Jon's union blog

OneBarnet - one fight against privatisation

2012-01-28T15:18:00.001Z

UNISON members in Barnet, as part of their exemplary struggle against the madcap privatisation plans of the Thatcherite faction of their local Tory Party (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2012/01/barnet-fair.html), will be taking strike action on 9 February (http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/756). More power to their elbows!

This is very much the same fight which PCS members in HMRC have been waging recently (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/6DEA4154-0A65-45CD-9EACDB423509ADCD) - against privatisation driven by dogma.

Public service workers need trade union unity in the fight to defend our public services. How we build, rebuild and sustain that unity may be the most important question with which union activists need to grapple.
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Virtually building a real trade union

2012-01-28T14:34:00.001Z

This week's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee received a presentation on the Web Access RMS (WARMS) which will be provided to branches later this year (RMS - the "Replacement Membership System" - is UNISON's membership system).

WARMS will enable access to the RMS over t'intraweb with what looks like a more user friendly interface and greater speed and ease of use. I hope this will be an asset to branches, particularly since it will make selecting members for bulk email distribution very easy (subject of course to the accuracy of the information on the system...)

I've been blogging now for more than five years (though I appreciate that for those of you who have been reading it has seemed longer). It's startling to reflect how far the Union has come online in that brief period. Back in 2006 we saw the internet as a noticeboard on which to paste information, not as a tool for recruitment and organisation.

Since the facility to join UNISON online was introduced more than 120,000 members have applied for membership in this way, with the proportion of all new members joining online shooting up from 14% in 2009 to 25% in 2010 and almost 35% last year. Whilst this still means that almost two thirds of new members are recruited "offline" it nevertheless represents a massive shift, indicative of the impact of technologically facilitated social change upon our movement.

We need to understand far more about how we move more of our activity online, overcoming the prejudice of those who counterpose "clicktivism" to "real life" - who fail to understand how social media can be used to facilitate activities which are far from merely "virtual."

Since the average age of a UNISON member is 48 (and although 48 is a very fine and youthful age at which many are considered to be in their prime...) we need very much to embrace an approach to trade union activism which will appeal to the Facebook and Twitter Generation.

This won't, I suggest, be done in an abstract way, but by applying the tools of social media to concrete circumstances of particular struggles and disputes. These tools may prove to be of particular value for rank and file organising given their utility in facilitating "horizontal" communication outwith official heirarchical structures.

Mind you, we need to tackle the problem that some of our most radical activists are some of the most conservative souls when it comes to dealing with the virtual phenomena of the developing online world...
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The challenge of solidarity

2012-01-28T12:23:00.001Z

UNITE members employed as petrol tanker drivers by Wincanton are extending their strike action into a second week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-16760835).

This is a defensive struggle against a threat to conditions (http://union-news.co.uk/2012/01/wincanton-drivers-determined-spirits-fuel-jet-strike/) much as has been the fight by the electricians to defend their national agreement (http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/electricians-protest-action-employers?cat=commentisfree&type=article) and the fight by Unilever workers to defend their pensions (http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/other_news/more_unilever_pension_strikes.aspx).

It's clear that in the private sector as much as in parts of the public sector some employers see the economic crisis as an opportunity to reduce the living standards of their workforce. Where there is union organisation there is the possibility to resist these attacks, and it is clear that pockets of resistance are emerging in the private as well as the public sector.

The first, faltering steps in the direction of rank and file communication between activists in different unions are only the beginning of a long journey, but if the destination is one in which we coordinate solidarity for each struggle as it emerges then swift progress would be in all our interests.
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Recruitment success and how to sustain it

2012-01-26T09:43:00.001Z

Yesterday's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee heard that 2011 had seen UNISON recruit more than 175,000 new members - the best annual figure since UNISON was created in 1993.

Since it is estimated that we need to recruit about 145,000 members a year just to stand still (because of the turnover rate as members retire, become unemployed or move jobs) our net growth is a lot lower, but still impressive given that this is taking place whilst the number of jobs in the areas in which we are most organised are certainly not increasing.

The boost to recruitment which took us above our turnover rate and into net growth took place pretty much entirely in the period after our General Secretary's TUC speech calling for strike action over pensions. Indeed 30% of all the members who joined UNISON last year did so in the two months of October and November.

For once in life, cause and effect really are as simple as they appear to be. The last time we had such a "spike" in recruitment was around the national strike action over local government pensions in the spring of 2006.

Indeed, each and every significant boost to our recruitment figures at a national level has been associated with national industrial action.

I have spent almost nine years on the D&O Committee, and before that had served for seven years on the equivalent body at Regional level. In all the untold hours of discussion about how to improve recruitment, through periods of both growing and declining employment, under different Governments and through good times and bad, the only measure which I have learned is proven to significantly increase our membership nationally is to call upon our members to take national action in a cause in which they believe and for which a sufficient number are prepared to fight.

I'm not suggesting that we call strikes simply to recruit more members. Recruitment to our union (like industrial action) is not an end in itself but a means to the end of protecting and promoting the interests of our members and potential members. That objective has to guide us.

I am however suggesting that we need to change our thinking. Rather than see strikes as occasional exceptions to the "normal business" of the trade union (requiring such exceptional temporary exertion that we all take to our beds with "strike fatigue") we need to see conflict and industrial action as integral to our "normal business."

We must replace the bureaucratic timidity which sees strike action as a dangerous threat to be avoided, with an appreciation that, when conflict is necessary, it provides us with our best opportunity to build our numbers and our strength.

The evidence in support of this contention stares out at us from our own recruitment statistics.
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UNISON opposes benefit cuts - so should Labour

2012-01-24T09:17:00.002Z

Smiths at the Station having sold it's Morning Stars, I thought I would buy a copy of the daily paper most widely read by UNISON members. There are some very angry people out there on the right wing (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090750/Welfare-reform-Labour-bishops-Lib-Dem-peers-derail-benefits-cap-plan.html).

Apparently the sensible decision of the House of Lords to exclude child benefit from the overall cap on benefits is an "insult to every working family" - the worst of it being that, in the debate a bishop referred to the Bible (!)

The Tories are however doing well in securing popular support for a policy calculated to create misery for some amongst a demonised and unpopular minority (benefit claimants). 76% - including 69% of Labour voters - back a policy which sets out to drive thousands more children into poverty and force families from their homes.

With Labour falling behind in the opinion polls, the timidity on the part of the Opposition Front Bench that has given the Tories a free hand to take on the supposedly "workshy" will probably only get worse.

Dave Osler makes the case simply, that there is no justification for a benefit cap set at any level (http://www.davidosler.com/2012/01/welfare-reform-bill-why-wont-anybody-say-its-wrong-it-principle/#more-4000). The Labour leadership's capitulation to right wing populism on this issue is symptomatic of the weakness which could doom us to years of Tory Government.

UNISON members whose work brings them into contact with those who will be hammered by these vicious benefit cuts can see through the lies - and UNISON Conference had the clear-headedness to adopt a policy position which would serve Her Majesty's Opposition far better than their current equivocation (http://cms.unison.co.uk/MotionText.asp?DocumentID=1002157).

The following text from last year's Conference motion, highlighting areas of particular concern to Conference in relation to benefit cuts, provides some of the information which we need to use to shift public opinion;

1) Women - The Fawcett Society figures show that benefits typically make up 1/5th of a woman's income compared to 1/10th for men. This would make benefit cuts particularly pertinent for many UNISON members - two thirds of whom are women, many have caring responsibilities and almost half of whom work part-time. The majority are low-paid. Taking the cap on housing benefit alone makes the effect on women clear as more than 1 million women currently claim this benefit;

2) Carers - Carers save the UK £87bn every year in services that otherwise would have to be picked up by the state - a cut in benefits for people who have often given up or reduced their paid work to care for others is counterproductive in both social and economic terms. Currently 3 in 5 people will end up caring for someone at some point in their working lives, with 2 million people moving in and out of caring every year. In a recent survey it was found that 1 in 3 carers do not want to wake up in the morning because of "dire financial circumstances";

3) Children - A cap on total benefits package will almost certainly add to child poverty figures by 2020 leading to higher public spending for future generations. Already the UK has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world with nearly four million of our children living poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that child poverty costs around £25bn a year in terms of poor health, educational inequalities, social exclusion and worklessness;

4) Housing - The reforms to housing benefit, including caps on the benefit that claimants can receive, a shift to up-rating benefit in line with consumer prices index, instead of retail price index, and reducing the value of local housing allowance risks driving thousands of vulnerable people from their homes in areas where housing costs are high. The cuts will also mean higher rents for many low paid workers and the recently unemployed, who along with pensioner claimants, make up the majority of households claiming Local Housing Allowance (housing benefit for the private sector). The housing charity, Shelter has warned that if housing benefit support is taken away, this will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness;

5) Disability - conference has many grave concerns about the government's plans to reform Disability Living allowance into a 'Personal Independence Payment' (PIP) and cut the future budget by 20 per cent by 2013/14. Over 3 million people currently receive DLA (1.8 are people of working age) with the total amount spent on the benefit this year forecast to be £12 billion. Just some of the concerns about the proposals are:

a) extra conditionality and the doubling of the eligibility lead in time before someone is able to claim DLA will result in an increase in disability related poverty for many disabled people;

b) there will no longer be automatic qualification for certain conditions and the proposed approach to assessments, necessitating regular face to face meetings, is problematic as it fails to recognise that society is still largely inaccessible to disabled people, including those with less complex impairments and barriers;

c) the proposal intends to withdraw the mobility aspect of DLA funding if an individual is in hospital or a residential home 28 days, 84 days for children; the right to control independence and offset the institutionalisation of disabled adults and children will become even more critical and place additional, unnecessary strain on both health and social care workforces.
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Dead sheep threaten to savage our trade unions!

2012-01-24T07:49:00.000Z

Wondering about the timing of the “news” story that prompted the last post on this blog, I was reminded of what I had heard before about the so-called “Trade Union Reform Campaign.”

This outfit for Tory outriders who want to make the anti-union policies of the Government seem reasonable by voluntarily posing as foaming at the mouth far right loons (with even more extreme views) has it’s launch meeting at the House of Commons today, to be addressed by the sane and reasonable Eric Pickles.

It’s obviously a great worry that these brilliant campaigners can get a story in a freesheet the day before their biggest event to date (and aren’t they proud). Whereas previous generations of reactionaries tried the Combination Laws, this retirement home for failed Tory politicians (and their unpleasant wannabe hangers on) is clearly determined to beat the working class movement into submission with press releases!

I agree with the comrades at the Morning Star that our best response to this latest assault from the less intelligent output of Oxbridge is to build and organise our trade unions. I would go to tonight’s TURC launch, but I think I’ll wait until our class enemies can come up with some worthwhile opposition.

Keep trying boys.

A tale of two public servants

2012-01-23T20:59:00.000Z

This evening's Standard carried what is, I would say by any reckoning, a disgraceful attack upon a dedicated public servant (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24030138-pound-300000-spent-on-nut-official-who-hasnt-taught-for-12-years.do).

Some (not very) bright spark has asked Haringey Council to tally up the salary of an elected lay representative of the National Union of Teachers over a period of six and a half years and (lo and behold) it adds up to quite a lot of money.

This really is only "journalism" in the sense that the "Taxpayers Alliance" conduct "research". It is clearly driven by the fact that the NUT (and others) in Haringey have got Gove on a back foot over trying to force an unwanted Academy - and is surely intended to act as a warning to every other trade union representative on full time release to carry out trade union duties.

But this blog aims to provide a balanced assessment of workplace issues, so let me try to see things from the other side...

I don't know the elected NUT rep in question, Julie Davies, personally but (much like the "Taxpayers Alliance" and all those astroturf grassroots campaigners) I know "her type".

Here is someone who has wilfully refused to advance her career for 12 years, wantonly choosing to represent her fellow teachers at disciplinary, grievance and sickness hearings (often to the mutual benefit of the individual and their employer) rather than progress to a management role.

Shamefully, she has accepted the repeated democratic decisions of her fellow teachers that she should continue to represent them rather than (as would be supported by this Government and their supporters in the press) sticking two fingers up to her colleagues and concentrating upon personal advancement.

Quite clearly, such selfless commitment to the best interests of those who choose to devote their lives to public service deserves every ounce of the criticism which it has today attracted.

How unlike this case is that of poor Stephen Hester, another public sector employee (running a nationalised bank), whose entitlement to a bonus is quite scurrilously being challenged (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/23/miliband-hester-1-6m-rbs-bonus?cat=politics&type=article).

How much more positive an example is set by a banker willing to double an already astronomic salary at the expense of an impoverished nation than by some public sector trade unionist scoundrel who persists in rejecting their own individual self-interest in order to represent workers' collective interests!

You see, dear reader? Once you look at things in a balanced way like this, it really is so straightforward...
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Solidarity with Southampton

2012-01-23T09:49:00.001Z

A year on, UNISON (and UNITE) members in Southampton continue to resist the attack upon their pay and conditions (http://www.soton-unison-office.org.uk/latestnews.htm). Action short of strike action continues and plans are afoot to disrupt the opening of a museum, to build which the Tory Council has borrowed £5 Million while stealing the same £5 Million in attacks on their workers' pay and conditions.

Our members in Southampton are right to continue to resist - and the dispute illustrates the importance of having control in the hands of the elected lay representatives of the workers whose conditions are being attacked.

In other branches where conditions are under attack it is imperative that branches wishing to recommend opposition to reductions in conditions do not face obstruction from within their own trade union.

Branches tempted to acquiesce in reductions in conditions should remember that if you give the employers an inch they'll only want to come back and take a mile - and that each succesful attack emboldens reactionary elements in other authorities to mimic that attack.

Workers in Southampton who have fought hard against the employer's attacks have preserved the conditions of untold thousands of members elsewhere as they have discouraged other local authorities from following the example from the Solent.
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Workers should defend claimants

2012-01-23T09:17:00.001Z

The Tory Government's Benefit cap will further impoverish thousands (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114368).

The trade unions should oppose this dramatic attack on some of the poorest in our society not so much out of humanity (though there's nothing wrong with that) but out of enlightened self-interest.

Nothing is more vile than the suggestion from the Cabinet of Millionaires that they are driven to impose an arbitrary limit upon benefits payable to any household so as to avoid the "injustice" currently done to low income households not reliant upon benefits.

Given that the Coalition are deliberately pursuing policies to cut jobs, freeze pay, reduce pensions and weaken employment rights, it would indeed be strange if in this one area of welfare reform they were motivated by the desire to do right by social strata they spend the rest of the time beating up.

Of course that's not the case. Far from gaining any benefit from the worsening of the conditions of those on benefits, those on low wages are every bit as much victims of this attack.

The Tories are returning to type and, in the spirit of the New Poor Law of 1834 they seek to ensure that the condition of "paupers" is "less eligible" than even the poorest worker in employment (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws). This facilitates the unemployed performing the function of instilling fear in the hearts of workers in employment, so that we shall moderate our wage demands and fail to fight for a better deal (being what Marx called a "reserve army of labour").

(This explains the paradox that political attacks on "benefit scroungers" aimed at the unemployed invariably increase as the availability of jobs for those same unemployed decrease.)

It is therefore in the direct material interest of trade union members in employment that our movement should show effective solidarity with claimants and campaigners opposing the benefit cap, resurrecting the demand of the National Unemployed Workers Movement in the 1930s for "work or full maintenance."

Unfortunately the leadership of the Party to which we are affiliated seems determined at present to position itself to the right of Lord Ashdown, Simon Hughes and the bishops on this question (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/16078).

The trade unions need to shift Labour policy on this, as on many other questions, in 2012 if we are to justify our continued affiliation to our members (and arm the Party with policies which will motivate our voters).
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The dispute has not been pensioned off

2012-01-22T22:26:00.001Z

Whilst union activists in local government will be focused on budget-setting for the next few weeks (at least in those authorities where the Coalition Government are enforcing their savage cuts), it’s important to reflect on the fact that the pensions dispute is not over.

Whilst negotiations are underway over health and local government pensions, trade unions representing the majority of unionised members of the civil service and teachers’ pension schemes have not accepted the Government’s pension proposals (and “rejectionist” unions are no longer excluded from talks by the Government).

The National Executive Council of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) have taken the sensible step, from the point of view of those who don’t find the Heads of Agreement a satisfactory basis upon which to negotiate a final settlement, of calling for further action, in conjunction with the other unions who are taking a similar view, notably PCS.

For those in UNISON who don’t believe that even world class negotiators can make a silk purse of a worthwhile settlement out of the sow’s ear of the Government’s preconditions, we have a pressing interest in what our fellow trade unionists do to continue to fight for fair pensions.

Activists need to continue to work for the maximum unity of our movement at every level at which that can be built.

Barnet Fair?

2012-01-22T20:28:00.002Z

Tory Barnet Council’s mania for privatisation has now been augmented by a penchant for legal threats to bloggers who have apparently been leaked a document concerning the current bidding process. Barnet's privatisation programme, which has variously been titled "Future Shape" and "One Barnet" is now approaching the point at which massive contracts will be let, regardless of the interests of the people of the borough. It's no wonder that there is such concern about this that insiders are leaking documents.

This little episode illustrates one of the many pernicious aspects of privatisation of public services – that so much that is vital to the interests of service users and employees is no longer to be decided in public by Councillors, but will be determined behind closed doors, in negotiations shrouded by “commercial confidentiality.” The “Commissioning Council” is exactly what it appears to be, a cloak to conceal the making of profits out of the taxpayer, at the expense of those who use, and provide, public services.

Solidarity and good luck to friends and comrades in Barnet UNISON who have to face up to these challenges.

Tories fire broken guns at the trade unions?

2012-01-20T08:40:00.000Z

Panic is reported at Congress House at the news that the discredited former friend of Adam Werrity is coming for the trade union movement. (Not)

Liam Fox, a politician noted for his sound judgement (?), is on our case and wants to stop the “scandal” of workers, elected by their colleagues, representing other workers at work.

It is perhaps good to see that the so-called “Trade Union Reform Campaign” can only rely upon discredited politicians to advocate their cause.

Anyone can make a mistake, but perhaps the backers of this unfortunate little campaign can explain to their Tory colleagues why they are campaigning against legislation agreed by a former Tory Government?

Also, whoever is running the website for this sad outfit should try not to publish spam comments!

As a former constituent of his when he was a Labour MEP (who remembers working on his 1989 election campaign – before he joined the Tories when Labour deselected him) I would quite like to know what David Cameron’s “envoy to the trade unions” has to say about all of this.

Welcoming unity

2012-01-19T00:35:00.002Z

I’m pleased to see UNISON’s forthright condemnation of the (at best) seriously misguided comments of the “two Eds” of recent days. Certainly UNISON activists had been waiting to hear this, and the full news report on the website hits the target well. It’s a positive characteristic of UNISON to quote the views of lay members alongside those of our General Secretary.

It's equally positive to see unity from the trade unions in criticising the Labour leadership for their foolish capitulation to Coalition economics. Unity between the trade unions is essential in the face of the many challenges our movement and our class will face in 2012. We also need unity within our trade unions.

If the Standard website included more information from the printed paper I would post a link to a letter from a lay activist which, whilst not literally on the same page as the news report about the UNISON statement was, politically, on the same page. UNISON achieves our best when our leadership and our more independently minded lay activists are pointing in the same direction. If only we always were!

We need unity in our movement, within and between trade unions - but this needs to be unity in action. United condemnation of the Opposition is good. United action in opposition to the Government is even better.

The challenge of job destruction

2012-01-17T08:31:00.000Z

The TUC are right to highlight how public sector job cuts will fall hardest of all in those Regions where deindustrialisation has left the Regional economy disproportionately dependent upon public employment (http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-20481-f0.cfm).

However, with the projected loss of almost 95,000 jobs in Greater London we're hardly excluded from the pain, particularly since (as the TUC have also pointed out - http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-20413-f0.cfm), private sector net job creation is currenly a drop in the ocean of public sector job losses.

The last Tory Government, just like this one, didn't see unemployment as a policy failure, but as a policy tool to be used to weaken our movement and to shift the balance of power in the workplace. An index of their success is that, after a generation in which the share of wages and salaries increased at the expense of the share of profits in the national income, that trend has been reversed in recent decades.

Now, under this Government, as we experience a sustained fall in real wages not seen since the 1920s, we also face a deliberate policy of job destruction. We can spell out the catastrophic consequences of this policy, but as union members we expect more than that our unions should share and describe our pain. Trade unions are tools for us to use to defend our collective interests.

Following the exposure of divisions in our movement at the last Public Sector Liaison Group, the question which confronts the leadership of (and activists within) the trade unions is "what is to be done?"
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Fighting privatisation - but not together?

2012-01-16T21:13:00.001Z

Belated solidarity greetings to PCS members in HMRC taking lightening strike action today against the threatened privatisation of call handling (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/6DEA4154-0A65-45CD-9EACDB423509ADCD).

This is exactly the same struggle being waged by UNISON members in Barnet, resisting wholesale privatisation plans from "EasyCouncil" (http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/750) (and tweeting as they do - http://mobile.twitter.com/barnet_unison).

