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Pay - the Fightback

Ellie Keen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:04:30 +0000

How much do you spend on your horse?

The fallout from the tremendous strikes and rallies on 24 April is continuing. Those who struck then are debating doing it again. Some of those who did not strike are discussing getting involved. And many others look on, wishing their own union leaders could be won to such action.

Gordon Brown’s oft repeated determination to hold pay rises for 6 million public sector workers at half the rate of inflation must have lost Labour piles of votes on 1 May. But Brown shows no signs of backing off. This confrontation is a central economic and political issue. It poses the fundamental question of 2008: will workers agree to let their living standards be cut in order to bail out the bosses, the bankers and capitalism?

Over 400,000 strikers on 24 April gave a resounding message that they won’t see their pay cut without a fight. The strikes reflected feeling over lack of staff, the penetration of private interests into the public sector and the oppressive power of management. But the main unifying issue was pay.

Now the chance exists to recreate that day on a higher level. Around 800,000 local government workers in Unison rejected their 2.45 percent offer and are now voting in a strike ballot. The initial indications are that the first strikes could be in early July. Teachers are discussing a further strike ballot in the autumn.

The 100,000 civil service workers who struck on 24 April could also strike again. July will see the 80,000 workers in the Department for Work and Pensions face the second year of an imposed deal which means 0 percent for 40 percent of the workforce.

At its conference the whole PCS civil service union backed a motion calling for a national strike ballot of 280,000 members over pay and other issues. Further education lecturers have agreed further strikes – in London on 9 June to coincide with the TUC lobby of parliament, and two days nationally in September. And at the CWU conference postal workers are to debate calling a national strike ballot over pensions. And there’s also a fight in the private sector – over pensions at Grangemouth and with Unite promising a real challenge over pay on the London buses.

But for the revolt to come to fruition it will require a political battle at every level. Unfortunately the left lost its move for another ballot for a strike this summer at the NUT executive. After the May elections one section of the trade union leaders will demand that there are no strikes in case the government is weakened and the Tories benefit.

In some unions, especially those affiliated to Labour, there is heavy pressure from the top to damp down any fight. But even here the feeling from below has forced strike ballots.

Those who continue to argue for surrender ignore the fact that workers should only be loyal to a government that is loyal to them, not one that cuts their wages and privatises services. If the left does not give a focus to the anger against Labour then it is precisely the right that gains. This is the lesson from the 1970s.

A union movement that is hobbled and demobilised will be one that is demoralised enough to let the Tories in. Over the next few weeks there needs to be intense rank and file pressure to compel union leaders to call ballots, to win those ballots and, as far as possible, to secure coordinated action between unions.

And inside the unions’ national and section executives the left needs to insist that the members’ interests come first, not the interests of Labour ministers or the career prospects of Gordon Brown.

Fixing the figures

Galloping inflation is the major factor driving the pressure for a fightback over pay. Britain’s rate of inflation rose to 3 percent in April, well above the pay increases offered to millions of workers in both the public and the private sectors. And the real rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising at least twice as fast as the official figures show.

The more accurate Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation rose to 4.2 percent in April, up from 3.8 percent in March. But official figures released on 13 May showed food up 7.2 percent, household energy up 8.3 percent and transport fuel up 18.7 percent.

More detailed analysis shows spaghetti up 59 percent and baguettes up 23 percent. A basket of typical food essentials was up 19.1 percent on a year earlier.

Worse is to come. Wholesale price inflation, which is an indicator of future price rises, was up 6.2 percent in April. Gas and electricity prices are set to go up a further 15 percent this year, another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than £1,000. No wonder that on 14 May Bank of England governor Mervyn King said, “There will be a squeeze on living standards over the next couple of years.”

One traditional response when the figures look bad is to leave reality untouched, but to try to fix the figures. This is certainly happening. In the spring the Office for National Statistics added fees for stabling horses to the goods whose prices it measures to work out inflation.

Maybe there are millions of workers out there for whom this is a crucial component of their monthly budget. But I reckon it won’t be much consolation as your food bill goes through the roof to know that some chief executive’s dappled grey is still getting its board and lodging at a bargain price.

And while inflation rises, unemployment is also going up. One study in mid-May estimated that 1,200 people will lose their jobs every day over the next 18 months. Unemployment has been rising for the last three months and reached 1.6 million in March.

Meanwhile around 2.5 million credit card customers have had restrictions put on their accounts as part of the fallout from the “credit crunch”. While most banks continue to make record profits, they have cut customers’ spending limits, brought in annual fees and even closed accounts.

Those targeted are not those who use their cards indiscriminately. They are those who don’t bring enough profit. Many use their cards rarely and pay off the balance in full every month.

A uSwitch survey found that 51 percent of the targeted customers were using their cards regularly and making at least minimum repayments. A further 20 percent were using their card regularly and paying their bill in full. Just 16 percent had exceeded their credit limit in the last year or missed more than one monthly repayment.

