Unity Unison Conference 2012

Unity!

Communists at 2012 Unison Conference

Beware of regional pay!

by Liz Payne

No green light for their agenda

by Tom Morrison It goes without saying that activists should be working for a massive turnout for the TUC’s 20 October demonstration. However, it is going to take more than demonstrations to defeat the ConDem’s agenda of pubic service cuts.

We need a strategy that will bring about a change of government. Central to this is unity with public and private sector unions developing joint action and building alliances with working class communities.

Local anti cuts committees, with trades union councils playing a key role, have the potential to create mass local movements which can then compel local elected members to fight the attacks on public services by setting needs budgets rather than meekly implementing cuts dictated by central government. Talk of setting illegal budgets is an ultra-left pipe dream without an extra-parliamentary movement.

The attack on pensions, the introduction of regional pay, the privatisation of public services and the latest attacks on trade union rights are all part of the ruling class strategy to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich through cuts to our terms and conditions.

Smash the unions and it’s a green light for the neo-liberal agenda.

Winning the pensions dispute is vital in the battle to defeat attempts to crush our movement and at the heart of our campaigning must be a political campaign which goes beyond the usual industrial relations rhetoric.

The politics of resistance have to be taken into every workplace and community where we have organisation.

In previous pension strikes and demonstrations workers were won to take action by making the argument that it’s not just about pensions; it’s about pay freezes and pay cuts; extending working life, and cuts to jobs and service when the demand for these services are going through the roof and fewer workers are left to deliver them.

Workers who at one point were saying ‘well at least I’ve got a job’ were won to say ‘enough is enough’ and were won to fight back. Even workers not in the pension scheme were willing to strike because they were sick of the decline in their current and future living standards. Concern for the lack of opportunity for their kids who will literally be working until they drop – if they can get a job at all.

Through these arguments it became political action. But it is not just about resistance to Tory-led policy.

Our movement has policies which, if implemented, would begin to eat into the power and wealth of the ruling class and lay the basis for further advance for our class. In Scotland we have the alternative economic and political strategy of the STUC’s ‘Better Way’ campaign allied to the six demands of the People's Charter which is both TUC and STUC policy The need of the hour is to broaden out the pensions dispute and build for the October demo by politicising the fight and making the case for getting rid of the ConDems and replacing them with a government that will be held to account by the organised working class and their communities.H Tom Morrison is chair of West Dunbartonshire branch

The Coalition has made no secret over recent months of its intention to introduce regional pay in the public sector whenever it can get away with it.

The idea is to con everyone that there’s already huge regional variation 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 this is a thinly disguised attempt to impose further massive wage cuts on the public sector, enhancing its attractiveness to profit-seekers, 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’! H Liz Payne is a Unison activist in the South West and the Communist Party’s national women’s organiser

Morning Star

H

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Pensions: a strategy for winning “The new pensions will be substantially more affordable to alternative providers… we are no longer requiring private, voluntary and social enterprise providers to take on the risks of defined benefit that deter many bidding for contracts in the first place” So said Danny Alexander, Treasury Secretary, explaining the government’s public sector pensions policy.

How much clearer do we want them to be? It’s not about “affordability” or “deficit reduction”… it’s about privatisation!

The recent accord between the teachers’ unions NASUWT and NUT indicates the way forward for the pensions fight. There is a recognition that to win on pensions, we have to identify the true motivation of the government – their privatisation strategy – and confront them on all the attacks that come from that.

To to make public services attractive to private sector bidders, the government has to n Reduce the cost of pensions n Abolish national pay rates and promote workplace pay bargaining, with regional pay as a starting point. n Undermine public service workers’ conditions, to encourage “flexibility” in work patterns, hiring and firing etc. n Undermine public sector trade unionism.

All these are underway. So we have to be clear that this is a struggle against the central plank of the government’s political platform – the wholesale sell off of public services.

Further industrial action can be sustainable and ultimately successful if it is built into a high profile political campaign against privatisation.

Such a campaign would bring us into alliance with sister trades unions; it would put us at the heart of communities already struggling against spending cuts and shoddy private providers; it would lead to fertile ground for us to promote an alternative economic strategy as

agreed at TUC Congress; it would enable the unions to work more effectively with the People’s Charter to build a real movement at local and national levels for that alternative.