UNISON members in health and local government share with PCS members in the civil service all the problems which are created for public servants in the UK by the neoliberal politics which dictate that the correct response to a crisis in the financial sector is to devastate the Welfare State.

We share opposition to the threat of privatisation, and we share the challenge of organising public servants after they have been privatised.

All of which makes me regret the lack of positive progress in joint working between UNISON and PCS since the signing of the Agreement for joint working between our two unions (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2010/09/united-we-stand.html?m=1).

Indeed, it even seems as if PCS is indeed now talking seriously with UNITE about a possible merger (http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2012/01/mark-serwotka-confirms-that-unite-pcs-merger-is-likely/#axzz1jLZwpA26).

Since such a merger would have all the industrial logic as would be exhibited by the appearance of a member of the Door Supervisors Union (http://www.doorsupervisorsunion.org.uk/) representing an employee of a London local authority, it is quite striking (or perhaps "not striking any more") that we have been able to make so very little progress in strengthening relations between UNISON and PCS, which would seem to have a far sounder basis in common interest.

Activists in different trade unions may need, in these times after the disintegration of trade union unity on pensions, to create new channels for effective inter-union cooperation.

We must most certainly not abandon the local tools for rank and file coordination which we manufactured in the run up to N30, whether they used the (semi-official) structure of Trades Councils or even less official forms.

We also need national coordination - and can look back to the last period of a sustained fall in real wages for some ideas - http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/subject/minority/what.htm.
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Oh Balls!

2012-01-16T09:02:00.001Z

Having given myself a weekend off politics (mostly) I wish the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Chancellor had done the same (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/15/ed-miliband-spending-cuts?cat=politics&type=article).

Instead one Ed has supported the other, who has given a speech ostensibly about economics but really about marketing the Labour "brand" for consumption in the pages of the right-wing press (http://labourlist.org/2012/01/ed-balls-speech-to-the-fabian-society/).

In fact, Balls gave a credible Keynesian critique of Osborne's reiteration of the Treasury orthodoxy of the interwar years, but the Labour leadership preferred to let the headlines be written around a remark that Labour cannot promise now to reverse cuts if it forms a Government in 2015 ("we cannot make any commitments now that the next Labour government will reverse tax rises or spending cuts. And we
will not.")

This statement of the obvious (who knows what circumstances would face a future Government more than three years in the future?) was then reinforced by a futile pledge of support for public sector pay restraint.

This pledge was given because, according to Balls, " Jobs must be our
priority before higher pay." This sounds like an echo of 1970s corporatism, but in circumstances in which, wrenched out of its historical context, it has no meaning.

This Government isn't applying the money it has saved by forcing down the living standards of public servants to job creation! On the contrary, our pay freeze has been accompanied by massive job losses, with more in prospect, having the negative macroeconomic consequences which Balls himself describes;

"Fragile consumer and business confidence has been crushed by the inflationary hike in VAT, the threatened withdrawal of public sector demand, the reality of falling incomes and the fear of rising unemployment." (The touchstone blog spelt out before Xmas how falling real wages are restraining consumer expenditure - http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/12/inflation-real-wages-and-potential-economic-surprises-in-2012/).

Yet, for the two Eds, it is more important to be seen to have "economic credibility" by talking tough about painful choices than it is to advance a workable alternative to austerity which does not require working people to bear the costs of a crisis not of our making.

The trade unions have, broadly speaking, advocated economic policies in the interests of our members. If our affiliation to the Labour Party is to remain defensible to our members (the large majority of whom - in UNISON - choose not to pay into the affiliated section of our political fund) then the unions need to establish, at Party Conference, economic policies for the Labour Opposition, and a possible future Labour Government, which offer some hope.
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Pensions decisions

2012-01-10T18:44:00.001Z

UNISON's Health Service Group Executive (SGE) has agreed decisively to ballot members on the Government's "final offer" on the NHS Pension, and will meet next week to decide on a recommendation (if any) to members in that ballot.

The various SGEs with members in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) have all, by varying margins, voted to endorse the principles agreed between the trade unions and the Local Government Association (LGA) for the future of the LGPS, legitimising the process of intensive negotiation which was already underway and which aims to secure agreement on "big ticket" items within three months.

For those of us in UNISON, we now have a clear policy position on the LGPS (and - of course - the right to campaign to change policy). Members in Health will shortly have a vote.

For those in other unions wishing to fight to improve upon the Government's position on public sector pensions, I regret UNISON is not, at this point, at your side.

However, the decisions have been taken democratically according to our Rules and those of us wishing to change or challenge these decisions must turn to our Rule Book to do so.
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Decision day on pensions

2012-01-10T08:51:00.000Z

With an increasing number of trade unions distancing themselves, in one way or another, from what appeared before Xmas to be the emerging settlement of the public sector pensions dispute (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16472469), UNISON's Service Group Executive (SGE) meetings today assume ever greater importance.

Will UNISON deliver the result that Maude and Alexander hope for?

Robert Griffiths, writing in today's Morning Star (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/113958), puts a key part of the case against coherently and in a measured way, when considering, quite correctly, the deliberate political nature of the attack upon our pensions;

"Only working-class unity, backed by a broad section of public opinion, bears the potential to turn back this massive ruling class offensive.

Of course nobody should be so naive as to believe that every public-sector worker - let alone those in the private sector - is prepared to strike unselfishly, for the collective good rather than to defend their own pension terms.

But it is also true that the huge demonstrations and strikes of March 26, June 30 and November 30 have built confidence, solidarity and militancy.

To break that developing unity now would be calamitous, not only for pensions and public services. It would divide and demoralise many workers and the labour movement as a whole.

It is sheer delusion to imagine that one or two major pension schemes can be removed from the fight and escorted to safety.

Splitting the united front will worsen the prospects for defending the other schemes - and guarantee that any temporarily "exempted" ones will be even more savagely attacked further down the line.

"First they came for the Civil Service scheme, but I was not a civil servant so I did nothing. Then they came for the teachers' scheme, but I was not a teacher... etc."

Finally, the government will come for the health or local government scheme, and there will be nobody left to act in solidarity."

The extent of the "delusion" criticised by Griffiths is made clear by the fact that, whilst UNITE were deciding their position democratically, negotiators for UNISON and GMB were in talks about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) (http://m.lgcplus.com/5039996.article). This before any of UNISON's SGEs had expressed a view!

I fear that our LGPS negotiators are so dazzled by their achievement in putting off contribution increases until 2014 (the credit for which they share with the employers' side negotiators) that they now want to press ahead, trusting to their undoubted skill and understanding of the detail, but ignoring the wider context in which a local government workforce, isolated from the rest of the movement, could be picked off at their leisure by the Government.

For local government workers it's as if, having confronted a burglar about to steal our possessions, we have come to an agreement with him that, if he leaves us most of our stuff now, we'll go out and leave the front door unlocked in 2014, and will spend the coming months helping him prepare an inventory. (And, since we are conceding to the Government on the pension age, and abandoning indexation as a bargaining objective, it's also as if we've given the burglar some valuables "on account" as a token of good faith!)

Of course, for health workers, the burglar's visit is delayed only by one year - and then only for half the workforce.

Today we'll find out if the elected lay representatives of UNISON members are prepared to endorse the approach which the Government are hoping for.
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UNITE rejects LGPS Agreement - what should UNISON do?

2012-01-09T19:42:00.001Z

Of the 11 trade unions with members in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), just three sent their senior officials into the talks with the three political leaders on the Local Government Association, from which emerged the "agreed principles" which UNISON Service Group Executives (SGEs) will be asked to endorse tomorrow.

Now, the senior lay Committee of one of those three unions, UNITE, has voted not to accept the "principles agreement" as a satisfactory basis for further progress (http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_rejects_local_government.aspx).

Although UNITE's total membership in the LGPS is small in comparison to UNISON it's Local Authority National Industrial Sector Committee (LANISC) is a serious body of informed and experienced union activists, who have now made a reasoned judgement that the principles, which entail surrender on the question of pension age and abandonment of our opposition to changes in indexation as a bargaining objective, are inadequate and insufficient.

With UNITE saying that "there now needs to be genuine discussions without arbitary deadlines" will UNISON bend the knee to the Government and accept the principles and the tight timetable for further negotiations on the basis of those principles?

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will know that I think the answer ought to be "no" for all the reasons I set out elsewhere (http://www.socialistunity.com/what-next-for-local-government-pension-scheme/). I do not believe that the gain we have won in the LGPS (delaying any change from 2012 to 2014) would be put at risk if we try to secure the further improvements which UNITE now seek - and that, as I argued today in the Morning Star (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/113879) - we will do better if we sustain the unity of our movement which was the most impressive feature of 30 November.

There is an increasingly strong case that UNISON, instead of leading local government workers away from the unified fight to defend pensions, would do better to stand firm and resume the resolute and effective leadership of that fight which we showed in the three months following our General Secretary's speech to the TUC.

(And as for the position in respect of the health service scheme, I can think of no better riposte to the public comments of our lead negotiator than that offered by Mark Campbell of UCU at Saturday's meeting!)

(If you may be offended by rude words look away now)

(Damage Limitation? My Arse!)
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Unity against miserablism

2012-01-07T19:38:00.001Z

I was pleased to be well enough to make it to today's well-attended Conference called, in a timely and appropriate manner by PCS Left Unity(http://www.leftunity.org.uk/) for trade union activists to consider recent developments in the public sector pensions dispute.

I ask those reading this who also attended to excuse the somewhat cantankerous nature of my contribution on the basis that I am still recuperating! (Mind you, I stand by my contention that union activists who don't understand the interaction of accrual rates and revaluation rates in a CARE pension, or what the triennial actuarial valuation of the LGPS is, have some studying to do.)(It's more important than reading Trotsky comrades :p)

Although the Conference saw excellent contributions (from the platform and the floor) from Mark Serwotka, John McDonnell, Kevin Courtenay, Gill George, Marshajane Thompson and a host of others, and although Janice Godrich deserved a medal for chairing it, the single comment which lodged in my (still perhaps slightly feverish) brain was from the UCU comrade who described our opponents within the movement, those who think that we have gone as far as we can go and should settle for whatever tiny concession we can achieve, as "miserablists."

This is such a wonderful description of those now prepared to write off the largest strike for a generation as a failure in order to try to justify abandoning its objectives!

I am left far from miserable by today's event. As ever, my batteries are recharged somewhat by networking with so many comrades whose commitment to our movement is driven by a vision of a better future for all - but much more important (for a borderline miserablist like myself) I am encouraged by the practical usefuleness of the lunchtime UNISON caucus, and of the valuable information shared by comrades from other trade unions.

It is crystal clear that the pensions dispute is not over. The choice we all now face is which side to take in this dispute. Are we with Cameron or the working class?

Having seen what the leadership of my trade union can do to lead a fight for our members, I hope that UNISON will assume its proper place as the leadership of a battle which is far from over.

As our General Secretary repeatedly made clear to our NEC - and stated to our Conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFRd_zEoHoM), this will be a long and hard fight in which victory cannot be guaranteed - "one day will not be enough").

I will not join, and do not agree with, those who condemn our leaders and our negotiators for putting to our elected lay Committees a position described, for the Government, as their "final offer". To do this cannot properly be characterised as a "sell-out".

However, the fact that the Government of public schoolboy millionaires say that they have made a final offer ought not to determine what the movement of the millions decides to do in response.

We can sensibly reject these paltry offers and fight on for more, mindful of the implications of the outcome of this dispute for every other issue which confronts our members.

The dispute about public sector pensions continues. UNISON's Service Group Executives (SGEs) must now decide whether or not UNISON shall continue to provide its leadership, or to cede that role to others.
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Teachers hold out for a better pensions deal

2012-01-06T19:18:00.001Z

In keeping with their profession, the two biggest teachers' unions seek to offer us a lesson in how to campaign and negotiate for a better deal on pensions. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16442607).

NUT and NASUWT have both refused to accept the "Heads of Agreement" announced, with such fanfare, before Xmas as a settlement of the pensions dispute and are demanding further improvements.

NUT General Secretary, Christine Blower, makes the obvious point that; "The Government must face the fact that further discussions and additional funding are needed." (http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/14699)

This afternoon's meeting of the NASUWT Executive unanimously arrived at the same conclusion - they refuse to be browbeaten into accepting that this is the "final offer" since it doesn't address their concerns about contribution rates and retirement age (http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/Whatsnew/NASUWTNews/PressReleases/PensionsStatement/NASUWT_008782)

The NUT Executive will meet next week to decide how to take the campaign forward. Rejecting now what the Government describes as their final offer implies the need for further action.

It is increasingly obvious that the dispute over public sector pensions is not over. A growing number of experienced lay union Committees have concluded that they do not accept that the repackaging of Danny Alexander's 2 November statement on 20 December can be the final word about what trade union members can achieve in defence of our pension rights.

UNISON members have until Tuesday morning to share their views with members of the Service Group Executives (SGEs) whose decisions will not only, quite properly, determine UNISON's stance, but may also help to decide whether our movement is united in a campaign for fair pension provisions for all or buckles in the face of pressure from the Government of our enemies, thereby inviting further attacks on every front.

There are difficult decisions confronting our SGEs. There are risks in continuing the campaign, including the risk that those who doubt our ability to continue to mobilise our members may turn out to have been right. However, we should draw encouragement from the confidence and determination shown by other trade unionists - and consider the enormous risks of being seen to concede now, in a dispute which has always been about much more than pensions.
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The Rule Book and the pensions dispute

2012-01-06T10:19:00.000Z

Sometimes, on cold, dark, winter evenings, when the North Wind whistles around the chimney tops, I am asked to tell tales of the UNISON Rule Book.

One important story explains who is accountable for the decisions which now need to be taken within UNISON about the Government’s “final offer” on the NHS Pension Scheme and the “Heads of Agreement” with the Local Government Association (LGA) on the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). It often confuses members that those of us who are members of the National Executive Council (NEC) aren’t involved in these decisions in that capacity, but that is as it should be.

Under Rule D.3.1.4.2.1 each of UNISON’s seven Service Groups has autonomy, on behalf of its members, to negotiate pay and conditions of service, and (under Rule D.3.1.4.2.4) to negotiate the settlement of any disputes arising from the employment of its members. Each Service Group has a Service Group Executive (SGE) (in accordance with Rule D.3.5 if you’re taking notes). The SGEs are the decision-making bodies which will meet on Tuesday 10 January to consider the pensions dispute.

Under Rule D.3.5.3 the majority of members of an SGE are directly elected biennially (and the elections are just coming up now - the nomination period will open on Tuesday 10 January 2012 and close at 5pm on Friday 17 February 2012.) A minority of members may be co-opted, and the NEC members elected to the NEC to represent the Service Group are also voting members of the SGE. Each SGE is bound by the policies agreed by the Annual Conference of the Service Group, in accordance with Rule D.3.4.2.

(An attempt to amend our Rules to shift the responsibility for bargaining to Sector Committees (which are indirectly elected under Rule D.3.7.3 and which have no Annual Conference to hold them to account) failed when National Delegate Conference 2009 rejected, by a clear majority Rule Amendment 13, which would have made this change. Personally, I thought Conference got this right, although our subsequent decision, as an NEC, not to pursue the matter again may need to be revisited.)

Although, under Rule D.3.1.5; “The policies and activities of a Service Group shall at all times be subject to and consistent with the policy of the Union as laid down by the Union’s National Delegate Conference or as applied by the National Executive Council and within the Rules of the Union” – this has never been taken to override the clear autonomy of the Service Groups granted by Rule D.3.1.4.

Therefore, to take the simpler case, whatever decision the Health SGE makes in relation to the NHS Pension Scheme, that shall be UNISON’s decision, neither the NEC nor our National Delegate Conference, could overrule the SGE. The only body above the Health SGE in our Rule Book is the Health Service Group Conference (which will meet in Brighton in April).

The case of the LGPS is more complex, since several of our Service Groups have members in the LGPS and, whilst the Local Government Service Group has by far the greatest number, nothing in our Rule Book says that a decision of one Service Group can bind another Service Group, regardless of the numbers involved. This gives rise to the same complicated question of coordination which arose in the last LGPS dispute, since it is quite possible that different SGEs may reach different conclusions about the Agreement with the LGA.

There is a Service Group Liaison Committee (SGLC), comprising a few senior NEC members together with representatives of Service Groups and Sectors. This Committee does not feature in our Rule Book, except obliquely in that, under Rule D.2.8; “the National Executive Council shall have the right to appoint such Committees from amongst its membership as it shall see fit, and shall have the power to delegate to such Committees any of its functions as it considers appropriate.”

Leaving aside the point that the SGLC includes members who are not “amongst the membership” of the NEC, the key consideration is that the NEC does not have any function which it could delegate to the Committee which would trump the autonomy of each Service Group.

This mode of coordination provoked the ire of our Local Government Conference in 2007. The Local Government Conference at that time expressed a lack of confidence in the SGLC and proposed that “a union wide review is conducted into the lessons of the dispute and report back on the findings and make recommendations for future cross service group disputes.”

Although no such review took place in those terms there was a proposal to write into the Rule Book, at the 2009 Conference, a power for the NEC to “oversee cross service group work” (this was in response to a decision of the 2007 National Delegate Conference that the NEC “reviews and enhances cross service group working”).

I don’t think that there are any easy answers to these issues, since the autonomy of Service Groups is important to the democracy of our union, and to members being in control (as far as possible) of negotiations which take place on their behalf. There is an inevitable tension between democratic accountability and solidarity which probably cannot be resolved.

The upshot of all this history is that there isn’t really a mechanism to resolve differences of opinions between SGEs about a cross service group dispute which would comply with UNISON’s Rules, so were such a difference to arise there would need to be a consensus between those who had the substantive disagreement about a procedure for its resolution.

Whether any of this will matter in the case of pensions we shall have to wait for Tuesday to find out. The SGLC would then, on Wednesday, face the task of sorting this out.

Should anyone be looking for Rule D.3.4.11 later next week, you’ll find it on page 16 of this year’s Rule Book.

UNITE reject the NHS pension offer (and wait for UNISON before deciding what to do next)

2012-01-05T19:04:00.001Z

Today brings the news that UNITE's equivalent of our Health Service Group Executive (SGE) has unanimously rejected the Heads of Agreement for the proposed changes to the NHS Pension Scheme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16431284).

Mind you, continuing a theme from earlier today about the poor quality of BBC reporting on pensions, the Beeb manage to misrepresent the Government's "final offer" as including protection from contribution increases for all those within ten years of retirement(!)

Still, the report from the UNITE Committee is accurate and Len McClusky is quoted as saying of the decision;

"Our NHS executive unanimously rejects the government's pernicious attempts to make hard working and dedicated NHS staff pay more, work longer and get less when they retire. Unite believes it is important to continue a campaign to maintain a fair and equitable system of public sector pensions and calls on ministers to enter into real, genuine and meaningful negotiations on the future of NHS pensions and public sector pensions." (http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_unanimously_rejects_nhs.aspx)

The eyes of health workers will now turn to next Tuesday's meeting of our Health SGE, who will need to make a judgement in the interests of UNISON members (and of the future strength of our organisation).

Since we have been told that the present offer "is the best that can be achieved by negotiation" and that this is about "damage limitation" the SGE face a hard choice, as were we to adopt the same position as UNITE we would necessarily continue to lead a dispute which would require further industrial action. This would certainly not be an easy choice. I think, however, that it would be the right choice.

I know there are those in the movement who are, sotto voce, talking down the success and effectiveness of the 30 November strike and, particularly in the North, who are emphasising the disappointing geographical gradient which sees support for strike action weaken generally as one travels South.

But should we be shocked that we faced difficulties in mobilising members for the first national action in a generation? Should we accept that 30 November is a high water mark, the best we can hope to achieve and the limit of our aspirations? I would suggest that the Ambulance sector ballot result is one indication otherwise.

It seems to me that the question confronting the Health SGE is not whether a manifestly poor offer is really acceptable, but whether we believe we have the power to improve it.

That said, I don't rule out the possibility that there may be some "talking up" of the offer alongside the talking down of our action (though I sincerely hope not).

In this connection, I hope that SGE members will query that part of our commentary on the Agreement (about which I blogged before - http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2011/12/nhs-pensions-comments-on-commentary.html?m=1) which refers to the proposed "accrual rate of 1/54th for service after 2015" and goes on to say that "this is around 11% better than the 1/60th accrual rate in the reference scheme and the current 2008 section. Comparison with the 1995 section is more difficult because you have to take part of your benefit as a lump sum at retirement but a 1/54th is around 18% better than the value of an 1/80th pension with a 3/80 th lump sum."

This really is unacceptable as it fails to compare like with like, since the accrual rate in a final salary scheme is multiplied by the known quantity of a final salary, whereas in a career average scheme it is multiplied by a series of annual salaries (each increased according to the revaluation rate). The presentation of that part of our commentary is, at the very least, misleading.

UNISON did such good work to train pension contacts and champions that it is very saddening to see us issuing such misleading comments - particularly when they could have the consequence of making a poor offer seem better than it is.

In the end, for all the rhetoric, UNITE made half a decision today, and it is noteworthy that they will meet again, after the UNISON Health SGE has taken the decision that will matter most of all, in order to take the other half of the decision ("what to do next").

