Make the rich pay – bail out all public services, not bankers’ and billionaires’ profits

By Richie Venton – SSP national workplace organiser

Two major trade union events in the space of 48 hours demonstrate the seething anger at public sector cuts, the potential for a united resistance across the trade unions, and the potency, increasing popularity and urgent necessity of the Scottish Socialist Party’s alternatives to this assault on jobs, services and conditions.

EIS 10,000 march

On Saturday 6th March, 10,000 teachers, lecturers, nursery staff, parents, pupils and other trade unionists poured out of Glasgow ’s Kelvingrove Park , snaking their way round a mammoth route to the EIS union’s rally in the SECC.

This was the first national demo called by the EIS in decades. The overwhelming majority of the marchers had never been on a demo before. The age profile was a whole cross-section, from toddlers in buggies and primary kids, through trainee and newly qualified teachers, to bearded veterans of the profession – united in their fury at education budget cuts, whilst bankers’ bailouts, renewal of Trident weapons and bloody war cost the public a fortune.

Anger at that obscene contrast was reflected in speeches by the EIS president and others at the rally. They denounced the governments of Westminster and Holyrood for regarding these expenditures as more important than the education of our children, who represent the future, and lambasted the SNP government for now confronting children with the choice of either free school meals or smaller classes, when they had promised both and children deserve both.

SSP on the march

The EIS march is part of a campaign they have entitled “Why must our children pay?”

The SSP was the only party with a leaflet that directly dealt with the issues of the march, demanding “make the rich pay – not our kids; bail out education and all services – not bankers’ profits; 20’s plenty in any class – give our kids a chance.”

People snapped up the leaflets, smiled and murmured their agreement with the headlines, turned and quoted it to their friends as they assembled to march off.

The lively SSP contingent was joined by parents and children who fought the heroic Save Our Schools Campaign in Glasgow last year. As we marched we led the chant “Twenty’s plenty in any class – give our kids a chance”, which caught on with the crowd marching and bystanders on the pavements.

As the 10,000 trod towards the end of their marathon march to the SECC rally, we improvised an SSP “street meeting” on the pavement as they passed us! We belted out our message on a very loud PA system: “The SSP demands that the government tax the rich, to bail out education, not bankers’ profits and bankers’ bonuses.” Several sections of the march shouted back their agreement with us as they marched past, and even more contingents applauded us as they marched past. A sign of how profoundly the bankers’ bailout has changed people’s consciousness, including their open-ness to the SSP’s unashamed socialist demands.

The EIS leadership promised in speeches that this mass demo is just the start of the campaign, which is to be welcomed, and which EIS union activists and members will make sure is the case.

It is absolutely right that as the union representing 60,000 members in education they should take up the cudgels in defence of that service. But what would be tragic, and totally divisive and counter-productive, is if the EIS leadership argued for cuts in other services to save education; unity of opposition to all service cuts, combining the power and scale of members of all public sector unions and the communities they service is what is urgently needed to stop the slaughter.

Biggest civil service strike since 1987

It was therefore encouraging that an EIS representative (as well as speakers from the FBU, UNISON and STUC) addressed the 8th March strike rally in Glasgow, called during the 48-hour stoppage by all civil service workers, members of PCS.

This was the biggest civil service strike since 1987. Across the UK, over 250,000 workers brought services to a halt in tax and customs offices; Job Centres; driving centres; the Courts; the MoD; passport offices; the Scottish parliament (for the first time ever); Westminster … to name but some. 30,000 of these strikers were in Scotland .

They are overwhelmingly low-paid workers, whose partial compensation for low pay has been a modest average pension of £6,500 and a reasonable redundancy scheme – which is now under assault. The government has set in motion the legislation to slash the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, cutting the package that most workers would get on being made redundant by up to one-third, tens of thousands of pounds each. A sure sign that the Labour government (backed up quite openly by the Tories on this) want to slaughter tens of thousands of jobs on the cheap – in addition to the 100,000 already shed in the past 5 years – and usher in privatisation by making the prospect more attractive to the privateers.