Neoliberal Offensive

Ellie Keen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

European TUC general secretary John Monks urges “European legislators,” in light of the most recent outrageous ruling by the European Court of Justice, to revise the posting of workers directive to clarify and safeguard its original meaning.

If he is referring to the European Parliament, then he is barking up the wrong tree.

Legislators are representatives who initiate laws and the European Parliament does not have this power.

Its role is to revise draft legislation proposed by the unelected and unaccountable EU commission and, once a directive is finalised and issued by the commission, it is up to the European Court of Justice to rule on disputes arising from its operation.

Unlike any other court, the European Court of Justice has a mandate to remove obstacles to the operation of a free market within the EU and to promote ever-closer union within the bloc.

And it has been single-minded in doing so in its judgements handed down in response to employers’ demands to prioritise their right to make profits over trade unionists’ right to defend their living standards.

The latest scandalous rejection of workers’ rights is in response to a complaint by the EU commission against Luxembourg for insisting that national legislation on maximum and minimum working periods, minimum paid holidays, minimum rates of pay, health and safety, non-discrimination and so on should apply to posted workers is unreasonable and an additional burden on foreign service providers.

The Luxembourg case follows hot on the heels of the Laval, Viking and Rüffert cases, which undermined individual states’ protective legislation in the name of free provision of cross-border services.

The Laval case involved a Latvian construction company working on a school in the Swedish town of Vaxholm, which refused to sign a collective agreement and provoked trade union action to isolate the site.

The European Court of Justice ruled that, important though the right to take industrial action is, it is trumped by the right to trade freely.

The Rüffert case involved a Polish firm winning a contract in Germany and refusing to comply with wage rates agreed between the Lower Saxony government and the German building workers’ union.

The European Court of Justice ruling was that freedom to trade took precedence over collectively agreements.

The Viking case was about the owners of Finnish-flagged ferry Rosella deciding to register it in Estonia, thereby annulling the collective agreement with the Finnish seafarers’ union.

Once again, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of the employer.

Even to those slow on the uptake, it must dawn that there is a pattern developing here and it is a pattern that points to a race to the bottom – acceptance of the worst pay and conditions as the norm across the EU.

This fits in with the neoliberal policies adopted across the continent and backed by all governments, whether nominally conservative or social-democratic.

It dovetails completely with the attacks on the welfare state, pensions provisions, the 35-hour week and other progressive conditions.

Overturning this employer offensive will not be won through EU institutions but by campaigns in all member states demanding non-implementation of these vicious anti-working class rulings.

Discontent Rising

Ellie Keen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:58:47 +0000

The prospect of a four-day strike over pay by the tanker drivers that supply Shell petrol stations has begun to generate near apocalyptic newspaper headlines. Primed by the government invoking emergency procedures last Friday and the panic buying response of motorists after the refinery workers’ strike at Grangemouth in April, the message the media is peddling is “oh no, here we go again”.

But given that Shell has only one in every 10 filling stations across the country and that these are concentrated in the south-east, the north-west, central Scotland and parts of the Midlands, the headlines are over-egging the pudding.

But what is giving rise to the overreaction is an emerging sense (pdf) of “feel-bad Britain”, where issue after issue adds to a sense of gloom, hopelessness and powerlessness as standards of living for the majority of people begin to plummet.

The rising cost of fuel and food, the credit crunch, the fall in house prices and the tailing off of demand in the housing market have all come thick and fast. Wages are not keeping pace and a small minority of wealthy individuals as well as many companies seem immune to and unmoved by what is happening to the majority of people. And on top of this, our public services are not improving despite the money ploughed into them.

In the case of the threatened fuel strike, the workers are demanding a 13% rise but are being offered 6.8% when their bosses got a 15% rise plus bonuses and the company is benefiting as the price of a barrel of oil climbs inexorably to $200.

But the other side to the story of feel-bad Britain is that there is no sense that the government is exercising any control over events. Brown made pleas to both the banks to pass on cuts in interest rates to the customers and to the oil companies to cap prices. They either said no or politely ignored him as nothing has changed. Then Brown tells us he is listening and that he “feels our pain”, but still nothing seems to change.

The sense of a government on the slide (but nonetheless immovable until May 2010) adds to this despair. What may bring things to a head – over fuel at least – is if hauliers start to exercise their collective disruptive power as they did back in late 2000 by stopping fuel leaving the refineries and organising go-slows on the motorways.

Already, there have been small signs of this in Scotland and Wales.

If the reaction of the Spanish hauliers is anything to go by, our reliance on private road transport to move goods and products about will be cruelly revealed. In Spain, where mostly small owner-employer operators are protesting over rising fuel costs, the supermarket shelves have started to go bare within just three days.

The general sense of malaise would also become even more apparent if the owners and operators of fishing boats started to blockade ports, as they have done in Spain and Portugal in recent weeks, over the cost of fuel.

