Report from Labor Notes conference and the Chicago Teachers' Strike

At the start of April I was lucky enough to be part of a small delegation from the UK to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago, which brought together over 2000 activists for an inspiring, stimulating and useful set of plenaries and workshops. The trip coincided with the 1 April strike by the Chicago teachers, which turned into a huge day of strikes, demonstrations and occupations involving dozens of unions and community organisations.

The first version of our report is now available here. So far it includes an overview of Labor Notes, reports from some workshops with really useful organising ideas, a report from the Chicago teachers' strike, and some background information about the US labour movement which might be helpful to readers.

Thanks to all the individuals and organisations who helped fund the delegation. Hopefully our report demonstrates that the trip was well worthwhile.

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Support the Junior Doctors and Student Nurses

For years the government has been slashing at the NHS, cutting and privatising to boost the profits of the private health vultures (many of whom have unsavoury links to MPs and other decision makers).

Now Cameron and Hunt have decided to take on both junior doctors and student nurses.

The proposed changes to out of hours arrangements for junior doctors wouldn't just mean a pay cut for many, but remove financialy penalties for trusts who jeopardise safety by making them work excessive hours. The proposals have been branded #notsafenotfair. After an impressive strike vote it was great to see so many out on the picket line for the first time this morning.

Meanwhile the government plans to remove bursaries from student nurses, replacing them with student loans. This system is bad enough for any course, but student nurses actually work full time for a large amount of their training. This would mean them actually paying to work.

The striking thing about the situation is how the government is managing to unite health workers. The idea that weekends could run a weekday service without extra resources is ludicrous. And other health workers know that if the Tories beat the junior doctors, they are bound to attack their terms next because junior doctors can't provide a weekday service without all the other hospital departments and functions.

It's worth remembering that "number 10" described Cameron's assault on junior doctors as his "miners' strike". The whole working class paid the price for years for the defeat of the miners. We cannot afford any repeat, least of all when our NHS is at stake. Health workers deserve maximum support and solidarity.

It's a crime that health workers have to strike at all. Before solidarity strikes were outlawed (and unions obeyed these laws) other workers sometimes struck "on behalf of" health workers so that they could continue their vital work. As the Tories push through their Trade Union Bill and try to outlaw most trade unionism, will this kind of action be back on the cards again if workers feel there is no point trying to comply?

This is the appeal from the BMA:

A CALL FROM THE BMA - TO OUR FELLOW WORKERS, TRADE UNIONISTS AND ACTIVISTS: WE NEED YOU!

The current situation:

Junior Doctors across England will be commencing industrial action on Tuesday 12th January. We are opposing this government’s attempt to impose an unsafe new contract on the medical profession. It is our view that the proposed contract represents an existential danger to the NHS as an institution.

You may be aware that the BMA had initially suspended its planned industrial action at the start of December and returned to talks with the Department of Health. That decision was made in good faith. However, over the last few weeks, in the course of negotiations with Government we have encountered only intransigence. It is clear that the government perceives our contract issue as pivotal for its attempt to “reform” the NHS towards a neoliberal, commercialised system.

It is therefore evident to us that we have no choice but to transform our 98% ballot mandate into action.  

The developments of the next few months will have consequences stretching far into the future. This government is wilfully putting at risk our patients' safety, the tolerability of our working lives as NHS workers and the very viability of the NHS as a publicly-funded, publicly-provided service.

Why we need YOU

The coming period will be the ultimate test of the BMA’s resolve as a Union. However, we remain mindful of the fact that the BMA is not an abstract entity operating in isolation from wider political developments. There is no way that we can win this on our own. We need all concerned citizens, activists and trade unionists to stand alongside us in this fight.

Over the last few months we have been in dialogue with many trade unionists throughout the country and we have been enormously grateful for their support both at a local and national level. The public messages of support from our allied health worker colleagues, the firefighters, the teaching unions and the TUC and TUCG unions have galvanised junior doctors.

We are therefore well aware that all eyes are upon us and that the institutions which represent the wider working class stand with us in solidarity.

We are in no doubt that Osborne, Cameron and Hunt will use the proposed doctor’s contract as a tool for achieving the destruction of safe terms and conditions throughout the NHS and throughout the public sector. The Conservative Party is attempting to stretch the NHS into an ostensibly 7-day elective service whilst simultaneously launching the biggest assault on NHS resources in its history. The politics of austerity represents a clear and present danger to the nation’s health.