I hope that the Health SGE has confidence in our ability to mobilise members for further effective action and therefore arrive at a similar decision to our comrades in UNITE. This is a decision for the SGE of course, which they are best placed to make.

I hope very much, however, that no part of UNISON's decision is influenced by misguided attempts to convince ourselves and our members that we have somehow conjured a silk purse from the sow's ear of the Government's offer on pensions to our health service members.
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Today's Bad Science on pensions

2012-01-05T09:42:00.001Z

It is difficult to get to grips with the report on the Today Programme that increases in the pension age in the three "pay as you go" public service pension schemes will not produce long term savings (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16419888) since the BBC don't go far into the detail of the assumptions on which this claim is based. This is not helped by the fact that Mr Ralfe's website (http://www.johnralfe.com/) provides no further details (at least not yet).

Perhaps it is as well that the BBC don't try to get into the detail as they might not understand it. Yesterday the BBC, whilst reporting that "civil service pensions were still gold plated" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/16419885) told us that "Before the changes, which were finally agreed before Christmas, public-sector workers accrued pension entitlements at the rate of 1/80 of salary per annum, plus a cash lump sum on retirement of 3/80 of salary, which was equivalent to an accrual rate of 1/70."

This of course wrong on so many counts! First 1/80 plus 3/80 is not equivalent to an accrual rate of 1/70 but is more generous. Secondly, the last round of changes generally moved to 1/60 accruals. Thirdly (of course!) - no changes were "agreed before Christmas" as all need to be considered by our elected Committees.

The net effect of this incredibly poor reporting by the BBC is to obfuscate and confuse the issues. Today's report (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16419888) does no better.

This is how it deals with the question of the revaluation rate, which, together with the accrual rate, is crucial to assessing the future monetary value of a career average pension;

"The Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) and NHS have annual increases over CPI baked in, which gives no flexibility to have a pension freeze along with a pay freeze," said Mr Ralfe in the report.

"Pensions will still go up, even if pay is frozen."

That last sentence is misleading in the extreme since what it refers to is not pensions in payment (which will increase in line with the CPI rather the generally higher RPI, as in the past) although this is what most readers would understand to be "pensions".

Here Ralfe is referring instead to the accrued pension from previous years of service which are revalued annually until retirement according to an agreed formula to prevent price inflation destroying the value of accrued pension rights. This is a novelty for those of us used to final salary pensions, where (obviously) the salary to which the accrual rate was applied to determine our pension tended to increase in line with (or for high flyers, faster than) earnings throughout our career.

Ralfe's implied criticism of even having a fixed revaluation rate appears to show a distinct lack of understanding of how pension schemes are negotiated, since without an agreed revaluation rate a given accrual rate gives none of the certainty about retirement income which is what defines the benefits in a "defined benefit" pension. Without both an agreed accrual rate and a fixed revaluation rate we would really be buying a "pig in a poke").

It is clear that negotiators on both sides have a better understanding of this issue than the "pension consultant" of whom the BBC make such play, as is clear from the proposals for different accrual and revaluation rates in each of the three schemes.

In fact, based on the assumptions made in UNISON's pensions calculator ("Future AWE is assumed to be 1.5% above RPI. For the projection of pension from retirement, future RPI is assumed to be 4.6% pa (in line with September 2010 RPI), and future CPI is assumed to be 3.6% pa, i.e. 1% lower than RPI. (Actual CPI as at September 2010 was 3.1% pa.)"), none of the three proposals have a revaluation rate which will be likely completely to protect the value of accrued service from past years compared to long term increases in earnings - a topic about which I blogged a little while ago (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2011/12/accrual-rates-and-revaluation-when-is.html?m=1).

The "more generous" accrual rates picked out by Ralfe are balanced by less generous revaluation rates (as is evident from the inverse relationship between accrual and revaluation rates in each of the three proposed "pay as you go" schemes.)

So does this all mean that, whereas we know that the RPI/CPI switch will cost us 15% of the average lifetime value of our pensions (if we can't stop it), and that (at least in the three "pay as you go" schemes) trade unionists face substantial "contribution increases" to pay down the deficit (if we accept the Heads of Agreement), that Ralfe is right and the change to the retirement age would not, of itself, save any money?

This is what the BBC are reporting, but on so little information it is impossible to assess. What assumptions does Ralfe make about mortality? About future increases in earnings and prices? About the demographics of each workforce?

We don't know because the BBC don't tell us and Mr Ralfe's website doesn't yet feature the report. All in all, shoddy work by a public service broadcaster.

Nothing in today's news makes me look more favourably on the "Heads of Agreement" - it would be good to see the detailed analysis of the excellent pension experts in our movement though.
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Ambulance workers up for a fight over pensions

2012-01-04T21:13:00.001Z

Having been ill for a few days now, my thoughts turn of course to the health service...

Hat tip to UNISON's London Ambulance Service Branch for the excellent news that our members in the ambulance service have overwhelmingly backed further industrial action over pensions (http://news.lasunison.eu/?p=543).

The Framework Agreement for the future NHS pension scheme, including the concession of a delay in contribution increases of one year for the majority of our members (about which I have blogged before - http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2011/12/nhs-pensions-comments-on-commentary.html?m=1) has been described as the best that can be achieved by negotiation.

This gives our Health Service Group Executive (SGE) at its meeting next Tuesday two options, to accept the Agreement or to call for further action.

The Ambulance workers' ballot result (for action short of strike action) suggests at the very least that the second option ought not to be written off!
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Happy New Year

2012-01-04T10:57:00.001Z

Apologies to eager readers for the lack of posts over the last few days (and Happy New Year btw). No sooner was the New Year holiday out of the way than I have been laid low with what unkind souls would doubtless call "man 'flu'".

If you miss me you can read a summary of the reasons why I hope UNISON's Service Group Executives (SGEs) should not at this point accept the Heads of Agreement with the Local Government Association (LGA) as a basis for negotiating the future Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) online at http://www.socialistunity.com/what-next-for-local-government-pension-scheme/.

Good luck for 2012 comrades. I think we'll need it.
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Optimism of the will for the New Year

2011-12-31T21:54:00.001Z

The first post on this blog in 2011 predicted that this would be “the toughest year for UNISON activists since the formation of the Union in 1993” and that “our best chance of effective unified action forcing a climbdown from the Government would be to fight to defend our pensions. The sooner we mobilise our strength as a unified national trade union movement the better our chance of forcing the Government back.”

The next post applauded the joint New Year statement made by the General Secretaries of the “big three” unions, which spelt out the opposition of our movement to the Coalition Government. Overall, I started 2011 with plenty of optimism of the will.

And 2011 was the year in which the trade union movement fought back against that Government as never before, with the largest trade union demonstration in the history of the country, and the biggest strike for a generation (at least!) My optimism of the will seems to have been well placed.

However, 2011 also saw a continuing pay freeze in the public sector, hundreds of thousands of job losses and – so far – no positive outcome of the pensions strike. A certain amount of pessimism of the intellect would appear to be called for also.

The trade union movement is not an end in itself. Workers do not join trade unions primarily out of altruism or for reasons of political belief (although there is absolutely nothing wrong with the minority whose commitment does spring from that source!)

Workers join, and are active in, trade unions for instrumental reasons – and if we wish to continue to be relevant to our members we need to deliver outcomes which protect the interests of those same members.

It is important that we are seen to fight for our members, but that alone is not enough. We need to deliver results. We need to do this with every tool to hand, including industrial, legal and political action.

To do this (and on this point I agree with the anonymous blogger at UNISON Active) we need to develop the political campaigning of our trade union. A century ago, trade unionists were prevented by law from supporting a political party. Today our problem is more one of finding a justification to support the only political party we have. More to the point, we have to work with our natural allies.

It is thirty years since the high water mark of the Labour Left, when Tony Benn was narrowly denied the Deputy Leadership of the Party with the votes of MPs who had already determined to leave for the SDP. The socialist policies which reflect the views of our trade union have been in retreat ever since.

As this political retreat has taken place, the membership of trade unions has declined. The 12.3 Million members we had in 1981 were already fewer the peak of 1979, but it was twice the number we have now. Nevertheless that much stronger labour movement comprehensively failed to resist the Thatcher Government. From a weaker position we now have to do better.

No cavalry is coming over the hill. No other struggle will arise to turn the tables on the Cabinet of millionaires. All we have is ourselves. This is the moment of the trade unions. We can reverse a generation of decline, or we can continue to accommodate to it, believing that the pinnacle of our aspiration is damage limitation (we could call that “new realism” perhaps…)

As the New Year’s editorial in today’s Morning Star put it; “the only possibility of a happy 2012 for working people will depend on the readiness of the labour movement to unite in determined resistance to the coalition and to do everything to make its existence as brief as possible.”

When I predicted that 2011 would be UNISON’s hardest year to date, I wasn’t wrong. Now I predict that 2012 will be worse and I doubt that I’ll be wrong about that either. That’s the pessimism of the intellect I mentioned earlier.

But from Barnet to Southampton (and in so many places beside) we see the potential of our movement.

Happy New Year.

Eat, drink and make merry for tomorrow we face a harder struggle than ever.

Happy New Year to the West Midlands!

2011-12-31T13:42:00.000Z

I’ve just added links to the website of the Staffordshire Branch and the blog of the Birmingham Branch Secretaries. I wish a Happy New Year to UNISON members in the West Midlands, who had the good sense and good fortune to organise a meeting almost immediately after the strike on 30 November, of which our General Secretary rightly made a great deal in his report to the December meeting of our National Executive Council (NEC).

From what the NEC were told, the bulk of our activists in the West Midlands felt that our members could be persuaded to take further action, albeit that it would be difficult to replicate N30. A minority were more gung ho and another minority more pessimistic, but the message which I took from the report of the General Secretary was that we were in a position to take further action if necessary. UNISON in the West Midlands did well to get reliable information to the national Centre as promptly as they did.

Birmingham Branch are also beneficiaries of the particular attention of the new national organising unit – and I will watch with interest in 2012 to see how this initiative turns out. UNISON’s organisation in England’s largest local authority is of more than local interest – and we need to increase our membership and density in every branch.

Led by a Star

2011-12-30T23:27:00.001Z

Mark Serwotka, commenting on the pensions dispute, issues a timely warning against defeatism in tomorrow's Morning Star (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/113639).

Those looking for resolutions for the New Year should take heed - and should also consider the wise words of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Rob Griffiths, who says "Unions need to meet urgently to draw up a strategy based on common objectives and which recognises the value of a bold and imaginative approach to various forms of popular and industrial action."

UNISON's leadership led N30's strike, just as UNISON was the heart and soul of the great mobilisation on 26 March. 2011 has been the year in which UNISON has shown what it can achieve with sound leadership and vigorous mobilisation. Our achievements this year have been a tribute to our leaders as well as to our members.

In 2012 we face a choice. It is right that we should face this choice, as policy in our trade union is made by members. Our choice is between following the guidance of those who (believing that this was always about "damage limitation") think we should settle for the modest gains of the Framework Agreements or following the line laid down months ago by our General Secretary when he said "to those who say 'name the day' I say one day won't be enough" (http://unison.org.uk/conference2011/news_view.asp?did=6958).

It is a choice to be made by the elected members of our Service Group Executives (SGEs) on 10 January, and it is not a choice to be made hastily. I have spent much of the holidays reflecting on the real but limited gains made in negotiations and asking myself if this is all we should settle for.

I think, perhaps, that UNISON is better than this. UNISON's position has yet to be determined, and I hope that SGE members read tomorrow's Morning Star.
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A flawed defence of UNISON

2011-12-30T21:02:00.001Z

Some folk get confused when reading a criticism of the tactics of the leadership of a trade union, and wrongly conclude that this amounts to an attack upon the trade union itself.

Such is today the case with the notoriously shy bloggers at UNISON Active (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/12/flawed-attack-on-unison.html) who are not amused by the musings of Owen Jones in today's Morning Star (http://union-news.co.uk/2011/12/unions-have-a-big-task-ahead-of-them-in-2012/).

Owen has earned the wrath of his anonymous adversary with the use of the word "capitulation". The outpouring of ire to which this gives rises serves to demonstrate, if nothing else, that the phrase "ultra-left" does no more to enlighten debate around the pensions dispute than the phrase "sell-out".

UNISON Anonymous are keen to point out that our members in the LGPS don't face an immediate contribution increase (which is both welcome and true) and that the lower paid half of the NHS workforce face no increase for at least a year (which is also true, and also welcome).

However, given that the other two of our three demands (that we should not get less and should not work longer) have not really been achieved, it is perhaps an example of litotes that the nameless blogger describes the Framework Agreements as "far from perfect."

I would suggest that a framework which defers the pensions of all those more than ten years from retirement, whilst leaving to the lottery of litigation the vital question of indexation is "far from perfect" in the way that my singing voice is "far from perfect."

"Capitulation" isn't my word and I haven't used it - but the (sadly and inexplicably) anonymous blogger at UNISON Active would better use their time attending to the unsatisfactory details of the Framework Agreements, rather than taking ill-judged potshots at Mr Jones.
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NHS pensions - comments on a commentary

2011-12-29T00:13:00.002Z

UNISON has produced a helpful commentary upon the Framework Agreement for the National Health Service Pension Scheme. This will help members to assess a proposed settlement which has been described as “the best that can be achieved by negotiation” (although this in the context of our being told that “we always knew this would be a damage limitation exercise – aimed at reducing the worst impacts of the government’s pension changes.”) (Which is not how I remember us putting it in the run up to N30!)

I’ll blog more thoroughly on this, but there are a couple of points in the commentary which stand out very obviously. The first is the observation, in the context of reporting the transitional protection for those close to retirement that “there is additional money for these protections outside of the initial cost ceiling set by the government” which explains the clause in the Framework Agreement which states that “The costs associated with the protection… …sit outside the costs of the reference scheme.” This appears to contradict the claim from Danny Alexander that “These heads of agreement deliver the Government's key objectives in full, and do so with no new money since our November offer.”

Whilst the delivery of partial protection for some scheme members but not others on the basis of their age can be viewed as divisive, it is certainly better if such protection is funded with additional money and not therefore directly at the expense of those excluded from the protection. This is not negligible and our negotiators deserve credit for this achievement.

The second point that strikes me immediately is the implicit contribution to the debate about the interaction of accrual rates and revaluation rates (about which I have blogged before) in the commentary on paragraphs 3b and 3c of the Framework Agreement. The commentary suggests that “an accrual rate of 1/54th for service after 2015 is around 11% better than the 1/60th accrual rate in the reference scheme and the current 2008 section.” This is, of course, mathematically true (in fact it is 11.111% better to three decimal places).

However, the value of the pension paid out of a career average scheme depends upon the accrual rate and the revaluation rate – and the fact that different accrual and revaluation rates are proposed in each of the Teachers and Civil Servants Framework Agreements illustrates the point that one can vary at the expense of the other to provide differently shaped pension schemes within the same overall cost ceiling.

This is what the commentary says; “the government actuaries valued average earnings as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) + 2.25% only for the purpose of costing the reference scheme in the government’s original offer. This would not have been the calculation used in future revaluations. In future it would have been actual average earnings, and these can and do fluctuate. For example in the 3 years to the end of 2010 Average Weekly Earnings Index (AWE) was 1.7% per year below even CPI. The AWE index is not expected to rise above CPI for some considerable time in the future. The uprating in this offer of CPI + 1.5% will be fixed which means we can be sure of the amount by which pensions will be revalued.”

I’m afraid that this is selective use of an extract from time series data which would almost warrant a place in the Guardian’s “Bad Science” column. It is true that in the three years to the end of 2010 average earnings fell behind the CPI, but that is because we are in the first period which has seen a sustained fall in real wages since the 1920s!

It is true to say that we can be certain that pension earned in previous years will be revalued by CPI+1.5% each year, but over the long run it is very likely that average earnings will increase by more than this. For example, the assumptions upon which our NHS pension calculator were based were that; “Future AWE is assumed to be 1.5% above RPI. For the projection of pension from retirement, future RPI is assumed to be 4.6% pa (in line with September 2010 RPI), and future CPI is assumed to be 3.6% pa, i.e. 1% lower than RPI. (Actual CPI as at September 2010 was 3.1% pa.)”

So, whilst our commentary on the NHS Pension Framework Agreement does not foresee average weekly earnings climbing significantly about the CPI for some time, our published assumption about the long term is that average weekly earnings will tend to increase by 2.5% more than CPI (1.5% above RPI which is estimated to be 1% above CPI). This is consistent with the long term experience of increasing labour productivity reflected in increasing real earnings, and the world would be a bleaker place even that it already is if trade unions did not hope and expect that we shall get back to increasing real wages!

The fact that the revaluation factor in a career average pension scheme may fall behind increases in average earnings does not necessarily make the scheme bad, there is a trade off to be made between accrual rates and revaluation rates, and there are winners and losers in any different way of balancing these two elements of a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) pension scheme.

We are told that this is the “best that can be achieved by negotiation” and the Health Service Group Executive (SGE) on 10 January will have to make a judgement about a pension scheme with an accrual rate of 1/54^th and a revaluation rate of CPI+1.5% because that is what on the table. Shrill denunciation will be of little help, an even handed commentary upon the current offer would be.

What is disappointing about the commentary at the moment is that it does not acknowledge the interplay of the accrual and revaluation rates. It applauds the (favourable) shift in the accrual rate (compared to the reference scheme) whilst obfuscating the (clearly related) change to a (less favourable) revalution rate. The decisions our SGEs have to make about pensions are serious decisions deserving an even-handed presentation of the facts, not an attempt to “sell” an offer which falls so very far short of achieving the objectives for which our members took strike action. The current presentation of the arguments around accrual and revaluation rates in the commentary runs the risk of being seen to be encouraging acceptance of the offer.

Taking account of the adverse changes to the normal retirement age for those too young for the transitional protection and the fact that the Framework Agreement accepts the use of CPI to uprate pensions in payment, I can see why an increasing number of our members in health may fell the approach being put to our members in Oxfordshire may be the right way to go.

Trying to understand the LGPS Framework Agreement

2011-12-28T23:01:00.001Z

This post may repeat points I have already made about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and the Framework Agreement, but I think a balanced assessment of where we are and what we ought to do now does require some careful thought. Those not interested in overlong blog posts about public service pensions are probably reading the wrong blog!

The LGPS pensions contribution calculator can be turned on its head to calculate how much less worse off local government workers will be from April next year (and the year after) as a result of the dropping of the previously proposed contribution increases.

For example, someone working full-time on £20,000 will “save” £144 after tax between April 2012 and March 2014 compared to CLG Option One, while someone on £30,000 will “save” more than £520 net over the same period. Even though these are just sums of money which we won’t be losing, they are non-negligible (and we also will not see the less favourable accrual rates in an “interim” LGPS which will not now be introduced).

Whilst it would be idle to dismiss the outcome of the negotiations which have reached this point as a “sell-out” it is however equally misleading to see them, as some have, simply as a victory for the trade union side.

This isn’t only because we have made no progress on the increasing normal retirement age or on the massively detrimental change to the index used to uprate our pensions (though both these factors need to be taken into account as we decide what to do next).

It is crucial to an informed assessment of the outcome of the LGPS negotiations (and particularly to why this is significantly different – and better – or, at least, less worse - than the outcome of negotiations on the “pay as you go” pension schemes) to appreciate that the real victory of negotiators (on both sides) has been in educating the Government about the nature of the LGPS, the basis on which it is funded and the consequent limits to the ability of the Government to achieve its original goals.

In a “pay as you go” pension scheme it is straightforward to increase employee contributions at the expense of employer contributions in order to siphon money from the pockets of employees to pay down a deficit which they didn’t cause.

The LGPS, however, is a horse of a different colour. Employee contribution rates are set in accordance with Regulation 3 the Benefit Regulations. The basis upon which the contributions from employers are determined is set out in the Administration Regulations, Regulation 36 of which requires that each fund is the subject of a triennial actuarial valuation, beginning in March 2010.

The contribution rates payable by each employer are determined in accordance with that valuation. Therefore, whilst the Government could have amended the Benefit Regulations to increase employee contributions from April 2012, they could not easily thereby have reduced employer contributions in order to redistribute money from the pockets of scheme members toward the Exchequer, as this would have required an amendment to the Administration Regulations to provide for an interim valuation.

The original consultation document which set out the options to increase employee pension contributions from April 2012 recognised this problem and read as follows at paragraph 4.11; “To ensure LGPS employers and taxpayers benefit from the savings achieved by the statutory amendments finally introduced, we suggest that it would be necessary to provide a technical amendment, effective from April 2012, that enables scheme-appointed actuaries to vary rates and adjustment certificates both between valuation exercises (i.e. between the 2010 and 2013 valuations), and provide that the accrual rate changes proposed are reflected specifically in the 31 March 2013 valuation exercise to reflect the level of savings produced in scheme employers` contribution rates from April 2014. Views are invited on this particular proposal and how best it might be achieved in regulatory terms.”

The dilemma which this request for views highlighted was put fairly succinctly in the response to the consultation from one London Borough who pointed out that “an interim valuation performed at the current time is not supported as it would be likely to increase employer contributions as investment market values have deteriorated and Gilt yields have fallen leading to a reduction in assets and an increase in liabilities”. In other words, because of the current state of the stock market, it is not likely that, even had an increase in employee contributions been imposed from April 2012, that an actuarial valuation of the funds would have enabled a reduction in employer contributions in order to facilitate a transfer of resources to deficit reduction.