For all the headlines that talk of a return to the “dark days” of the 1970s in Britain, only if the hauliers acted en masse would we come close to a replay of those times.

Pay, the fightback...

Ellie Keen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

... and how much do you spend on your horse?

In some unions, especially those affiliated to Labour, there is heavy pressure from the top to damp down any fight. But even here the feeling from below has forced strike ballots.

Fixing the figures

More detailed analysis shows spaghetti up 59 percent and baguettes up 23 percent. A basket of typical food essentials was up 19.1 percent on a year earlier.

Those targeted are not those who use their cards indiscriminately. They are those who don’t bring enough profit. Many use their cards rarely and pay off the balance in full every month.

Size of Teachers’ Strike Exceeds Predictions

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:35:27 +0000

Teachers voice their anger at government policy

Two hundred thousand teachers organised in the National Union of Teachers came out on strike on Thursday in opposition to the Labour government’s wage-cutting pay deal. NUT members had balloted 3-1 to reject the three-year pay award of 2.45 percent this year, followed by 2.3 percent over the next two years.

Thee teachers were joined by 100,000 civil servants in the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS), who are opposing a similar cap on their wages imposed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown throughout the public sector.

According to the Guardian, “More than a million pupils at 8,000 schools were expected to miss school … and those predictions may have been exceeded. Several local authorities reported more than twice as many schools closed or partly closed as expected.”

One in three schools in England and Wales were closed, despite the fact that the other two teaching unions, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), refused to support the day of action.

In London, 708 schools shut down completely, and 769 were partially closed. In the South West the strike closed 254 schools, and in Liverpool 187 schools closed their doors, while 213 were only able to operate partially. In the North East 402 schools were shut, 500 were closed in Wales, and 600 in Yorkshire. The West Midlands saw 200 of its schools closed and 264 partially shut.

Teachers held marches and rallies up and down the country, expressing their determination to beat what is being dubbed as Brown’s pay freeze. In London between 6,000 and 10,000 teachers and public sector workers marched together, and rallies were held in Liverpool, Preston, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Cardiff and Wrexham. In Birmingham, 1,000 workers took to the streets.

The London march began in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where singer-songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg played, then walked through the Strand, past Downing Street, and ended in a meeting in the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. The hall held only 2,600 people, meaning that three-quarters of the marchers, including reporters from the WSWS, were unable to enter.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to teachers Keith Marsh, Jan Moses, Adeola Oladejo and Sonia Jallone from a north London primary school about why they were striking:

“For more pay, so that we get more teachers in the profession rather than lose them,” said Jan. “I have a 16-year-old daughter who would be a great teacher, but I would never let her do it with the way things are. It’s about respect. Either the government respects us, or they don’t.

“We are fed up with being told that teaching is a vocation and we should be grateful that we get paid anything at all. Why do you have to take on Teaching and Learning Responsibilities just to earn a half-decent wage? Teaching itself is an important enough job.”

“It’s about other issues as well,” Keith added. ”The paperwork: the fact that we are now expected to be psychologists, social workers and nurses as well as teachers.”

“Officially we work 27.5 hours per week, but how is it that I am working 60 hours?” Jan interjected. “Also everything is based on SATs [standardized tests] now, but there is so much more to what we do.”

Keith agreed: “When you are teaching Year Six you have kids crying their eyes out or not coming in because they are so worried about SATs.”

“I am on strike not just over pay but because of stress levels, workload and changing targets,” Sonia said. “PPA [Preparation and Assessment time] has helped, but it is not always kept to. We need to go back to the old methods where we focused on teaching. We don’t have to assess everything all the time.”

“PPA time was the government admitting that the amount of paperwork we have to do is ridiculous,” Keith stated. “Anyway, if they can find £50 billion to bail out the banks, why can’t they pay us what we deserve? Some 50 percent of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within three years. What a waste of talent and training!”

The four agreed that the one-day strike was not enough and thought it was a shame that it had gone ahead without the support of the other unions—particularly those representing caretakers, teaching assistants and learning support assistants who in most cases are paid less than half the salary of teachers. These workers are also expected to do teaching work with groups of children and in some cases take classes while teachers are having PPA time.

Jo Boyle works at a West London primary school that had been closed down by the strike. “I came out because I think it is important to support striking en masse,” she said. “I don’t think it will change anything, but I believe in acting as a group to try and change things. I’ve never been involved with the teaching union before, but I expected people to be in support of the strike because I think of teachers as socialists who support change.

“It is not so much about pay, although it is difficult for teachers in London to get on the property ladder, but we have a reasonable quality of life compared to many people. It is more about the amount we do and how much of ourselves we put into it. We don’t feel we are being valued. We see other people working less, with less responsibility and being paid more.

