For a growing number of people today unemployment is a way of life. Finding a job is harder than most people think.
The ruling class announce it is easy to get a job just get on a bus or a bike and find one in the next town. Not so easy for all of us unfortunatly. For many working class people just finding a job that you are qualified for is something with more jobs wanting more and more from us. Also with most jobs now wanting experience and if your young and never having had full time employment this is really hard to get as where would you have gaiend your expereince from ?
There may have been part time work you did while at school or university but no doubt it wasnt what you eventually wanted to do for a job.
The sheer desperation of many to get a job these days at any cost has lead many to take a job in a industry they are not familiar with or ever had any intention of taking. This is another reality of the labour market in 2011. The fact that as workers we are forced to take a job we are not happy in just to pay our bills or mortgage is another sign of how brutal and rough the capitalist society we live under today can be.
Even once in a job of low paid poor conditions work we may not have the chance to join a trade union and be forced to work very long hours for very poor pay. But yet these are the choices many are taking just to get a job and feel apart of society.
This is no way for workers to live and as the working class we all deserve better.
This is why as socialists we must portray whenever and wherever we can that there is a alternative for workers and unemployed people all who we look to win over to our ideas that there is a better way. A better way of running society. To benifit the many not just the few.
The system and society we wish to see is a socialist society where peoples needs were met before anything else. There would be enough jobs to go around and would all be well paid for the jobs people do. All this can be achieved despite what the ruling class and the right tell us. It cannot happen in this current society by reforming the system as capitalism is flawed totally and cannot provide for everyone. Which is why we must continue the day to day struggles fighting for workers and working peoples rights and concessions off the ruling class untill the working class become full contious to take on the ruling class and over throw this rotten capitalist system.
We must raise socialist ideas and theories wherever we can winning workers to our ideas. Pushing for workers to have the rights to a trade union and to push back and defeat the extreme anti trade union laws in this country. Which are some of the harshest in Europe not helped at all by a capitalist supporting labour government over the last 13 years.
Workers need to know their rights and fight for more. We as socialists always try to raise working class struggles and stand up for workers as we believe in the collective power of the organised working class. The time for morning is not now the time for organising and fighting back is now.
Workers need to realise that there is power in a unite working class and a better future is possible.
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Showing posts with label class action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label class action. Show all posts
Monday, 29 August 2011
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
practise picketting a way of raising class contiousness ?
So next thursday up to a million public sector workers will be walking out on strike over proposed changes to pensions and pensin contributions.
Well for many the idea of going on strike will be a new and daunting idea and something they would have no idea what to do. Many will have confused and often wrong ideas portrayed through the media of a strike and how one is organised and works.
Many older comrades in teh trade union movement who have been t here and seen it all have suggested as a idea to help boost workers confidence to arrange practise picket lines.
Where in a lunchtime before the 30th of June workers can be lead out the front of the workplace and set up a practise picket.
This worked very well under a recent Unite strike in Manchester and was very successful.
At a recent TUC trades council building conference at the weekend which was very labour centric from what i heard. But Bob Crow did get to speak and was fully in favour of this idea. He even suggested that workers might be so inspired and boosted by this sign of solidarity they may not wish to return back into work.
I think this is a excllent idea and gets workers who may not ever hav taken any industrial action in their life up to speed with trade unionism and class solidarity.
It is a chance to breed a new generation of militant workers who understand how trade unions should work. Ideas like this will put further pressure on the likes of the TUC and Unison to back mass action come the autumn.
Well for many the idea of going on strike will be a new and daunting idea and something they would have no idea what to do. Many will have confused and often wrong ideas portrayed through the media of a strike and how one is organised and works.
Many older comrades in teh trade union movement who have been t here and seen it all have suggested as a idea to help boost workers confidence to arrange practise picket lines.
Where in a lunchtime before the 30th of June workers can be lead out the front of the workplace and set up a practise picket.
This worked very well under a recent Unite strike in Manchester and was very successful.
At a recent TUC trades council building conference at the weekend which was very labour centric from what i heard. But Bob Crow did get to speak and was fully in favour of this idea. He even suggested that workers might be so inspired and boosted by this sign of solidarity they may not wish to return back into work.
I think this is a excllent idea and gets workers who may not ever hav taken any industrial action in their life up to speed with trade unionism and class solidarity.