A victory for the Junior Doctors would signify the first real crack in the entire edifice of austerity in the UK.

Please stand with us. And when you need us, ask us. We will stand by you.

Invitation to attend our pickets

On behalf of the entire BMA we thank you all for your incredible support so far. Many of you will have seen the details with regards to the planned action and I will reiterate them below. We invite you to come out and display your visible support for us on the days of action.

·         The action will begin with an emergency care-only model, which would see junior doctors provide the same level of service that happens in their given specialty, hospital or GP practice on Christmas Day. It will then escalate to full walk-outs. The action as proposed is:

Emergency care only — 24 hrs from 8am Tuesday 12 January to 8am Wednesday 13 January

Emergency care only — 48 hrs from 8am Tuesday 26th January to 8am Thursday 28 January

Full withdrawal of labour — from 8am to 5pm Wednesday 10th February

·         The aim is to picket all major hospitals in England on all three days of proposed action. Pickets will be in the vicinity of the main entrances and will start at 8am, continuing until at least 12.30pm. However, many picket sites will continue into the evening, especially at the larger hospitals.

·         Along with the pickets there will be parallel “Meet the Doctors” events at nearby transport stops or public spaces. We will direct you to these events from the picket.

·         Please turn up on the days of action, and give us your support. We will then inform you if other local events are planned on the day. If you are an allied health worker, trade unionist or campaigner please do consider bringing along the banner representing your organisation, your working uniform or similar. We would appreciate it however if banners in explicit endorsement of specific political parties are not displayed and that any selling of campaign literature such as newspapers is relatively discreet.

·         On the days of action, please do debate us, educate us and invite us to address your colleagues in your workplace or trade union branch.

Finally

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you of another important upcoming date. On Saturday 9th January student nurses, midwives and allied health workers will be marching in opposition to Government plans to scrap the NHS student bursary. The protest will assemble outside St Thomas’s hospital at midday and proceed to Downing St. The BMA will be marching alongside the nursing students and we hope to see you there!

Just as the social democratic consensus in this country began with the inception of the NHS in 1948 so too will the NHS be the site of Britain’s last stand against the all-consuming forces of austerity.

Solidarity is the antidote to the cynicism of those in power. Now is the time to stand together in a common defence of the NHS. If not now, when?

Kind regards

Dr Yannis Gourtsoyannis, Member of BMA Junior Doctors Committee National Executive.

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National demo to defend the NHS, 29th September

The Tories and their Lib-Dem props are ripping the NHS to shreds with cuts, reorganisation and privatisation - actions that were in no manifesto and nobody voted for.  Many of those who backed the changes in parliament have links to private healthcare that wants to profit from ill health.

It's a crime that there was no national demo when the Health & Social Care Bill was going through parliament, but the huge local protests around the country show that people are prepared to come out and defend the NHS.

Now UNITE, along with UNISON and GMB are building a national protest to Save the NHS on 29th September in Manchester, when the Tories are holding their conference.

Everyone should be there.  The UNITE web site now has a page where you can sign-up to pledge to join the march on 29th September.  UNITE should be organising trains and coaches from round the country - there is no time to lose.

If you're in a well-organised workplace you should be building a large delegation for the march.  If you're in a less organised workplace, what better opportunity to get people involved - many non-members will support this campaign too.

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UNITE's policy against the cuts hardens

Last week UNITE's Executive Council agreed a statement on the cuts, which I reproduce below. This marks a significant hardening of the union's position, distancing itself from New Labour's "too far, too fast" line, and offering support to councillors who support UNITE's policy. The EC also agreed a motion from the North West region backing "co-ordinated and generalised strike action within the law" as part of the campaign against the cuts.

Executive Policy

CUTS ARE NOT THE ANSWER ORGANISING AND FIGHTING FOR THE ALTERNATIVE

Unite‟s Executive Council unanimously confirms its opposition to all Government spending cuts. We commit ourselves to fight this ideologically driven assault on our much valued public services and welfare state.

This assault on our class is designed to shift the blame for the economic crisis to the public sector and make working people pay for a crisis not of our making but caused by the negligent and irresponsible behaviour of financial institutions, gambling for profits in an unregulated market for financial products.