We need n To issue a hard hitting joint union statement identifying privatisation as the political context of the pensions struggle. n To openly challenge the legitimacy of the ConDem Coalition – an unelected millionaires’ government of two parties that each lost the general election n To dentify the alternative economic strategy, and promote the People’s Charter – demanding that it form the basis of the manifesto of any party that claims to represent workers and wants their votes n To launch a sustained high profile campaign for public services at local level involving Regional TUCs, trades union councils, People’s Charter groups etc against cuts and privatisation – explaining this as the context to the pensions and pay struggles n To get the TUC Public Sector Liaison Group to approach the private sector unions and the National Pensioners Convention for co-ordinated campaigning on the issues of public sector, private sector and State Retirement pensions. n Organised further industrial action as part of a strategy of building the wider, broader movement against privatisation and the government.

Our response cannot be to roll over, and has to be much more than continued sporadic industrial action.

This is a matter for the whole working class – and the unions’ strategy needs to be firmly based on mobilising that immense force.H Broadening the Battlelines: the pensions struggle

by Bill Greenshields £1.50 from www.communist-party.org.uk ISBN 978-1-908315-07-6

Stop the European Union, we want to get off

by Anita Halpin As the capitalist crisis deepens the myth of the ‘social’ chapter, the reason so many trades unionists loyally backed the EU, lies shattered. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU is the only way to recover democratic control over the economy, save manufacturing, restore employment rights and rescue our welfare state.

The EU serves the interests of big business and the banks. No wonder Cameron, Clegg and Cable support the Single Market as it enables the City of London to continue to dominate EU finance and banking.

The anti-democratic and pro-big business character of the EU is now fully exposed as it replaces elected governments and the European Central Bank – with its partners in crime the International Monetary Fund and the World Central Bank – impose drastic deflationary policies.

In the USA, even Obama’s economic stimulus package creates some new jobs but such investment programmes are outlawed in

the EU. So it is highly unlikely that the ECB would be able or willing to replicate this for France or any other member state.

The peoples of France and Greece have expressed their clear opposition to EU austerity and privatisation policies in their votes for socialist, Communist and other left candidates. Yet both François Hollande and the Greek Euro-leftist Syrzia coalition remain committed to the EU and the single currency.

It is impossible to separate rejection of the austerity programme from the institutions that crafted it or to discard policies created solely to sustain those same institutions.

The Communist Party believes that a commitment by left and progressive forces in this country to withdraw from the EU will strengthen the position of all those in Europe fighting to preserve and defend their democracies and halt a race to the bottom.

That is why trades unionists have a duty to say enough is enough: we want to get out.

The message is getting across. In March the ETUC unequivocally condemned the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, which imposes even more

deflationary budget controls and directly abrogates the democracy of debtor states.

In April the STUC annual conference accepted a motion condemning the antidemocratic and deflationary character of the EU and calling for national powers to again be able to invest in the productive economy and provide public services.

Most significant was the call to negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on a most favoured nation trade agreement on the same basis as Norway but outside the provisions of the Single Market. While the STUC executive did not endorse the call for withdrawal it stressed the critical threat the EU now posed to democracy and trade union rights.

A threat that is all too evident. At the end of last month the EU Commission report on the UK economy called for reinforced austerity. A week later, and following the ECB’s line, the Bank of England monetary policy committee played it safe (in banker’s terms) and kept interest rates at 0.5 per cent. H

A weekend of rallies, meetings, debate, food, music and Marxism

Anita Halpin is the Communist Party’s trade union coordinator

Why we need an alternative economic strategy

by John Foster The public sector cuts being imposed

by George Osborne are doing irreparable damage.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the 2012 budget cuts were ‘twice as big’ as those inflicted on the public sector between 1975 and 1982 and their extension to 2017 would mean ‘the longest sustained cuts in public spending since the Second World War’.

Since present government took office and December 2011, 232,000 jobs were lost in local government alone. And this is only the beginning. Osborne’s cuts are scheduled to continue at a real rate of 3.7 per cent annually for five more years.