It is a chance to breed a new generation of militant workers who understand how trade unions should work. Ideas like this will put further pressure on the likes of the TUC and Unison to back mass action come the autumn.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Con-dems public sector pensions attack, brutal class warfare must be fought
The government is attempting to steal £2.8 billion from public sector pensions in Britain. This is a brutal act of class warfare directed against millions of mainly low-paid workers.
Attempting to prosecute it is a tiny ruling elite, who despise the public sector and those who deliver the vital services that bind our communities together.
Propaganda about public sector "gold-plated" pensions and conditions at the expense of everyone else, especially private sector workers, is the ideological 'justification' for a state-instigated hate campaign against public sector workers.
PCS members have voted for action alongside three education unions on 30 June. These four unions have three quarters of a million members.
This will be the first major coordinated industrial action against the Tory-led coalition's cuts and privatisation programme.
PCS members have voted not just for a day of action nor to only defend pensions but for a programme of discontinuous action which will allow the national union to coordinate action to defend jobs, pay and conditions, which are all under attack now.
Strategy
This strategy will be a significant element in building for mass coordinated industrial action in the autumn.
The National Association of Head Teachers is the latest union to announce it will also ballot its members about striking over pension cuts. Potentially there could be between three and five million workers striking against the coalition cuts in the autumn.
Pensions are the great unifying factor in the public sector. Every single worker will suffer appalling detriment if the government's plans are realised.
The plans are based on the report by anti-union ex-Labour minister John Hutton, a truly despicable creature, awash with lucrative sponsorships for services rendered to corporate interests.
The civil service has operated on an unwritten contract that job security and reasonable pensions, which are deferred wages, were the trade-off for low wages.
The average civil service pension for full service, excluding the tiny percentage of high earners, is £4,200 a year.
Hard-working public sector workers are the victims, not the cause of the economic crisis. We are now being asked to pay again, with what is effectively a tax on public sector pensions to pay off the deficit caused by the bankers and their system.
Victims, not the cause
The proposals will mean members will be expected to double or treble their contributions (the value of an extra day's work a month), work until age 68, and accept cuts of 20-50% in the value of pensions.
Our pensions' value has already been reduced by 15-25% because of the un-agreed re-indexing of pensions and benefits. PCS and other unions have mounted a legal challenge on this.
But the attack is not about dry statistics, it represents a shocking assault on living standards of some of the lowest paid workers in society who are also facing pay freezes, savage assaults on conditions, privatisation and the threat of job losses.
Even the Tories have voiced concern that the changes to contributions will lead to workers simply opting out of the scheme with horrendous implications for the future of pension provision.
This has been cited as part of the reason for Lib Dem treasury minister Danny Alexander's proposal to taper the increase in pension contributions.
Public sector workers now face a life of low pay followed by an impoverished old age, and they will be expected, as taxpayers, to fund the means-tested benefits necessary to support increasing numbers living below the poverty line.
Poverty
The official poverty line is £170 a week, the state pension is £102 a week; reduced occupational pensions will increase the number of pensioners in poverty - currently 2.5 million. 3.5 million pensioners are in fuel poverty.
In Germany pensions are 70% of average earnings, though set to fall. Even in the USA, for 40 years of work, social security provides 40% of previous earnings.
In France, 12% of GDP is spent on pensions, 10% in Germany, but in Britain, a measly 6%.
The net cost of paying public sector pensions in 2009/10 was a little under £4 billion. The cost of providing tax relief to the 1% who earn more than £150,000 is more than twice as much.
The total cost of providing tax relief to all higher rate taxpayers, on their private pensions, is more than five times as much.
There is an all-out campaign to divide public and private sector workers by claiming that pensions for the former are at the expense of the latter. In reality many households are comprised of people working in both sectors; the idea that low paid private sector workers are supportive of the cuts in other family members' pensions is garbage.
Workers won't buy the argument there should be an equality of misery.
Companies took pension 'holidays'
The removal of decent pension provision throughout the private sector was due to the fact that in the 1980s and 1990s companies took pension 'holidays' that left schemes under-funded.
When legislation was introduced to guarantee levels of funding, it increased the rate of pension fund closures as companies were unprepared to fund schemes at shareholders' expense.
The loss of these schemes did not, during a period of comparative economic boom, save jobs, guarantee pay rises or help to avoid financial meltdown in the private sector.