The consequences of these actions, coupled with the failure of both national and international regulators to prevent even the worst excesses of the free market and their promotion of self regulation, are now being felt by workers across the globe. Further, the economic crisis has given government the opportunity to promote and further its ideological attack on collective trade unionism, social and employment protection and the wider social fabric of our society.

Of course there is an alternative:

• collect the missing tax billions from the banks, multinationals, rich and powerful in our society and close the loopholes and avoidance scams that enable them to opt out of making their fair and proper contribution.
• introduce a Robin Hood tax to collect revenue from all financial transactions, bonuses and share options and raise tax rates at the top to ensure a fairer contribution from those most able to make one.
• maintain public spending and invest in our future, keeping people in jobs and growing our economy to create new ones. Supporting public services as well as our private sector, construction, manufacturing and support services is vital to rebalancing our economy.

We congratulate our General Secretary and this Executive Council in promoting our position of opposing all Government‟s cuts and the call for co-ordinated industrial action, but much more needs to be done:

1. Unite‟s position on the cuts must be effectively communicated to our officers and staff, our constitutional committees, shop stewards and activists, within our political structures and to Unite MPs and councillors as well as within our wider communities.

We have to end confusing messages being communicated within certain sections of our union sympathetic to the Labour leadership‟s message of “cuts too far, to fast” – the so-called “dented shield approach”.

2. We must do more to inform, inspire and engage with our lay representatives, shop stewards and activists across all sectors of our Union. We must equip them with the arguments they need to engage our members at work and within local communities if
the fight back against the cuts is to be effective. This campaign requires leadership from the top but also grassroots activity at local level.

3. We encourage all workplaces, branches and constitutional committees to send resolutions to their Regional and National Industrial Sector Committees as well as to this Executive Council supporting actions for consideration.

4. We firmly believe coordinated industrial action is an essential tool in the fight before us and ask the General Secretary to write urgently to all officers, branches and constitutional committees with a strong message of encouragement to take up the fight and to initiate a series of communications and promotional materials to support our activists in developing the arguments for action. While decisions on industrial action will of course be taken by our members in democratic ballots, they must be confident in an alternative and know that they have their Union‟s full support in taking action.

When members of any union are taking industrial action against cuts Unite members in workplaces not taking industrial action are encouraged to protest and show solidarity as far as they can.

5. Industrially, it must be clear that we will support all members fighting back. Unite recognises the importance of advancing our members interests by fighting for improved pay and conditions even in these difficult times, while in our public services specifically our full resources must be given to those fighting against job losses and compulsory redundancy, pay cuts and/or freezes and the privatisation or outsourcing of work.

6. We support the initiative in developing training for our activists. It is critical that we up-skill our officers and activists in preparation for delivering our fight back strategy. Providing evidence to support the fact that we are not "all in this together" such as the fact provided by recent evidence from the High Pay Commission that chief executives of FTSE 100 companies earn an average of £3.7 million which is 145 times the average wage.

7. We are seeing an employers‟ offensive unleashing itself against all workers - on their pay and conditions, their pensions and their collective bargaining rights. If workers vote to take strike action, they should be encouraged to co-ordinate strike dates with others in dispute to maximise their effect. We ask the General Secretary to ensure that mechanisms are put in place to enable such coordination to develop.

8. We particularly urge the General Secretary to ensure that this union immediately engages with other like minded public and private sector unions with a view to our working together on an urgent programme of co-ordinated strikes over pensions and pay cuts, redundancy, privatisation and outsourcing of work. This should however not stand in the way of Unite taking a lead or acting alone in the defence of our members interests wherever necessary.

9. We believe we must communicate our position within the Labour Party at all levels and make it clear that Unite cannot support a position based on government cuts being “too far, too fast”. We must seek urgent dialogue with elected councillors on ways in which, by working together, we can reach agreement on alternatives to cutting, outsourcing or privatising services and jobs. We are very clear that we will reject and fight any attempt by councils to use the economic crisis in an opportunistic way to attack and/or undermine trade unionism, our agreements or facilities.

10. We must ensure that Labour MPs and councillors receive an unequivocal message from our union supporting our policy of opposing all cuts. Elected councillors must know they will receive the full support of this union if they face disciplinary or other action for supporting union policy. We must ensure Unite fully supports councillors who oppose cuts to local services.