“The system of pay doesn’t support people who want to just be a good class teacher. People are forced into management because of pay issues. I took on a maths TLR [Teaching and Learning Responsibility] after only one-and-a-half years in teaching because I needed more money to pay my rent and live in London, when it would probably have been better for me to have more teaching experience first.

“The strike would have had much more of an impact if the rest of the unions had come out. I wonder why the other unions accepted the pay deal and why the NUT didn’t work harder to get them out with us.”

Jo agreed that the NUT had not opposed the constant attacks on education: “The union should have raised issues like the National Curriculum, SATs and Performance Related Pay [PRP],” she said. “We didn’t know anything about PRP until it was already accepted and in place and then you don’t feel you can do anything about it.”

Katie Noble said she was on strike because the pay deal was “completely unfair. It is below inflation. We are asked to pay more for various things in daily life, but this is not reflected in our pay.

“We put in extra all the time. We give up weekends and stay late planning, marking, filling in paperwork.”

Gilly Chapman agreed: “People have huge expectations of what new initiatives we will take on.”

“There is always something new,” Katie added, “you think you’ve got your planning sorted and the government brings in a new framework and you have to start all over again.”

Gilly felt that the strike could be the start of more general action. Katie agreed that there was unrest across social services. “I don’t think the government will back down, but I don’t think it will end here,” she said.

A 1,000-strong rally was held in Manchester at Friends Meeting House, which was packed to capacity. After the meeting teachers joined public sector workers organised in UNISON in a march through the city. Marchers were greeted by spontaneous applause from passers-by, in stark contrast to the media barrage claiming widespread opposition to the strike amongst parents.

“I am very surprised at the turnout,” said Lindsey Lenton, who has been teaching for two years. “I thought there might be hostility from the public. But people were clapping. I’ve brought my 10-year-old niece along so she knows why her teachers are on strike. I love teaching, but it is exhausting, and despite the fact that myself and my husband both have decent jobs, we still had a struggle to get on the property ladder.”

A retired nurse joined the Manchester rally in Albert Square and expressed her support for the strike. “When I was working as a nurse we had to come out on strike and I agree with the teachers. Now I’m retired it’s still a struggle, I have a mortgage to pay and all the bills.”

In Sheffield a young teacher from Rotherham told a rally, “I love my job passionately, but it places enormous demands upon me and is very time consuming.

“New teachers like myself have to make large sacrifices and it is an indictment of New Labour that I begin my teaching career with imposing debts from tuition fees and student loans. Many like myself have sickening levels of debt.”

She explained how she cannot afford to run a car, or buy a house, whilst everyday costs are rising too. She expressed her revulsion for New Labour and their reneging on promises, amongst them Tony Blair’s mantra of “education, education, education,” saying, “We deserve a government that puts its money where its mouth is. I’m disgusted that teachers cannot afford an average house in an average city.”

One teacher told the WSWS, “It’s not just about teachers having financial difficulties. Education is being damaged. None of our Year Seven pupils have had an English teacher this year. I was wary about coming out on strike. I don’t take this action lightly.”

Another added, “I never have a weekend free. I cannot really afford to go on strike, but I am now doing the lesson planning for two or three other teachers on a regular basis. We have an excessive workload and it has increased all the time during the last few years. I think the problem is that we should all be taking action and speaking with one voice.”

One teacher had gone for a job interview at school and was asked whether she was going on strike. “There is no department in my school that hasn’t been affected by staff absences,” she said. “People are leaving teaching, they can’t recruit new people and there are those off work with stress.

“It’s got so bad it’s nearly impossible to do the job. This strike is less about pay than it is about conditions. I know newly qualified teachers who can’t afford to miss a day’s pay to go on strike.”

Interviewed on Channel 4, Schools Minister Jim Knight attempted to talk up teachers’ pay by saying that their pay had risen by 19 percent since 1997. That means that on average over 11 years, teachers pay has risen by significantly less that 2 percent a year, a pay cut in effect given the level of inflation now standing at over 4 percent. There has been a huge rise in house prices, as well as burgeoning utility bills.

Newly qualified teachers are particularly hard hit because they start their working lives with debts from student loans averaging £20,000. The government are also claiming that teachers are earning on average £34,000. This is in fact the maximum salary after 10 years service, but only if teachers pass their annual performance management monitoring and reviews, and is wholly dependent on the constraints of the schools budget.

Knight also attempted to hide behind the School Teachers Independent Pay Review body, which recommended the pay deal to the government. This body is independent in name only, its members being hand picked by the government.

Teachers in Further Education colleges also joined schoolteachers in their day of strike action. Despite the fact that these workers teach A Levels and GCSEs [General Certificate of Secondary Education] to students aged 16 and above, they are not paid on a par with the rest of the profession.

At the rallies particular applause was reserved for calls for united action of all public sector workers in opposition to the government. Real unity, however, can only be achieved when working people build their own organisations that have as their aim the utilization of the vast wealth of society for the satisfaction of human need and not the profits of the minority.

