A hardening mood developing?

On October the 20th TUC demonstration in London I noticed a hardening of the mood of workers. The demo was a smaller march yes but those on the demo had a better understanding as to what will be required. On the run up to last year’s demonstration we’d been swamped for 6 months or so on mobilising for the march. This time with sell outs from the right wing trade union leaders and many feeling marches won’t get us anywhere the number attending was well down. This can be explained by the fact that the march was near enough finished by 5 pm whereas it was still strong and coming this time last year. People I spoke to had a realisation that the government won’t listen to protests, march’s or petitions and that more sustained action is needed and more often than every 18 months. It’s clear that the mood has changed since last year more are realising labour will not fight the cuts. The mood for an alternative is still there and many still want to fight. The take up of our material on the day of NSSN and socialist party materials was a clear sign of this. The thing now is to transform this change in mood into action. Passing motions in local trades councils, union branches and community groups is essential. I posted the NSSN’s latest bulletin and list of public meetings coming up on this blog yesterday. Pressure from below must be built on We may well have to be demanding another general strike next year as there is no grantee this will end this gov. But we must try a 24 hour general strike will be a step forward uniting public and private sector disputes, getting the students, unemployed onboard is key. Unions are not well organised in the private sector, our more militant unions are now in the public sector which is good but unfortunate as these cannot cause as much disrupting as the private sector where we are poorly organised. A strike involving our IT sector which serves local government and government records would have a devastating effect as would the RMT taking action on the underground in London. The TUC’s passing of the motion 5 to consider the practicalities of a general strike must be taken up seriously now. Let’s hear no excuses of illegal wrangling or having to win the public argument the 99% are under a barrage of attacks its fight now or see the rest of the cuts through unchallenged which must not happen. The unions must be making every opportunity they get to explain why we need a 24 hour general strike. More unions are coming on board now with the ideas so with the NSSN and our support let’s name the day!

Backing NSSN’s call for a 24 hour general strike public and private workers uniting

With 85% of the cuts still to come, it is imperative we organize now to prevent anymore attacks on our pay, pensions, NHS, benefits and our general living standards.

This is why I’m backing the National Shops Stewards Network’s calls now for a 24 hour public and private sector general strike. Uniting public and private sector workers is the only way we can defeat austerity and bring this government to its knees and start to build the future for the 99% not just the 1% which is currently the case.

Back on the 16th of June the NSSN met for its 6th annual conference and endorsed the motion to start building now towards a 24 hour public and private sector general strike.
You could say last November on the 30th of November we had a almost public sector general strike but now is the time to start linking up sectors bringing back in the sparks, the Honda workers, the ratcliffe power station workers the Coryton workers and many many more I can’t fit in this piece where private sector workers are starting to fight back. No doubt encouraged by their comrades in the public sector on pensions.

This government is a weak government and can still be defeated. There are no absolutes in the class struggle and to say this con-dem government will last the full 5 years is something even fortune tellers could not predict. There are lots of cracks opening up and lots of areas where division can occur in their ranks.

For our part we must unite and put an end to the government’s claim that the public sector is greedy and the private sector isn’t fighting back. Let’s be honest all workers are under attack in some form or another. Uniting them together in combined targeted co-ordinate action could really show the true power of the working class.

We saw that the potential power workers have when a threat of a strike by tanker lorry drivers caused a fuel shortage just imagined if they actually had gone on strike.
We welcome the TUC’s move to call a mass national demonstration on October 20th this year and will do all we can to build for that too but that can’t just be another march 26th 2011 we need to see this as a start of a concerted fight back uniting all of the struggles.

We estimate there is currently 400,000 workers in live disputes at the current time with surer to be drawn in to struggle. With the idea of a mass sick in which has been tried in America in the past can create the effect a general strike can have. This is no small task and the NSSN is well aware of this and we do not take calls like this lightly we will not for example as others on the left have done called for a all out stay out tactic. That is far in advance of the current state of play and peoples thinking right now. We look to build our demands slowly and carefully popularizing our ideas among workers and testing our slogans. Having the correct ideas at the right time can have a huge impact.

This is what we found last year with our calls when lobbying the TUC in September of last year for a one day public sector general strike. Which a matter of weeks later did actually happen.

