside by workers in key industrial facilities; power generation and oil refining. Workers ignored and defied anti-union laws on balloting procedures, solidarity strikes and mass picketing, exploding the myth - perpetrated by far too many union leaders for decades - that the anti-union laws invented by the Tories and retained by New Labour are insurmountable. The industrial action was not taking place in isolation. Across Europe workers have started to take action against the impact of the economic recession that threatens their jobs and wages and conditions. For the left the strikes brought complications in the form of the slogan 'British Jobs For British Workers' which although was never raised officially by the Lindsey workers became prominent from the beginning of the dispute. Socialists have absolutely no truck with such slogans which promote division and can and have been used by the far right to promote their racist poison. When Gordon Brown first used this phrase in November 2007 the SSP was unequivocal in condemning him for playing into the hands of the BNP and fuelling racism and xenophobia. When the strikers used this slogan initially there is no doubt that there was a large element of throwing the slogan back in Gordon Brown's face. Here was a situation in which UK workers were specifically being excluded from UK jobs. But the slogan very quickly backfired; it was a gift to the BNP who had in fact been using it for a number of years and it allowed the media to deliberately and dishonestly portray the strike as overtly xenophobic and racist. An interview conducted by Paul Mason which was used on Newsnight showed a striker making the point that "we can't work beside them, they are coming in full companies", referring to the segregated accommodation of the new contractors. The BBC's 10 o'clock news carried a story about the strike in which Government ministers accuse the strikers of xenophobia, the Newsnight clip is cut to the striker saying "we can't work beside them". But the strikers themselves agreed demands at their mass meetings which never gained the oxygen of media coverage, but which cut across entirely the vicious distortions of their portrayal in the press. They demanded union rights for all workers, including immigrant labour; for union facilities for the Italian workers to make them an integral part of the trade union movement here; and for the implementation of the national construction and engineering industry agreement on the rate for the job, hours of work, breaks and conditions for all working in the UK – including the Italians. Numerous first-hand accounts showed pickets giving short shrift to the unwelcome attentions of the fascist BNP – who after all sided with the Tories against the miners’ strike, and didn’t even think firefighters should have the right to strike. Strikers demonstrated a core internationalism and solidarity with fellow-workers that bodes well for the future of this movement. Union spokespersons repeatedly stated that this strike was not about race or nationality, not against Italian or Portugese workers, but against the Italian company that was excluding local, skilled workers from even getting an interview for jobs. Strikers rightly saw this as an attempt by EU companies to exploit EU directives and court rulings on ‘posted workers’ to undermine and break hard-won national agreements and trade union organization. Far from being instinctively against migrant workers from Italy or Portugal, many of the strikers are themselves ‘migrants’ – forced to uproot themselves to find work in other regions of the UK or even across the EU. So they will have felt particularly bitter towards Labour’s Lord Mandelson who in effect told them to “get on their bikes” and trek across Europe for work – because after all the EU regulations are for the workers’ benefit!!
Seumas Milne in The Guardian called it exactly right when he described the strike as "a fight for jobs in the middle of a deepening recession and a backlash against the deregulated, race-to-the-bottom neoliberal model backed by Brown for more than a decade which produced it." In the Glasgow Herald Professor Gregor Gall described the strike as essentially being about "the underlying issues of the race to the bottom under capitalism, the drive to neo-liberalism and the European Union's deregulatory preference."
The specific European Union legislation and court rulings that were inevitably going to ignite labour disputes at some point is the EU Posted Workers Directive and the judgements by the European Court in cases including Viking, Laval and Ruffert. The judgements have had the effect of undermining union negotiated collective agreements which are not recognised as `universally applicable' in the UK.
For trade unionists this strike was waiting to happen and the response of workers across the UK has been inspirational. Linda Somerville, formerly a member of the Unite National Executive, says that there were three things that stood out; "Firstly that the strike took place in the first place" she says. "We have been told repeatedly that workers in the UK are no longer interested in militant trade union action. That clearly is not the case. "Secondly, the strength and depth of the secondary, solidarity, action was immense. "Workers in key industrial locations across the UK held mass meetings and took action. "Thirdly, the strikes were all against UK trade union law which is amongst the most oppressive in Europe. The legal tools were there for employers to launch a major assault on trade unions involved in the action but the sheer size of the strikes, protests and walk outs rendered the laws impotent. "Workers at Grangemouth refinery who were very quick to come out in support of the strike have been emboldened by recently winning their pension dispute with INEOS which saw them take strike action in April 2008."
