Unity! TIME TO STOP THE RETREAT by Kevin Halpin When the depression hit Britain in the early 1920s and millions were on the dole, it was Communists who coined the slogan ‘Stop the Retreat’ and campaigned alongside others against the shameful treatment of the unemployed. In 1931, the final betrayal of the working class by Labour Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald saw the creation of a coalition government and a savage attack on welfare benefits. And now, in 2012, the fall out from yet another round of anti-working class attacks sees crippling unemployment and misery for millions. While not accepting unemployment as here to stay we should certainly support the reinvigoration of unemployed workers centres
up and down the country. With welfare cuts of £30bn already made and the decimation of the public sector, every section in society is affected. Over the past 30 years employment in the UK has become much more precarious with over a third of the workforce now slaving for low wages with few benefits, little or no collective representation and no job security. How bad were the ‘bad old days’ of the 70s when they were also the ‘good old days’ of full employment? The hope of returning to full employment recedes as successive governments - at the behest of EU austerity mongers - raise statutory retirement age and extend the working life. But communists do not accept that there is an economic need to increase the pension age. Labour would be on the winning ticket if
Communists at the TUC 2012 Wednesday 12 September
it committed to lowering the pension age for both men and women and increasing the state pension. This would both increase the quality of life for pensioners and put money back into the economy. It would also serve to create jobs for many young workers and further refuel the economy. Why should workers suffer because the benefits of our welfare state have meant that they are living longer. How can the solution be to make them work longer when latest statistics show that working longer ultimately means living less. Labour should champion decent pensions for all in both the public and the private sectors and look at imaginative ways to improve the quality of life like providing winter breaks for pensioners in warmer countries as do some Scandinavian countries and France. (Not only a social benefit but also an environmental benefit in fuel savings.) And, as argued on Monday, an alternative economic strategy can provide an alternative to austerity and make positive social measures affordable; the cost of higher pensions can be met by tax on high earners, on excess company profits and cracking down on tax dodgers. Full employment was not an era of 20th century history, it must be an aspiration for the 21st century and the crucial element in achieving this - for too long the ‘elephant in the room’ in terms of the AES - is a commitment to the shorter working week. Remembering the successes in the 1980s of the 35-hour campaign, trades unions - with the TUC’s support - should revive this demand as part of the overall aim to forge a better life for all. Above all we have a duty to defend the welfare state, our peacetime legacy of the war against fascism
ARGUMENTS FOR THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER
DELIVERING ORGANISATION AND BUILDING OUR CAMPAIGNS
by PCS communists A number of resolutions on this week’s Agenda stress the importance of organising and the requirement to recruit the vast majority of those workers that are unorganised. Such resolutions aren’t new but apart from the rise in actual membership during the last government due to the increase in employment in the public sector; actual membership of unions has continued to fall since the highs of the 1970s. And this is despite the fact that there are now more people unemployed. A recent bit of research undertaken by PCS shows some useful pointers that should be built upon. Previous research said that the reason why people didn’t join unions was that they weren’t asked and this may remain the case in some instances. But what the new evidence suggests is that people now join unions if they see them as being relevant and standing up for the values that they believe in. The view that people join as some type of insurance policy was debunked; it was more the case that people supported the union’s campaigns because they still thought they were needed. Unions and their members must become better at campaigning and putting over the views of the majority of the population – opposing privatisation, unfair taxation,
by Robert Wilkinson Behind the mask of the clownish grin and clumsy interventions of Michael Gove as education secretary for Education there lies a much more sinister agenda. Cold-hearted privateers looking for easy pickings are driving forward the apparently chaotic and contradictory fragmentation of the education services. From pre-school to postgraduate research, all are to be up for grabs. Much attention has been focused on fighting back against the government imposition of the pensions robbery. Essential as this has been, it has served to obscure the more fundamental causation of this offensive. In their determination to privatise the delivery of education, the desire of the Treasury to accumulate a surplus on the Local Government, Teachers’ and Lecturers’ Pension Schemes is secondary to the Government’s objective of reducing the pension burden on those who wish to take over the ownership and employment of educational assets, both capital and human. The existing pension schemes were seen as a ‘disincentive’ for private sector investment.
