Next meeting of Defend Dundee Services will take place between 7.30pm and 9pm on Wednesday 19th January, Committee Room 1, 14 City Square (same as last meeting).

Our next few meetings will be on the following dates

Next meetings:

• Wednesday 12 January 2011
• Wednesday 26 January 2011
• Wednesday 9 February 2011
• Wednesday 23 February 2011

There is an Dundee anti-cuts meeting on the 19 January so to avoid a clash we have had an extra week break over the holiday period.

The main topic for the next meeting will be the coming Tory/Lib Dem cuts. To come along contact us in one of the listed ways.

By Richie Venton, SSP National Workplace Organiser

Two further strike days planned by NUJ members at the BBC (15th and 16th November) in defence of their pensions have been suspended, as a result of major breakthroughs in their ongoing battle.

The dispute is far from over, but the impact of united action has put BBC bosses on the back foot.

BBC Director Mark Thompson infamously emailed staff prior to the initial 48-hour strike pompously declaring “there will be no further talks, no further offers”. On the contrary, the impact of the strike action led to Thompson and other BBC bosses offering new talks.

After the first strikes, they had victimised three NUJ members based with BBC World Service – giving two of them final warnings, a third being effectively sacked – for taking part in the strike overseas! The NUJ held a UK-wide meeting of Mothers/Fathers of Chapels (shop stewards) which agreed to suspend the strikes on 15/16th, in favour of negotiations, provided the victimisations were withdrawn – which they subsequently have been.

A couple of real life examples illustrate what has fuelled the burning sense of injustice which has driven BBC workers into strikes and a work-to-rule. Andy, a senior broadcast journalist, stood to get a pension of £14,900 at 60 under the existing scheme; under the BBC bosses’ new proposals he would lose £3,900 a year, a 26% cut. Even if Andy worked on ‘til 65, paying in thousands extra in contributions, he would still have his pension slashed by 13%.

Joe, a TV centre worker, stands to lose £5,000 a year – a 30% reduction. And south west of England broadcast journalist Laura would have her pension slashed from £15,500 to £13,200 a year.

Meantime, in the same BBBC but on a different planet, BBC boss Mark Byford is to get a golden handshake of £1million plus an annual pension of £400,000!

Dave Eyre, NUJ Father of the Chapel at the BBC in Glasgow and Edinburgh told me about the issues behind this trade union struggle, and the impact of workers’ initial action.

The existing BBC pension schemes are a mixture of Final Salary and Career Average. These are to be closed off to new members and the amount of any salary increases that folk who remain in the current schemes are allowed to put towards their pension will be pegged at 1 per cent. So for instance if we got a 3per cent pay rise, only 1 per cent of that would contribute to our pension.

The new offer from the BBC – called CAB 2011 – is a career average scheme that is much worse. Folk will have to pay a lot more to get back much less, losing 20% and more in the value of their pension.

The BBC suddenly seems very concerned about the deficit in the Pension Scheme. They weren’t so concerned when a surplus in the scheme in the 1990s allowed them to take a payment holiday.

There is no doubt there is a deficit. But when the BBC first came forward with their proposed cuts to our pensions they claimed the deficit is about £2bn. Since then they backtracked to claims of £1.5bn – and in figures produced for the BBC which have leaked to the NUJ, the estimates are lower still – possibly down to £1bn.
The NUJ and other BBC unions are not trying to ignore the existence of a deficit in the scheme, and we recognise it may mean people having to pay more in contributions to defend their pension levels. We are prepared to talk and negotiate on this. But we first need to know what the actual figures are. By next April the BBC Trustees will carry out their legally required formal assessment of the figures. We say wait ‘til we get the figures then. And we say the BBC must talk to the unions and the Trustees, who have been totally ignored by BBC senior managers so far. Right now we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke – and we’re not buying!

We have serious questions to put to the BBC. Why act now? Why have they decided to cut pensions in the midst of the wider financial crisis – when reports just out this week suggest Final Salary Pension Schemes are bouncing back, recovering from the earlier levels of deficit alongside the mild economic recovery – challenging the argument that the economic downturn means the death of FSPS?