For socialists and trade unionists this dispute has been an important test, with many more to come. The SSP has repeatedly said that the economic recession and world wide crisis of capitalism will inevitably mean that workers will be pushed into struggle. But these struggles will be complex and contradictory with the enemies of the working class seeking to muddy the waters and cause confusion. For that reason it is vital that we take a sober and detailed analysis of the situation and in particular understand that in Europe it is the rabidly neo liberal and pro big business measures of the European Union that seeks to drive down wages and terms and conditions across the board that organized workers are now resisting. We need to see the essence of the issues, even when accidental slogans cloud the image. Instead of ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ the SSP from the outset of this strike wave supported the strikers in demanding the right to work, the right to an equal chance of being employed, and for defence of the wages, conditions and union rights won by hard struggle in this harsh, dangerous industry. The SSP from day one of this strike movement called on unions in the UK to urgently seek active links with unions in Italy, Portugal and the EU, to unite in action against attempts to divide and conquer, against the use of cheaper labour and worse conditions in the bosses’ race to the bottom. We also need to raise demands such as trade union registers of unemployed workers in the industry as the pool for employment when jobs are on offer – at least a small step forward to the days when unions had elements of control over hiring and firing in a few of the better-organised industries, such as printing. That would help counter the conscious ‘race to the bottom’ of conditions by companies at home and abroad, by use of cheap, disorganized workers to undermine the rights won by unionised workforces. This dispute highlights the broader issue of ownership of the power and energy industry, where multi-nationals seize advantage of the de-regulated, cheap-labour EU market – championed by Blair and Brown – to maximize profits – and the SSP’s counter-proposal of public ownership and democratic control of the industry, where workers’ elected representatives would have a direct input to all aspects of employment, production and planning. The wave of tremendously courageous strike action seems, at time of writing, to have won a major climb-down from IREM, with UK workers to get 50 per cent of the jobs, but with no lay-offs for the Italian workers, and for all to get the nationally agreed wages, hours and conditions. This example of militant trade unionism, in defiance of the laws, will inspire others to similar defences of their jobs and right to work – starting with others in the same industry. The job of socialists and good trade unionists is to match the courage of these strikers and seek to influence the slogans and demands of their movement in a fashion that reduces confusion, limits the opportunities for the media and reactionaries to distort workers’ aims, and to consolidate the powerful elements of workers’ unity and internationalism already on show in this current powerful movement.
Click on the "Value for Shareholders" sign for a leaflet you can print out and send to the TGWU in solidarity:
Drivers at the Tesco delivery depots in Scotland are striking against brutal threats from the multinational’s bosses.
Management have insisted drivers must sign up to pay cuts of between £3-6,000, and accept de-recognition of their trade union, and have in fact just spent a day scuttling round Scotland in taxis delivering redundancy notices to their drivers’ homes. The drivers deliver food and supplies to 100 stores across the country, which will be hit hard by the three-day strike on the eve of the busy bank holiday weekend. Tesco bosses are using the excuse of a move to a new site - 50 yards across the motorway from the existing Livingston depot.
ACTION YOU CAN TAKE: something everyone can do is ring up the Tesco Customer Service line on 0800 50 55 55. It's a freephone number.
One SSP member has said: After discovering it I have just rung up and said as a regular Tesco shopper. I am concerned that they have sacked their drivers and used cowboy driver company Yuill & Dodds. [It is important to be polite and friendly in manner - it's a low-paid call-centre worker you will be speaking to.] I asked if this report was true, because if so I would be ending my custom and advising others to do likewise.
The lad said it was a strike because of a move to new depot - but I was able to advise him the strike only started last night whereas drivers were sacked by taxi deliveries two days ago, etc. In fact I think he was genuinely shocked at the facts of £3-6,000 pay cuts, union de-recognition, sackings of the drivers etc.
They will ask for your name and address, and I asked for a written explanation from top management - which is unlikely to happen, but all such calls are logged and passed on to top manmagement! So it's a simple and free way to pressurise Tesco bosses.
Please act on these suggestions - and let us know of any interesting responses you get! Please pass the word.
More information will be posted on the SSP website.