This difference between the LGPS and the other public service pension schemes arises from the unique nature of the LGPS as a funded scheme, and it is a significant achievement by negotiators for the trade unions and the local authority employers that they have forced the Government to an appreciation of the futility of enforcing employee contribution increases in the immediate future.

This achievement has averted some very real and material disadvantage for hundreds of thousands of local government workers who might otherwise have faced paying arbitrary and unjustified increases in pension contributions, amounting to significant pay cuts, from next April. This is a good thing and not a “sell-out”.

However, if the approach of the Framework Agreement, which is to negotiate a new LGPS for April 2014, rather than impose an interim scheme almost immediately, arises from a correct understanding of the nature of the scheme and its statutory regulation, then I can’t really see why we should accept the increase in retirement age, or give up fighting for proper uprating of pensions simply because our negotiators and our employers have forced the Government to accept reality. We have not yet won a victory and ought not to give up fighting for that victory now.

The pensions arguments of Xmas yet to come

2011-12-23T20:25:00.002Z

Already today, I have been visited by the pensions arguments of Xmas past and the pensions arguments of Xmas present, but more troubling than either of these may be the pensions arguments of Xmas yet to come.

For, whilst it is easy, after too much food and wine, to be irritated by the excitable comrades for whom any mass strike is Christmas come early, what will become of us if, Scrooge-like, we call the prospect for further struggle “humbug” and make the wishes of the financial advisors come true by settling for a warmed over version of the offer we rejected in early November?

Will Danny Alexander’s promise of no further change to our pensions for 25 years come true?

No.

Instead, emboldened by what they clearly see as their victory on this question (These heads of agreement deliver the Government's key objectives in full, and do so with no new money since our November offer.), the Tory-led Government will not only advance their attacks upon workers’ individual and collective rights, but will also hold firm to their plan for continuing reductions in real wages and assaults upon our Welfare State.

The activists and organisation which we have encouraged and built in the run up to 30 November will be demoralised and disorientated by our seeming capitulation, and opportunists within our own movement will seek membership growth without growing the overall membership of all trade unions.

As early as Xmas 2012 we will be reading of the plans of the Tories who hope to form a Government alone in the near future to end defined benefit pensions for good and all.

Is this the future we want to wake up to after the Xmas holiday?

UNISON members need to find out who represents them on their Service Group Executive and lobby them before the meetings on 10 January.

The message of a Christmas Carol is surely that we still have time to change our minds?

Merry Xmas one and all (particularly regular readers of this blog, Sid and Doris Festive-Blogger)!

The Pensions Arguments of Xmas Present - what has changed since early November?

2011-12-23T17:34:00.002Z

This Xmas we have a series of “Heads of Agreement” to mull over as we munch on mince pies and regret eating sprouts. Following the publication of our ballot results on 3 November, and ahead of our strike on 30 November, UNISON published a very useful document dealing with Danny Alexander’s now notorious (at least to him) statement of 2 November.

Since this document explained what had and had not been changed by that statement, and (by clear implication) why we were right to press ahead with a strike against Government plans even after that statement, it is worth returning to that document and looking at what is now proposed (which our Service Group Executives are to consider on 10 January.

The UNISON document acknowledged the two changes made in the 2 November statement. The first of these was in relation to accrual rates in the new career average schemes, which would remain at 1/60^th rather than a less advantageous 1/65^th. In fact, as we have now seen, since the Government’s proposal was for an accrual rate of 1/60^th linked to a revaluation rate of CPI+2% (intended to reflect the increase in average earnings), the Government have been more than happy to concede what appear to be more generous accrual rates if these are linked to less favourable revaluation rates.

Although I do intend to return to this topic in greater detail after the festive season, for the moment I think the key thing to recognise is that a settlement which favours the accrual rate at the expense of the revaluation rate is closer to a final salary scheme, since it gives greater weight to later years in the career, whereas a settlement which keeps a higher revaluation rate at the expense of the accrual rate gives a relatively greater weight to earlier years in the career. I should imagine that an equality impact assessment could keep whatever the collective noun for statisticians is busy for quite a while…

The second change made on 2 November, and acknowledge in the UNISON document, was the protection of the retirement income for those within ten years’ of retirement, with tapered protection for those close to that limit. The UNISON document noted that it was then “not yet clear whether this would have to be paid for with further detrimental changes to other workers’ pension entitlements.” It is now clear, since all of the “Heads of Agreement” (with the exception of the local government, discussed further below) come in within the Government’s financial targets set on 2 November that this is precisely how that protection has been achieved. Having regard to the age profile of trade union (and pension scheme) membership, we may have served a significant proportion of our members well. I hope this won’t prove to have been at the expense of the future of our movement.

Given that we had acknowledged these two changes in advance of 30 November, they were not relevant to our (correct) decision to strike on N30. What was relevant were those things that had not changed at that point. Have they changed since?

Contribution increases

The UNISON document from early November correctly reported that, at that time, “as before, contributions will be increased for all pension scheme members earning over £15,000 a year by an average 3.2% (for part time workers this will apply if your full time equivalent salary is greater than £15,000), the lower paid will pay less than the average but many middle and higher paid will pay more. For the Local Government Pension Scheme ministers are currently consulting on proposals for contribution increases lower than the average 3% called for, by having a lower average contribution increase between 1% and 1.5% in exchange for a worse accrual rate than the standard 1/60^th”.

So what has changed?

Well, in the NHS scheme, protection from contribution increases in April 2012 have been extended to those earning up to £26,557 and, as the deal is explained on our website “in 2012 members will pay between 0 and 2.4% extra. Those with a pensionable salary of less than £26,557 will not pay any extra. This will apply to 48% of the NHS workforce and probably around 70% of UNISON members. There will be further discussions on contributions in years 2 and 3.”

Whilst it is true that the Government has conceded the possibility that they may think again about future contribution increases in the light of the experience of opt-outs, that appears to be a very small and unappetising carrot (something with which anyone who has spent the afternoon peeling root vegetable for a roast dinner will be most familiar!). This is so for two reasons.

First, the Government have not put any more money on the table and so (at least in the “pay as you go” schemes) it is clear that any reduction in employee contribution income will have to be made up somewhere else.

Secondly, the Government know that the trade unions will (quite rightly) do all we can to encourage our members not to opt out of occupational pension schemes which will continue to offer them a deal less awful than the appalling offer from the private sector.

As for the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), here there has been a real shift in the Government’s position, since it is now acknowledged that there can be no contribution increase until at least April 2014, and accepted that, if the scheme can find alternative savings, there need not be contribution increases even from that date.

It is vitally important, in assessing this development, to understand the point made by Tory Wandsworth Council (of all people!) There never was any point (from the Government’s point of view) in trying to enforce contribution increases on LGPS members before April 2014, because there was no way of using such an increase to produce a countervailing reduction in employers’ contributions in order to siphon money out of their budgets towards deficit reduction in the short term.

Retirement Age

The UNISON document responding to the 2 November statement stated correctly that; “as before, anyone who won’t already be within 10 or 14 years of the current Normal Retirement Age (as explained above) will now face increases in their Retirement Age, rising in line with the State Pension Age, rising to 66, then 67, then 68.” That remains the case in each and every one of the “Heads of Agreement” – and, of course, the State Pension Age can be varied by the Government.

Although the LGPS proposals provide for “flexible retirement” between 55 and 75, this flexibility is constrained by the actuarial reductions which would apply to those retiring before their retirement age, which will be set in accordance with the state pension age. Therefore, there is no practical difference between any of the schemes on this point. If we accept the current proposals as the basis for negotiation we are accepting that we shall work longer.

Shift to Career Average Pensions

The UNISON document replying to what Danny Alexander had said on 2 November point out, rightly, that “as before, the Treasury’s preferred design for all schemes remains a Career Average Revalued Earnings scheme(CARE) where the pay used to calculate pension is an average of pay earned by an individual over their membership of the scheme. The Treasury is proposing that the earnings should be revalued in line with average earning increases up to retirement. This is different to the current Final Salary schemes where the pay used to calculate the pension is based on earnings near retirement.”

Although the Treasury has been happy to allow negotiators in each scheme to increase the accrual rate at the expense of the revaluation rate (shifting the eventual outcome marginally closer to final salary and away from career average) this has only been permitted within the overall cost ceilings set on 2 November. The LGPS is (now) excluded from this overall ceiling because the different nature of the regulation of this funded pension scheme (in which local authorities themselves are stakeholders) means that a Tory Government is no more able now to dictate outcomes than a Labour Government was in the last Parliament.

So, if we were to redraft the UNISON document responding to the 2 November statement in order to respond to the statement made on 20 December what would we say has changed?

Not the retirement age.

Not the future shape of the schemes.

The contribution increase in health is put off for a year for the lowest paid half of the workforce, and in local government for everyone for two years (plus in the LGPS the Government now accepts the limit of their power to dictate outcomes, which is clearly a good thing).

We have also preserved the Fair Deal (about which more later) which is, for those to whom it will apply, very certainly a good thing.

But is this good enough for us to give up the fight our members were so willing to fight on N30?

That is a question to be asked to, and answered by, our elected Service Group Executives (SGEs) on 10 January.

The Pensions Arguments of Xmas Past - uprating and price indices

2011-12-23T14:10:00.001Z

A little over a year ago, ahead of Xmas 2010, I was pleased to see UNISON encouraging members to lobby Members of Parliament against the (then imminent) shift from uprating pensions in payment in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). 135 MPs have, over the last year, signed the Early Day Motion in opposition to this change.

This particular unanticipated assault on the living standards of occupational pensioners had come about almost six months before in George Osborne’s unnecessary “Emergency Budget” of June 2010. Fellow blogger MJ had highlighted the importance of a coordinated national response to the attack at the time and the TUC took only a fortnight to come out, on 7 July last year, in opposition to this theft from pensioners by a Tory Government.

The admirable Civil Service Pensioners’ Association (CSPA) had sounded the alarm on this point almost immediately, highlighting the dishonesty of the Coalition parties. It is worth repeating the following from their website;

The index-linking arrangements for public sector pensions stem from the Pension (Increase) Act 1971. The law is complicated but it has had the effect of ensuring that each April public sector pensions have been increased in line with the Retail Prices Index, as recorded for the previous September, so as to maintain their purchasing power. The RPI link has been applied since 1972, employees have been led to believe by pension scheme literature that the RPI link would be maintained and many have made financial choices based on that understanding. Following much media speculation about the future of the current arrangements, we sought clarification from the three main political parties about their intentions and we received the following assurances.

At a meeting held on 30 March 2010, Angela Eagle said on behalf of the Labour Party "Following the agreement for change reached with the unions in 2005, we are satisfied that public sector pensions are affordable, sustainable and fair. We have no plans to change the current index-linking arrangements."

In a letter dated 12 April 2010, Steve Webb said on behalf of the Liberal Democrats "We are very clear that all accrued rights should be honoured: a pension promise made should be a pension promise kept. Therefore we would not make any changes to pension rights that have already been built up. I have confirmed that I regard accrued index-linked rights as protected."

In a letter dated 27 April 2010, Philip Hammond said on behalf of the Conservatives "Indexation of pensions in payment is an established part of pensions legislation. The Conservative Party has no plans to change the current index-linking of public sector pensions in payment. We agree with the view that the right to indexation of pensions already accrued is part of the accrued pension rights and those rights will be protected. Our proposed £50,000 cap on public sector pension rights accrued was always intended to be a real-terms cap and therefore will be subject to indexation to reflect inflation. It would make no sense to express a long-term cap on pensions in nominal terms."

The TUC joined the CSPA in opposition to this change a fortnight after it was made. Even then though the presentation of the TUC opposition was revealing, Brendan Barber was quoted as saying that “On the day that the Institute of Directors is due to launch a further attack on public sector pensions, this TUC research shows that public sector pensioners have already been hit hard in the budget,” and “Significant changes were negotiated in public sector pensions just a few years ago and the Budget has cut benefits further.” (I have added emphasis).

With hindsight, the TUC position, which was not at that time to take any action about the issue (though subsequently of course the trade union movement has coalesced around two related legal challenges now on their way to the Court of Appeal), faced in two directions even then. On the one hand the dramatic impact upon the living standards of pensioners was highlighted. On the other hand (in anticipation, since realised, of the coming assault upon our pension schemes), the cost savings arising from the change were also hinted at.

It is therefore noteworthy that none of the “Heads of Agreement” in relation to any of the four main public service pension schemes have anything to say about the basis of uprating of pensions. This is instead left to the courts, which might overturn such a decision for some procedural flaw, such as a lack of appropriate consultation, or the taking of a decision for irrelevant reasons, but cannot indefinitely prevent a Government acting as it wishes within the law. To achieve this requires a political campaign utilising all the tools we can put our hands on (including industrial action).

Although the basis of indexation of pensions post-retirement is not the easiest topic I have ever had to explain at a trade union meeting, as our members (and the public) have grasped the sleight of hand whereby the Government have taken some 15% of the lifetime value of our pensions (giving the lie to the “protection of accrued benefits”), opposition has grown. It’s not just the 135 MPs who have signed up in opposition, but the more than 100,000 signatures on the e-petition which should now see a debate on the subject in Parliament.

UNISON National Delegate Conference 2011 called upon our National Executive Council (NEC) to “mount a substantial campaign amongst members against the change from RPI to CPI.” We have lobbied members to get their MPs to express opposition, and we have urged members to sign the e-petition, but perhaps the most significant part of the campaign which we have waged has been through the firm support of the entire Union for the action taken, at the behest of our Service Groups, by the large majority of our members on 30 November. This was in line with another element of the same Conference decision that the NEC ought to “build unity across UNISON and with other unions to oppose current and proposed detrimental changes to pension rights and, acting within UNISON rules and the law, to support service groups and sectors seeking to co-ordinate official national industrial action in defence of pensions.”

As we put it in the generic “Vote YES” leaflet in the run up to N30; “Changes recently imposed mean your pension is already worth less and you will receive less when you retire. We say enough is enough.” Our pension calculators also drew members’ attention to the implications of the change in uprating our pensions (questions 16 and 17 of the NHS calculator and 14 and 15 of the LGPS calculator). Members I spoke to certainly understood our opposition to the change from RPI to CPI to uprate pensions in payment as part of what we were striking against.

Critically, because the shift from RPI to CPI applies in exactly the same way to all our pension schemes (and to many more beside), a demand around this shift would be one thing which could give us the unity of the trade unions, against the loss of which the Communist Party of Britain rightly warned in yesterday’s Morning Star.

Negotiations around such details as accrual and revaluation rates, as well as employee contributions, must necessarily take place on a scheme by scheme basis because they are scheme specific. This has been a practical difficulty in sustaining trade union unity and has facilitated the Government’s tactic of “divide and rule”.

A unifying demand that the Government reverse the shift from RPI to CPI for uprating pensions would not only unite all public sector workers, but would be in the interests of private sector occupational pensioners and members of other pension schemes in the public and private sectors.

This is not some impossible demand. Although the Office of National Statistics (ONS) denied a Guardian report that they had bowed to pressure from the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) (who have been investigating this topic and has set up a working group) to review the use of CPI for these purposes, the CSPA report that just such a review is taking place (“The Office of National Statistics is working to improve both the RPI and the CPI measures but their work is not expected to be complete until 2013... …The Royal Society of Statisticians is contributing to the ONS work.”).

It is therefore a perfectly credible and reasonable demand that the Government should revert to use of the RPI to uprate pensions (and benefits) whilst the ONS works to develop a better index than either the RPI or the CPI.

I hope that one of the questions which UNISON’s Service Groups will be able to consider on 10 January is whether or not to send our negotiators back to see Danny Alexander and Francis Maude to ask them to reverse George Osborne’s dishonest and unacceptable change in the basis of uprating pensions in payment, and whether or not to prepare for further united industrial action to support them in this demand. As another UNISON NEC member said, before last Xmas, UNISON “will look to take every opportunity to try to reverse” the change to CPI. Now might be the right time to do what we pledged last Xmas.

Accrual rates and revaluation - when is a significant improvement not a significant improvement? Or is it?

2011-12-22T01:35:00.003Z

The Government having got itself out of its pickle we do now have details of the proposals for the Local Government Pension Scheme - but, having spent the evening drafting correspondence for members on that topic, I thought I would turn first of all the proposals for the NHS Pension Scheme.

I particularly want to reflect on the proposition that "an accrual rate of 1/54 uprated by CPI plus 1.5%, represents a significant improvement from the outset of the negotiations".

I wonder about this because when we published our response to the Government's announcement on 2 November we explained their position on career average schemes at that point as follows; "The treasury is proposing that the earnings should be revalued in line with average earning increases up to retirement."

So, at that point, four weeks before our strike, they were offering health workers an accrual rate of 1/60ths with a revaluation rate of average earnings (or, as the Government predict CPI plus 2%).

So - is a career average pension scheme with an accrual rate of 1/54ths and a revaluation rate of CPI plus 1.5% an improvement on a scheme with an accrual rate of 1/60ths and a revaluation rate of CPI plus 2%?

Someone who is better with spreadsheets than I am suggests not.

Of course, anything we get now will be a significant improvment "from the outset of negotiations" because, at the "outset of negotiations" the Government were floating accrual rates of 1/100ths (and our negotiators weren't telling us this at the time). But that was the outset. Anyone who has ever negotiated about anything knows that the eventual settlement is always a long way from the starting positions of either party, and that sometimes you exaggerate your initial position, knowing that.

Health workers took strike action because they were being asked to work longer. They still are (though with a tripartite review for some staff, including those in emergency services).

Health workers took strike action because they were being asked to pay more. That is held off for one year for those below an income threshold. That's all.

Health workers took strike action because they were being asked to accept less when they retired. It's not at all clear that the "Heads of Agreement" make real progress on this point compared to what was already on the table on 2 November.

Whereas local government workers have another year and more to negotiate, the Government wants to rush health workers to make a decision now. Yet while they promise 25 years of certainty, Tory supporters are already plotting the next attack on our pensions.

I haven't read enough yet to have a firm opinion - except that I already have a very firm opinion that we ought not to be rushed to accept anything!

Pickled Eric causes trouble

2011-12-20T17:13:00.003Z

Eric is once more in a pickle, as he is responsible for the local government unions suspending their provisional agreement to the “Heads of Agreement” on the Local Government Pension Scheme agreed only yesterday. This news on the UNISON website echoes less detailed press statements from both GMB and UNITE and is clearly a joint union position.

Whatever did he say?

Update with an answer from a well-informed source who advises reading the Local Government Chronicle for an answer to that question. It seems DCLG got confused about the difference between a cost ceiling and a cap on employer contributions…

Waiting for the details on our pensions

2011-12-20T15:17:00.005Z

Well, we’ve all listened to Danny Alexander prattle on, and the Treasury have announced that Departments will be issuing written ministerial statements with details of the “Heads of Agreement” for each pension fund. Michael Gove has issued the statement for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme and Francis Maude for the Civil Servants. UNISON members are still waiting for the statements on the NHS Pension Scheme (which doesn’t yet appear on the DoH website) and the Local Government Pension Scheme, although this website has the detail and appears to have seen the LGPS statement It’s not up on the CLG website as I write.

We need to see the detail in order to discuss what we do next.

Update at ten to four.

Well, although details are all over the place online, I still can’t find Eric Pickles statement on the LGPS on the CLG website but the GMB are clearly displeased by whatever it says…

Update at four o’clock

Here now on our website are the details for the NHS pension scheme proposals.

Update at ten to five

Hat tip MJ who pointed me to this exchange on the Guardian website which explains why we are waiting for a further letter from pickled Eric on the LGPS;

Q: Was the letter that upset the GMB sent by Eric Pickles?

Yes, says Alexander.

Q: What do you feel about him trying to scupper this deal?

Alexander says the letter was withdrawn. Another letter is being sent.

Update at ten past five

UNITE are angry with Pickled Eric as well…

What is proposed for NHS pensions?

2011-12-19T17:28:00.002Z

We now have some idea of what is being proposed for members in the National Health Service pension scheme. This will be put to the Health Servie Group Executive (SGE) on 10 January, and all UNISON members should be making contact with their SGE members. The devil is, as ever, in the detail we do not yet have. If those earning under £26,000 have been offered one year’s protection from contribution increases, who is paying for this? And what is happening after that year? If we see this dispute simply as a “damage limitation exercise” then perhaps we should encourage ourselves to give away a great deal. If we believe that our reasonable, affordable, sustainable pension schemes deserve defending, maybe we should fight on?
At any event, the decision belongs not to those who have been in the negotiations but to the elected lay members on the Health SGE. UNISON members should lobby those elected by our members to represent their interests.

What is happening with the Local Government Pension Scheme?

2011-12-19T16:30:00.003Z

We now have a circular from UNISON HQ concerning the negotiations with the local government employers in relation to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). This reflects an agreement in principle between unions and employers not to make any increase in pension contributions next year, and not until 2014, with negotiations about the future scheme to be introduced at that time (rather than in 2015) to continue.