If the BBC’s only concern is to address the deficit in our pension scheme, why not wait until they find out what it is!? Some NUJ members – and I am one of them – are asking if this is being done for other reasons. Are we being used as the thin end of a wedge to implement widespread pension ‘reform’ across the entire public sector, to the detriment of all who work in the public sector?

Many people look at the salary levels of Jonathan Ross and imagine BBC staff are all multi-millionaires, with gold-plated pensions. Well, we’re not! The average BBC pension is about £12,000. That’s not a poverty pension, but it’s also not a millionaire’s pension. However, that average includes massive pensions of £hundreds of thousands that a select group of senior managers do receive and will receive. A big chunk of people get much less than £12,000.
So we’re not fighting for gold-plated pensions, but for fairness in pensions.

The initial strikes had a huge impact, as anyone who regularly watches the news will have noticed. Flagship programmes like Good Morning Scotland, Newsdrive and major Gaelic service programmes were all off the air – as were Today and Newsnight UK-wide. We had an evening bulletin read by someone who normally does a jazz programme, and radio bulletins read by the Head of News.

In the aftermath of the strike, senior managers met with Mark Thompson, where they told him they got programmes out by the skin of their teeth, and they urged him to sit down and talk with the NUJ.
Today (Thurs 11th), after three previous ‘final’ offers, it now appears Mark Thompson is offering further talks if we postpone the industrial action planned for Mon 15th/Tues 16th November.

We really welcomed the support we got last week from the trade union movement and across the political spectrum. We especially welcomed support from members of other BBC unions who took the decision as a matter of conscience not to cross our pickets.

The Courier reported today that the disgraceful parking charges at Ninewells Hospital are to rise again!

It’s bad enough that relatives and visitors to the sick and injured are lining the pockets of the Vinci parasites but raising the charges just adds insult to injury.

Dundee SSP have campaigned against these charges for years. What is most galling is that most other hospitals have had them abolished. Only those with disastrous PFI deals remained.

Recently the newspapers were full of politicians outraged over the locked in contract which delivered terrible value for money on aircraft carriers.

It is worth noting that those same politicians are silent when it comes to worse contracts sucking money out of our schools and hospitals in PFI deals.

PFI – created by Tories, perfected by Labour.

Everyone should read this account of Firefighters being run down by scabs.

Utterly despicable.

What are the chances these events will get the same level of coverage as the whining about the fire-fighters striking to defend services?

I’m sure given the amount of coverage the Tax Payers Alliance get for their rants about waste etc you will be wanting to hear what they have to say about Vodafone.

Well here it is in it’s totality

No doubt when some poor soul finds out next week that they were overpaid a couple of hundred quid benefits than they should have they will get front page coverage but for now their spokespeople are oddly silent.

For a better Tax Campaign group see Tax Payers Alliance

Demonstrate in Edinburgh, Saturday October 23rd

Called by the Scottish Trades Union Congress

11.00 am: Assemble East Market Street Edinburgh
11.30am: March off
12.30 pm: Rally Ross Bandstand

Unite and Defy Demolition Coalition Cuts

The Twin Tory millionaires’ Cabinet gloated and cheered as Osborne declared war on over 100,000 Scottish jobs; benefits for the most vulnerable; schools and community services; the NHS; workers’ pay and pensions. Slashing Scotland’s block grant by £1.3bn this year spells devastation in local government, construction, education – public and private sector. The vast rise in unemployment will worsen the deficit! The poorest will be hit hardest. The hour has struck for united, decisive action – as well as alternative policies – to stop this slaughter. The thousands marching today are critical to building a rebellion on the scale of the anti-poll tax movement – through your union, community, pensioners’ or students’ organisations – and by building local anti-cuts alliances.

• Demand the SNP government and Councils set ‘No-Cuts’ Defiance budgets that refuse to pass on Westminster’s butchery.

  SNP, Labour and other politicians who claim to oppose the Twin Tories’ cuts now face a stark choice: defy or destroy.

  If the SNP government was serious about defending Scotland, they should set a budget next month without a penny cut in pay or services, not a single job loss, and demand the missing £1.3bn back off the Westminster thieves who stole it to bail out the bankers and billionaires. They should call workers and communities into action in support of their defiance, with rallies, demonstrations, peaceful civil disobedience and industrial action. A nation in rebellion could win back the £1.3bn for next year’s Scottish spending needs.