The response to the 48-hour strike was absolutely overwhelming – forcing management to stoop to tricks like jetting in a handful of scab managers from Newcastle to open the Glasgow DVLA office.

Socialism in the civil service

Again, not only did SSP members in PCS play an instrumental part in building the strike, but our policies were more widely and eagerly embraced than for a long time: on the picket lines, at the PCS strike rallies in Glasgow and Dundee, and at the SSP public meeting in Glasgow after the union rally. This was a really large meeting, with over half those present attending their first ever SSP meeting. And strikers were enthusiastic in their support for our socialist aims – many commenting wryly that if only we could get a fair hearing in the media, imagine how popular our case would be – as well as our proposals on how to build public sector unity against all cuts in the immediate future.

Unity against the carnage – build 10th April Demo

Alongside a rolling programme of further industrial action by the PCS, railway workers are striking (Scotrail) and balloting for pre-General Election strikes (Network Rail). Numerous anti-cuts campaigns, involving council workers’ unions and communities, are campaigning against the brutal council cuts that loom. Already 5,000 council jobs face the chop, with hair-raising predictions of 32,000 jobs (one in every eight!) being butchered by 2014. And community centres face closure up and down Scotland .

So an immediate opportunity to tie all these strands of struggle into a rope to restrain the axe-wielders presents itself on Saturday 10th April. Scottish UNISON is calling a mass, national demonstration in Glasgow that day, in defence of public services.

SSP members in all the various trade unions – alongside other union members – need to move heaven and earth to make this an almighty display of the power of a united working class on the march, by calling on their unions to mobilise members into an event that dwarfs even the brilliant 10,000 on the EIS march.

As Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and SNP politicians sharpen their knives in a grisly pre-election competition for whose cuts are the deepest, the SSP in contrast will stand up for public sector workers and the communities that depend on public services.

We will build for a united march for public services – not private profit, demanding the governments tax the rich and bail out all public services – not bankers’ and billionaires’ profits.

We will campaign inside the unions for measures that would fund these services, protect and create jobs, and begin to re-distribute wealth from the millionaires to the millions.

Measures such as a 10% tax on every millionaire (to fund 80,000 new jobs in Scotland alone, on £25,000 a year for 3 years!); restoration of income tax on the rich to pre-Thatcher levels (83%) and likewise Corporation Tax on big companies, from the current paltry 28% to the 52% it was at before Thatcher and then New Labour made this country a tax haven for the tax-dodging rich.

A sea-change has begun in the outlook of workers in the frontline of public sector carnage by the parties that back big business and the profit system. Socialist measures – including full-blown public ownership of the entire banking sector, natural wealth, services and big industries, but with democratic control – are increasingly convincing to people whose future is under threat.

The time is ripe for the potential power of a united trade union movement to be mobilised – starting with 10th April – and for socialist demands to be boldly advanced amongst an increasingly receptive crowd of angry workers. The SSP will do its part, emboldened by the events of the past 48 hours.

Another 27 innocent civilians killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan. There is one marked difference between this and previous attacks, there appears to be no immediate denial, claim it was the Taliban the hit, claim it was the Taliban who hit them etc etc.

The SSP are holding a public meeting on the war on Wednesday.

Wednesday at 7pm in the DVA Constitution Road Dundee.

A Canadian Anti-War group have pointed out a cruel repeat of history.

The 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow were boycotted in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Then–U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced the boycott in February 1980, and Canada and dozens of other countries soon followed suit. In his state of the union address that year, Carter made the case against the Soviet war:

“The vast majority of nations on Earth have condemned this latest Soviet attempt to extend its colonial domination of others and have demanded the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops. The Muslim world is especially and justifiably outraged by this aggression against an Islamic people. No action of a world power has ever been so quickly and so overwhelmingly condemned. But verbal condemnation is not enough. The Soviet Union must pay a concrete price for their aggression.”