For the economy as a whole these cuts are crazy. The only gainers are Osborne’s pals in the City who want spare state to cash to bail them out. The cuts are killing the productive economy and increasing long-term debt.

Britain’s economy is now over 4 per cent smaller than it was in 2007 – the only major economy to have contracted to such an extent apart from Spain. It is still contracting. This is why alternative economic policies, based on active state intervention, are needed.

The last couple of years have seen a transformation in attitudes to such intervention. In 2010 the TUC backed the People’s Charter. In 2011 it additionally called for alternative economic policies based on expanding the public sector.

What we need now are specific demands that can unite trade unions and communities to campaign politically and add up to a coherent strategy that can rescue our economy.

The first demand is obvious: stop the cuts.

This is the quickest way of restoring consumer demand: end the insecurity of imminent job loss, halt the new pensions levy, reverse the

Campaign for trade union rights in Iran Abuse of human and democratic rights in Iran continues to be of major concern. The regime is clamping down on organisations that mobilise working people and defend jobs, better conditions, peace and security.

Trade union leaders are harassed, intimidated and arrested to prevent them from speaking out against atrocious working conditions, poverty wages and exploitation.

While last year Unison celebrated the release of Mansour Osanlou, the bus workers’ union leader, this year his union colleagues have been arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Reza

benefit cuts and end a wage freeze that is currently cutting real incomes by up to 3 per cent a year. The second is for the government to create real, well-paid jobs and hence boost tax income as well as demand for goods.

Council housing is one obvious area. There is desperate need and the private sector has failed – house building has collapsed from 180,000 in 2006 to 120,000 last year, the lowest since the 1920s.

Building houses under local democratic control also makes it possible to introduce comprehensive energy saving with green technology – another key area for investment.

Equally essential is the demand to take water, energy and transport back into public ownership, end extortionate pricing and stop the state subsidies to monopolist owners.

There must be action to stop closures in the productive economy, to take over failing manufacturing enterprises and to penalise companies that shift production overseas – even if this means defying the EU directives.

Can this be paid for? Yes, easily – by imposing a tax on the City’s financial transactions, reclaiming the £100 billion lost through tax evasion, closing down Britain’s many tax havens and reversing Osborne’s tax cuts for the rich and on company profits.

What we can’t afford is austerity. This is actively destroying national wealth by shrinking the economy – with between £50 billion to £100 billion lost every year compared to 2007.

What’s needed is a mass movement that can remove this government of financial speculators and ensure the Labour Party adopts the alternative policies needed save our productive economy – in the interests of the vast majority of the population.H John Foster is a member of the Communist Party’s economic commission Shahabi, the bus workers’ union treasurer, got six and a half years. Another trade unionist, a teacher, Abdolreza Ghanbari, is on the death row. Scores of others are incarcerated.

On May Day the TUC, Unison, NUT, RMT, UCU, the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), the Canadian Teachers’ Union and the main Cyprus trade union federation joined in calling for respect for human and union rights and the release of all trade unionists from prison.

Unison has affiliated to the solidarity organisation in Britain CODIR and resolved to prioritise the campaign for workers’ rights in Iran.

We call on all Unison branches and regions to support CODIR’s campaigns and affiliate to it. H http:/www.codir.net

WHY IS UNISON NOT AFFILIATED TO THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER?

GROUCHO ASKS It’s a mystery! The Charter puts forward a detailed, coherent and costed alternative economic programme.

It was endorsed by the TUC in 2009. It has 16 individual union affiliates. It is supported by the Scottish and Wales TUCs and was enthusiastically endorsed (again) by the Trades Council Conference in May. It has many trades councils affiliated, and is included in the TUC ‘Plan of Work’ for 2012.

So why is Unison not affiliated? Apparently Unison leaders have told the Charter that it has ‘limited funds’ and so can’t quite run to the affiliation fees. The Political Funds stand at only £6.4million, two thirds being spent on the Labour Link – which backed Ed Miliband for Labour leader. The People’s Charter affiliation for a union of Unison ’s size is a hefty 500 quid – unaffordable really…

Anyway, says Unison leadership, we have our ‘own campaigns’ such as ‘A Million Voices’ – and very good it is too. But key purpose of the Charter is to bring together various unions’ ‘own campaigns’ and those of other progressive organisations – as good as they all are – into an integrated over all alternative – as proposed by the last TUC Congress. It’s not rocket science.