• Build a mass lobby of Scottish parliament

  Given the SNP’s record so far, they won’t show the spine to do this unless they face a rebellion from below. The STUC should use today’s demo to call a mass lobby of the Scottish parliament to stop tartan butchery next month. If the STUC fail to, public sector unions should call it.

• Make councillors fight

  Councils face the same stark choice: defy or destroy. Bombard councillors with demands for No Cuts budgets, mounting mass campaigns to demand the stolen millions back off Holyrood to balance the books, with no cuts.

• Axe the Council Tax

  Demand an emergency Bill in the Scottish parliament to replace it with the income-based Service Tax; to raise £1.6bn extra in 2011.

• Build a Scottish one-day public sector strike in early 2011

  No cuts are acceptable – or necessary. Neither Coalition cuts, nor lesser, slower Labour or SNP cuts. The STUC should today declare plans for a united one day strike of the entire 600,000-strong public sector in early 2011 – to force back the Scottish butchers, before the council budgets are set in stone. To build the rebellion in the workplaces that would embolden communities too.

The butchers’ Coalition – with 23 millionaires and 4 ex-bankers in a Cabinet of 29 – spew out the monstrous lie that cuts are unavoidable and necessary.

The public debt is mainly the result of the £1.3trillion bankers’ bailout, mass unemployment, loss of taxes. But it is still only 70% of GDP – whereas it never fell below 100% of GDP from 1918 ‘til 1961. Job cuts will massively add to the debt. There are numerous better ways – without a penny cut in pay, benefits, pensions, or the loss of a single job or service – with vast scope to improve the shoddy system we endure already:

• scrapping the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replacing it with a Scottish Service Tax based on income would raise an extra £1.6bn next year – more than Osborne has slashed off the Scottish budget!
• £120bn a year in taxes on the rich and big business are avoided, evaded or uncollected – that’s 75% of the 2009 deficit!
• a modest 10% wealth tax on the richest 1,000 fat-cats would raise £35bn a year – enough to create 1.4 million jobs on a £25,000 wage.
• restoration of tax on the richest elite and Corporations to pre-Thatcher levels (a policy the SSP shares with the PCS union) would raise up to £250bn a year extra.
• scrapping Trident (whilst guaranteeing Faslane workers’ jobs through diversification into peaceful, socially useful work) would save £100bn.
• full and democratic public ownership of the banks would give us access to £560bn in liquid cash and £5trillion in assets.

There is nothing unavoidable or necessary about this Coalition’s butchery.

The cuts are driven by ideological hatred of public services, a ruthless intent to reverse the gains made by past working class struggles – a mission to use the whip of mass unemployment and starvation-level benefits to drive wages down even further, boosting profits even higher.

The ultimate ‘better way’ is a socialist Scotland, independent of the Westminster butchers, with democratic public ownership and control of the vast wealth and resources; an end to war and Trident; and a plan of clean, green production and services, based on people not profit. Join Scotland’s genuine socialist alternative, the SSP, to build that future.

The SSP Campsie podcast has a three parter with Richie Venton discussing the struggle in Liverpool.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

SSP Campsie Radio are proud to host Richie Venton who recalls the titanic struggles that took part in the city of Liverpool against the Thatcher Government in the eighties. Richie was part of the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party.

This is a valuable first-hand account of a struggle that can inform today’s battle against an uncaring Tory/ Liberal Democrat coalition.

Main parts of our leaflet for EIS conference at the Caird Hall in Dundee.

The election of the Tories – the Twin Tories, with the treacherous Lib Dems joining forces with the Tory Butchers – marks a new threat to education workers, education services and communities. We all face a level of carnage to jobs, conditions and services not experienced since Thatcher at her most rampant.

Cameron and Clegg have lost no time in pronouncing their top priority is to cut public spending.

These upper class butchers want to wield the axe to jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, public services – to enrich their own class even further.

Cameron’s claims that we all face pain for years to come is false to the core.

The bankers who enjoyed a bountiful handout from public funds don’t face ‘pain’ – for instance, 100 of them at the RBS recently awarded themselves a £1m bonus each!