Finally, we are determined that Unite will never abandon those who face the most serious cuts of all; the poor and vulnerable in our society including the disabled, the unemployed and those on low incomes who are now beginning to suffer real hardship as the first £18 billion of Welfare Benefit cuts begin to bite.

Some are our members but many are not, our success in fighting the cuts will require us to stand shoulder to shoulder with those at the sharp end. We recognise that the most vicious cuts of all are hitting those who often have no voice.

We urge and encourage our activists, shop stewards and members to get involved in the fight back, linking up trade unionists with groups coordinating actions locally and nationally such as UK Uncut and the Coalition of Resistance, as well as students, pensioners, tenants associations, community groups, the unemployed and welfare claimants.

This is a fight to defend our class. We must redouble our efforts to ensure we will win that fight. This Executive Council and our unions leadership is fully committed to this strategy and must now ensure that this message runs through our union, at all levels and in everything we do.

Adopted by the Unite Executive 19th May 2011

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Post, Privatisation, Wages, Beans and the Welfare State

There's a national "Keep Our Post Public" rally today against the government's plans to privatise Royal Mail, with Len McCluskey as one of the speakers.

Privatisation is a key plank of the government's strategy to increase profits at our expense, by opening up our public services as new markets for comercial activity.

Plank 2 is cutting real wages (in the public and private sector) by using mass unemployment to depress wages while letting inflation drift up. The latest inflation figures this week show CPI inflation up to 3.3%, while RPI inflation, which is a more realistic estimate of the rate of increase in the cost of living, is up to 4.7%. No wonder some members are being driven to take strike action to defend their standard of living - UNITE members at Heinz in Wigan start their strike over pay tonight.

Plank 3 is the assault on public services and the welfare state, by a combination of pushing costs onto individuals (as with education) and direct cuts in provision.

If we want to successfully defend our own jobs, standard of living and services, we need to support all those resisting any element of this strategy to make us pay for an economic crisis we did not create. Amongst other things, that means backing campaigns against privatisation such as at Royal Mail, campaigns to defend pay and pensions such as those at Heinz or the BBC, and campaigns against cuts in public service and the welfare state, such as the magnificent and inspiring campaign being waged by school, FE and University students.

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The lies about the cuts

The proposed cuts to public services threaten the welfare state at a fundamental level. If they go through, life for many working class people will be more like that in the 1930s, before it was established. The attacks on the welfare state cover every area, including health, education, welfare benefits, pensions, care for disabled and old people, and much more.

To try to force through the cuts, the Con-Dem government and its allies in the media and business have to sell a series of lies to enough of the population to prevent us uniting to mount sufficiently effective resistance to the cuts. Every union activist has a responsibility to challenge these lies to promote effective resistance. Let's look at a few:

LIE 1: We're All In This Together

The Con-Dems would have us believe that we all face a financial crisis and all have to tighten our belts. What a sick joke coming from a cabinet a majority of whom are millionaires. They aren't reliant on public services like the rest of us. Their vast wealth provides security for them should they fall ill, lose their jobs (let's hope!) or grow old. They can afford to buy the best care and support for their families too. Why should we start tightening our belts until theirs' reach the same circumference as ours?

In reality, there isn't much belt-tightening going on at the top at all. Friday's Guardian reported that the Chief Executive Officers of FTSE100 companies had seen their earnings rise by 55% in a year. Total pay for all the board members fo the top 350 listed companies went up 45%.

When they pretend not to be enjoying slashing public services, I can't help picturing Cameron & Clegg as prefects at some public school, beating some kid's backside and saying with a perverted grin "this is hurting me more than it's hurting you".

LIE 2: The Cuts Won't Really Affect Us in the Private Sector

There's a clever bit of language being used to peddle this lie - referring to the cuts as in the "public sector" instead of "public services". The reality is that unless you are a millionaire, you rely on public services at key points in your life or that of your family. It is these services that are under threat.

But there are other ways we in the private sector will be affected too.

Many of us work for companies who, directly or indirectly, sell products and services to the public sector. These contracts are already being slashed, impacting on our own employment prospects.

Many of us have family or friends working in the public sector, many of whose lives are about to be torn apart.