The trades unions have proved themselves incapable of defending living conditions. The economic climate today—of banking collapses, the credit crunch and looming recession—means workers must begin to assert their own independent class and social interests.

Britain’s Teachers and Civil Servants to take One-Day Strike Action

Ellie Keen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

For the first time in 21 years, teachers in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will come out on a one-day strike on April 24 in opposition to the government’s imposition of a 2.45 percent pay award. With the current rate of inflation running at 4.1 percent this represents a pay cut in real terms. To make things worse, the pay award offered in January runs for three years—with a 2.45 percent increase in September, and just 2.3 percent in each of the following two years.

Members of Europe’s largest teaching union will be joined by over 100,000 civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) covering ten government departments and further education college lecturers in the University and College Union (UCU) in more than 250 colleges in England. Over 20,000 Birmingham City council workers will also begin strike action on April 23.

The government claims that pay restraint is necessary in order to keep inflation down. Schools Minister Jim Knight went so far as to tell the Times Educational Supplement that “it is because teachers have mortgages too that I know that they understand the need for a pay deal that helps deliver low inflation, low interest rates and a stable economy.”

Workers need higher pay precisely because they are facing rising mortgage, food and fuel costs, as well as credit card debts.

Teachers and other workers are not responsible for the financial crisis of the banking system, or the looming recession. Yet, while the Brown government is making available between £50 billion and £150 billion to the banks to cover their bad debts, and has spent billions more on the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, they are insisting that workers accept below-inflation pay rises for years to come.

The starting pay of a teacher in England and Wales, at September 2008 would be £20,627 and in London’s Inner/Outer/Fringe this only rises to £25,000/£24,000/£21,619.

Students and newly qualified teachers are beginning their working lives unable to afford a mortgage and with debts from student loans averaging £20,000. The interest rate on student loans has just been raised to 4.8 percent.

According to the BBC, “grants to cash-strapped teachers from the Teacher Support Network charity rose 70 percent in the first quarter of 2008,” and more teachers struggling with their mortgages sought help from the benevolent fund run by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT).

Chief executive Patrick Nash of the Teacher Support Network, which gives hardship grants in addition to advice to teachers who are struggling, told the BBC, “More of our callers are having to seek help simply to make ends meet, showing that the national credit crunch is having a very real effect on teachers in particular.”

However, the NUT is not mounting a serious challenge to the government’s pay award. This is a one-day token strike to provide a focus for the rising anger of its members, after which the union is merely asking teachers to lobby local councillors and MPs leading to a protest at parliament in June. The summer break takes place for six weeks in July/August, so nothing further is likely to take place until September when the pay rise comes into effect.

The very fact that the NUT has not led a national strike in 21 years testifies to its refusal to oppose the constant attacks on teachers’ wages and working conditions. Indeed, over the past two decades the union has collaborated with successive governments in a massive overhaul of education, which includes the following:

Implementation and extension of the proscriptive and unwieldy National Curriculum, without consulting teachers and with no reference to child psychology.

Statutory annual tests for children at all ages including SATS, which have made children in the UK amongst the unhappiest in Europe, according to a recent United Nations report.

The setting of arbitrary targets in line with continual testing of children, dressed up as “raising standards” and “inclusion” of children from poorer areas, which again bears no relation to how children develop. Teachers have to waste precious time that should be spent with children compiling meaningless test data about children as young as five years old. This information is sent to the government, to be used as a stick to beat teachers whose classes are not performing up to standard.

The introduction of Performance Management as a way to smuggle in payment by results. Newly qualified teachers no longer automatically climb up the pay scale with experience, but have to prove they are worthy of a pay increment by being monitored. This is reinforced by regular OFSTED inspections.

The drafting in of untrained classroom assistants, a so-called “army of mums,” as a cheap labour workforce on temporary contracts who can even replace, at the discretion of the school head, trained teachers in the classroom.

The merging of the departments of Education and Social Services, using the pretext of the tragic death of Victoria Climbie, that will pave the way for further cuts to the social welfare budget.

The introduction of privately run academies headed by dubious outfits such as the Vardy Foundation that favours the teaching of creationism.

Education has been used as an opportunity for big business to make huge amounts of money. Not only have schools been forced to run as businesses with their own budgets, but they have to buy in privately run services like school meals, repairs, educational psychology support, whilst the government hands over millions to the building industry in its Buildings Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Alongside the lack of funds for school and support services, schools have been transformed into instruments for the social policing of children with severe social and psychological problems—with unqualified “mentors” substituting for trained social workers.

The role of the NUT in allowing this to take place is only eclipsed by that of the NASUWT and the smaller Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

The NASUWT has opposed strike action, with the spurious claim that its members are more concerned about their increased workload. Its members will be carrying out business as usual on Thursday, with no challenge from the NUT. The ATL have said that under no condition must their members take strike action. (The lecturers in further education are striking for pay parity with teachers that were promised to them four years ago!)