But let’s be under no illusion the TUC and the heads of the labour movement will not want this and will do all they can to prevent this. So our task is doubly as hard when we are fighting with one or two hands tied behind our backs effectively.


"We advocate that the next step should be for the TUC to organize a one-day general strike, which includes both public and private sectors" (for the full

NSSN GUIDE TO ACTION
Since last year's conference NSSN has been involved in an increasing number of workers' struggles, and, as the austerity cuts bite, we expect these struggles to intensify.
• We encourage supporters to concentrate on organizing local and regional NSSN Networks with events and meetings to help rank and file activists to build up reliable support networks.
• We welcome the TUC national demonstration on October 20th and we will do everything we can to make this day a successful start to the next phase of an action-based campaign against austerity.
• We advocate that the next step should be for the TUC to organize a one-day general strike, which includes both public and private sectors, against all cuts to pensions and wages, jobs, services, and housing; to stop privatizations of NHS, education and public services; and to stop the slavery of workfare.
• To this end we call on trade unionists, campaigners, youth and pensioners to come to Brighton for TUC week
• to lobby delegates to press for a national strike
• to hold an NSSN fringe meeting to highlight this demand




We call on all NSSN supporters to redouble their efforts over the coming months to build support for this strike around the country, at the same time this will build the NSSN and increase the effectiveness of rank and file trade unionism throughout the country.

Supporting the sparks

Rob Williams, Chair, National Shop Stewards Network
Electricians working for Balfour Beatty (BBES) have spoken for all electricians in the construction industry and voted overwhelmingly to strike to defend their national pay agreements - the Joint Industry Board (JIB).

BBES has an order book of £15 billion and had made nearly £100 million in profits in the last six months but they want to slash wages by 35%.
This is a disgrace and i hope all those who lent their support in the private sector to public sector workers under attack over pensions will recieve support back from public sector workers in return.

Facing all the obstacles and complications that have given the employers such an advantage for years - low union membership, lack of shop stewards, agency labour, the blacklist etc, Unite and especially the Rank and File Committee have pulled off an incredible result.

Unsurprisingly, BBES has sought and secured a legal injunction against the ballot to stop the strike on 7 December - the day that BBES workers face having the new contracts (BESNA) imposed on them.

This has caused the union to call off the strike and re-ballot. But even if Unite re-ballots, the dispute must continue and escalate unofficially. Whatever the law says, the massive YES vote has legitimised this struggle.

Meetings in London and Glasgow on 3 December put the call out for unofficial strike action at BBES and the other companies looking to withdraw from the JIB and impose the BESNA terms. It's been reported that workers are joining the union in the next two companies to be balloted, NG Bailey and Tommy Clarkes. This shows the potential for a national stoppage in the industry.

The best signal yet are the stoppages that have already taken place over the last four months and are actually escalating. Corus Teesside, Lindsey, Saltend, Ratcliffe, West Burton, Carrington, Farringdon, Blackfriars, Kings Cross and countless more sites have seen walkouts.

In Glasgow on Saturday, 150 sparks met to decide that there will be an unofficial strike in Grangemouth on 7 December. They then marched through the city singing and occupied the NG Baileys site off George Square.

In Cardiff over 50 electricians met to decide that there'll be action that day at Llandough Hospital.

BBES, on behalf of all the 'Dirty 7' construction contractors, are using the Tory anti-union laws to stop this strike, democratically voted for by a four to one margin, on a spurious technicality. Unite must now call for a national stoppage in the construction industry, even if unofficial.

BBES are panicking because of the threat of strike action and the unofficial stoppages that are taking place every week around the UK. There should be no secret deals to end this dispute but a total retreat by BBES and the other six companies. There has to be transparent negotiations in full view of the BBES workers and the members of the union.


It is excellent that this unofficial action is spreading and continueing despite anti trade union laws and a lack of union membership at a rank-and-file level it shows the level of anger out there over this proposed cut in pay.

During times where we are all under attack public and private sector workers must support eachother in struggles and stand together. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided over claims that pit public and private against eachother. We the "workers" are all in this together not the rich and the polititians who earn a nice pay packet each year with no threats to their pensions at all.