by Martin Levy As argued elsewhere in this year’s Unity!, the government’s attack on public sector pensions is a central part of its drive to reduce the costs of public services, so that they can provide rich pickings for privateers. Resisting privatisation requires a coordinated response, involving both community campaigning and an industrial strategy which focuses not only on pensions but also on quality, staffing and pay. Over recent years, under the impact of both Labour and ConDem government policies, public sector workers have seen their pay levels virtually frozen while inflation has continued to surge ahead. Education staff are now among those being asked to take industrial action: the NASUWT and NUT have issued a joint declaration of intent over pay, workloads, pensions, jobs and conditions; UCU and Unison are balloting on action over higher education pay, with other unions likely to follow; while, in further education, UCU is consulting members with a recommendation for rejection of the employers’ miserly pay offer. No government-imposed pay freeze can last. But the ability to break it depends - as with pensions - on more than justified anger. Individual
supporting industrial development – supporting their values. The growth in public sector union membership across all unions prior to last year’s strike proves this point. Employees saw unions standing up for them and joined in their thousands. Most unions are still sectionally organised along craft lines and this in itself causes a problem in reaching out to workers in the so called new industries on green field sites. PCS’s response is radical at one level – it has set ambitious targets for increases in density and this is on top of already impressive increases as the figures show. At a time of significant cuts PCS is not retrenching but looking to increase its density by 2% a year over the next three years. It is aiming to increase the number of local reps to 1 per 25 from a current average of 1:26. It aims to have direct electronic communication to over 100,000 members in the same period. Budgets are being directed to campaigning both in workplaces and more widely. This approach, along with the traditional organising approach, is one of many that can be used. But, and it is a big ‘but’, how does the existing trade union movement make itself relevant to those who have no contact with trade unions. Many work in the private sector – many of the jobs are part-time and minimum wage – so we should support the Living Wage Campaign.
Many work in industries that are just this side of the law – so we need to be more aggressive on exposing such places. Many work where bosses do no more than meet the basic legal minimum - so we need to fight to improve these. But many still work in reasonable workplaces that follow the law and have reasonable conditions and pay. Unions will need to work together and break out of their sectional areas – it is good that Unison and GMB are working together, that NASUWT and NUT are now campaigning together rather than recruiting from each other. PCS and Unite have signed a joint agreement which has a potential to develop into something more. And this is all to the good but it isn’t enough The union movement and the TUC needs to take our messages out into the community – we have the policies around the Peoples’ Charter. We need to engage with people who see unions as irrelevant and get them into the movement – workplace organisation then comes later. Our first step must be to get unorganised workers onto the march on 20 October and that means not just supporting our own members. Can we not sign people up to join our anti austerity campaigns? Can we use it as a place to recruit? Communists and the left would say yes – but will the bureaucracy will run scared?
The commitment to privatise the education sector is not simply the warped and selfish ideology of this cabinet of millionaires. It goes much deeper than that and has a far longer pedigree. The Single European Act of 1986 enshrined a more aggressive insistence on adherence to neo-liberal, free market principles. It embodied four ‘freedoms’ of goods, services, capital and labour and required all sectors of the economy to be opened up to competition. The principle of opening services, including education, to private sector competition was enshrined in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organisation of 1995. This was followed by the European Services Directive of 2006 that required member states to ‘ensure free access to and free exercise of a service activity within its territory’. There is of course a major barrier to this drive to privatisation and that is the high level of trade union membership in most education services. However the fundamental flaw in this apparent strength of potential opposition has been the fragmentation of the workforce into numerous and sometimes
competitively hostile trade unions. Successive governments have set out to divide and weaken the trade unions in order to implement their privatisation agenda and recognise that the process of privatisation itself will have the effect of weakening trade union organisation even further. The initial united rejection of the government’s pension proposals was a source of considerable strength but all the time had a fatal flaw in that separate negotiations could be used by the government to divide the unions and weaken the campaign. A purely defensive strategy was bound to fail as public sector unions were seen as protecting their own members at the expense of the rest of society. What is needed now is a united campaign to protect public services against the inequity of privatisation schemes that will put profit before the needs of people, reinforcing and deepening social division. In this, as in other struggles, the battle lines now need to be broadened to include the users of those vital services.
sectors or unions going alone are likely to be picked off. There is an urgent need for public sector unions to coordinate their industrial action plans and to broaden the basis of their campaigns. On the policy front, UCU’s two motions to this Congress deserve broad support. The first, Valuing further education, draws attention to the savage government cuts to a service that is ‘a vital gateway to education and work that fulfils individuals’ and provides access ‘for young people and adults needing a second chance. And the second, on post-16 education, exposes the attempts already being made to open up universities and colleges to for-profit providers, including private equity funds. The attack on post-16 education is doubly ideological. As elsewhere, it is intended to remove from public consciousness any suggestion of collective provision. But it is also designed to recalibrate social perspectives downwards. Not only will students pay, whether in further or higher education, but ‘unprofitable’ courses will disappear. The wealthy will be able to command places at the most prestigious institutions, while many potential students from lower-income backgrounds will become excluded altogether. Trade unions need to be equally ideological, recapturing a vision of
education that the rest of society can subscribe to. Instead of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, we need a ‘Good Society’, with education as one of the main pillars. That would be a society which n regards everyone as educable; n ensures that subjects are made more accessible – not less – to working class n requires education institutions to promote living and learning together; n projects democratic participation and more collective control in workplaces as part of learning; n involves a new vocationalism addressing the youth employment crisis, including local integration of social partners; schools, FE, employers, HE, local authorities, parents and regeneration agencies. Can this be achieved? Yes, but only within the context of building a mass movement around a broad alternative economic and political strategy, such as outlined in the People’s Charter for Change.