When the recession started, may profitable private companies used it as an excuse to attack jobs, pay and pensions and to push through changes they had always wanted. If the putlic sector gets away with slashing jobs, pay and pensions, and tearing up employment contracts, this will encourage private sector employers to come back for more.

Throwing hundreds of thousands of workers on the dole will dramatically reduce their spending power, reducing the market for the products and services that workers in the private sector produce, further depressing the economy.

LIE 3: The Cuts Won't Really Affect Us, Only Work-Shy Scroungers

The government has targetted the very poorest in society, those dependent on state benefits, for the biggest cuts. This will have a devastating impact on many of those who are out of work, old or seriously ill.

Many people have heard a few stories about people on the fiddle, and the media ensures that everyone hears such stories (true or invented) second hand. Of course if the National Minimum Wage wasn't so pitifully low, decent childcare was readily available, and employers weren't so ready to sack people who are ill, fewer people would be tempted to fiddle.

But really the issue of "scroungers" is just a distraction, intended to get working class people squabbling over a few quid amongst ourselves. The real robbers are in the city. It was irresponsible gambling in the city that triggered this recession. Vodafone have just been let off paying about £6bn of unpaid tax.

The rise in unemployment was caused by employers throwing millions of people out of jobs, not by a pandemic of the laziness virus. The problem doesn't lie amongst the unemployed, but in the market economy that dictates that it is now more profitable to prevent people working and have fewer jobs.

The key argument though is about why the Con-Dems are so keen to target those not working. Cutting benefits to those out of work won't increase the number of jobs. What it will do is make people increasingly desperate to compete for the small number of jobs available, allowing employers to drive down wages for those of us in work, increasing the profits enjoyed in the boardrooms at our expense. That's the fundamental reason why people in work and out of work must unite against the cuts.

LIE 4: The Debt Is So Big There Is No Alternative

The debt is indeed big, thanks to the collossal bailout of the financial markets. After years of privatising profits, governments around the world nationalised the debts. We had a few months where there was serious discussion about how unfetterred markets had caused disaster, then the neo-liberals went back on the offensive and now they want more privatisation and deregulation as the "cure" for the debt.

But it's worth getting the debt in perspective. As these graphs show, UK national debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has gone up in 2009 and 2010 (when it exceeded 50%). But this is still low by historical standards, FAR lower than after World War II, the period when there was consensus between the main political parties that we had to invest in setting up the welfare state - health, education, benefits, housing etc - and grow the economy in order to pay off the debt.

It isn't the size of the debt that is driving the Con-Dems (and some other countries) to adopt harsh "austerity" policies. It is a continuation of the neoliberal economic madness that triggered the crash in the first place, combined with a knee-jerk desire to get out of the crisis by making working class people pay.

"There Is No Alternative" (TINA) is a line used by Thatcher to justify Tory assaults on working people in the 1980s, and by Blair to justify his wars in the 2000s. Even if they couldn't think of something positive to do instead, NOT wreaking dustruction on millions of people would have been a better alternative to what they did.

LIE 5: The Public Sector Had Grown Too Big and Greedy

It wasn't teachers, nurses, refuse collectors and all the other public sector workers who caused the crisis. Financial institutions had succeeded in persuading governments that they didn't need to hold much capital, so when the US economy took a small dip and some people couldn't repay high-interest mortgages, they ran out of cash. As financial institutions had bundled up these debts with lots of others and sold them to each other all round the world, they all panicked about what bad debts they might hold, and stopped lending to each other - the Credit Crunch. This triggered a collapse in large sections of the "real" economy.

LIE 6: The Cuts Are Essential To Protect the Economy

Throwing half a million public sector workers out of their jobs, along with half a million private sector workers who provide goods and services to the public sector, while cutting the incomes of many in the poorest areas, are measures likely to deflate the economy and increase the chances of a prolonged slump or double-dip recession. How on earth can the private sector "take up the slack" when the people who might buy their products and services are skint?

There are many detailed alternative arguments, including UNITE's "Alternative Economic Programme", the TUC's "All Pain, No Gain: The Case Against the Cuts", "The Case Against The Cuts" from PCS, and "One Million Climate Jobs" from the Campaign Against Climate Change and various unions.