Now Canada is part of a coalition occupying Afghanistan whilst hosting the Olympics.

Read the rest of the article at the link for more information.

Dundee SSP are holding a public meeting about the continued war and occupation in Afghanistan on the 24th of February at the DVA.

There will be a short ceremony by Burns’ Statue in Albert Square next Saturday, 13th Feb, at 12noon to mark the permanent return of the Dundee Spanish Civil War memorial, and the new supplementary memorial, to their proper home.

We previously covered the re-dedication of the new plaque

We are holding a public meeting Axe war, not services on Wednesday 24th February at the DVA, Constitution Road, starting at 7pm.

The main speakers will be

• Colin Fox, SSP co-national spokesperson
• John McAllion, former MP and MSP for Dundee East
• Joan Humphreys, Military Families Against War

followed by Q&A and discussion time.

Dundee Violence Against Women Partnership and Dundee Contemporary Arts present:

Lilya 4 Ever free showing.

Date: 1st December 2009, 6pm.

The film will be followed by a period of discussion about the issues around trafficking and violence against women.

Details of how to book can be found here

This post is as good as any to also promote the White Ribbon Campaign and to encourage all men to join it.

The Guardian has published an article on the Post Office closures and consultations. It details a parliamentary committee criticising the sham consultations and closure program.

When the press are telling us daily about the damage posties are doing to the service they are attempting to defend it’s worth remembering who the privatising parasites really are who are gutting the service by both tiny attacks and huge.

We wrote about the sham consultation at the time.

There is an anti-war demo in Edinburgh on November the 14th.

Bus from Dundee :-

Bus – 33 Seater booked – spaces still available, If you would like to book a seat please get in touch as soon as possible

To reserve seat contact: Karen Grogan, karen1grogan@hotmail.com.

Bus leaves Meadowside, opposite Post Office, at 8.30 a.m.

Returns to Dundee by 5.00 p.m.

£10 per seat (£5 concessions).

Assemble 10.30am East Market Street, Edinburgh, leaving at 11am

Troops Out of Afghanistan Now / No to NATO / Scrap Trident

The NATO defence ministers are meeting at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre the weekend of the 14th. The war in Afghanistan is waged under the NATO banner. Opinion polls make it clear that a big majority want the troops home now.

Joan Humphries, whose grandson Kevin Elliott was killed while on foot patrol in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on 31 August, will be speaking at the end of the march and there will be music from David Ferrard

Called by Stop the War Scotland, supported by STW UK, CND, SCNDSACC

Excellent photo from Colin Fox’s blog

To join the SSP go to the site and fill out a form, email, phone etc.

By Richie Venton, SSP National Workplace Organiser

The Scottish Socialist Party offers unqualified support to CWU members forced to strike against bully-boy bosses and their Labour government backers. They are out to crush the union, crucify jobs and rights at work – in the hope they can sell off Royal Mail to greedy profiteers at Jumble Sale prices.

Every worker, trade unionist and community needs to stand by their posties in a potentially vicious battle to defend the very survival of a public service under assault from Royal Mail bosses, the Labour government and large sections of the media.

Over-paid butchers knife jobs, services and rights

Over-paid Royal Mail bosses, with absolutely no history in the postal service, have prepared for this showdown since the 2007 strike settlement. The key phrase in the Pay & Modernisation Agreement was change will be introduced by agreement. The exact opposite has happened. Bullying, intimidation, threats of disciplinary action, workers taken off pay, have become the standard methods of imposing new conditions that have meant catastrophic job losses and unbearable workloads.