Balfour Beattie and other firms need to feel the heat from the organised workers at a grass roots level and by this action spreading to other cities and towns this can only lead to more pressure on the unions and BB as a result.

I support the sparks and construction workers taking action ripping up agreements and going against what was agreed is undemocratic and unfair to workers who are struggling by as it is.

Why trade unions need to organise better in the private sector

The state of membership in the private sector, as revealed in the latest Trade Union membership statistics released earlier this year demands a new and innovative approach to how unions reach out to the majority of workers who aren’t in a union.

There’s a feeling that says unionised sectors of the economy can’t remain islands of decent pay and conditions in a sea of declining standards. If we wanted proof that this is true then we need only look at the way in which the paucity of decent occupational pension schemes in the overwhelmingly non-unionised private sector has been used to undermine public service pension provision.

The scale of this challenge is significant. Density in the private sector is now just 14% – barely 1 in 7 private sector workers now belong to a union. Unions are present in less than a third of private sector workplaces and less than one fifth of private sector employees are covered by collective agreements. Since 2000 density in the private sector has fallen by 3.7% and membership by 840,000. And since the late 90s the number of workers who have never been members of a union has steady increased. Now, over half of all employees have never been in a union and in the private sector, three fifths of employees have never held a union card.
This is not to dismiss the efforts made by a number of unions in attempting to organise in the private sector but we have to be realistic and accept that the scale of the challenges means that we aren’t going to organise every workplace in the traditional way in enough time (the average size of a bargaining unit as reported by the CAC in 2010 was just 87 almost half the figure recorded in 2006).

Some may say that workers know where we are if they want to join us but the fact is that actually lots of workers don’t even know WHAT we are let alone WHERE we are.

In these tough times of a economic downturn a union will be what many workers of the past would instantly turn to. With the role of trade unions being pushed to the back burner for a good while many workers are unclear what joining a union can do for them. We need to change this perception and get ou and explain the benifits of being within a union.
The steady decline in private sector unionisation has lead to the government feeling they can get away with pitching public sector workers who have always traditionally been better organised into unions against the private sector workers who are very poorly represented by theunions.
This i feel is mainly down to the fact that trade unions in the private sector have been hammered over the years with very few success's. It is very hard to stand up in a workplace and speak out against compulsory redundancies. To take a lead on a issue and organise workers is harder than ever with us all leading very individual lives we see our pay as a matter of embarrassment and something which still should not be spoke of. In Britain we still feel shame in saying how much we earn. But being open about this we would realise what other workers around us are earning and that we are not all as well off as we were lead to believe.

We need to unite and uniting private and public sector unions is a must. Last wednesday on November the 30th i noticed a number of private sector workers taking the day off in support of their comrades in the public sector. This needs to grow and improve.
Organising in the private sector isnt easy and i dont claim to have all the answers but a debate certainly needs to be held there and where a union can become recognised and provide a fighting programme it will naturally attract workers.

As the old saying goes people are drawn to a union that has a fighting tradition. Hense why the PCS and the NUT have increased their membership this year by backing strikes and being honest to their members and backing their demands. A similar programme in the private sector where if a union rep stands up to fight and take on the boss's the trade union backs him or her up all the way. Workers must feel that they can be supported and trusted to take on the boss's and support if needed will be forthcoming.
There’s evidence showing that we can find a way of making union membership more easily available to the millions who don’t currently have it, there’s a receptive audience waiting to hear from us. Polling work for the TUC has shown that unions retain broad support from the British public – with 60% of the public agreeing that ‘unions provide vital protection for many groups of workers’ and in 2005 over 40% of workers in non-unionised workplaces said that if asked they would be likely to join a union.

A continued decline in membership and density in the private sector, particularly should it fall below 10%, will not only give our enemies a reason to question our legitimacy as voice for working people in the private sector, where most people in the UK work, but will increase the pressure on the terms and conditions of workers in unionised sectors of the economy. It’s in the long term interests of both unions and workers this is not allowed to happen.




extracts taken from stronger unions and on behalf of the TUC

Do we want choice ?

