Unity Unison Conference 2013

Communists at the UNISON conference 2013

Unity!

It’s their crisis.

Make the rich pay!

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by Bill Greenshields

RADE UNIONS in the forefront of resistance to government policies have united with anticuts groups, the Coalition of Resistance, the People’s Charter and others to organise the People’s Assembly Against Austerity.

The intention of this huge event, to be held in London this weekend on June 22, is to bring together the forces that can build a movement of opposition broad and powerful enough to mobilise millions of people against the ToryLibDem government.

Such a movement is vital if public support is to be won for widespread strike action taken to defend jobs, pay and public services. It would inspire and ensure solidarity for local community campaigns against cuts.

The People's Assembly also provides a forum for discussing the kind of strategy to make this happen and promoting the alternative policies that are needed. It

will constitute a strong voice for working class and popular interests against those of big business and the City of London.

Will all those taking part agree on every dot and comma about the way forward, the objectives, tactics and strategy? Of course not. If they do, they won’t represent the full variety and complexity of views within the working class and peoples of Britain.

The People's Assembly must comprise delegates and representatives from Scotland, Wales and every region of England, from most trade unions and trades councils, from community organisations and campaigning groups, making real contributions to a real exchange of ideas. The aim should be to reach the maximum possible agreement on how to support unions taking bolder and united action and how to build stronger, broad-based local community campaigns that are linked to the trade union movement in a strategy to defeat the Tory-led regime. continued on back page

Austerity is working The ConDem government, and the ruling class in general, has achieved something of a victory in persuading a section of the British people that public expenditure is the main problem facing the country.

A financial and banking crisis caused by bossess, bureaucrats and bankers has been transformed into a funding crisis for public services.

The point of this sleight of hand is to persuade us that austerity is necessary. In this important sense austerity is working. It has enabled the ruling class to shift the burden for the crisis of their capitalist system on to working people and decisively in favour of monopoly and profits.

The key task for us in the public service unions is to put a brake on this process and begin to win the kind of victories, large and small, national and local, that raise wages, increase living standards, strengthen the ‘social wage’ in the form of benefits and public services and shift the burden for tackling this crisis on the people who caused it and benefit from it.

This requires a powerful blend of industrial action, political propaganda and alliance-building with other public sector workers and communities. Unity in action with other public sector unions, in local government, health, utilities, the State and education is key and we have to face the fact that failure to fully achieve this is as much the fault of our leadership as any other. Each of us must look critically at our work and see where we can make a difference where we work and live and where we have personal responsibility We need to be creative when looking at strike action and look at all options. Is a one day strike the most effective? Should we look at bringing out key sections and pay them full strike pay? Should we look at 15 or 30 minute stoppages? Should we look at walking out when government ministers walk in? Strike action and action up to a strike all has its place and we need to include all types of action to fight back against austerity.

We can build unity in action most quickly at local level but this must have a national dimension and the People’s Charter and the People’s Assembly movement is the solid foundation for this.

Conference matters

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veryone who works in the public sector has had enough of being the kicking boy for this government.

The campaign of vitriol that continues to be poured on us from the government and the media, with a few honourable exceptions such as the Morning Star, has demoralsised many whilst the cuts in jobs and terms and conditions has made just surviving a struggle.

We need as a union to assess where we are and what to do next. The local government pay freeze has not led to a mass turn to industrial action, except in Scotland where a ballot is being held. In the NHS members have received the 1% pay increase but 1% of nothing is nothing.

Members in other sectors continue to face vicious employers and threats to their jobs and possible takeovers. Across all sectors it is the lowest paid who lose their jobs first, whose terms and conditions are attacked and have extra work dumped on them whilst the senior managers seem to be immune. This has to be challenged.

We need better information to the whole membership and the public. Public service workers know the truth behind government lies but we must win public understanding that when services are attacked vulnerable people will be harmed.

This week we can take action to help our members stand up and defend themselves, their services and their communities. The debate on pay will be crucial. Members know that their jobs are vital but feel utterly devalued by the government but also by the employers. A real campaign with clear evidence for a decent pay rise is essential. The need to prepare for strike action where necessary is urgent.

The fight to defend facility time is key. Our stewards are the union’s backbone and are being forced to work more hours and becoming more stressed. We need to highlight the real costs, human and financial, of stewards not being released to defend members. We also need to assist our stewards to do their valuable work. A campaign to illustrate the work of stewards and also to recruit new ones would be useful.

Unison needs to go on the offensive. The work in the past year with the Insitute of Employment Rights is to be welcomed. The decision to back the People’s Assembly on June 22 is a good springboard to action.

Let us celebrate our 20 years of existence with a good conference and a future of standing up and fighting back in conjuction with our local communities and other unions.

a call to the labour movement

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he Tory-LibDem government is attacking the living standards and democratic rights of workers and their families on a scale not seen in Britain since the 1930s.

It is an integrated, ruling class offensive to protect and expand big business profits.

Resistance to this attack on incomes, jobs, public services and trade unionism has been sporadic, fragmented and defensive.

Industrial responses alone will not defeat such an all-round political offensive. Unity of action and purpose is desperately required in and around the labour movement.