The only beneficiaries were the bosses and shareholders.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly describes current negotiations with Cabinet Minister Francis Maude as a "farce". Maude wants the unions to go into sector bargaining without any compromise on the core national issues of increased contributions, cuts in the value of schemes and the rise in the working age.
Maude and Alexander clearly aim to sow division by putting the unions at each other's throats by fighting over the distribution of the cuts rather than opposing them outright.
Key principles
But PCS is adamant that these key principles must be collectively opposed and negotiated on, before sector talks take place.
Already, under the threat of strike action Alexander has announced that workers earning less than £15,000 won't have any increase in contributions. But this must be confirmed in negotiations.
Those earning less than £18,000 will have their contributions capped at 1.5%. But only 4% of PCS members earn less than £15,000 and across the public sector it is 1%.
And these low-paid workers will still suffer the increased retirement age and all the other aspects of the attack.
Workers earning more than £18,000 could have their contributions raised by up to 5%. The increases will be phased in over three years from next April.
This is clearly an attempt to divide the opposition and must be resisted.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said the government was "hopelessly mismanaging" the pension issue. But Labour also attempted to increase the pension age in 2005 but was thwarted by the threat of coordinated public sector strike action.
Echoing the shameful Labour line that while the coalition is "cutting too deep and too quickly" cuts are nevertheless 'necessary' and 'inevitable', some union leaders signalled concessions upfront.
The coalition government is now trying to tempt them into an unholy alliance against PCS and other unions by isolating the 'militants' who, according to Alexander "seem hell bent on premature strike action".
The position must be unequivocal - no cuts or privatisation. Accepting the need for cuts is the road to division and defeat.
On pensions, we are facing organised theft on a huge scale by a government of millionaires with no mandate - economic terrorism against the vast majority waged to increase the obscene wealth of a tiny minority who place profit before people.
We face a defining battle for our movement. Real leadership is required, based on a strategy of no cuts, and no concessions to pension robbery.
We must build the kind of widespread industrial action capable of defeating and bringing down this government.
For a newly-qualified teacher who goes into the profession at 23, doesn't take any promotions and retires at 65 on UPS3, the figures suggest that the government's best offer cuts his/her pension by 40%. Their worst offer cuts it by 52%!
One PCS member in Swansea was staggered to find he would lose £160,000 under the new arrangements. This is a typical, not extreme, example.
Attempting to prosecute it is a tiny ruling elite, who despise the public sector and those who deliver the vital services that bind our communities together.
Propaganda about public sector "gold-plated" pensions and conditions at the expense of everyone else, especially private sector workers, is the ideological 'justification' for a state-instigated hate campaign against public sector workers.
PCS members have voted for action alongside three education unions on 30 June. These four unions have three quarters of a million members.
This will be the first major coordinated industrial action against the Tory-led coalition's cuts and privatisation programme.
PCS members have voted not just for a day of action nor to only defend pensions but for a programme of discontinuous action which will allow the national union to coordinate action to defend jobs, pay and conditions, which are all under attack now.
Strategy
This strategy will be a significant element in building for mass coordinated industrial action in the autumn.
The National Association of Head Teachers is the latest union to announce it will also ballot its members about striking over pension cuts. Potentially there could be between three and five million workers striking against the coalition cuts in the autumn.
Pensions are the great unifying factor in the public sector. Every single worker will suffer appalling detriment if the government's plans are realised.
The plans are based on the report by anti-union ex-Labour minister John Hutton, a truly despicable creature, awash with lucrative sponsorships for services rendered to corporate interests.
The civil service has operated on an unwritten contract that job security and reasonable pensions, which are deferred wages, were the trade-off for low wages.
The average civil service pension for full service, excluding the tiny percentage of high earners, is £4,200 a year.
Hard-working public sector workers are the victims, not the cause of the economic crisis. We are now being asked to pay again, with what is effectively a tax on public sector pensions to pay off the deficit caused by the bankers and their system.
Victims, not the cause
The proposals will mean members will be expected to double or treble their contributions (the value of an extra day's work a month), work until age 68, and accept cuts of 20-50% in the value of pensions.
Our pensions' value has already been reduced by 15-25% because of the un-agreed re-indexing of pensions and benefits. PCS and other unions have mounted a legal challenge on this.