One must add that the National Union of Students (NUS), which is Labour controlled, will do nothing to support the lecturers or teachers. The only listing for April 24 on its website is for a Student governor “toolkit day.”

Essential lessons must be drawn from these experiences. The attacks on the pay and conditions of teachers since Labour came to power in 1997 have taken place in the midst of a boom. Today the UK and world economy stand on the brink of a recession after the eruption of a banking crisis that is routinely compared with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. This must herald an ever more savage assault on the public sector by Brown.

Organisations that could not defend their members under an expanding economy will never do so when the recession really bites.

The working class must build its own organisations of class struggle.

Teachers’ pay is only one aspect of a broader fight to defend education from its systematic undermining by Labour and its big business backers. For this to be successful demands that this struggle is taken out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracy through the creation of rank and file organisations of teachers that cut across the carefully-cultivated sectional differences that divide and weaken workers in education.

NUT members must do what their leadership has refused to—oppose the collaboration with the government by the NASUWT and ATL and campaign for joint action by all teachers. This should be extended to all other workers in education. At the same time, support must be built amongst parents to reject the claims by the government and the media that the teacher’s action is endangering children’s education.

Only when working people organize a mass, independent political movement and assert their own social and class interests can the immense wealth of society be utilized to provide high quality schools and public services for all.

Unity in Action

Ellie Keen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:23:50 +0000

On 5 November I was sacked after 25 years from the job I loved as a community psychiatric nurse. Three days later 150 community mental health workers went on strike indefinitely for my reinstatement.

I might have felt a bit of shame and embarrassment if any of the trumped up charges were true, but I was even sent a letter on the day of my suspension promoting me to senior practitioner. My crime was speaking out about government plans to transfer NHS care to the voluntary sector and publicly protesting my innocence.

As a result my colleagues are taking 14 days of strike action. Their amazing commitment of time and energy is not just about freedom of speech and myself; it is driven by the frustration of working in services being cut to ribbons.

For a long time our trust has been underfunded, but it came to a crunch in 2003 when one of our NHS hospitals closed and moved to a private finance initiative (PFI) hospital. The beds cost four times as much in the new hospital, so we only had half as many. We lost 45 beds across the city.

This means that even if a patient has section papers completed they can wait up to three weeks before admission. You end up with a 20 bed ward for 27 patients. Patients are reluctant to go home because when they come back they might have nowhere to sleep.

The trust also managed to turn a £4 million budget increase into a cut for the ten community mental health teams. We used to have 16 nurses, but they reduced it to four, with support workers cut from seven to four. Despite this we only had 10 percent less patients.

All this made people furious, so we went on strike earlier in the year, stopping the redundancies and downgrading. You’re not allowed to strike about cuts in services if you have a job at the end of it but we carried on campaigning regardless. I think they suspended me for continuing to campaign. If I’m a leading trade unionist in the branch and they discipline me, where does that leave individual nurses?

I went to see a junior minister for mental health the other day and I was the sixth person to see him that day about services or my case. It’s on a scale I’ve not seen before, but the trust has been digging a bigger and bigger hole for themselves, upping the stakes when they should be backing down.

In our first set of strikes they closed three wards rather than discuss emergency cover with us. They sent some people home for two weeks, some to a private hospital where people couldn’t leave for the five or six days they were there, they sent another 20 acutely mentally unwell patients or so to Darlington, for three weeks, with no idea when they were coming back, 100 miles from their family and friends. I just think that’s cruel.

They’ve employed private investigators to investigate my case on a couple of hundred pounds a day. They’ve employed a private HR person for my disciplinary hearing. They’ve taken on 20 private beds for the duration of our strike as a contingency plan.

We lost 20 beds when we moved to the PFI hospital and suddenly they turn up in the private sector and we can afford them, but only for the duration of the strike. Now they’ve got a private PR firm employed. The money, time and energy they have squandered trying to get rid of me and break the union could have been spent trying to solve the problems of our service.

What’s so inspiring is the way nurses, occupational therapists, senior support workers and the service users themselves continue to speak out about cuts despite what’s happened to me. People still go to committees, write to MPs, do press interviews, organise lobbies, petitions and demonstrations: all the things my victimisation was intended to stop.

Our strike headquarters is a hive of activity. Over half the strikers are actively involved. Users of our services have been incredibly supportive despite the huge impact our strike action has had on them. They regularly join our pickets and protests, and speak out.

For years our union branch has supported campaigns by our users. We fought for free bus passes and daycare, and to stop Job Centres threatening people about work. People often ask me if I was offered my job back would I want to work there again. Well I couldn’t ask for better people to work with – users, carers and staff alike. We have a passion for what we do, a sense of justice and a laugh. It’s not just about me.

More information is available at the Reinstate Karen Reissmann website.