The Call to the Labour Movement by the Communist Party makes the a series of practical proposals for action that can give shape and direction to our resistence.

Resistance to this attack on incomes, jobs, public services and trade unionism has been largely sporadic, fragmented and defensive.

Industrial responses alone will not defeat such an all-round political offensive. Unity of action and purpose is desperately required in and around the labour movement.

That is why this Call to the Labour Movement makes the following proposals:

This will help ensure that a strategy of rolling, coordinated and generalised strike action by the trade unions puts the maximum pressure on the government.

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity on June 22 can play an invaluable role in building and uniting the resistance and winning people to an alternative.

H Unite against austerity and privatisation For unity to become a reality, trade unions, trades union councils, anti-cuts campaigners, socialists, Labour Party activists and progressives must work together on the broadest, most inclusive basis.

All who oppose the austerity and privatisation programme of this Tory-LibDem government should be welcome in anti-cuts campaigning. The focus of opposition must be on the current government and its policies.

We need to build durable militant movements of ordinary people in local communities throughout Britain.

HCampaign for trade union freedom Industrial action by trade unions to defend jobs, incomes and public services needs to be coordinated and generalised as widely as possible, with every effort made to secure popular support.

The Tory-LibDem government, employers and the courts are now opening a new front of class warfare against trade union and employment rights and facilities. Based on the trade union movement, the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom provides the focus for a united response to this anti-trade union drive in the interests of working people and their families.

H Rally support for the People's Charter Policies for progressive taxation, economic planning, public ownership, public investment and an independent foreign policy for Britain can safeguard public services, jobs, living standards, our environment and peace.

Supported by the TUC, the TUC Women's and Trades Councils conferences, the Scottish and Welsh TUCs and many individual trade unions and local trades union councils, the People’s Charter provides the basis for an alternative economic and political strategy that puts the millions before the millionaires.

Every labour movement organisation should affiliate to the People’s Charter and help promote it.

H Promote the Charter for Women As low-paid and public sector workers, lone parents, carers and service users, women are being hit particularly hard by austerity and privatisation measures. Supported by the TUC Women’s Conference, many trade unions and the National Assembly of Women, the Charter for Women proposes policies to win genuine equality at work, in the labour movement and in society.

H Solidarity against EU austerity and privatisation The Tories, UKIP and sections of the big business media fully support EU-wide attacks on people’s living standards and public services. But they want to protect the City of London casino and its US backers even from feeble EU regulation.

For the labour movement, the key demand must be to restore to parliament in Britain the power to protect jobs and industries, to take the utilities and transport back into public ownership and ensure that they are run in the public interest.

We also need to support workers across Europe who are fighting for these powers, against the EU and its Constitutional Treaty commitment to ‘an open market economy with free competition’ (Article 98).

H Oppose militarism and war Britain's involvement in an endless series of wars to protect British and US big business interests is not protecting democracy or human rights here or abroad. Military spending should be reduced to average European levels and diverted into civilian production. Britain's nuclear weapons should be scrapped and the subservient military alliance with the US ended.

H Bring down the unelected ToryLibDem coalition This regime was cobbled together at the behest of Tory paymasters in the City of London. Nobody voted for a coalition. Most people voted for parties (including the LibDems) that claimed to oppose the current austerity and privatisation policies.

Putting an end to this government before it does even more damage to our society is a democratic duty.

The only realistic alternative to the ToryLibDems is a Labour government, which underlines the immediate need to fight for Labour policies that serve the mass of the people.

We urge all who broadly support this this Call to the Labour Movement to win support for its positions throughout the labour and progressive movements. Use it to unite and ignite opposition to the Tory-LibDem government around the positive alternative.

Executive Committee Communist Party May Day 2013

An economy for the people The book argues for an alternative economic strategy that breaks political dependence on the US, and diversifies economic relationships, fostering those with emerging BRICS economies and questioning anew our dependence on the EU, whose ‘social model’ now seems a distant memory.

Critically the book tackles the problems that a progressive government would face and argues that an alternative economic strategy must be accompanied by measures to devolve political power and encourage the participation of the people in exercising control over big business and finance.

It sets outs a strategy that can boost spending power among the British people, begin to narrow the widening inequalities in British society and raise the standard of living and build a new, democratised public realm that insulates people from dependence on volatile financial markets.

This book challenges the consensus that has confined political economy to the options that the banks and big business will accept.

Based on the policy agenda that Britain’s trade union and labour movement have begun to shape it analyses what is wrong with the British economy, arguing that the country’s productive base is too small, that the economy has become too financialised and that power has become concentrated on the City.

It sets out policies to establish democratic and social control of the City, arguing that regulation is not enough.The book focuses on how immediate growth and longer-term reindustrialisation might be achieved, arguing that a socially owned banking sector can foster the creation of a new, sustainable, social housing sector, a new communications infrastructure and new green industries.