LIE 7: There's Nothing You Can Do

We have to make stronger links between workplaces and local campaigns in every town and city. There are thousands of group, protests and activities against the cuts springing up in every town and city (like Right To Work in Manchester where I live). Get involved. Use UNITE's Area Activist meetings and local Trades Councils to make links.

Whenever any group of us is in the firing line, whether that's in the public sector, local community or the private sector, we need to unite behind them. That must include backing the strikes to defend the fire service in London (FBU) and pensions at the BBC (NUJ).

And of course, don't neglect developing union strength in your own workplace. Without strong and effective workplace organisation, we are building on sand.

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Private Equity v Democracy

When most of us have such a low opinion of the vast majority of politicians, it's easy to lose sight of why democracy has always been a central plank of the labour movement agenda.

Before working people got the vote, parliament was simply a club for the rich and powerful to sort out their affairs - almost invariably at our expense.

Previous generations of working people fought to gain more power by both winning the vote. The rich and powerful sought to safeguard their interests by moving lots of decisions out of parliament, to prevent us getting our grubby hands on them.

The push for nationalisation in the early and mid 20th century was an attempt to counter this by bringing more of the economy under democratic control. However, in many cases the extent of democracy actually achieved in state-owned industries was extremely limited.

Since the 1980s the rich and powerful have been on the offensive, trying to roll back what limited democratic say we've had. Think about a few examples:

• Privatisation
• Stopping council house building in favour of property speculation
  
• "Independence" of the Bank of England (from democratic control)
• The World Trade Organisation (WTO) imposing rules which over-ride national laws, so that taking account of labour standards, health & safety or the environment in trade is banned
  
• The rise of QUANGOs
• Chopping up public services into "trusts", "foundations" etc
• Government accepting "commercial confidentiality" to stop voters knowing how our money is being spent with private companies

If the people we elect go along with declining influence over our lives, is it any wonder that voters take a decreasing interest in who is elected?

Another factor is the international nature of business undermining the national nature of democracy. For example, companies play governments off against each other for tax-breaks and grants.

The TUPE legistation has given us some limited protection when our jobs are bought and sold between different companies. But the "share purchase" method of takeover completely bypasses this protection. You can be working for company X, all its shares are bought by company Y, which may have a radical impact on your future, and you currently have no say at all.

This is becoming a bigger issue at the moment because of the rise of Private Equity companies. Not only do they buy business through share purchase, avoiding TUPE, but they are not publicly listed companies, so are even more secretive than your normal PLC.

In it's campaign to give working people more say over private equity, UNITE is focussing on the example of Telent (formerly Marconi, GEC etc) in our sector, which was bought by the Pensions Corporation. There's more information about the general issue on both the Amicus and TGWU web sites. Why we don't have the same information on both is a mystery to me!

If you're interested in the wider issues about democracy, there's a brilliant book by the late Paul Foot "The Vote - How It Was Won and How It Was Undermined".

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Privatisation - is it a wind-up?

"You couldn't make it up" is a reasonable reaction to learning that Carphone Warehouse were behind one of the proposed "Academies" in Preston. The news coverage this week suggesting government support for McDonalds being approved to issue qualifications took this to a new level.

Does the government really want to reduce "education" to "training"? Are tax-payers expected to fund job-specific training because so many employers are too scared of having staff poached by competitors to train their staff properly?

Now Virgin, responsible for that bane of my life the West Coast Main Line, want to help privatise more of the NHS. Does Richard Branson know no shame? A man who launched a brand of condoms shortly after his balloon burst over the Atlantic, and who aims to milk the taxpayer of billions thanks to Gordon Brown's refusal to nationalise Northern Rock, now hopes to extend corporate power over more of our NHS. Presumably their healthcare centres won't be offering help with contraception, STDs or abortion? I hope there are protests at the various events they plans across the UK.

Satire is dead.

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Privatisation - can be beaten

It's very encouraging to see that the Jersey parliament has postponed its vote on the privatisation of Jersey Telecom, under pressure from the UNITE campaign. Let's keep it up and keep this service in the public sector.

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Privatisation - in our sector?

Most people don't think of privatisation as an issue directly affecting members in our sector - except when we're working for the companies doing the privatising!

Jersey Telecom is an exception - it's still in the public sector, and members are fighting to keep it that way.

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