The Politics of the Post Strike

Ellie Keen — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:17:43 +0000

For the past four months the strikes in Royal Mail have been the central question of working class struggle. It was always going to be a major battle, an important one for every trade unionist.

In early June some 130,000 workers in the CWU union brushed aside the propaganda from their bosses and voted overwhelmingly for action against pay cuts and 21 changes to working conditions – 77 percent voted yes on a 67 percent turnout. The vote was so overwhelming that the majority of workers at every Royal Mail branch in the country voted to strike. A series of one-day and sectional strikes eventually forced the bosses and the government to offer talks, a huge reversal from an employer who had said that “the deal is the deal” and no changes could be made.

Weeks of talks produced no result – and then the employers, backed by Gordon Brown, confronted workers with an even more vicious package. It was designed to break the union in order to impose a total transformation of working conditions. A further series of official and unofficial strikes brought Royal Mail to a crisis, and threatened to destabilise Brown’s strategy towards the public sector.

A new deal emerged, which the union’s postal executive (after a bruising struggle) has recommended subject to the achievement of certain guarantees from Royal Mail. If those assurances are given, workers will vote on whether to accept the offer. There is serious resistance because it gives away crucial concessions on pensions, “flexibility” and jobs as well as pay.

Throughout the dispute CWU members have shown great courage, sacrifice and solidarity. Far from crumbling, the strikes became more solid as they went along. Scabbing was never significant, and the union leaders’ greatest problem was holding back unofficial strikes rather than persuading members to go into battle. During the strikes over 5,000 workers joined the CWU, emphasising that struggle builds the unions. New reps emerged in offices, fresh layers of leadership that could revive the union – if they are not repelled by the result of the strike. Other trade unionists have raised money, come to the picket lines and helped organise joint union meetings.

It is unclear what will happen in the next few weeks, but there are two areas where lessons can be drawn. The first is the question of unity between the postal workers and other groups of workers. Royal Mail workers are a very powerful group. As their strikes showed, they can cause huge backlogs of mail and massive problems for big business. According to Royal Mail, ten customers account for 20 percent of the total market, 100 for 40 percent.

The people who shout loudest during a post strike are the banks and utilities whose cashflow gets hit. In addition the strike underlined that competitors such as TNT, DHL and Business Post have a somewhat crucial defect – they all rely on Royal Mail to deliver the letters they collect and sort. The competitors are also customers of Royal Mail, and rely on its infrastructure and workforce. The private mail firms were hit hard by the strikes because they could not carry out their usual business of doing the relatively easy bit (collecting and sorting mail) and then dumping it on Royal Mail to do the deliveries.

Postal workers have real leverage, and had Brown called an election in early November he would have faced real problems if the strikes had gone ahead. But even postal workers need allies when they are opposing such a central plank of government policy.

Need for reinforcements

The post was the frontline of a wider assault by the government. Brown is trying to hold pay “rises” for six million workers below the rate of inflation – a real pay cut. He wants this not just for this year, but for at least three years. At the same time he wants mass job cuts, and each worker working harder and faster (“modernisation”). This is a strategic project where money is channelled away from areas of public service deemed inefficient in order to create resources to make big businesses more internationally competitive, hold down taxes for the rich and companies, and keep funding war and internal repression.

In 1996 eight days of 24-hour national postal strikes over an extended period eventually forced Royal Mail to back off from a far-reaching transformation of ways of working. But the stakes this time were much higher, and the need for reinforcements correspondingly greater. The success or failure of the post strikes was always going to have important implications for millions of other workers. So every union should have offered solidarity, and any union with disputes at the same time should have attempted to coordinate their action with the CWU.

The charge sheet is damning. The postal workers’ first strike was on 29 June. The last strike during this latest phase of the battle with Royal Mail ended on 18 October. For 110 days the postal dispute was taking place. Of course it was punctuated by long periods without strikes. But, even if we restrict the analysis to the official strikes, there were six days of national strike action involving 130,000 workers, and a further ten days when one or other section of Royal Mail was out. So there were 16 days for another union to get on board and strike alongside the CWU. And yet it did not happen.

Who is to blame? In the early days most CWU leaders were either indifferent or hostile to the idea of striking alongside other unions. Labour loyalists such as CWU general secretary Billy Hayes were fearful that they would be portrayed as launching a “political strike”, and as Gordon Brown has only just come to office a direct confrontation with the government was to be avoided. Others argued that a joint strike would draw attention away from the CWU’s issues. Still others were vaguely in favour, but refused to give more than seven days notice of strikes in case it helped Royal Mail bosses to organise scabbing – and with only seven days notice other unions would find it impossible to come on board.