But the attack is not about dry statistics, it represents a shocking assault on living standards of some of the lowest paid workers in society who are also facing pay freezes, savage assaults on conditions, privatisation and the threat of job losses.
Even the Tories have voiced concern that the changes to contributions will lead to workers simply opting out of the scheme with horrendous implications for the future of pension provision.
This has been cited as part of the reason for Lib Dem treasury minister Danny Alexander's proposal to taper the increase in pension contributions.
Public sector workers now face a life of low pay followed by an impoverished old age, and they will be expected, as taxpayers, to fund the means-tested benefits necessary to support increasing numbers living below the poverty line.
Poverty
The official poverty line is £170 a week, the state pension is £102 a week; reduced occupational pensions will increase the number of pensioners in poverty - currently 2.5 million. 3.5 million pensioners are in fuel poverty.
In Germany pensions are 70% of average earnings, though set to fall. Even in the USA, for 40 years of work, social security provides 40% of previous earnings.
In France, 12% of GDP is spent on pensions, 10% in Germany, but in Britain, a measly 6%.
The net cost of paying public sector pensions in 2009/10 was a little under £4 billion. The cost of providing tax relief to the 1% who earn more than £150,000 is more than twice as much.
The total cost of providing tax relief to all higher rate taxpayers, on their private pensions, is more than five times as much.
There is an all-out campaign to divide public and private sector workers by claiming that pensions for the former are at the expense of the latter. In reality many households are comprised of people working in both sectors; the idea that low paid private sector workers are supportive of the cuts in other family members' pensions is garbage.
Workers won't buy the argument there should be an equality of misery.
Companies took pension 'holidays'
The removal of decent pension provision throughout the private sector was due to the fact that in the 1980s and 1990s companies took pension 'holidays' that left schemes under-funded.
When legislation was introduced to guarantee levels of funding, it increased the rate of pension fund closures as companies were unprepared to fund schemes at shareholders' expense.
The loss of these schemes did not, during a period of comparative economic boom, save jobs, guarantee pay rises or help to avoid financial meltdown in the private sector.
The only beneficiaries were the bosses and shareholders.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly describes current negotiations with Cabinet Minister Francis Maude as a "farce". Maude wants the unions to go into sector bargaining without any compromise on the core national issues of increased contributions, cuts in the value of schemes and the rise in the working age.
Maude and Alexander clearly aim to sow division by putting the unions at each other's throats by fighting over the distribution of the cuts rather than opposing them outright.
Key principles
But PCS is adamant that these key principles must be collectively opposed and negotiated on, before sector talks take place.
Already, under the threat of strike action Alexander has announced that workers earning less than £15,000 won't have any increase in contributions. But this must be confirmed in negotiations.
Those earning less than £18,000 will have their contributions capped at 1.5%. But only 4% of PCS members earn less than £15,000 and across the public sector it is 1%.
And these low-paid workers will still suffer the increased retirement age and all the other aspects of the attack.
Workers earning more than £18,000 could have their contributions raised by up to 5%. The increases will be phased in over three years from next April.
This is clearly an attempt to divide the opposition and must be resisted.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said the government was "hopelessly mismanaging" the pension issue. But Labour also attempted to increase the pension age in 2005 but was thwarted by the threat of coordinated public sector strike action.
Echoing the shameful Labour line that while the coalition is "cutting too deep and too quickly" cuts are nevertheless 'necessary' and 'inevitable', some union leaders signalled concessions upfront.
The coalition government is now trying to tempt them into an unholy alliance against PCS and other unions by isolating the 'militants' who, according to Alexander "seem hell bent on premature strike action".
The position must be unequivocal - no cuts or privatisation. Accepting the need for cuts is the road to division and defeat.
On pensions, we are facing organised theft on a huge scale by a government of millionaires with no mandate - economic terrorism against the vast majority waged to increase the obscene wealth of a tiny minority who place profit before people.
We face a defining battle for our movement. Real leadership is required, based on a strategy of no cuts, and no concessions to pension robbery.
We must build the kind of widespread industrial action capable of defeating and bringing down this government.
For a newly-qualified teacher who goes into the profession at 23, doesn't take any promotions and retires at 65 on UPS3, the figures suggest that the government's best offer cuts his/her pension by 40%. Their worst offer cuts it by 52%!
One PCS member in Swansea was staggered to find he would lose £160,000 under the new arrangements. This is a typical, not extreme, example.
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