Mobilising the public sector fight back

Left Unity is organising a meeting for trade unionists on 13 September – Simon Hardy writes on why you should come along

Since 2010 the recession and austerity has hit working people and the poorest very hard – whilst the number of millionaires in Britain has increased by 50% in the last 4 years. Many of us are struggling to make ends meet – for some, no matter how hard we work, even if we take two jobs, we still can’t pay for the things we need.

Public sector workers have been hit particularly hard, as the government continues its ideological commitment to reduce state spending, the axe has fallen hardest on public services across the country.

One of the biggest problems that we are facing is the scissor crisis of a spiralling cost of living and deflated wages. In recent years teachers have lost 15% of their pay in real terms. As the TUC research shows, public sector workers have lost on average £2,245 since 2010 – hitting firefighters, librarians, civil servants and other public sector workers very hard as energy bills transport costs and rent and house prices are all increasing.

Around 450,000 government workers are not even paid the living wage.

In response the trade unions have organised some strike action. The July strike was a good show of strength and unity over public sector pay. Now there is another day of strike action by Union, GMB and Unite in local government on 14 October, just a few days before the mass TUC demonstration in London.

The key question now is how can we help to strengthen this action and broaden the fightback beyond a day of strike action?

Come to the trade union meeting

Now is the time to urgently come together and discuss the next steps and what Left Unity’s message should be in the fight back against the government. People have joined Left Unity to create a new political party to fight in our communities and in elections, but it’s also important that we come together in our trade unions.

And there are a lot of things to discuss.

We need to think how we can make all of our disputes about more than just the trade unionists. In many cases public sector workers are fighting to defend service provision. This effects more than just the workers, so we have to find ways to reach out to the community. The key question is how to link defence of pay and conditions to defence of public services and how to involve service users and community groups.

And we need to think how to build a united fight back across the public and private sector. The right wing media is spewing out a barrage of propaganda trying to divide workers – arguing that public sector workers should stop complaining and accept the cuts and wage freezes. Anyone who falls for this argument is helping the bosses in making us all support this race to the bottom. With wealth inequality at its most extreme in generations, working people turning on each other is exactly what the right wants to divide us and weaken our fight back.

We need to see it differently. The workers’ movement needs to unite the public and private sector into a joint fight back against austerity and for a better standard of living. We have to discuss how we can end the anti-union laws and defeat recent anti-union tactics like the lock out at Northampton General Hospital of Unite members involved in a dispute over pay and conditions.

We also have to consider what to do if Labour wins the next election, and how  it will change the political landscape. After all, Labour is committed to continuing the coalition spending plans for at least two years – meaning there won’t be any serious pay increase until at least 2018 at the earliest. With overstretched food banks and no sign of things getting better for the vast majority of working people and the poor we urgently need to mobilise the fight back and to strengthen it.

If you are in Left Unity and work in the public sector then come to our meeting on 13 September. Now is the time to get organised – whoever wins the next election we will have to fight.

We hope that this meeting will be a stepping stone to a Left Unity trade union conference in 2015 to bring together all the party’s members across the unions.

Details are online here.