But gradually the argument inside the union shifted. Delegations from other unions to CWU picket lines helped to make coordinated action seem a possibility rather than just an abstract idea. When CWU members spoke at or attended rallies with other unions they began to feel they were indeed the vanguard of a broader battle, and that others would support them. Petitions began to circulate in July calling for CWU leaders to start urgent negotiations to strike alongside others.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS civil service workers’ union, played a very important role. His speeches calling for coordinated action between the PCS and other unions electrified audiences of postal workers. Here at last a union leader was fighting to get the unity that could beat Brown. The PCS executive confirmed that Serwotka could hold meetings with the CWU to offer full support for its strikes, and coordinated action after the first round of strikes.

By mid-July the pressure from below had caused a shift, and a majority of the CWU’s postal executive were in favour of seeking serious talks with the PCS over a date for action. Serwotka was invited to address the CWU leaders. But at just that point the PCS drew back. The union had started its own consultation on the next steps in its own campaign. The majority on the PCS executive felt nothing could be done until the consultation was over and that decision effectively ended the possibility of a joint strike. Other unions, such as Unison, could have struck with the CWU. But its leaders ran away from a strike in the NHS.

The battle to unite the fightbacks continues (in Unison and the PCS, for example). We need stronger rank and file networks to force union leaders to fight, or to win unofficial solidarity if they won’t. But that can’t be divorced from the question of politics. The central reason why there was no coordinated action is that union leaders were terrified of confronting a Labour government, especially once a November election seemed possible. Building greater workplace strength and building a political alternative to Labour remain inseparable.

And this leads to the second, and probably the most enduring, problem revealed by the dispute – the union’s relationship with Labour. When the strikes began most postal workers saw the struggle as one against the hated Royal Mail bosses Allan Leighton and Adam Crozier. But as it went on, the role of the government became ever clearer. In mid-July Labour MP Emily Thornberry asked Brown if he would “join me in urging Royal Mail to enter into meaningful discussions with the CWU and thus ensure that the jobs, and the good pay and conditions of Royal Mail employees are protected”.

This was a very moderate request. Thornberry was only asking Brown to support genuine negotiations during an important industrial dispute.

But he pointedly refused to do so. Indeed he did not even refer to the question of talks in his reply. Instead he demanded that “all workers should look at pay settlements as a means by which we can conquer inflation over the next few months”. He was instructing the victims of inflation to accept pay cuts in order to hold down inflation!

Outflanked by events

As the strikes continued Brown condemned them as “completely unjustified” and business secretary John Hutton called for the union to accept what the bosses wanted on the grounds that “there is no way Royal Mail is going to be successful unless it reforms and changes and becomes as efficient as some of its competitors” – support for pay cuts and worse conditions.

Inside the union leadership Billy Hayes tried his best to deflect attention away from Brown. But he was steadily outflanked by events. Even before the first strike he faced revolt over his support for Alan Johnson as Labour deputy leader.

In a very prescient contribution to this debate at the CWU conference in June, London delegate Paul O’Donnell said, “In a short time we will be starting a dispute which could determine the future of the Post Office and this union. We need to fight on the industrial and political fronts. Backing Johnson sends out a wrong message. It’s like having a fry up for the bailiffs before they repossess your cooker.”

And during the dispute feeling grew against paying the bailiff’s wages at the same time as he was repossessing you – paying money to Labour while the government was assaulting the union and its members. The idea that the strike “is all about Brown” became common currency on picket lines.

During the second strike, on 13 July, hundreds of postal workers besieged Royal Mail headquarters on Old Street, London. It was a heated occasion with managers quaking in their offices as angry workers hammered on the doors. Outside the biggest cheers were for a speech from the union’s deputy general secretary Dave Ward, who said there was “a heavy responsibility on the people who really run the post office – the government. It’s just not acceptable that we have a bloody Labour government which is doing nothing while Leighton and Crozier get away with wrecking our industry.”

The pressure grew to such an extent that Billy Hayes was forced to attack the government. “If this was Northern Rock they would be pouring money in. There is no indication of their concern in the slightest,” he told a recent rally.

There is now a raging debate about how the union should spend its money. Thousands of CWU members are withdrawing their permission to give part of their subscriptions to Labour, or withdrawing from the political fund entirely.

Following on from the expulsion of the RMT from Labour, and the withdrawal of the FBU, the debates inside the CWU are extremely important. Seven years ago the CWU conference voted to withdraw “all financial and moral support to the Labour Party” if the government privatises any part of the postal industry.

Two years later the conference voted that “donations to the Labour Party should be reduced”, and that “the CWU shall affiliate to the Labour Party on the basis of the minimum amount”. The union members agreed the money saved should be used for “political campaigning around issues of concern to the CWU”.

Every year since there have been discussions about whether or not to break from only supporting Labour. Now the issue cannot be avoided. If the union is to keep members fully on board with paying the political levy, it has to reflect the feeling of deep anger over what the government has done. It has to democratise the fund and allow branches to support left Labour MPs and councillors, and left wingers in other parties, instead of just handing the money over to Labour.

A great industrial battle (which may be far from finished) has emphasised how politics and economics are intertwined, and how workers can be won both to serious struggle and to breaking from Labour.