With this reign of terror, Royal Mail bosses have slashed 60,000 jobs since 2003 – and they aim to shed another 60,000 in the next 2 years. Record profits (£900,000 a day last year!) have resulted from vastly increased productivity and heavier workloads from drastically fewer workers. The workers’ reward? Zero pay rise; abolition of the Final Salary Pension Scheme; ‘absorption’ of extra work into existing workloads with no extra pay; not a penny reward for increased productivity … and 60,000 job losses!

Crozier’s 35,000 scabs

Crozier and his cronies are hiring 30,000 temps as an army of scabs – recruited from people desperate for a few weeks’ work in the midst of recession – in addition to 5,000 Royal Mail managers being deployed to scab on the actual strike days. Royal Mail bosses are spending a fortune (of the public’s money) to break the strike, break the union, break the backs of the workforce, to usher in later privatisation.

They have no interest in reaching a resolution that protects workers’ conditions and jobs whilst improving the public service. They only belatedly offer to go to ACAS to get the pre-Xmas strikes cancelled, so as to come back with a vengeance in January. They must not succeed!

Bosses launch war

Instead, they have prepared for war. The secret document, exposed by BBC Newsnight, shows they plan to remove union facilities to help prosecute their war on postal workers. That is already the local experience in many areas. And they are in collusion with the Labour government on this! Lord Mandelson, whose scheme to privatise Royal Mail was shelved in the face of public uproar and the threat of strikes, is out for revenge. He has publicly denounced strikes – legally balloted for according to his Labour government’s vicious anti-union laws – as suicidal.

Interviewed on TV, he showed an incriminatingly detailed knowledge of the secret Royal Mail document, homing in on how much union facility time costs Royal Mail, which suggests he either wrote it – or at the very least has been in cahoots with Crozier and his crew.

Labour government collusion

Labour government ministers have been quoted saying this could be our miners’ strike. They egg on Royal Mail bosses to confront the union, to casualise the workforce with floods of part-timers, in their anti-working class mission to create armies of cheap labour in a de-regulated labour market that maximises profits.

As sole shareholder in Royal Mail, the Labour government have the power to settle this dispute in defence of workers and the public, but instead they encourage vicious hysteria in the press against the CWU – such as reports of riot cops preparing for battles between strikers and scabs. They let Royal Mail bosses enjoy a 13-year pension fund holiday, creating a record pension fund deficit, which workers are being punished for.

Don’t feed the hand that bites you!

New Labour has never been innocent by-standers in this long-running conflict, contrary to their protestations – and in stark contrast to the mind-boggling continuation of funding of New Labour by the CWU. Last year alone the CWU gave their arch enemies over £1million.

The national union should unreservedly declare an end to this crazy support for the party that is butchering CWU members, as one strand to the current war for survival. As we first wrote in SSP workplace bulletins in January 1999: make the break from New Labour’s New Tories – don’t feed the hand that bites you!

Members of the Scottish Socialist Party inside the CWU played their full part in winning the landslide majority for unified national strikes. The SSP does not hesitate in giving full-blooded support to CWU members on strike. We will build public support, until you win a deal that defends jobs, services, conditions and workplace rights.

UNITE – stop scabs!

SSP members in UNITE will press the UNITE leadership to call on their members not to be used as organised scabs. Royal Mail regularly jets managers into local offices on strike, taking care to deploy them from far-flung places, to reduce the likelihood of them taking sympathy action with CWU members they already know.

Leaders of UNITE should instruct their members to do their normal duties, not other people’s jobs, and not to manage Crozier’s scabs – and start a campaign for a strike ballot of their members in Royal Mail – whose jobs are on an extremely shaky nail.

Other unions, and the TUC/STUC, should call and build mass solidarity marches – and appeal to the unemployed not to scab.

If Royal Mail and the Labour government raise the stakes even higher, for example by taking court action against the CWU, other unions should call members out in defiant days of solidarity strike action to help win this critical battle.

• No suspension of strikes – pre-Xmas is the best time to hammer
• Royal Mail bosses – it makes up two-thirds of their annual profits.
• Stand firm and united – victory to the CWU!