None of this is certain. The Government (in the unpleasant person of Eric Pickles) has yet to agree. UNISON’s Service Group Executives (SGEs) will also have their say on 10 January – and UNISON members need to be assisted to communicate their views to SGE members.

The concession from the Government in not increasing contributions from 2012 clearly reflects the reality of the LGPS – as explained in the comments to the Government from Tory Wandsworth Council – that “any saving from increased employee contributions or reduced accrual of pensions would reduce the call on employer contributions at the next triennial valuation of the Pension Fund”.

As Wandsworth point out that “an interim valuation performed at the current time is not supported as it would be likely to increase employer contributions as investment market values have deteriorated and Gilt yields have fallen leading to a reduction in assets and an increase in liabilities”, it becomes clear that the Government’s objective – to take money from the pockets of our members in increased pension contributions in order to channel them in the cause of deficit reduction – is simply unachievable in the LGPS ahead of the triennial actuarial valuation in 2013.

Therefore, there is no point in the Government enforcing increased employee contributions in the LGPS before 2014, as such contributions would merely (horrors!) be paid into our pension scheme and not into George Osborne’s coffers.

The implications of this development require a little thought, but it is clear that the threat to the LGPS is simply postponed. Local Government workers were abandoned by the rest of the public sector in the last round of pension negotiations. If we are to learn from that error we should probably not repay that in kind on this occasion.

100+ MPs back our pensions fight

2011-12-19T15:06:00.000Z

It’s good to see that more than 100 Members of Parliament have now signed up to the Early Day Motion which calls on the Government to come to a reasonable agreement over public sector pensions. This comes after the e-petition opposing the shift from the Retail Price Index(RPI) to the Consumer Price Index(CPI) passed the 100,000 signature hurdle to ensure a debate in Parliament.

We have increasingly solid political and public support to reinforce the evidence of the very effective strike action on 30 November. In assessing whatever we may hear later this afternoon, and deciding how to respond, we should take this into account.

Breaking news - there will be no deal on pensions today

2011-12-19T14:40:00.005Z

In this time of 24 hour “news” everything is reported at breakneck speed, in simplified soundbites that continually convey a sense of dramatic motion. This is certainly the case as we wait to hear from the Public Service Liaison Group meeting at the TUC this afternoon. It can cause a loss of perspective.

The BBC tell us negotiations are “on a knife edge”. There are hints of optimism from the teachers and, again, according to the BBC “there has been some agreement on the scheme affecting local government employees.”

Such reporting encourages some over hasty responses in various quarters. Some of the cries of “sell-out” are, at the very least, premature. (Remember that some comrades predicted that local government would be broken away from the unity of the public sector back in the summer…)

Mind you, the vitriolic response of the anonymous blogger at UNISONActive is at least as sterile as any of the denunciations s/he derides. Even allowing for how upset some of those at the other end of the icepick (as it were) may be at the passing of the “Dear Leader” I worry for the blood pressure of those in our movement who believe the “ultra-left” (as they put it) to be the main problem.

Were I able, I might well be at the lobby this afternoon, in the rain outside Congress House – not to attack or criticise our leaders but to give them the confidence they ought to have that our members are willing and able to fight on if that is what we need for a fair settlement.

It falls to the General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers to make the obvious, calming point that; “It is important to remember that unions are democratic organisations - no deal of this magnitude can be completed behind closed doors. Any outcomes - and there is no proposal on the table yet - will have to go to members and union executives."

As I was saying, in UNISON, this means that the crucial decisionmaking forums will be the Service Group Executives (SGEs), meeting on 10 January. Each SGE member should be making arrangements to take soundings from their constituency, so that when they exercise their responsibility to take a decision on our behalf they know the views of those they represent.

Branches need to engage members in this dialogue, and for this to be both possible and meaningful, the Union needs (even over Xmas) to revise and update our pensions calculators to take account of any revisions in the Government’s position. Any such revision should enable members to compare what is now “on offer” to what was on offer before the 30 November strike, and also to the status quo ante (what we have at the moment).

Whatever we may hear from the purveyors of instant news later today, no deal can have been done, for no UNISON negotiator has a mandate to do any such deal. Our trade union is, in accordance with Rule B.2.2, lay member led, and it is for elected lay members, for good or ill, to make decisions.

Activists in branches need urgently to communicate to members, not so much an opinion about what we are told this afternoon, as encouragement to engage with the process of democratic decision-making over the next three weeks. That said, branches have an absolute right to make recommendations to members both at this point and in the event of any subsequent consultative ballot of members, providing that this is done in accordance with our Union's lay democracy

Update at twenty five past three – read closely what the news report about Health Service Pensions actually said. The headline said “Public sector pensions: 'Deal' on health scheme” – but the detail said “Unison is poised to put an agreement to members of its executive in the new year”. It is up to the Health SGE to take a view – and it is up to every healthworker in UNISON to share their views with their SGE members. Let's look at the detail and make our own minds up!
The elected members of each SGE are listed (subject to subsequent changes) in the report of the outcomes of the last elections.

Pensions dispute - members must decide

2011-12-18T15:00:00.004Z

Looking back on this blog, I recollect that last time I was on strike to defend my pension, members of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) had become isolated from all the other public service pension schemes, took a single day of strike action before “suspending” our action for further negotiations, and ended up with a Special Conference concluding we had got all we could. We had done well, but could have achieved more had we not backed away from further action and lost momentum.

It is, therefore, with a certain sense of déjà vu that I read Friday’s statement from the Secretaries of the trade union side of the National Joint Council concerning the recent negotiations with the Local Government Employers. From this we learn of discussions, which have not touched on the detail of a possible solution, but which, our lead negotiators “believe will lay a positive framework for negotiations, starting in January… ... and potentially could lead to no change until 2014.”

Details of what has been agreed won’t be in the public domain until Tuesday, but a number of employers have published their responses to the current statutory consultation – South Yorkshire Pension Authority are amongst those who make the suggestion that “the short-term changes be withdrawn and instead the proposed long-term changes brought forward by one year to April 2014.”

Since the same consultation response also offers “agreement that Normal Retirement Date should be tied to State Pension Age in the future but not before the new scheme is implemented” it isn’t necessarily the basis upon which, as an LGPS member, I would be hoping that the trade union side would want to proceed.

A framework for negotiations in England and Wales which accepted increases to the retirement date, or left the issue of the index to be used to uprate pensions to be resolved in court, would pose a serious challenge for our Scottish local government members, who struck solidly to resist these two changes, the Scottish Executive having already decided not to impose contribution increases.

I shall refrain from detailed comment until I have some details on which to comment, but I am concerned at the prospect that the Government might succeed in “dividing and ruling” the public sector, and also that we might make the mistake of demobilising our members during negotiations, instead of keeping up the action. This would amount to an unwelcome departure from the resolute leadership UNISON has shown to the pensions dispute over recent months.

As was reported to UNISON’s National Executive Council on 8 December, the negotiators in the different pension schemes need to continue to coordinate between themselves and “UNISON needs to build on the momentum of 30 November, keep the union prepared for any further action if necessary, and keep members - especially those who joined in the run-up to the dispute - involved in the campaign”.

All the relevant service group executives (SGEs) will meet in early January (Tuesday 10^th I believe) to be updated on negotiations and plan for any future industrial action. UNISON members need to be fully informed of what is going on in negotiations, and we then need to take responsibility for conveying our views to the elected members of our SGEs, who will need to take decisions.

It is our elected lay SGEs who have the authority both to guide our negotiators and to determine our tactics in relation to industrial action. Branches face a real challenge to engage with our members on these issues over the holiday period, but it is a challenge to which we now need to rise.

Christmas and Class Struggle

2011-12-16T09:42:00.001Z

On the day of the office party it's good to see Keith Flett in today's Morning Star having a look at the nineteenth century social origins of our Christmas "traditions" (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/113180).

The evolution of the Christmas which we all now know was the product of specific social circumstances of the mid-nineteenth century (also the period in which contemporary gender roles solidified, and in which the labour movement emerged and found some stability). Flett points out that, Christmas as a celebration all but died out after the 1640s and that it was "reinvented for commercial reasons and to co-opt working-class alternatives."

He also, rightly, points out that the festival became part of a process whereby workers began to obtain additional leisure time (even if bank holidays had to wait until the 1870s).

The driving force of the struggle of working people to improve our conditions of existence is all too easily obscured - and I think we should be more eager to claim, which is true, that the Christmas holidays are a product of trade union struggle.

Every day we have off work we have because someone before us fought for it. I hope, this Christmas, our movement lives up to that legacy.

Season's Greetings to you all (particularly regular readers Sid and Doris Blogger).
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Keeping the momentum on pensions

2011-12-15T09:39:00.001Z

It's a little misleading for the Grauniad to imply that an announcement of further strike action over public sector pensions, due today, has been "postponed" (http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/14/public-sector-strikes-postponed?cat=society&type=article).

As reported in the last post on this blog, it was reported to UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) a week ago that it was "too soon" to be naming the date for further action. This was a different approach to that adopted unanimously by the NEC of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) a few days earlier (http://unionfutures.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-debate-about-where-we-go-next-on.html). The UCU position is not dissimilar to views expressed by PCS and the NUT and favours "naming the day(s)" for further action, at least in general terms.

Speaking personally, my preference would be to plan for further action while negotiating, but - at this point - the differences between and within unions are simply tactical. Some fear that if we press ahead with plans for further action immediately we are writing off the very negotiations which we claim as a positive outcome of the unprecedented action taken by our members. This might weaken support from members for further action or lead to weaker unions backing away. It could also jeopardise public support.

Though I do not find these arguments sufficiently convincing, none of them can be written off. Those advancing these arguments are, in general, doing so from the point of view of being every bit as committed to victory as those drawn, as I am, to slightly more combative tactics.

The other worry though - which I share - is that, if we make more than is warranted out of "progress" in negotiations we risk demobilising our members, making further action more difficult to deliver.

Talking up the prospects of a settlement when - for example - all we have in respect of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a constructive dialogue with the employers (rather than the Ministers who are the ultimate decisionmakers) could be hazardous.

A GMB official is quoted in precisely this hazardous way in the Guardian article, whilst UNISON's more cautious comments do less to raise what may well turn out to be false hopes of an early and satisfactory settlement.

The task of local activists, not easy at this time of year, is to maintain the momentum of the dispute by;

Communicating to all members information about the negotiations;

Engaging members in continuing activity as part of the dispute (signing e-petitions, lobbying MPs and leafletting members of the public for example);

Involving members in debate both about how we should respond to any developments in negotiations and also about tactics for further industrial action.

Our General Secretary has said repeatedly, for the best part of a year, that this dispute would not entail only a single day of strike action by UNISON. Nothing I have seen or read before or after 30 November makes me think he has been wrong to say that.

We need to sustain the organisation and motivation of our members to deliver further action.
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Report from last week's UNISON NEC meeting on pensions

2011-12-15T09:02:00.000Z

This is an initial personal report of last week's NEC circulated earlier this week by myself and fellow Greater London NEC member, Helen Davies.

An official report of the meeting is available online at http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7483.

The most important discussion at the meeting of our National Executive Council (NEC) on Thursday 8 December concerned the pensions dispute and our assessment of the action on 30 November and what we should do next.

We are therefore circulating this report (about that debate) now and will cover other issues in a subsequent report.

Our General Secretary, Dave Prentis, led the debate on pensions and commenced with the observation that 30 November had been the proudest moment of his career. He stressed the work that had been done by many members, activists, officials and employees over many months.

We had cleaned up our membership data so that we had faced no legal challenges and had balloted first so as to set the scene for all the smaller ballots which came after us. We had also won the argument for there to be a multitude of demonstrations across the UK rather than a single national demonstration.

Our action on 30 November had led to a reopening of negotiations by the Government and employers. Teaching unions had been invited to talks the day after the strike and civil servants on the following day. There had been discussions with the local government employers since the strike and in the health service on the day before - and the day of - the NEC.

The General Secretary made clear that we had rejected the "offer" from Andrew Lansley to stall pension contribution increases for lower paid health workers for just one year (at the expense of other health workers!) He made clear that the dispute would be directed following a meeting at the TUC on 15 December (which he will chair) and that negotiations on the four main pension schemes (health, local government, teachers and civil servants) will be coordinated so we don't get picked off one by one.

The Chair of our Policy Committee, who also chairs the Service Group Liaison Committee (SGLC), then reported from a lengthy meeting of the SGLC on the previous day. It was vital that we maintained the momentum and enthusiasm from 30 November and to do this we needed to increase, rather than simply maintain, our communication with our members.

The negotiations which had started since the strike were at a preliminary stage and it was too soon to "name a date" for further action if we were to maintain the vital unity of the trade unions. However, we need all Service Groups to bring forward their meetings to early January, leading to a further "pensions summit" very early in the New Year. An extended meeting of the Service Group Liaison Committee is scheduled for 11 January to consider progress in negotiations and options for further industrial action.

We also need Regions to convene urgent meetings of Regional Service Groups and (where, as in London, they exist) Regional Service Group Liaison Committees so that the views of members can be fed into the debate about "what we do next" if we do not secure adequate concessions from the Government (which seems unlikely).

Subsequent discussion focused on minor disagreements since no one needed to reiterate the overwhelming support for the essence of what had been said. One school of thought (with which we had sympathy) was to "name the day" - or at least the month - for further all-out national action.

The contrary view was not to go for further all-out national action "too soon". This was reinforced by those who felt that - constitutionally - the NEC ought not to seek to direct our autonomous Service Group Executives (SGEs).

There was also some discussion about other options for action short of all-out national action, such as regional rolling programmes of all-out action, selective (or so-called "smart") action and action short of strike action. No compelling case was made for these more limited forms of action.

In the end, in line with the ruling of our President, the NEC did not take a vote about this, but there was clearly a consensus to support the implicit need for further strike action should the Government not back down.

It is equally clear that we need branch activists engaged in campaigning amongst our members for support for further action should that be required. It is vitally important that we do not lose momentum in this dispute through December.

Right now we can encourage members to sign the e-petition against the attack on uprating of future pensions and can also urge members to lobby their MPs to support us in seeking meaningful negotiations to resolve the dispute.

Here are the relevant links to pass on to UNISON members in branches;

For information about how to challenge the change from using the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the less generous Consumer Price Index (CPI) to uprate our pensions once we retire go to http://www.unison.org.uk/pensions/popchallenge.asp and sign the e-petition online at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1535. There are already more than 95,000 signatures and we need 100,000 for a debate in Parliament.

For details of the Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled by Dave Anderson MP, calling for meaningful negotiations to resolve the pension dispute, and which you can ask your MP to sign go to http://www.unison.org.uk/labourlink/pages_view.asp?did=13813. You can read the EDM itself at http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/2228 and also read a list of the MPs who have signed it. If your MP has not yet signed the EDM you can contact them to ask them to do so. To contact your MP (or find out who they are if you don't know) go to http://www.theyworkforyou.com/.

Our Region clearly needs to call new and additional meetings for branches ahead of existing timetables, so that we can discuss how to defend our pensions, following the lead of our national union.

Best wishes,

Helen Davies
Branch Chair, Barnet UNISON
UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) member Greater London Region

Jon Rogers,
Branch Secretary, UNISON Lambeth local government branch
UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) member Greater London Region

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Looking ahead

2011-12-13T09:17:00.001Z

As we grapple with how to sustain the momentum of the pensions dispute whilst (in local government) anticipating another vicious budget round with massive job losses, it is all too easy to get lost in the detail of the massive economic crisis which is crashing around us. The never-ending round of job losses and reorganisations is enough to drain the most energetic activists.

It's helpful then to step back a little to see the bigger picture, as Robert Griffiths does in today's Morning Star (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/113056). Whilst I'm not entirely convinced that the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain has quite joined all the dots between resistance to austerity in the here and now and the overthrow of capitalism by the working class, that hardly discredits a sound analysis of the (frustratingly) slow but steady progress being made in the trade unions.

(I imagine the "British Road to Socialism" as a winding country lane very little of which is visible ahead as you travel along it).

Griffiths is right to point out that 2011 has seen the slow awakening of our movement to the need to resist, and also to point out that our trade unions - even the TUC - have adopted sensible and progressive economic policies which, if implemented, would begin to turn the tide of attacks upon working people.

Unfortunately, we lack a political party prepared to advocate such policies at present - those Labour politicians prepared unequivocally to back our resistance to austerity are all too few and far between (http://l-r-c.org.uk/press/labour-mps-and-councillors-back-30-november-strike-and-say-we-wont-cross-pi/).

If 2011 has been the year the trade unions woke up, we need 2012 to be the year in which we shift the Labour Party on to our side. This is particularly challenging for those of us having to resist the implementation of cuts by Labour politicians believing that they have no alternative.

Regular readers of this blog, Sid and Doris Blogger, will have appreciated that I haven't written this because I have any particular answer or insight, but just because my journey into work has been prolonged this morning. For now all we can do is build the strength of the union as best we can to resist as many attacks as possible.
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Solidarity with HMRC

2011-12-12T08:49:00.001Z

Solidarity with PCS members in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) staging walkouts in opposition to privatisation and draconian sickness management today (http://union-news.co.uk/2011/12/a-date-with-data-%e2%80%93-tax-officials-strike-today/).

Tax collectors may not be the most popular public servants, but their work is vital to providing the resources on which all our services ultimately depend. While ordinary staff struggle to keep the show on the road after tens of thousands of job losses in recent years (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/9EC48325-6B49-4545-A96B97C09980A23B), their boss - notorious for losing us billions in deals with corporations trying to avoid tax (http://m.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/06/hmrc-tax-deal-vodafone?cat=money&type=article) - is retiring on a pension many times larger than they can look forward to (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/09/revenue-chief-retires-goldman-sachs?cat=politics&type=article).

It seems somehow fitting that someone who came to public attention by proving that there really is one law for the rich and one law for the rest should himself benefit from that same phenomenon.

In the mean time though, ordinary employees working in HMRC have to stand up for themselves and all trade unionists should wish them well.
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Breakaway Lemming chooses independent suicide?

2011-12-11T23:58:00.001Z

The TUC's Touchstone blog provides the best concise overview of Cameron's ineffective veto (http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/12/criminalising-keynesianism-not-why-cameron-deployed-his-veto/).

The 26 European nations which have wilfully isolated themselves from Her Brittanic Majesty's United Kingdom aim to sign up to a deal which prohibits reflation - a deal for no growth and less stability. That's not in the interests of Europe's working class. It will also collapse the economy of Europe for years. Merkozy are leading 26 lemmings in a fiscal suicide pact. This is what Nick Clegg wants to join, and Mister Ed is wrong to agree with him.

But call me Dave didn't reject this project to protect workers in the UK - on the contrary his plan to appease the little Englanders on his backbenches is all about trying to "repatriate" powers to exploit us even more outrageously than the European norm. With real wages falling, the Chambers of Commerce and Rotarians who are the backbone of the Tory Party want to take yet more profits out of the workers, ignorant of the fact that this will restrain domestic demand and push us firmly back into recession.

Dave is just the lonely lemming, choosing a different cliff to jump off but heading in essentially the same direction.
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Everyone deserves a decent pension - solidarity with Unilever strikers

2011-12-09T09:59:00.000Z

Before yesterday's meeting of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) got underway, the very first thing the NEC did, at the request of our General Secretary, was to send a message of support to workers at Unilever, striking today to defend their pensions (http://union-news.co.uk/2011/12/unilever-pensions-strike-dont-wash-our-retirement-plans-down-the-drain/).

Unilever is a profitable global giant which makes Persil, Marmite and Pot Noodles but it claims it cannot afford decent pensions for UK workers who help make its profits. The company's European Works Council has expressed solidarity with the strikers (http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unilever_s_european_workers_jo.aspx).

1,700 UNITE members are striking today alongside approximately 650 members of GMB and USDAW. They deserve the support of all trade unionists in this important defensive struggle. Pensions are deferred pay whether you receive them from a private company or a public sector body.

Whilst the task of the moment is to defend what pension provision we have, whether in the public or private sectors, we need to think also about the policy demands which our movement should make to try to achieve decent pensions for all.

Jerry Jones, in the Morning Star last week, made a cogent case for a single, independently administered, Government-backed "pay as you go" defined benefit pension for all employees (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/content/view/full/112556). An alternative would be to open up "admitted body" status in the Local Government Pension Scheme to any private employer able to pay their way (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2010/04/son-of-frs17-and-lgps.html?m=1). For the sake of our members in the private and voluntary sectors who don't have decent pensions, as much as for the wider unity of our class we need to develop and promote a policy to provide dignity in retirement for all citizens.

My favourite UNISON placard in our current campaign is the one that says "Everyone Deserves a Decent Pension" - and it is because we must give effect to this sentiment that our NEC was right to send solidarity to the Unilever strikers - and we will be right to think further about what we would want a future Government to do when drafting Conference motions for 2012.
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Eric in a Pickle about wasting public money

2011-12-08T18:22:00.001Z

Before starting work on a report from today's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) I checked a lottery ticket and found that Lady Luck had once more saved me from the moral dilemma of what to do with the winnings.

A Stephen Park of Capita has a better way than buying lottery tickets though. He was paid more than half a million quid for little more than a year's work (http://m.lgcplus.com/5038762.article).