The richest 1,000 fat-cats whose incomes rocketed by 30% last year, to £353billion! – do not face ‘hard choices’ or ‘painful decisions’.

It’s Scotland’s 630,000 public sector workers, alongside workers in the private sector, our families, our communities, who face a massacre – unless a united, determined, militant campaign of resistance is built, starting now!

In resisting the cuts, EIS and other unions need two central guiding principles: unity in action is our best defence – and a convincing set of policies to explode the myth that cuts are unavoidable.

Teachers, civil servants, council and NHS workers have marched and taken strike action against cuts.

It would be fatal if these fights were kept separate and apart, or if any union adopted the notion that cuts are inevitable – but ‘not in our service’. That would weaken the resistance and guarantee cuts to all services.

So SSP members in the EIS (and in all other unions) strongly advocate united action – across all public sector unions and alongside community groups, anti-cuts campaigns, Save Our Schools campaigns…

EIS and other unions should build a united public rally on Saturday 26th June, after new levels of carnage are announced in the 22nd June Butchers’ Budget – as a springboard for building a mass march in the autumn, when even more cuts will be announced in the government’s Spending Review.

Such events would help build the fighting morale of tens of thousands who right now are terrified of what the future holds.

Equally important in building a rebellion against cuts from a government that has no mandate in Scotland – with 85% voting against the Tories – is a convincing set of policies that exposes the lie that cuts are necessary and unavoidable – a monstrous lie peddled not only by the Tories and Lib Dems, but also New Labour and the SNP! Otherwise many people will fall for the argument that there’s not enough money to defend jobs and services, that cuts are a necessary evil – and then fall out amongst themselves over where the cuts should occur.

That divide-and-conquer trickery lies behind the Tory plan to consult people over what to cut! There is no need for any cuts! There are oceans of wealth swilling around – but in the hands of the bankers. billionaires and boardrooms of oil companies – not in the hands of the public.

The SSP fights for alternatives that would create jobs, improve services, protect conditions. Commit EIS to action against the cuts – alongside other unions – and argue for socialist policies that would fund the expansion of jobs and services. And join the SSP – for an independent socialist Scotland.

Twenty’s Plenty in a class

The Scottish Socialist Party has an unrivalled track record of standing up for kids, communities and education. We have consistently fought school closures that lead to larger classes, job losses, increased stress for staff, worse education.

We have led several Save Our Schools campaigns, uniting parents, communities and trade unionists – demanding smaller classes and investment in community-based schools within easy, safe reach of children’s homes.

We led the mass opposition to Labour’s school closures in Glasgow last year. During that campaign we popularised the slogan Twenty’s Plenty in any class, and lobbied the SNP government to pass legislation to limit classes to 20 for all age groups.

At the recent STUC Congress, SSP members pushed this policy and won the backing of the conference for a campaign for classes of 20 maximum for all.

In East Dunbartonshire, when the Labour-Tory Coalition announced closure of 8 primaries last week,the SSP called a protest demo and public meeting to set up a Save Our Schools campaign.

150 local people joined the demo, the councillors took fright, and shelved their butchery – for now!

EIS shares the SSP’s policy of 20 max in a class. The time is rotten-ripe for the EIS leadership to lead action in support of this policy – including industrial action.

Today Angela Gorrie, SSP Candidate for Dundee East, joined former MP and MSP for the area John McAllion and a number of other SSP members to call for an axe to bankers’ bonuses, not public services. They started the day outside RBS in the city centre and will travel to other areas in the constituency, including Carnoustie and Broughty Ferry, later this afternoon.

Angela said: Despite being told by all the major parties that after the election we must prepare for savage cuts in public services, one group not affected is the greedy bankers, who continue to award themselves large bonuses. A fact made all the more galling because the banks had to be bailed out by the ordinary tax payer.

The Scottish Socialist Party calls for an end to the bonus culture and for all banks to be nationalised under workers’ control.

We also oppose the cuts which are being promised and believe that there is no need for any cuts to public services if the rich were forced to pay their fair share of taxes.

It was the rich who paid for this crisis, make them pay for it!

To track Rod the Robber’s progress throughout the day please see www.twitter.com/dundeessp. Photos will be posted as it happens at http://tinyurl.com/ssp0405