Robert Wilkinson convenes the Communist Party Education Services Commission
Martin Levy is on the UCU delegation, but writes here as a member of the Communist Party executive committee and editor of the Party’s theoretical and discussion journal, Communist Review
BEWARE REGIONAL PAY!
The Coalition has made no secret over recent months of its intention to introduce regional pay in the public sector whenever and wherever it can get away with it. The idea is to con everyone that there are already huge regional variations in the cost of living and that pay in the private sector is based on local market conditions. Yet research shows this to be a complete fabrication. There’s little regional variation outside London and the majority of larger private firms pay national, not regional rates. The truth is that this is a thinly disguised attempt to impose further massive wage cuts on the public sector, enhancing its attractiveness to profitseekers as jobs and services are privatised. The whole thing is designed to cause maximum division and conflict between groups of workers and break trade union power in national pay bargaining. It won’t be only public sector workers who suffer. Wage cuts in so-called ‘lowcost’ areas (for which read ‘already poor’) will increase skills shortages and hit services to the most vulnerable. Slashing spending-power will in turn further depress struggling economies. Private sector businesses will close with further job losses and misery in a spiral of decline. It’s all part of the age-old ruling class strategy of ‘divide and rule’. Stand together against regional pay! Always say ‘Never’!
Useful sites
Britain’s Communist Party www.communist-party.org.uk Ireland’s Communist Party www.communistpartyofireland.ie Young Communists www.ycl.org.uk News from the workers and communist parties of the world www.solidnet.org Politics and culture blog http://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com Europe in revolt http://revolting-europe.com Institute of Employment Rights www.ier.org.uk
IF NOT YOU, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
by Robert Griffiths
In every modern, industrial country, the trade unions are the bedrock of a civilised society. We are the biggest democratic and representative bodies in Britain.Together with our families, we represent more than half the population. But more than that, we represent the interests of society as a whole. The debates and discussions at Brighton this week have reflected the interests and aspirations of millions of people – not only in Britain, but around the world. People want dignity at work and in retirement, they want equal opportunities, they need decent public services, they need peace. Our trade unions could do more to speak and act for them. Are we not sometimes too quiet, too defensive? Every day brings fresh news of some outrage, somewhere in Britain or wider afield. It might be a 'balance sheet' redundancy in a viable enterprise, a hospital ward closure, a racist attack, a young family being deported, someone with disabilities being refused benefit or yet another scandal involving the corporate gangsters who dominate our economy. Perhaps another trade unionist has been murdered in Colombia, or a journalist silenced in Russia. And there are always people starving while their country exports food or valuable minerals to the West. Then there's the hypocrisy of the British and US governments, armed to the teeth, up to
their necks in 'extraordinary rendition' (ie, transport for torture), bombing or invading sovereign states around the world, lecturing China and others about human rights. Why are too many of our trade union leaders so quiet? Some speak out and are attacked by the right-wing media for doing so. Others condone injustice and oppression by their silence. And far too often, the silence from the Labour Party leadership is deafening. That's why I'm asking you to consider two things in particular as you leave Brighton. Firstly, what more can you and your union do for the Morning Star – the daily voice for peace, jobs and socialism? You could, for instance, order a copy every day from your newspaper shop, show it to friends and colleagues, make a regular donation, advertise events in it and get your union body and trades council to take out shares. Own a national daily newspaper! Secondly, consider joining Britain's Communist Party. We continue to fight exploitation, oppression, racism and war, 92 years after our foundation. We have links with more than 70 communist, socialist and national liberation parties around the world. Would the trade unions be stronger if Britain had a bigger, more influential Communist Party? Would the Labour Party leadership be so timid? The labour movement needs the Communist Party – and the Communist Party needs you.
Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party
JOIN BRITAIN’S PARTY OF WORKING CLASS POWER AND LIBERATION
Name
I want to join the Communist Party/Young Communists o Please send me more information o
Address
e mail
return to
phone
CPB Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR0 1BD