Who paid him this? Well it was the Department ruled by that paragon of prudence Eric Pickles. Mr Pickles is keen to lecture local authorities on the need to cut back - a subject about which he would have us believe he knows his (pickled) onions.

He now looks a right wally (a pickled gherkin or cucumber - http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question45843.html). Poor Eric has no idea how to economise with public funds!

He could do worse than take a leaf out of the book of Lambeth's Labour Council, which has reduced the number of agency workers and consultants from 800 to 250 in the last couple of years.

Will this grotesque mismanagement give Mr Pickles pause for thought before he next lectures local authorities?

No?

I thought not.
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Branches under Regional Supervision - normal service to be resumed as soon as possible!

2011-12-07T15:59:00.000Z

As usual, today's meeting of the Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) received a report on the small number of UNISON branches taken into "regional supervision" for a variety of reasons.

In the majority (7 out of 12) of UNISON's Regions no branches are currently in regional supervision. In another four Regions just one branch is under supervision and all have been under supervision for less than a year.

In Greater London, three branches are under supervision - all three having been thus for more than eighteen months. Regular readers of this blog, Sid and Doris Lay-Democrat, may recall previous posts on this vexed question.

Today, however, the Committee received some good news arising from the proactive approach taken by the Committee Chair to ensuring the accountability to the NEC of the supervision process in the Greater London Region.

The Newham branch, still under partial supervision since first having been taken into supervision in 2008, will finally and definitively emerge from supervision after the branch Annual General Meeting which will take place in the first quarter of 2012.

The Greenwich branch, taken into supervision in March 2010, will also emerge from supervision following an Annual General Meeting which will take place later in 2012.

These two sizeable, and previously effective and well-organised, London borough branches certainly need to be restored to the normal democratic control of their members as soon as possible.

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Development and Organisation Committee report

2011-12-07T14:44:00.000Z

I will draft a fuller report of today's meeting of the Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) for London branches.

In the mean time, here are the edited highlights!

Recruitment of new members in the run up to the pensions strike has been record-breaking. We recruited far more than twice as many new members this November as last November.

The Committee discussed the vital importance of retaining members in the coming months, recognising that this might depend upon the future progress of the pensions dispute - and that the key thing for us to do is improve further our communications with our members.

We went on to receive an update on learning and organising activity, including on our bid to the Union Learning Fund. We received a brief verbal update on the ongoing review of self-organisation and a detailed and valuable report on data protection issues which will found further guidance to branches.

The Committee held its annual debate on the scheme of representation for branches at National Delegate Conference, where we have seen a declining attendance of low paid members as delegates in spite of increasingly vigorous application of a scheme designed with opposite intent.

A sound point was made that the real problem here is with organisation of, and participation by, members at branch level - since proportionality and fair representation should be for life (not just for Conference).

As well as endorsing the timetable for the forthcoming elections to Service Group Executives and the template for next year's Branch Assessments, the Committee received an update on branches under regional supervision, with which I will deal in the next post.
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Can we buck the market?

2011-12-07T00:19:00.001Z

My old mate Nick asks reasonably "who's in charge?" (http://lawatwork.blogspot.com/2011/12/who-is-in-control.html) a question about the power of credit rating agencies which is also troubling an anonymous blogger over at UNISON Active (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/12/full-viewback-to-messagesbarometers-of.html).

UNISON Active link to an interesting report from the Council for Foreign Relations which runs through the role and criticisms of the credit rating agencies (http://www.cfr.org/united-states/credit-rating-controversy/p22328). Government's want to criticise the credit rating agencies when their assessments prove unhelpful, and some of their judgements can certainly be criticised - but the problem is systemic and not about this or that wrong decision.

The credit rating agencies appear as agents on behalf of investors and therefore a manifestation of the power of the disembodied "market" or "markets", entities which now appear to have more power than even the mightiest states. This though is an example of what Marx called "commodity fetishism" - the perception of social relations between people as if they were relations between people and things. It serves a purpose.

If a Government says to its people; "we must cut your wages and your welfare because the markets dictate this" then those who oppose them can be labelled "deficit-deniers", unrealistic fools who do not know that there is no alternative to balancing a budget.

But of course a "market" cannot know, or say, or want anything. Those who dictate attacks on wages (and the social wage) by supposedly sovereign states are not abstract concepts (things) but real people - global capitalists, and their agents, for whom profit is the ultimate expression of their attenuated humanity. The credit rating agencies are merely tools used by our increasingly globalised ruling class.

It's not "the markets" who require austerity, it is unimaginably wealthy people who see in this crisis an opportunity to consolidate their wealth and power at the expense of those whose labour created all that wealth.

Why does this matter to a tuppeny-ha'penny lay union activist trying to think globally while acting locally? Well, if we are going to resist local spending cuts in a globalised economy in which the apparent impossibility of even "social democracy in one country" means that our "party of the left" swallows the lie that we have to please "the markets" then every shop steward needs to become an economist.

Working people need an alternative to this failing capitalist system and our trade unions are the only tools in our hands until we can reclaim our Party.

I look forward to a world in which nations get a "triple A" rating for high levels of literacy, low levels of infant mortality and for the democratic and civil rights of the people! In the mean time, all we can do is resist.
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Time to reverse rising inequality

2011-12-06T08:48:00.001Z

The headline story on today's Morning Star doesn't seem to be online yet (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news) but it's the best take on the OECD figures which show inequality increasing faster in the UK than in any other wealthy country (widely reported elsewhere - http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE7B40HB20111205?irpc=932).

The earnings share of the top percentile (the highest paid 1%) has doubled from 7.1% of all income to 14.3% now. This isn't a phenomenon of the recession alone - from 2003 to 2008 as the economy grew by 11% the median wage was static (http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/growth-without-gain-faltering-living-standards-peo/). This demonstrates that in the "good times" the goodies were going to those above the average.

Now though, with the fine excuse of a deficit to pay down, and with the tools of pay freezes, tuition fees and attacks on pensions, benefits and public services in the hands of a right-wing Cabinet (most of whom are comfortably at the top of the income distribution), it is those on low and middle incomes, who derived least benefit from the "good" years, who are to be made to pay during the lean years.

Underpinning these developments has been the increase in the share of profit (and concomitant reduction in the share of wages) in our national income since the mid 1970s (http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/government-policies-will-further-squeeze-the-wages-of-ordinary-workers). The decline in the share of wages mirrors to some extent, and is clearly associated with the decline in trade union membership and density over the past thirty years (which resumed last year - http://strongerunions.org/2011/05/03/trade-union-membership-2010/).

If we don't reverse the growing inequality in the UK then there is little hope that consumer expenditure can contribute to economic recovery (unless we can base our economy on the production of yachts for the rich!) To turn the tide we need to strengthen the industrial wing of our movement and reclaim our political wing for the ideas of equality and redistribution.

The alternative policies which are required were spelt out by UNISON two years ago (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=1670).

With recruitment well up in recent weeks and months as a result of the popularity of our defence of pensions and opposition to austerity, UNISON in particular has a historic opportunity to try to reverse a generation of widening inequality. The Labour Party needs to follow this lead.
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Shattered!

2011-11-30T16:47:00.002Z

I am sooo tired. The only person around me who seems more tired is my son, who has been picketing, rallying and marching since half past six this morning, and was one part of three generations of my family on this afternoon's London demonstration.

This close to the action in a major strike any assessment of what we are achieving can only be both parochial and impressionistic. On that basis I stand by what I said in Windrush Square in Brixton just before noon.

This has been our strongest strike in 25 years. Whilst we have areas of weakness - and much work to do before the further action which is an inevitable consequence of our seriousness about this dispute - we have brought out more strikers, and mobilised more pickets, than for many years.

Let today be the turning point that it has the potential to be!
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Solidarity Forever - with every Tom, Dick and Sally!

2011-11-29T20:01:00.001Z

One of the many positive and inspiring things about the build up to tomorrow's strike has been the support shown by community anti-cuts campaigners.

Local people with no direct stake in our pension schemes have shown a clear political understanding of the importance of our dispute to the overall balance of what we 80s lefties still refer to as "class forces".

Some of our officials (having been brought up on the wrong side of the icepick as it were) have fits of the vapours at the thought of non-members joining picket lines - particularly if (horrors!) they may have "their own political agenda".

Everyone has "their own political agenda" and the world is divided between those who recognise and are honest about this and those who don't and either aren't honest or simply do as they are told by others.

Those whose "political agenda" is to defend the Welfare state and trade unionism are our natural allies. Their agenda is, in essence, the agenda of the trade unions.

This dispute is therefore very much a dispute for every "Tom, Dick and Sally" (as I have heard it put by an eloquent if politically immature individual) and if members of the local community wish to visit our picket lines tomorrow to express their support they should be made welcome (and certainly not as if they were "chaff" to be sorted from the "wheat" of striking workers).

This applies even if someone wishing to support the picket line tries to sell you a copy of "Socialist Worker" or "the Socialist" or any one of a dozen other such titles. (Copies of the Morning Star will be available free to Londoners at Lincoln's Inn Fields - but you should buy it if asked as they need the money!)

If you don't want to buy a leftwing paper all you have to do is say "no thankyou". Those of our members who have the gumption to picket can be relied upon to deal with that for themselves.

Our enemies are in Downing Street, and amongst Cameron's paymasters in the City. They are not to be found behind pasting tables full of wordy leaflets trying to sell socialist newspapers to largely uninterested shoppers outside a tube station.

Our picket lines are our own and are controlled by workers on strike. Other supporters are welcome if they accept our leadership of our own dispute. On a strike day, even more than any other day, we have "no enemies to the left."

I can't speak for every union official (and I wouldn't want to) but "Tom, Dick and Sally" are welcome on our picket lines!
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Remember, remember the THIRTIETH of November!

2011-11-29T15:45:00.000Z

The last bulk email has been sent.

The individual exemption letters for those providing emergency "life and limb" cover have been issued.

Shop stewards, activists and ordinary union members are explaining, persuading and cajoling wavering colleagues.

Picket rotas have been drawn up - and picket co-ordinators are worrying about not having enough people first thing.

Unions are working together as never before. (Our branch office (away from the employers' premises) is hosting flags, placards and leaflets for both GMB and UNITE.)

Today Gideon told me he wants to cut my real pay for a further two years and make me work a year longer even than was previously proposed.

Tomorrow we have an unprecedented opportunity to reply to a Government of millionaire public schoolboys intent on destroying our Welfare State.

As one of our stewards said at the mobilising meeting hosted by our Trades Council last night, we will make history tomorrow.

Let's hope that a generation of retreat and defeat is at an end!

Good luck, comrades.
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Which side are you on?

2011-11-29T07:52:00.004Z

It's good to see Labour MPs and Councillors pledging to stand on, rather than cross, picket lines tomorrow (http://l-r-c.org.uk/press/labour-mps-and-councillors-back-30-november-strike-and-say-we-wont-cross-pi/).

Hat tip MJ.

Tomorrow's strike is a moment to choose sides. Those who want a decent, fair society which takes responsibility for the old, the sick and the poor, will support striking public servants.

Those who want above all else a market economy which rewards some at the expense of others and let's the devil take the hindmost will support the Thatcherite Government.

Between these two positions there is precious little political space, just perhaps a narrow fence, full of splinters, from the top of which the Shadow Cabinet gaze nervously down at the real world outside the Westminster bubble.
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Different models of leadership?

2011-11-28T22:31:00.001Z

Today we have witnessed two different models of leadership in our movement.

On the one hand, the purported leader of the alleged opposition says all strikes are failures (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/labour-strike-miliband).

On the other hand, our General Secretary calls, clearly and unequivocally, for further action in the new year if the Government do not relent from a multi-billion cash grab from the reasonable and affordable pensions of public servants (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/28/unison-strikes-new-year-prentis?CMP=twt_gu).

To describe all strikes as "failures" (as Mr Ed does) is to commit a fallacy which would shame even a talking horse (http://www.google.com/m/url?channel=browser&client=ms-rim&ei=pwXUTpC-L4Ly8QOlvwE&hl=en&oe=UTF-8&q=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DWLR4iZJLgc4&ved=0CBEQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGPBsPOJYV7YaVrG00YQUlD0NdASw)

A strike is a collective manifestation of the structural conflict of interest which necessarily exists - in a capitalist society - between employer and employee. As long as social relations are structured as at present, strikes will be an occasional, inevitable feature of our working lives.

Only someone with no knowledge or understanding of the world of work could say that all strikes are a sign of failure.

They are a sign of conflict, to be sure. But two points need to be considered.

First, conflict is embedded in the "DNA" of a society in which the minority, owning and controlling the "means of production" can monopolise the surplus produced by those with no option but to sell their labour to pay their bills. If, in these circumstances, conflict is to be viewed as a failure it must surely be seen as a systemic failure, calling for structural (even revolutionary) social change.

Secondly, collective struggle may be far from the most pernicious expression of such conflict. It may be that, in the absence of strike action to address a conflict of interest between employer and employee, individual workers will resign, go sick or simply stop working to the best of their abilities.

Such individuated expression of dissatisfaction may well have more lasting negative consequences for an employing organisation than the "short sharp shock" of strike action.

Therefore, strike action is best seen not as a "failure" but as a diagnostic tool to help identify problems which an organisation needs to resolve.

Are you listening at the back?

Maude and Alexander! Stop chatting and let the rest of the class know that you have been paying attention!

And you, Miliband Minor, do try to keep up!

If I were a teacher having to deal with this shower I should certainly be striking.
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It's not 99% (yet) but it's a majority

2011-11-28T09:21:00.001Z

Opinion poll evidence that public opinion is three to two in favour of Wednesday's strike action (http://www.comres.co.uk/poll/569/bbc-five-live-economic-barometer-survey.htm) is certainly welcome.

A poll for the BBC shows that 61% believe we are justified to strike on Wednesday whilst 36% oppose us and 3% don't know. The same poll shows that the Government's handling of the economy is approved of by just 28%.

(For a historical comparison with the last major showdown between the trade unions and a Tory Government, in 1984 the miners had uncritical support from about 12%, with some support from another 35% - http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=640).

This level of support for our forthcoming strike action is all the more impressive since we have the positive support of just one major daily newspaper - the Mirror (http://m.mirror.co.uk/) (which also reports the possibility of sunshine on Wednesday, so even their weather forecast is sympathetic to the workers).

Supporters of the Coalition Government's attempt to turn an economic crisis into a political opportunity to reshape society in the interests of the wealthy and powerful (who are, of course, responsible for the crisis) may have overplayed their hand. To see the smooth plump faces of privilege lecturing the careworn low paid public servants may be less persuasive than Messrs Maude and Alexander had hoped.

Credit is due to our leadership - and press office - for consistent explanation of our case (and for the press adverts running today - http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2532).

Equal credit must go to the untold thousands who have heeded the call to speak with family and friends, to use social media in our support, to write to local press and vote in online polls.

Now - on the antepenultimate day - we need to use this clear evidence of public support in our final push to consolidate the willingness of members to strike.

(Those Labour politicians who can't - yet - bring themselves to support us [http://www.edmiliband.org/] may feel that today is a day for silent reflection).
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Blairite blogger attacks us while Tory voters join us on picket lines

2011-11-27T21:00:00.001Z

As the lifelong Conservative supporting Headteacher, praised by Cameron for opening her school on 30 June prepares to join Wednesday's strike (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15909788) it is disappointing to see that there are some anti-union Blairite ultras in Labour's ranks still fighting imagined battles from the distant past.

Someone claiming to be Alex White says Labour mustn't support strikes because the party needs the support of the electorate not trade unionists (http://labourlist.org/2011/11/labour-backed-strikes-not-in-my-name/).

In an analysis that my "O" level politics teacher would have returned with a lot of red ink this unfortunately ill-informed blogger says that unions are out of date and need the Party more than it needs them (a view from which the Party Treasurer might dissent perhaps?)

However the conclusion of this second rate opinion piece is truly breathtaking, and is as follows; "Like it or not, this coalition was voted in. They have a mandate. Do the unions speak for the electorate? Of course not. When they do, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?"

To get so many things wrong in so few words is quite an achievement. Neither the Tory nor Lib Dem manifestos justify the assertion that the Government has any sort of mandate for its cash grab on our affordable and reasonable pension schemes. (By this logic the Opposition ought not to oppose but should simply wait for the next election).

As for whether or not unions speak for "the electorate" - I think it is important to remember that people don't come to life only at election time in order to comprise "the electorate". In between time we live as workers, consumers (even bloggers!)

For the great majority of us who have to work if we are to pay our bills (the group which we "old fashioned" socialists sometimes describe as the working class), the trade unions very much exist to express our interests. UNISON speaks up for the public services that comprise the social wage upon which working people depend, not only for the pay and conditions of our members.

Rather than echoing Murdoch's Sun in 1992 ("will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?"), this dismal Blairite blogger would be better advised to lie down in a darkened room so they can get over their shock at working people standing up for our rights. (Or prepare to join a picket line and get the political education they have so far missed out on!)
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Working together to act locally on pensions

2011-11-27T13:56:00.000Z

The imminence of Wednesday’s strike makes all of us who are branch activists focus parochially on our local preparations. Every local paper turns our national dispute into a local story, and in every locality there is work underway to coordinate and prepare.

I was most struck to be contacted, at Sunday lunchtime, by a Regional Official, helping to ensure that our local health and local government branches were co-ordinating our work on the strike day effectively.

This is an important development in UNISON’s maturity (now our Union is more than eighteen years old!) It will augur well for the further action which will be necessary beyond 30 November.

When even the TUC General Secretary has to defend strike action it is obvious that our movement has reached a decisive moment.

Whilst we always need to be thinking globally, now is a time to act locally.

What can Labour MPs actually do to help us?

2011-11-27T01:53:00.000Z

In calling upon Labour Parliamentarians to support us in the struggle to defend our pensions, what is it that they can actually do?

Well it may be that there will soon be regulations against which they will have to be asked to “pray” – but in the mean time they can sign up to Early Day Motions (EDMs) a sort of petition for MPs. There are two recent such.

EDM 2228, tabled by Dave Anderson MP sets out the trade union case to defend public service pensions with great clarity. EDM 2183, tabled by John McDonnell MP, calls upon Parliamentarians to support us in taking strike action by joining (rather than crossing) our picket lines.

MPs who want to support our cause should clearly be encouraged to sign both motions, as well as giving clear public expressions of support for our cause to local media.

Concentrating upon the political expression of the economics of the pensions dispute

2011-11-27T01:29:00.002Z

Some bald Russian bloke once said that politics is the concentrated expression of economics. In current circumstances that means that the lamentable failure of the “leader” of the Labour Party to align himself with the vital struggle of the trade unions next Wednesday is a concentrated expression of the devastating setbacks being experienced by workers in the real economy.

These are laid bare brilliantly by Income Data Services (IDS) in their blog, as follows;

“In the year to April 2011, the median gross annual earnings for full-time employees were £26,200, an increase of 1.4 per cent compared with £25,900 in 2010.” (This compares with price increases running around 5%, and shows that overall the decline in real wages is continuing).

“This year’s ASHE (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings) survey reveals some remarkably low movements in earnings over the year to April 2011. For example, the hourly earnings, excluding overtime, for full-time employees at the bottom decile grew by just 0.1 per cent to £7.01 an hour, compared with growth of 1.8 per cent at the top decile to £26.75 an hour. There is an overall stretching of the earnings distribution towards the top end.” (So we are all, on average, getting poorer, but the poorest workers are getting poorer fastest).

“The overall salary movement of 1.4 per cent is for those people who were in continuous employment between April 2010 and April 2011. The picture is bleaker if all full-time employees are included, including those changing jobs or re-entering the labour market. For this larger group, median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £501, up just 0.4 per cent from £499 in 2010.” (So workers who are losing their jobs are generally only getting back into employment by accepting lower pay than they were previously earning).

As IDS conclude, with remarkable restraint; “The reduction in the real value of wages and salaries is without precedent in the modern era and is the major cause of the consumer caution which is inhibiting economic recovery.”

Whilst the lamentable politics of the Labour “leader” may be a concentrated expression of these depressing economic realities, we can only change those realities if we can change the politics of the Labour “leader”. The Labour Party needs to support the working class fighting back against austerity.

For public service workers, well into a multi-year pay freeze, the further assault upon our living standards consequent upon the Government's plans to destroy our pension funds doesn't just add salt to our wounds, it deepens them considerably. We really do now have "scars on our backs" from defending public services, and we expect politicians who seek our support to support us now as we make a necessary stand.

At least in relation to Wednesday’s strike action, Alan Johnson has this right. So does Ian Davidson. So does Lambeth Labour Group. It isn’t just those of us on the left of the Labour Party.

The Government have declared class war upon us and we need both the political and industrial wings of our movement to mobilise effectively against them. The practical and legal restrictions upon mobilising nationally against cuts in jobs and services that fall locally have meant that the trade union movement has had to coalesce around the attack on public service pensions – and we need and are entitled to the support of any politician who calls themselves “Labour”.

We need to reverse the economic attacks upon our class, but to do this we need political power, and to achieve this we need to completely recondition the Party built a century ago for that purpose.

Wednesday is a time to choose sides. All Labour politicians need to realise this.

