Busy days in Manchester

There's a busy few days coming up for the trade union movement in Manchester.

On Saturday, there's a rank-and-file meeting of electricians at noon in Manchester's Mechanics Institute, building the campaign in construction against major contractors trying to back out of the JIB agreement, deskill the work and dramatically slash pay.

On Sunday, we have the TUC "March for the Alternative" at the Tory conference in Manchester (route map), assembling at noon. This is followed by a Right To Work post-demo rally, back at the Mechanics Institute.

On Monday, UNITE members at API Holographics in Salford are due to strike again in a dispute over a pay freeze. This UNITE press release includes the address of their picket-line for those who can show support.
[Update 2/10/10: Heard on the march today that tomorrow's strike at API Holographics has been suspended as the company has offered further talks]

On Tuesday, UNITE members at Fujitsu in Manchester and Salford are striking again as part of our long-running dispute over breaches of agreements and victimisation of reps. Details of the pickets and the protest planned outside the Tory conference to coincide with the CEO speaking at a fringe meeting are here.

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Unity against the Tory attacks on the jobless

Much of the public debate about the Tories' proposals to force jobless people to work for nothing has missed the point. It has concentrated on whether or not this will "help" people who are out of work get the hang of how to work. But of course the Tories and their Lib Dem stooges couldn't care two hoots for the unemployed - that's not what it's about.

The reason why there are more people out of work now than a couple of years ago is not down to a sudden loss of the "work ethic" by poor people, a pandemic of laziness, or an increase in the appeal of trying to scrape by on a pittance. It is because employers decided to cut millions of jobs and we largely failed to stop them.

While we havejobless people who are desperate for a job and unable to get one, why should any of us complain if there's a small minority who aren't? They're giving those that are keen to work a better chance.

And of course that's a clue as to why the Tories are really proposing all these attacks on people relying on state benefits. This cabinet of millionaires wants to increase profits for themselves and their mates by driving down wages for people in work. And the more people who are desperately competing for every job, the easier that will be.

That's why it's vital that none of us fall for the divide-and-rule arguments pumped out by the Tories and their friends in the media, trying to encourage those of us lucky enough to be in employment to blame those who aren't. Instead we need to recognise that every campaign to defend state benefits is a campaign to protect our job security and our pay and conditions. We need unity against the cuts, not scapegoating of the poorest in society.

I'm delighted that the Right To Work campaign has produced a petition against this work-for-nothing scheme. It should be used in workplaces, not just amongst the unemployed.

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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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Pensions onslaught continues - but so does resistance

The onslaught on pensions in the IT & Comms sector continues, with the announcement that the BBC wants to slash pension provision. Their particular wheeze is to break the link to final salary by capping the increase in pay which can be pensionable - this is particularly nasty for younger members and in periods of high inflation.

It's good to see a strong union response, with the five BBC unions (UNITE, NUJ, BECTU, Equity and the Musicians Union) planning to coordinate strike ballots unless the proposals are withdrawn. The recent UNITE IT & Communications National Sector Committee meeting discussed the situation and agreed to send our members at the BBC a message of support.

The government is busy attacking pensions in both public and private sector. The Minister of State for Pensions, Steve Webb MP, announced the intention to change from using the Retail Price Index (RPI) to using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as the measure of inflation for regulating occupational pensions.

This nasty announcement would affect millions of people - current pensioners, people who were previously in final salary pension schemes and those still contributing. Professional Pensions reports one consultancy estimating that 12 million people would have their pensions reduced.

A Pensions Age report quotes TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber:

"Over someone's whole retirement this will add up to a significant loss. CPI is less than RPI in most years because it excludes housing and council tax costs. But even if all other things are equal CPI is on average half a per cent less than RPI because it is calculated in a different way. If pensions in payment today had been linked to CPI instead of RPI for the last twenty years they would now be 14 per cent lower."

For those whose DB schemes close, and who prematurely become "deferred" pensioners, the impact could be a lot worse.

Everyone should be bombarding their MPs with complaints about this raid on our pensions. We should all be supporting any members in the public or private sector who fight to defend a final salary pension scheme. We should all be joining the Right To Work demonstration against the cuts at the Tory Party conference on 3rd October.

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UNITE Policy Conference

There's lots of information about the conference appearing on the UNITE web site, and I won't attempt to rival or duplicate that, but rather provide a few updates from a sectoral slant.

The delegations from both the Electrical Engineering and Electronics (EEE) and IT & Communications (ITC) sectors were small, making me worry that some of our Regional Industrial Sector Committees (RISCs) are not working effectively.

Conference agreed motion 11 from the Coventry Area Activists Committee dealt with the need for investment and R&D, highlighting the decision of Ericsson to close its Ansty site with the loss of 700 jobs.

Motion 35 from the EEE National Industrial Sector Committee (NISC) promoted the idea of a European Minimum Wage policy, building on the national minimum wages in many countries, and helping prevent the "race to the bottom" where countries try to undercut each other. The motion was agreed (despite nobody standing up to propose it).

The text of all the motions is on the web site, but there is a sentence missing from the end of motion 35.

Composite 8 comprised motion 42 from the ITC NISC and motions 43 from the East Midlands ITC RISC, both of which proposed affiliation to the Right To Work campaign. Since the motions were submitted, the Executive Council had decided that it didn't want Policy Conference to decide on any affiliations at all (which seems wrong to me personally) and would oppose any motion that included affiliation. The movers decided that rather than removing the bits about affiliation, which was really the point of the motions, they would remit it for the EC to consider.

Conference agreed motion 59 from London & Eastern ITC RISC, which called for a positive right to strike, noting the difference between European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgements supporting the right to strike and contrasting them with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings which put free trade ahead of human rights.

Many members in EEE may be affected by the decision to try to find a way to revive the "drive for 35" campaign for a shorter working week through the Confederation of Shipbuilding & Engineering Unions. The campaign in the 1980s had successfully reduced the working week for large numbers of workers in engineering and beyond. The levy which formed a vital part of the campaign had left a fund of many millions of pounds, which is now almost impossible to access. Conference agreed an Executive Council (EC) statement that (subject to legalities) should allow the fund to be used and the campaign revived. Conference was given a commitment that the EC will be kept regularly updated on progress.

Another highlight was a packed fringe meeting with BA Cabin Crew, standing up against their bullying boss Willie Walsh in a campaign that is vital for working people in every industry.

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