So we hear it nearly everyday, David Cameron trying to sell NHS reforms or privatising large parts of our public sector. This is the tories real plan for our public services. But the word Cameron and Clegg and his con-dem buddies seem to want to use is this word "choice". Apparently we all need choice now on what hospital providers we use. This in otehr words is saying we need to be able to choose a private company offering you something for a cheap price. But this is all well and good but why should we pay for public services which we pay for anyway out of our tax's well most of us not including much of the ruling class who evade tax.

But the use of words has been very clever by the tories over the last years or so. To get labour out of power and bring about a shift in peoples minds they convinced many people we needed change. That labour were out on their knees and we needed something fresh. The use of the media which has so famously gone up in flames this week in the tabloid press especially with the News of the world helped trumpet.

But i wanted to know with our public services do we really want choice, i mean really ? surely most people in this country i'd have thought would settle for a brilliant top class service, free at the point of use and paid for by their tax's. Its tried and tested and works well. Even if it is not perfect it works largely well. SO where does David Cameron get this idea we now want choice in our services ?

I believe like many that this is a smokescreen for privatisation and inviting his private sector mates in to make a quick buck on our NHS and public services.

Quite simply we do not need choice. We just want a good well funded NHS which is free at the point of use and provides good health care.

Afterall that is what it was set up to do in the first place. Not to become a market for private companies to make money out of us.

The failiure of privatisation is very clear you do not have to look much further than the likes of Railtrack and Southern Cross care homes to realise that when profit comes before care and need then it is a recipe for disaster and sloppy service ultimatly ending in failiure.

So Mr Cameron we are happy with our public services, they may need better funding and a few tweaks here and there but on the whole they are fine they do not need a choice based system or a profit making excersise involved either.

The role our public services play is a key part. Our fire brigade and police and council workers do a excellent job. Lets not destroy the great jobs they do.

ruling class to step up divide and rule tactic, workers must unite

As we have already seen over the last few weeks and months. The government will look to pitch workers against workers, Be that private vs public sector, low paid vs medium paid, part time vs full time, women vs men. The fact is we are all workers whether we recieve slightly more or slightly less at the moment we are all facing cuts or rising living costs in one way or another.

The ruling class use a clever tactic which is quite effective but we must be aware of it. Its know as divide and rule. It is aimed to drive wedges and divisions between the working class so workers turn against each other in disgust rather than focusing on the main issue, the system of capitalism which is at fault.


Such news stories as this one i have just seen on the internet :
ONS stats shows public sector pay 7.8% higher than private sector pay on average, up 2.5% since 2007

This is all very deliberate to set private sector workers further against public sector workers. When the government uses phrases like gold plated pensions and great pay in the public sector they are trying to divide us all. Trying to turn private sector workers who may feel agrieved at being paid less against the public sector worker not the government or their employer or even the system which allows this.

When contiousness in the class is low like it is now and workers are not aware of the forces at play this can lead to divisions and i am sure the government will look to increase these as we progress through the year.

This is also a very clever tactic as when it come to industrial action by public sector workers the government will know that headlines like this will decrease support for the strikes for public sector workers as the private sector workers may feel they do alright anyway and are just being greedy.

This is not the point it is the fact that we should be aiming for good pay, a living wage rising with inflation for all private or public sector workers.

At the end of the day public sector workers pensions are not gold plated as we discovered last week and we must rebuff these lies and attempts by the ruling class to divide the working class.

United we stand, divided we fall. i'm afraid and unless we stand up for our workers in other sectors not just our own we will be divided and play into the governments hands.

So i'd love to see more solidarity from the private sector who have undergone big cuts already to save our public services that we all do treasure.

It is key that private sector workers do support and show solidarity when bigger strikes are called in the autumn a sign of solidarity from the private sector will get this government on to the back foot knowing their attempts to divide us are not working and we're standing up to them.

The positivity to come out of the TUC march 26th demo and what to do next

SO throughout today i have been hearing piece after piece on the news about how this so called violence ruined the TUC march and hi-jacked it and all the rest of it. As i said i think the only people to hijack the march wre labour and Ed miliband trying to turn it into a slow cuts march and a general vote for the labour party message helped hugely by the TUC. But as a socialist i found the demo huge and a very positive thing. Throughout this week people who were on the march will go home to their home areas and tell their fellow friends, workmates and family of waht relaly went on there. Hopefully people will be ablet o breakthrough the biased coverage the mainstream news sources are putting out.