Edited by Jonathan White with contributors from Mark Baimbridge, Brian Burkitt, Mary Davis, John Foster Marjorie Mayo, Jonathan Michie, Seumas Milne, Andrew Murray, Roger Seifert, Prem Sikka, Jonathan White and Philip Whyman. £6.95 (+£1 p&p) ISBN 978-1-907464-08-9 n Manifesto Press is a new venture that aims to publish working class history, socialist theory and the politics of class struggle.

It is republican and anti-imperialist; secular and feminist; anti-fascist and antiracist; committed to working class political power, popular sovereignty and progressive culture. n www.manifestopress.org.uk

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continued from front page The People's Assembly will a be test of good faith for all those taking part, especially political parties and groups on the left. continued on back page It must be open, tolerant and inclusive, free from attempts at control and manipulation by any one organisation. Only by enthusiastically seizing the opportunity of working together to develop a broad, democratic movement will we maximise the chance of success.

Let no one be dismissive or cynical about the People’s Assembly, there is no alternative on offer with potential mass support.

It is up to all of us whether it can generate the kind of movement required, one which reaches every town, city and community, drawing in people who currently don’t think of themselves as 'activists’ or even as 'political'.

In particular, it has to be a movement that finds a place not only for organised workers, but for those in precarious work, for those in self-employment, for small business people, for the unemployed, pensioners, students, carers and for people of every ethnic origin and sexual orientation – in fact, for everyone under the cosh of big business and its Tory and LibDem puppets.

Bill Greenshields chairs the Communist Party and is trade union officer of the People’s Charter

New from the Communist Party

Bill Greenshields provides a sweeping analysis of the current crisis of capitalism, the class war being waged by the ConDem coalition government and the steps that need to be taken to build a People's movement in response. £2 from the Communist Party

EU: no friend of workers

by Robert Griffiths The EU has spearheaded the global drive for deregulation and privatisation through measures which, day in and day out, translate into all the evils of austerity: massive job losses; poverty wages; near-Victorian workplaces; and declining services in transport, energy, communications, health, education and local government.

No surprise, then, that many Tories and most sections of big business do not favour British withdrawal from the EU. Emboldened by three decades of privatisation, deregulation and anti-trade union laws in Britain, they strongly believe that the EU need not grant any concessions to the working class – in Britain or elsewhere – in the name of ‘social partnership’ or a ‘social Europe’.

Furthermore, they oppose any EU attempts to create a level playing field across Europe by regulating the City of London. The Tories and big business also want to make Britain's harsh anti-trade union and ’flexible’ labour market laws even worse.

That is why the Tories leadership – backed by the City and the CBI - want to renegotiate relations between Britain and the EU, while stopping short of withdrawal.

UKIP and some other Tories, on the other hand, believes that an even more right-wing government in Britain should be free in future to undercut social and economic provisions in western Europe, finish off trade unionism, ignore global warming and snuggle up still closer to US imperialist power.

This division represents a clash of views and interests within the British ruling class. At this stage, those who favour full withdrawal remain in the minority. Neither side has the interests of the mass of people in Wales or Britain at heart. They are arguing about how best to perpetuate super-exploitation, deregulation, privilege and inequality.

However, both the Euro-separatists and the Euro-sceptics attack the EU or aspects of it, playing upon a reactionary patriotism and xenophobia to garner support and conceal their class motivations.

There is a third section of ruling-class opinion, the Euro-fanatics, who see the others as jeopardising Britain's position within the neo-liberal, big business European Union.

Still believing in the benefits and promises of the ‘Social Chapter’, substantial sections of the British trade union movement and Labour Party continue to align themselves with this

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third camp, supporting the EU from the workers’ perspective.

But this is ever more incomprehensible as the EU Commission and the European Central Bank impose austerity, privatisation and mass unemployment policies on the peoples of one EU state after another.

Solidarity with the workers of Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere should mean opposing the antidemocratic and neo-liberal treaties of the EU – not defending them, or merely attacking their right-wing critics.

Britain’s unions should be exposing the anti-working class policies and institutions of the European Union, not confusing the European Court and Convention on Human Rights with the anti-labour EU Court of Justice or brandishing the feeble working time directive as a fig-leaf for EU austerity, privatisation, impoverishment and despair.

The EU continues to centralise political, economic and financial power on a European scale. For decades it supported the run-down of the Welsh coal and steel industries. The European single market has destroyed many more manufacturing jobs in Wales than it has created. Public procurement rules favour large European monopoly companies at the expense of local public and private employers.

Ruthless contractors use EU labour market laws to exploit migrant labour, backed up by EU Court of Justice rulings.

Britain's labour movement should be defending all workers, whatever their country of origin, against EU-backed superexploitation. Our response should be to reject all three camps of British monopoly capitalism in favour of popular sovereignty and an independent foreign policy for the nations of Britain.

The left and Labour should be leading the fight against the corrupt, big business EU – not leaving it to Ukip charlatans, who ride the EU gravy train and who defend the corrupt, big business City of London.

The labour movement should be campaigning for the policies in the People's Charter for public ownership, economic sustainability, progressive taxation and peace – against the Tory-led regime, UKIP, the EU, the US and NATO. This will show people that there is a real alternative to the common big business agenda of the Euro-separatists, the Euro-sceptics and the Euro-fanatics.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party

Morning Star

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