There are those who point out that the Charter policies, which would lead to an ‘irreversible shift in wealth and power in favour of ordinary working people’ (the stated ambition of the 1974 Labour Manifesto), are not popular with today’s Labour Party.

That’s true – and the 2009 TUC Resolution (supported by Unison) agreed’to build support for the principles outlined in the Charter in workplaces and communities to help promote progressive policies in the Labour Party .…’

Those bad ultra-leftists who go on to mischievously suggest that the future Lord Prentis does not want to rock the Labour Party boat for some reason should be ashamed of themselves – and I, Groucho, and my fellow Grouchists, reject such simplistic, puerile smears out of hand. So … why is Unison not affiliated to The People’s Charter? H

WANTED! A POLITICAL VOICE FOR WORKERS

by Robert Griffiths Last month, millions of people voted against the austerity and privatisation policies of Britain’s unelected, illegitimate government.

They rejected the idea that high public expenditure was the main cause of the economic and financial crisis.

They refused to accept that massive public spending cuts and a savage assault on wages and pensions of public sector workers are necessary to reduce the financial deficit.

Every time it aligns itself with these policies, Labour leaders betray the millions who should be able to look to them for support and solidarity. Speaking in favour of savage cuts in public sector wages and pension entitlements, welfare benefits and local social services represents a shameful capitulation to the banks, the Con-Dem regime and the rightwing mass media.

The support of the labour movement, contrasts sharply with the refusal of the Labour Party leadership to advocate policies that would generate economic growth such as defending public services, jobs, wages and pensions. This further highlights the extent to which the interests of the labour movement and ordinary working people across Britain

continue to be largely unrepresented in the House of Commons.

The trouncing of the Tories and Lib Dems in the local elections is very welcome, and illustrates a growing spirit of resistance. The danger is though that the current Labour leadership will interpret this support as an endorsement of their current policies – to be used against those in and outside the Labour Party demanding change.

Working people, in both affiliated and nonaffiliated unions, need a Labour Party that defends their interests. The duty of affiliated unions to fight for progressive, left and socialist values in the Labour Party could not be clearer. They must campaign in a more determined, planned and coordinated way to change the policies and, if necessary, the Labour leadership This is an important part of an even bigger question: how can the labour movement best ensure that its collective views and interests are represented in parliament?

This challenge must be faced by the whole movement. The trade union movement, and its members locally, have a duty to intervene to reclaim the party as political representatives of the interests of working people.

Affiliated unions should respond immediately to demands from their members

and cease paying financial donations to the Labour Party centrally until such time as its leaders and MPs oppose cuts in public sector wages and pledge solidarity with all those fighting to defend their pensions.

Affiliation fees should be maintained in order to step up the challenge to the Labour leadership's current policies from inside the party as well as from outside.

Affiliated unions should convene an allBritain conference at the earliest opportunity to discuss the current crisis of political representation for workers and their families.

Should the Labour Party continue on a rightwing course, its future will be at risk and the trade union movement will have a duty to reestablish a mass party of labour capable of winning elections, forming a government and enacting policies in the interests of the people not the bankers.

Affiliated unions should consider demanding that a special emergency conference of the Labour Party be held to decide a fundamental change in its economic and financial policy and its response to the capitalist crisis.

At some point, either at the initiative of the TUC or some other body, a special conference of all labour movement organisations should be convened to discuss the political representation of the labour movement in the House of Commons.

In the face of the current ruling class offensive, the labour movement needs to develop the maximum clarity and unity.

Communists believe these actions are the most realistic and effective way of ensuring that the interests of working people are represented in the Westminster parliament.

For its part, the Communist Party will continue to develop its Marxist analysis, project an alternative economic and political strategy for the working class and its allies and strengthen non-sectarian left unity. H Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party. He has written an open letter on the crisis of political representation.

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