The urgent need for better education

2011-11-27T00:42:00.000Z

If ever there were a need to prove the point that this country needs to invest more in education, it would be provided by the lamentable quality of “research” from the Tory Tax Dodgers Alliance, whose latest contribution to understanding of the world of work is to have yet another go at the supposed “cost” of trade union facility time.

They are concerned that the public sector (where their “research” – which involves taxpayers to pay for information for them through Freedom of Information requests – has identified a weak foundation for wild assessments of the total cost of trade union facility time) has more strikes than the private sector.

This, they think, rebuts the counter argument from Dave Prentis, who has rightly argued that the role of trade union representatives in the workplace is, as the Donovan Commission held more than forty years ago, more a lubricant than an irritant. There is also contemporary evidence of the benefits to organisations in the public and private sector of effective trade union representations.

If the author of the reactionary twaddle published by the cheerleaders of the Tory Right had ever had a proper job he might have a little more understanding as to why the presence of union organising in the workplace may be associated with evidence of collective struggle (including industrial action) – and that this doesn’t necessarily mean that organisations with less collective organisation (and less struggle) are better performing.

Still, we mere workers mustn’t be sniffy about clueless intellectuals. We should offer them some suggestions to the author in question. He could read up a bit on “exit, voice and loyalty” for example and think about how that might apply to the performance of public and private sector employers.

If the “libertarian” right (whose concern never seems to be for the liberty or dignity of working people or the poor) were ever to achieve their fantasy of workplaces free from effective collective organisation, they would simply see that indices of individual discontent would rise. The production of complex services requires from much of the workforce a positive engagement and informed consent which cannot be achieved simply by diktat.

The agenda of the right is not about improving the performance (or “value for money”) of public services, but about hobbling the trade unions to weaken a bulwark against their attack upon our Welfare State.

The only taxpayers they care about are the ones who never earned their money in the first place.

Daily Malice attacks all the wrong targets

2011-11-25T15:29:00.001Z

The Daily Mail has done our movement a service by writing a comment piece which brings together every reactionary stereotype you could hope for in order to attack next Wednesday's strike (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2065930/Public-sector-strikes-Bullies-expose-ministerial-weakness.html?ito=feeds-newsxml).

First the "journalist" who wrote the comment regurgitates uncritically the Government's unsubstantiated claim about the likely cost to the economy of the forthcoming action.

Then they move on to the blame game. The real culprits are - of course - the trade union leaders who are "antediluvian monsters" - to be described as "antediluvian" by the house journal of English bigotry and xenophobia must be an accolade which will be welcomed as much by Tyrranosaurus Prentis as by the Serwotkasaurus.

There are, however, other villains.

Ed Miliband is in the frame because he has refused to condemn us. (Because we would dutifully surrender the pensions we have paid for all our working lives if a Labour Leader told us to?)

The BBC are also to blame apparently - because Ministers are running scared of being seen to be anti-union in that quarter. (This is odd as I seem to remember that the BBC have their own disputes with their own unions).

The Liberal Democrats too are responsible for our strike action ("the usual disagreements between the different halves of the Coalition pantomime horse" weakening the Government negotiators according to the Daily Malice).

But if Danny Alexander is partly to blame according to the Mail so is "Francis Maude — the wettest of wet Tories — (who, we are told, has) failed to heed the many warnings that, if Britain is not to be held to ransom by a small number of hard-left bullies, it must pass laws insisting on a minimum turnout for a strike ballot to be valid."

So, everyone is to blame apart from the Mail's preferred wing of the Tory Party (who have in fact initiated this dispute).

Also missing from the "analysis" offered by a paper which surely now struggles to justify being described as "middlebrow" is any sense that the coming strike arises from the reasonable and informed decisions of hundreds of thousands of workers, the great majority of whom are women - and many tens of thousands of whom are Mail readers.

Trade unionists should comment on this shoddy and ill-informed comment in a national newspaper.
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Ed - we'll join you if you join us!

2011-11-25T14:53:00.001Z

I've just had an email from Ralph Miliband's less right-wing son (http://t.taomail.co.uk/w/116567/16921/99/28/4735942/4735942/7d2155/).

He's asking me to join him petitioning and campaigning tomorrow around Labour's Plan for Jobs and Growth (http://www.labour.org.uk/youth-petition?utm_source=taomail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Campaign-116567&tmtid=116567-16921-123307-99-28-4735942).

I'll tell you what Ed.

You bring your petition on to our picket lines when you support our strike to defend our fair and affordable pensions on Wednesday and we'll sign it there.

While you're at it tell the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party to do likewise.

You can follow the local example of Streatham CLP who last night voted to support us - or of Scottish Deputy Leadership candidate Ian Davidson (http://ian4deputy.org/) whose solid position on the pensions dispute is gaining backing across the Party.

Or look up the definition of "Labour" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=labour).
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Gearing up for action

2011-11-25T01:24:00.001Z

As local government employers prepare for the massive strike action which is almost upon us, Dave Prentis is right to acknowledge that this strike will be unlike the stereotypical strikes of the past – and to emphasise that we may have to take further action beyond 30 November.

According to the Grauniad, Dave Prentis declined to rule out more strikes if talks failed. "Members did not just vote for action on 30 November. They have voted for action full stop. If our members believe they want to take further industrial action if an offer from the government is not good enough, then we're in a position to take that action." This is a serious statement of intent from our leadership.

With the Government reduced to imagining reasons to oppose our strike – in part because they have failed adequately to prepare – now is the time to be clear and firm about the need, both to maximise strike action on 30 November, and to discuss honestly with our members the likely need to escalate our action thereafter.

Good luck to everyone planning for Wednesday’s strike!

(Don't) take your children to work day...

2011-11-23T23:03:00.001Z

I recollect that, before the Green Party became a more or less serious political force, one of its principal speakers did notoriously suggest that our leaders were other than human, and perhaps other than terrestrial in origin.

Such thoughts thought are inevitably brought back when we hear that our Prime Minister (the millionaire, formerly of the Bullingdon Club, never having done a proper job) thinks that parents whose children are out of school next Wednesday owing to the public sector pensions strike should be allowed to take them into work.

That’ll work. Tesco checkouts can easily accommodate a bored seven year old. A railway station ticket office would be a happy home for an irritated ten year old. A bus driver could easily and safely sit alongside a hungry five year old. And management at nuclear power stations will be jumping for joy at the thought that they could double up as a crèche for the day.

Cameron gave as much thought to the reality of employment in making this suggestion as Maude did when he called us all out for a quarter of an hour with pay.

What a total pillock.

Meanwhile, in reality, parents who cannot go to work as their children are off school next Wednesday could see to it that their kids enjoyed some special extra citizenship lessons by joining picket lines, rallies and demonstrations in support of the strikers.

Tories practice class war (again)

2011-11-23T09:46:00.001Z

The TUC are right to condemn Government plans to undermine workers' rights (http://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace/tuc-20317-f0.cfm).

The idea that workers have an excess of rights in the workplace, or that it's not easy enough to sack people will raise a hollow laugh in most trade union branch offices.

On any given day it falls to me to advise one or more of our members that the law offers them little hope of recompense for one or other of many injustices.

In my experience, lazy managers sometimes like to blame workers' rights, union power or negotiated and agreed staffing procedures for their own failings. Good managers can cope with the human beings they work with having rights as well as responsibilities in the workplace.

Right wing business lobby groups (http://www.britishchambers.org.uk/zones/policy/tax-and-regulation-campaign/tax-and-regulation-campaign_2.html) always resist regulation in the name of profit. But deregulation just benefits the worse employers and worse managers, whilst creating downward pressure on workers' conditions throughout the economy.

Our best response to this latest attack must be further to strengthen next Wednesday's action.
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Let's strike together

2011-11-23T09:09:00.001Z

I'm only a week later than a fellow UNISON blogger in promoting the single released by the TUC to coincide with next week's strike (http://unionfutures.blogspot.com/2011/11/tuc-recording-to-support-nov30-strike.html).

I realise I'm probably showing my age by referring to the track (available for download online via http://www.theworkers.org.uk/) as a "single" - but whatever it is, listen to it and download it!

My only quibble would be that what we want on 30 November is not so much that public servants work together as that we strike together. Which we will!
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Pensions - teachers do the maths!

2011-11-20T22:26:00.001Z

An A* to the NUT for working out that, over the 78 years since its inception, £46 Billion more has been paid in contributions to the Teachers' Pension Fund than has been paid out in pensions (http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/14349).

Given that, at present, the Treasury rakes in £2 Billion a year more into the NHS scheme than it pays out to pensioners it would be interesting to see a similar calculation - which would underline the vital importance of strike action by our healthworker members.

Every UNISON Region needs to follow the example of our Welsh members who have pledged to picket every employer (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7377). The only people allowed past should be those showing letters identifying them as individuals providing "life and limb" cover as agreed with the Union (which letters will remind them to donate their pay to hardship funds!)
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Maude gets his megaphone out again

2011-11-20T20:58:00.001Z

You know Francis Maude is fibbing about being close to a deal on public service pensions because he’s saying it in public – anyone who has negotiated a settlement knows that megaphone diplomacy does not accompany a constructive end game. He says that union leaders are being irresponsible by supporting strike action but, for my money (quite a lot of it looking at the pension calculator!) the only irresponsible statements are from those leaders who say of the Government’s recent pronouncements that they “welcome the government's concessions, and say as they had come at ‘the 11th hour’ they need to be studied carefully to make sure ‘they stack up’.”

This is nonsense. The Government are offering nothing in relation to the uprating of pensions by the CPI and nothing in relation to the immediate increase in pension contributions (in the LGPS mitigated by contemporaneous immediate worsening of accrual rates in the interim scheme). In relation to future accrual rates they offer only to leave us with sixtieths in a (cheaper) career average scheme and, as to the “protection” of those within ten years of retirement this is to be achieved within a cost envelope, and therefore at the expense of younger workers.

Such public equivocation from leading trade unionists can only give succour to our enemies in the Government. Perhaps UNISON should make sure all other union leaders have read our useful handout which explains how little the offer means. We need our leaders to stand firm at a time like this and not to be shaken by the bluster of Tory Ministers.

Whilst the Government try to shake the confidence of the weakest of our leaders, the rank and file are getting organised locally and nationally. I didn’t get to the Unite the Resistance meeting yesterday as I was busy elsewhere, but learn online that it can be recalled with both optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect. Now is certainly the time for rank and file organisation on a pan-union basis in order to support those amongst our leaders who see the need for action, and to reinforce the confidence of those we send to speak on our behalf.

A very happy Thursday

2011-11-17T22:51:00.001Z

At the risk of revealing some of my favourite tales as a child, written by A A Milne and set in my native Sussex (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh), I will wish you, dear reader, a very happy Thursday.

I am happy that the pensions campaign is going well.

This lunchtime I spoke to almost 100 members of UCU (http://www.ucu.org.uk/) and UNISON at Lambeth College's Vauxhall site on the topic of pensions.

This was a really positive and constructive meeting between members of two different branches - of two different unions - absolutely united in their determination to defend our pensions. The meeting was unanimous not only for action on 30 November, but also - and wisely - for the necessity for subsequent escalation.

That said, none of the stewards and activists from either union seemed to me to be complacent about the great difficulty of actually getting our members out, and losing pay. That work remains to be done, but from a far better position after such a positive meeting. Plans are in hand for joint picket lines of members of the two branches.

Later on I was pleased to attend a shared meeting between public service trade unionists and anti-cuts activists from Lambeth Save Our Services (http://lambethsaveourservices.org/) where we planned four pre-strike leaflet drops at major local public transport hubs as well as events for the strike day itself.

Representatives from UNISON, UNITE, UCU and PCS worked in harmony with community activists to make these plans in a model of the unity we strive to create between providers and users of public services. I was able to report on united work being undertaken by our Trades Council and other unions, including the South London Battlebus on 26 November and the organising meeting hosted by the Trades Council on Monday 28 November.

The ballot results of recent days are most important for demonstrating the solid determination of a united labour and trade union movement. The numbers balloted do also, unavoidably, underline the relative importance of different unions in this dispute.

UNISON is absolutely central - but we still need to guarantee unity in action, not only between but also within our Union. If we want UNISON to achieve its potential then we need that unity.
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Standing together on 30 November

2011-11-16T21:22:00.005Z

Whilst we may have to wait for the ballot result from our brothers and sisters in UNITE, we already know that the GMB, UCATT and the Society of Radiographers joined us today.

We are heading for the largest, and most united, strike action of our lives on 30 November, and one of the most encouraging features of this dispute is the unity of purpose which it has engendered.

In my own branch we are cooperating with a multitude of other trade union branches to build support for the strike and picket shared workplaces. At the Town Hall, and many other Council offices, we will stand alongside comrades from our local GMB branch (and in some cases with comrades from UNITE). At our local College, picketing will be jointly organised with the UCU. Crucially we will work jointly with all the teacher unions, NUT, ATL, NASUWT (ballot permitting!) and the NAHT. This picture will be replicated up and down the country.

And where we have workplaces where members of different UNISON branches work together, pickets from different UNISON branches will be cooperating on the day. Now is not the time for those of us in UNISON to remain in our "service group" silos. This is a fight which the Government has picked with the whole of the public sector, and the whole of the public sector must - and will - stand together to resist.

As UNISON's guide on industrial action for branches makes very clear "It is important to work with the other trade unions at local level to ensure the maximum impact of the strike and any protests. Branches are encouraged to set up joint trade union strike committees, to co-ordinate picketing arrangements and other activities so that each union can play to their maximum strengths." This applies as much to different branches of the same union as it does to different unions.

(If there are a small number of conservative officials who see cross service group working as "meddling" or who fail to understand the extent to which workplaces are shared between UNISON branches across service groups then their toes will be quite sore on 30 November, having been trodden on a fair bit. Perhaps another of the unions striking with us on the day will be able to offer them some solace!)

In our great majority, millions of trade unionists are preparing for united action on 30 November. We will stand together, picket together and march together. This unprecedented unity gives us some sense of the potential power of our movement.

Greater London UNISON goes all out to build for 30 November

2011-11-16T21:05:00.006Z

Yesterday the Greater London Region of UNISON overcame an unanticipated power cut to arrange new venues for a meeting of our Regional Committee, a briefing for more than 150 branch delegates and a meeting of our Regional Local Government Committee (sadly a little inquorate as so many delegates had gone back to branches to get on with building for the strike).

The branch briefing saw Regional Secretary, Linda Perks, taking a strong line in calling upon all activists to do all we can to get all members out all day on 30 November. The only members who will be permitted to do other than strike for the full day will be those legitimately exempted or providing emergency cover agreed by the Regional Office.

Branch delegates were resolute and determined. No one present sounded a discordant note.

We now have the hard work of persuading members to strike, picket, rally and demonstrate on 30 November.

The Regional Local Government Committee members gave our representatives on the Service Group Executive a "steer" for the meeting called for 23 November. Our unanimous view was that the strike must go ahead, that we need ample time to consider the details of any offer (of which there is in any case no sign) and that we believe plans must begin now to escalate all out strike action for a longer period early in the New Year.

We now have an irreversible momentum for the largest, most solid and most effective strike of our lives in a fortnight's time.

Labour must back pensions fight

2011-11-14T23:33:00.004Z

The Trade Union and Labour Organisation (TULO) has issued a pension campaign pack for Constituency Labour Parties and an online petition for Labour Parties and Labour Party members to express their support for the pensions fight.

This is an important and positive development as we try to get more Labour Groups to copy Camden, Islington and Lambeth and express clear political support for our fight with the Government.

Regular readers of this blog, Sid and Doris Elderly-Bennite, will know that praise for UNISON Labour Link is rarely read here. However it is a positive sign that we have had support at Regional Labour Party Conferences in the North West and Eastern Regions, together with support from all the candidates for Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in Scotland. Other Labour Groups, in areas as diverse as Stoke and Kings Lynn are supporting our position.

The trade unions are in an unavoidable confrontation with the Government of millionaires and it is time for Her Majesty's Opposition to oppose!

Build for the 30th - and look beyond

2011-11-14T21:37:00.003Z

On the day when the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the First Division Association both returned impressive YES votes for action on 30 November, the most important task facing all trade unionists is to communicate to all our members, with absolute clarity, the need for a dramatic and effective 24 hour strike starting at midnight on 30 November.

Tomorrow's briefing for London UNISON branches will be a unique opportunity to organise cross service group action in our capital city. It has taken eighteen years, but UNISON is finally coming of age, bringing nurses out on strike alongside local government workers (and many others!)

Whilst working our socks off for the most effective action possible on 30 November we do however need to be debating where we go next after that Day of Action, as I argue in the Morning Star. Gregor Gall's recent contribution to this debate is timely and interesting.

He is right to argue that a strategy that does not include further all-out action after "N30" cannot seriously expect to win whereas a strategy of trying to "keep people out" rather than going back to work on 1 December cannot seriously expect to be delivered.

Whilst I want there to be a debate in the movement about what, between these two equally wrong-headed approaches, we need to do, I do understand why union leaders play their cards close to their chests. Dave Prentis cannot express a personal opinion about what we do next without offending against our lay democracy. Elected lay officials can - and should - express the range of our personal views though, and we should do so now.

It may be particularly useful if those who remember their roles in the 1989 NALGO local government pay dispute communicate what they believe to be the lessons of that dispute for our current circumstances, since it combined both escalating all-out action with selective (or what is now called "smart") action.

I hope that we shall find some space for such a discussion at tomorrow's necessarily truncated meeting of the Greater London Regional UNISON Local Government Committee, and shall report back here later this week.

Democracy at risk

2011-11-12T22:21:00.001Z

With the replacement, in the space of a few days, of two elected European Premiers with technocrats charged by the European political elite with the task of implementing austerity programmes against their own populations it is clear that we are moving into a period in which our struggles as trade unionists to defend our economic interests (crucially for us just now the pensions dispute) will become inseparable from the defence of democracy itself.

Jurgen Habermas this week summed it up very well; “Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy want to extend the executive federalism of the Lisbon treaty into an outright intergovernmental rule by the European Council to make it possible to transfer the imperatives of the markets to the national budgets without proper democratic legitimation, using threats of sanctions and pressure on disempowered national parliaments to enforce nontransparent and informal agreements creating an especially effective, because disguised, arrangement for exercising a kind of post-democratic rule”.

The worsening financial crisis, caused like every such crisis in a capitalist economy by the bosses going on strike and failing to invest their capital in productive industry will only worsen the financial pressures on national Governments, who will continue to pursue the economic prescriptions of the IMF and ECB, attacking the wages and the social wage of the workers.

In Europe, including the UK, the weakened social forces which built the social democratic postwar settlement will continue to resist the appalling social consequences of these economic policies. In these circumstances, we can expect to see further restrictions on the right to protest and the right to strike as, ultimately, what is now at risk are not only the social gains of the last century but the democratic gains of the last two centuries.

In the UK we have a Coalition rather than a Government of technocrats, but its function is the same, to secure public consent for policies contrary to the interests of the great majority of the population. If we are to secure a better future, the trade unions need to campaign for our policies, defeat this Government and secure its replacement with a Government committed to policies which would rebuild our economy and society in the interests of the majority. As hard as this may be even to imagine, it seems to me that the only possible such Government would be a Labour Government – which is why I’ll be at the AGM of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) next Saturday, to discuss with fellow socialists in and around the Labour Party how we might move in that direction.

As the LRC National Committee statement for Saturday puts it; “The Labour Party leadership has totally failed to connect with the new movements and new mood of resistance. Worse still, it has continued to support largely the same economic strategy as the Coalition with only marginal differences over the speed and severity of cuts. From a position where it initially recruited tens of thousands of new members in the aftermath of the 2010 general election in reaction to the coalition government, the Labour leadership is blowing this goodwill by its refusal to speak up on behalf of the 99%. The election of Ed Miliband as Labour Leader reflected a rejection of New Labour by Party members but this has not been repaid in any way since. With rare exceptions he has pursued the same agenda as Blair and Brown economically, politically and in terms of Party democracy. The opportunity presented by ‘Refounding Labour’, for instance, was abandoned in favour of a continuation of centralised control. The task of the LRC is to play the role that the Labour Party has failed to grasp – to be an essential part of building the resistance and to assist in giving it political expression”.

The strike on 30 November is not simply about our pensions. It will be a crucial moment in building resistance to the austerity plans of the global elite, which are plans to roll back decades of social progress.

Maude - famous for fifteen minutes?

2011-11-12T12:58:00.003Z

The Government are clearly rattled by the coming pensions strike - leading to the daft suggestion that we can have a fifteen minute strike with no loss of pay.

Did Francis Maude consult the employers on this proposal? Of course not, it isn't a serious proposition but a shot in a propaganda war.

Today's Financial Times sees Francis Maude playing every card he can think of, building on last week's "non-offer" from Danny Alexander, although it's left to an anonymous Whitehall source in the Guardian to offer the "carrot" (that they may give ground on the "Fair Deal") whilst Maude wields the "stick" of possible further anti-union legislation.

The "carrot" is, of course, no such thing. It's more the possible withdrawal of an "anti-carrot," in that the Government may not withdraw what little protection we have for pensions when workers face privatisation.

In what sense is it "giving ground to leave things as they are?