I wanted tto say how big this demo was and it felt so exhilariting to me and i hope it did to many others too. The BBC and TUC initally estimated half a million on the march on the day but later have downscaled it i am not sure why this is. I imagine to downplay the reaction and to stop any unrest in the movement. The TUC's leadership will think they have done their work and have let off steam from working peoplea nd can go back to the day to day stuff of running a big Union.

Wrong. From now on the mood across the country has changed, We may not notice it yet but it has changed the mood of the working class has changed. With the trades unions mobilising hundreds of thousands of workers to the streets of London for one day shows what can be achieved . So i wanted to reiterate the positive message this demo sent outa nd still does to me. The violence will soon be forgotton about in a months time and this demo which i still think was up nearer the 3 quarters of a million mark than half a million will live long in the memory of the working class. But this cannot be the end we need to carry on building resistance to the cuts and building pressure on the TUC and the unions to ballot for co-ordinated strike action. On the day our party gave out leaflets in support of a one day public sector genearl strike this was warmly welcomed and hopefully comrades in the various unions can ramp up pressure for this to become reality. I really think this can happen as anger about the cuts deepens as we head into the summer.

People have told me a general strike is illegal. I've talked to various people and have found out it is not. If done correctly with each union finding a issue and i'm sure they wont be short of a few ballots its members for strike action on the same day this can become a reality i'm sure of it. Mass workers resistance must be our way forward taking teh movement with us. In the socialist party we dont believe in individual based action this does not serve the greater struggle as a whole we firmly believe in the role of trade unions and the action they can take. As several union speakers said on the day we have all marched in our hundreds of thousands today just imagine if we all took strike action together on one day what we can achieve. We can stop these cuts i know we can we just need to build the support in and outside trade unions and in our communities ensuring we take everyone with us.

I think there would also be the unity there from private sector workers to also take strike action in solidarity with public sector workers. At the end of the day we are all workers and all have to sell our labour the tories may like to try and divide us and try and set us against eachother but aat the end of the day we are all one big mass working class ready to fight back against these unfair policies the tories are introducing.

So i really do think we should remember the positive parts of the demo and try to force the narrative that the violence is not representitive of the whole movement and the anti cuts movement and we are still moving forward not standing still.

Lets keep organising and building and fighting back against the cuts for ordinary working peoples sake, those who did not cause this financial crisis.

How small business's are struggling under the tories

As with a lot of small business's nothing has really improved under the tories.

Work has dried up for a lot of industries and it is looking bleak in the coming months.

This is no different for where i work a small manufacturing business which has no more than 50 members of staff and two workshops and a small office of about 8 people. This is a typical small business which relies on the contracts from public sector frameworks such as the water boards and sewage treatment works. All of these sorts of jobs have dried up with few if any new housing being built in the country despite us desperatly needing more and more.

With the addition of the VAT rise in January up to 20% now all of our suppliers have put up their prices so everything becomes a lot more competitive and harder to have that cutting edge on others in the industry.

Not only that but national insurance contributions are going up in April i hear which will affect workers having to contribute more to an already squeezed wage take home when you deduct tax and everything but also your company will have to contribute some too. Altogether this is not good news for a busienss like the one i work for. AWith jobs and work hard to come by these extra tax's and costs the tory lead coalition are throwing at us are simply not helping the situation.
The tories claim to be on the side of small business. I fail to see that personally they only people they are on the side of how i can see it is their rich banker friends from down the city.

I see no incentivs for small business's to employ more people like they want the private sector to do at all.

I'm no advocator of private sector work at all but as i happen to work in it i couldnt help notice these sorts of things. That the tories plans to help people into work by laying off people in teh public sector and hoping blindly that the private sector will pick up the fallout. This is just simply blind optimism from the tories i feel as they have no actual plan for this at all, no real awareness that the private sector is struggling too as a lot of it does rely on public sector contracts and work coming from there too.

As a result things are very tight and hard right now. I cant see things improving that much either with inflation going up and up and up.

Another period of negative growth and we are back in recession, i do see us going back into recession as things are just not picking up quickly enough or if at all. The tories have no plans for growth at all its just all cuts cuts cuts.

I do wonder if they have another plan