It's a bit like Alexander's "offer" on accrual rates in that sense. He kindly offers us (after 2015) the sixtieths accrual rates we already have (saving himself money by the switch to career averages).

The Government's PR strategy is clearly to talk up what Maude calls their "big and generous" offer, obfuscating and hoping that the inherent complexity of some of the issues in dispute will mean that commentators and the public accept their version (as a very poor Guardian Leader did early in the week).

Maude repeats today the lie that the Coalition is offering protection to those approaching retirement age. They aren't. They are offering negotiators the opportunity to make those further from retirement pay more in order to provide that protection. (If the unions engage with this approach we risk being seen to have betrayed younger workers, who are already less likely to be trade unionists - or, indeed, members of the pension scheme.)

This crude "divide and rule" tactic to set young against old is mirrored in Maude's public attempt to drive a wedge between Dave Prentis ("a very formidable, skilled, experienced negotiator") and Mark Serwotka ("highly politically motivated").

If he thinks such transparent tactics will persuade UNISON to switch from a one-day strike to a token fifteen minute walkout, I predict he will be disappointed. Maude, for all his praise of Prentis, is trying to reach past our General Secretary to weaker and more timid souls who want to avoid confrontation.

Confrontation is however inevitable unless the Coalition withdraw their attacks upon us. The very public game of "sticks and carrots" and "divide and rule" is a play to the gallery of public opinion, hoping to shake the confidence of our leaders and confuse and intimidate our members.

In response, we need our leaders to be both "formidable, skilled and experienced" and "highly politically motivated". It is a very "political" - and laudable - motivation to want to defend public services and public servants!

We should be moved least of all by threats of anti-union laws, the withdrawal of offers or the end of the Fair Deal.

Unless we stop the Coalition in their tracks then all of these things will inexorably come to pass as the cuts collapse the economy, drive up the deficit and lead to further attacks on workers' living standards.

Anything the lying Coalition say is safe (such as the risible suggestion that they won't touch our pensions again for 25 years) is as secure as last year's decision to uprate benefits each April in line with the previous September's CPI, which is already being revisited to shave still more off the living standards of the poor and most vulnerable.

We have one chance - and it comes not only on November 30 but also in the vital and urgent debate about further early all-out national action.

Which will need to be for considerably more than 15 minutes!

Pampered, privileged and protected?

2011-11-08T23:07:00.003Z

Mark Littlewood doesn’t have (has never had) a real job. Instead he is Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a (mysteriously funded) weirdo right-wing “unthink tank” (as explained here) – but he knows what’s what!

Writing for the Daily Mail he explains that public servants are the pampered, the privileged and the protected.

This fabulous insight has certainly turned my world upside down.

I can certainly see that the Adventure Playground workers in my branch who lost their jobs this summer when the employer made 70% funding cuts earlier this year were “pampered” by being offered a massive and unaffordable cut in their hours. And all local government workers are truly “privileged” to be in the third year of a pay freeze. Most of all though, the many workers made redundant against their will this past year are truly “protected” from the pain of continuing at work with the kind offer of their P45.

Or, on the other hand, maybe not.

Maybe those who are pampered, privileged and protected are those who move between easy jobs with libertarian campaigns, rightwing political parties and reactionary think tanks? Does Mr Littlewood deal with difficult casework, work unsocial shifts or live under constant fear of losing his job? What do you think dear reader? I doubt it.

Those of us with real life experience of public service work know that this reactionary nonsense is rubbish. However, we need to bear in mind that the odious Mail, which is, in fact, the most widely read daily newspaper amongst UNISON members, is also read by many with no such experience.

Therefore, all of us who care about the future of public services – and all of us who want to win the pensions dispute – need to be alive to the need to rebut lazy reactionary nonsense wherever it is vomited into public consciousness.

Public services are as important to the functioning of the private sector of the economy as is the “wealth generating” private sector to the funding of the private sector. Neither one is parasitic upon the other, both are in a symbiotic relationship – which is one reason why we campaign in defence of public services.

As we move towards 30 November every one of the foaming-at-the-mouth reactionaries like Littlewood will be unleashed. We need to face them down and expose their lazy and ill-informed arguments.

Read all about it...

2011-11-08T00:59:00.003Z

The dear old Grauniad really didn’t quite get what was happening with the pensions dispute in Monday’s editorial, so it’s good that we got a serious response in to their confusion.

Contrary to what the Grauniad Leader writers may think, the Government's "offer" last week was no offer. It doesn't matter if they turn it into a "formal offer" - it's crap. It doesn't touch the immediate proposals in any way, and the "protection" for older workers is just an aspiration which we have to help the Government achieve at the expense of younger workers. "Offering" us 60ths in a future career average scheme (which will be much cheaper that our current final salary 60ths schemes) is hardly an offer!

To be fair to my favourite liberal paper they had provided a platform for an important expression of support for our struggle from young Labour Party activists yesterday. Wherever a serious attempt has been made to ask Labour policitians to back our cause they have agreed. The only areas where we don't have Labour Councils considering support for our struggle is where we have failed to ask. (Note to UNISON Labour Link - do some work!)

It’s key that we sustain support for the 30 November strike action across the whole movement – which means we need to rebut the argument that Danny Alexander has offered us anything and also that we need to welcome and value all support from within the Labour Party.

Yeah right

2011-11-06T17:38:00.001Z

In the latest shot in the propaganda war, the Government have planted a story in the Indescribablyboring which suggests that they gleefully anticipate our forthcoming strike action, believing we will alienate “public opinion”. Apparently, we have fallen into their “trap” by fighting to protect our pensions (whereas, of course, we can all well imagine that they would be livid if we had simply decided to swallow a massive attack upon our living standards…)

Well the online poll by the Grauniad gives us 77% support and the Torygraph gives us 82% support. The reality is that the great majority of working people (whether conscious of their being working class or believing themselves to be “middle class”) know that the great majority are being done down in this bankers’ recession, in which only the very wealthiest – who caused the problems in the first place – are protected.

Public sector pensions are not some indefensible perk, they are the sensible provision of security in retirement for those who, in their working lives, are required not to be influenced by improper motives. Public opinion is not against us, and the targets of this Tory propaganda (the weaker elements in our own leadership) must ignore this nonsense from our enemies.

Oh Danny boy...

2011-11-06T17:12:00.000Z

Youthful Liberal Democrat wunderkind Danny Alexander clearly visits from a parallel universe, judging by what he has to say to the BBC today! (Hat tip MJ for pointing this out to me!)

Danny boy claims that union leaders want a strike which isn’t in the interests of union members, and that’s why the good old Government will try and talk directly to the workers, rather than those pesky leaders (like rabid militant Dave Prentis who has wantonly promised to keep essential “life and limb” services going on a strike day…)

This nonsense is clearly part of a public relations campaign which was also the entire purpose of the “improved offer” on pensions earlier this week (which wasn’t improved in any significant way and doesn’t alter anything about the pensions dispute).

The rebuttal unit at UNISON HQ is going to be kept busy – and in particular we need to develop a clear and persuasive response to the question “why are will still striking if the Government have made an improved offer?” (to which of course the answer is that they haven’t really, but we need to work it up in a bit more detail).

Mind you, if Danny Alexander wants to talk directly to ordinary UNISON members I’ll be happy to arrange it for him…

All out!

2011-11-03T23:51:00.000Z

UNISON's democratic structures have called for industrial action following the member ballot (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2513).

That means we are moving toward action at the of this month (on "N30").

This changes everything.

Our national leadership wants us to fight hard for our pensions.

At a local level, branch activists are convinced of the need for a serious fight against cuts and job losses also.

If there are (lay or full-time) officials between these two levels not prepared for the hard work required to deliver these aspirations then let them depart.

For now, let's be clear. UNISON balloted members for action and they have voted to take action. We. hope each and every member who has been balloted will both have voted for and will take take such action.

It's a hard job we activists are given over the next month - to persuade people to do what they don't want to. Strike action is never easy and always painful.

But this is the action which is now necessary.

Now we move forward.
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All out on N30

2011-11-03T19:46:00.001Z

We are now heading for strike action on 30 November (http://lambethunison.blogspot.com/2011/11/its-yes-and-we-are-not-alone.html).

Who should strike?

Everyone who has been balloted should strike!

Every UNISON official and activist has an obligation to have this argument with every member (and every recruit!)

No excuses.

Get out on N30!
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Solidarity with Waltham Forest

2011-11-03T09:47:00.001Z

UNISON members in Waltham Forest are holding a branch meeting on Monday (http://www.unisonwalthamforest.org.uk/2011/11/02/branch-meeting-monday-7th-november/) to discuss a long running dispute over conditions of service in which a (notionally) Labour authority is threatening over 1,000 staff with the sack (http://www.unisonwalthamforest.org.uk/2011/11/02/over-1000-council-employees-still-not-signing/).

This dispute has arisen because - rather than make savings in the use of expensive consultants and agency staff, the authority has decided to rob £3 Million from the pay packets of predominantly lower paid workers through a series of changes to terms and conditions. Disgracefully the Council have resorted to bullying to try to get workers individually to accept changes which have not been agreed by their trade union (http://www.unisonwalthamforest.org.uk/2011/10/19/latest-management-bullying-to-get-you-to-sign-their-new-contract/).

UNISON resistance has already seen off an attack upon national sick pay - but as the branch's report to the Council's own Staffing Committee (http://www.unisonwalthamforest.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Report.pdf) makes clear - the Council has lacked the confidence even to have a meaningful dialogue.

How shameful to see this conduct from a Council led by a former UNISON official whose biographical details claim he used to fight workplace injustice (http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/index/council/leader/leader-biog.htm).
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Looking at what the Government are doing to our pensions

2011-11-02T23:17:00.001Z

In order to assess what the Government is up to in relation to public service pensions the best thing must be to see what they themselves have to say.

Before assessing today’s announcement it is important to be clear about what, according to the Government, has already been agreed (that is to say, agreed by themselves with themselves, probably over a very agreeable meal and some fine wine…) and is therefore not changed by what has been said today.

These “agreed changes” include not only the change in uprating pensions from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which reduces the lifetime value of our pensions by at least 15%. This change, which hits private as well as public sector workers, transfers £83 Billion pounds from workers to bosses (including the Chancellor of the Exchequer) over the next fifteen years. The Government, which is waiting as we are for the outcome of our legal challenge to this act of theft, has proposed no change whatsoever on this point. (If you haven’t already signed the e-petition against this do so now!)

Incidentally, the RPI/CPI change make the Government liars when they say that one thing that won’t change is the value of our accrued benefits. They tell public servants that “all the benefits you have earned, up to the point when any changes are introduced, are fully protected”. Given that our benefits, post retirement have been reduced by tens of billions of pounds by George Osborne’s sleight of hand with price indexation, this is the sort of statement which makes Nick Clegg look like a decent and honourable individual.

Another area of what the Government are calling the “agreed changes” which are not touched by today’s announcement are the contribution increases, about which HM Treasury say; “Employee contributions will rise from 2012. This was announced as part of the Spending Review and there has been a consultation on this issue already. Members of public service pension schemes will pay more for their pensions from April 2012. Average increase in member contributions for public service pension schemes (excluding the Local Government Pension Scheme) should be assumed to be 3.2% of salary. Average increases for the Local Government scheme should be assumed to be 1.5% of salary.”

This statement is also riddled with outright lies. The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) consultation is still underway – and the only reason that the contribution increases in the LGPS are lower than in the other schemes is because the Government are also proposing detrimental changes to accrual rates with immediate effect (hitting all workers including the lowest paid). For those who don’t find the dishonesty of Tories (and their Lib Dem stooges) at all shocking, the important point is that the contribution increases – a 3% extra tax on public servants who choose to save for their retirement – are taken as a given by the Government. The Chancellor’s cash grab on our financially viable and affordable pension schemes, to raise billions annually to pay off the deficit caused by the bankers, is still on – and nothing Danny Alexander and Francis Maude said this morning has changed any of that.

The great bulk of the changes which can be illustrated by UNISON’s pension calculators are therefore simply not touched by the “offer” made by Danny Alexander this morning. The only material change for most members is to Box 8 on the LGPS calculator and Box 10 on the NHS calculator, where the accrual rate in the “new” scheme should now be set to 60ths. (I hope the necessary changes to the online calculators can soon be made). This is a modest concession, increasing the value of pensionable service post 2015 by some 8%, but the other “concession” announced today is somewhat more problematic.

If you read the detail of today’s publication from the Cabinet of millionaires, you’ll read that “the Government’s objective is to provide protection to those who on 1 April 2012 are within ten years of Normal Pension Age,” however this objective is to be met in scheme specific negotiations subject to overall cost ceilings. In other words, any protection for those close to retirement must be at the expense of those further from retirement.

For a trade union movement which already fails to reach the great majority of young workers, collusion with these age-related divide and rule tactics would be the kiss of death!

That’s why our General Secretary, Dave Prentis, did well to lead a strong response from the TUC to the poisoned chalice offered by Ministers this morning. The Government are not confident or strong. They have not made this offer conditional upon withdrawal of strike action but instead say that it remains open to the end of the year.

Today the Government showed weakness both by shifting their position and by the bluster which accompanied that move – but they also showed the animal cunning of the British ruling class as they tried to give as little as possible whilst trying to divide their opponents and take advantage of the weakness of those who see their role as mediators rather than leaders.

Tomorrow will see the result of the largest ballot in the history of British trade unionism. UNISON members will speak and we will say that we are prepared to fight this Government to defend our pensions.

Let that be our answer to the Government. A million workers prepared to take on the Cabinet of millionaires. (The turnout in the ballot mayn’t be all we might have hoped for, but that’s why the last Tory Government introduced postal ballots – to depress the turnout!)

Wednesday 2 November 2011 was the day that those who don’t want workers to fight the Tories tried and failed to set the agenda. Tomorrow will be different.

Not nearly good enough

2011-11-02T13:48:00.003Z

So the Government have offered 1/60th accrual rates in the future career average pensions and protection for those within ten years of retirement.

That was always going to be their offer on accrual rates anyway (and represents a massive overall reduction in pension payouts compared to 1/60th accrual in a final salary scheme. As for the proposal that the trade unions should sacrifice the interests of young workers to protect those closer to retirement – that’s hardly a strategy for the future of the movement!

I don’t like to disagree with a fellow trade unionist but I can’t see how these proposals are "worthy of serious consideration". We now know what the Government is prepared to offer to avert a strike.

Now let’s see what we can make them offer by striking! Tomorrow’s ballot result will show UNISON members voting for action, and this will be followed by results from many other unions.
Now is not the time to give up.

Update - it is clear that the strike on November 30 will be going ahead (depending of course on the ballot results, of which more tomorrow)

Talk, but don't wobble!

2011-11-02T09:56:00.000Z

Our trade union leaders have been called to the Cabinet Office this morning to hear about some cosmetic enhancements of the Government’s “offer” on public service pensions.

No doubt wobbly people will want to wobble in response to any sign of a concession – but I am confident UNISON will stand firm. It’s clearly UNISON’s imminent “YES” vote that has the Government beginning to at least seem to shift, but our members will expect that we don’t settle for anything less than the withdrawal of the current proposals for a cash grab on our pension funds.

UNISON activists now need to do all we can to help our fellow trade unionists in GMB and UNITE, and other balloting unions, to get the “YES” votes we all need.

The Final Countdown - vote YES now!

2011-11-01T23:12:00.002Z

With the UNISON pensions ballot closing on Thursday, this really is the very last chance anyone will have to vote "YES" in the biggest ballot in the history of British trade unionism.

Let's hope for a good turnout and a strong, positive "YES" vote!

Take action for fair pensions for all

2011-11-01T23:03:00.002Z

The two linked legal challenges to the Government’s unilateral switch from uprating pensions in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – costing us all some 15% or more of our lifetime pension income – were heard in the High Court between 25 and 27 October.

The ever informative website of the Civil Service Pensioners Alliance predicts that we won’t have the judgement for some time – and I guess an appeal would be quite likely too. However, the e-petition has now exceeded 70,000 signatures, and as we need 100,000 for a parliamentary debate – now would be a good time to sign the petition!

This is an issue which unites public and private sector pensioners and – with evidence that declining active membership could undermine the future of the LGPS – it is vital that we do all we can to build such unity. As we defend our pensions we need to articulate a positive alternative of fair pensions for all.

Signing an online petition can be dismissed as mere "clicktivism" - but forcing a parliamentary debate on the question of pensions would not be an irrelevance as we prepare for the biggest strike of our lives (so far).

Doing the political work for the pensions dispute

2011-11-01T22:31:00.002Z

Reading the good news of support for our pensions dispute from the Lambeth Labour Group, and remembering the pioneering work done along similar lines in Islington got me wondering about how we are doing getting such political support from London Labour local authorities. The good news is that Camden Council are considering a similar supportive motion from Labour Members next week.

Hackney have cancelled a Council meeting due for the proposed strike day, setting another good example, agreed also in Southwark (where the Leader has pledged not to cross a picket line – an example which other Council Leaders with a union background will hopefully follow!). Decisions to cancel meetings on 30 November are needed elsewhere (not least by Lewisham).

Newham is just one of the Labour Councils where we ought to see Labour Members proposing motions to support our stance in the pensions dispute. At least where we have Labour Councils we should be doing what we can to secure decisions by local authorities such as that made by Islington and in prospect next week in Camden and Lambeth.

Perhaps the UNISON Greater London Regional Labour Link Committee should consider how much it has done so far for the pensions dispute? With the ballot result imminent we need to step up the political campaign as well as building for industrial action.

Moving forward to N30

2011-11-01T18:49:00.000Z

Regular readers of the blog, Sid and Doris Blogger, will appreciate the total coincidence which saw SERTUC issue confirmation of the strike day demonstration within an hour of the last post on this blog.

There will be a regional rally in London. This will be 2.15 to 3.15pm on Victoria Embankment and the road will be closed for the event. SERTUC and London unions will coordinate speakers – more information later. There is likely to be a march to join the rally at 2pm – provisional arrangements are assemble in Lincoln's Inn Fields from 12 noon, move off at 1pm to the Rally on the Victoria Embankment – details will be finalised shortly.

Branches staging local events will, I am sure, generally bring these forward to enable members to support events in the boroughs and go on to the London demonstration.

I very much take the point made to me privately by a well-informed correspondent that we cannot necessarily expect all the General Secretaries to be at the London rally. This will - ballots permitting - be a UK wide strike and it is certainly true that in the North, Wales and Scotland (and for that matter Northern Ireland) where trade union density is higher, there will be strong support and major - and important - rallies.

However, I hope that UNISON will field a significant speaker for the London rally which will inevitably draw an unfair share of media attention. UNISON turned out massive numbers on 26 March and a fair few of those were from London.

As we move towards the declaration of our ballot result in the next 48 hours we need to begin to prepare our members for the absolute necessity not only to take strike action on the day but to do the maximum possible in terms of activity - whether picketing, demonstrating or (best of all) both, guided always by an understanding that our objective is to exert political pressure through our lawful industrial action and associated activities.

Now is the time for the sort of leadership that tells people not what they may want to hear but what they are required to do.
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Now it gets interesting

2011-10-31T18:09:00.000Z

Before I say anything else let me say "Vote YES!!"

The UNISON ballot is almost over - but there is still time for members to post ballot papers which have been overlooked.

The GMB and UNITE ballots are just beginning - and deserve our attention also.

However, anticipating a "YES" vote and the inevitability of action, we do now need to reflect upon the tactics needed to win this vital dispute.

Since I don't always get the Morning Star on days when I am not at work I owe a hat tip to the "almost-official" UNISON Anonymous Blog (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/10/striking-while-iron-is-hot.html) for reporting on the latest contribution to this debate by the ever-interesting Gregor Gall (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/111265).

Gregor hones in on a vital difference between public sector and private sector industrial relations (which escapes some of our officials to this day!) He observes that "strikes against private employers are essentially economic where the point is to cause loss of revenue and profit to the employer - terms that do not equally apply to a public or state employer."

In the private sector an employer is driven by the "bottom line" - in the public sector the approach of our employer is determined by "political contingency."

This means that we need to maximise the political impact of industrial action - and that this is more important than (for example) sustaining picket lines on every workplace.

We do need to call, clearly and unequivocally, for strike action on 30 November (once we have the ballot result) and we need to stiffen the resolve of those who may have been deluded by all the talk of "partnership" that has streamed out of our Regional office in recent years. Those who fail to strike on 30 November (unless properly exempted to provide "life and limb" cover) will be scabs and those who make excuses for them will be lower than vermin.

However, having got strike action from our members we must repay their sacrifice with an intelligent strategy to maximise the impact of their action. This must mean an early Central London march and rally on 30 November. Those who stand in the way of this necessary objective are traitors to our cause and must be shown no quarter.

If SERTUC fails to organise an effective platform in Central London for our General Secretaries to articulate our demands then it will become an irrelevance. No UNISON official has any mandate or authority to oppose an early Central London demonstration on 30 November and I hope no one is abusing their position to weaken our campaign in such a way.

UNISON members are putting their faith in our leadership. Now more than ever we need our leadership to rise to this challenge and to ensure that all our Union's resources (including all our employees) stand together in unity to advance our cause in the dispute that will write our history.
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Why is there a weekend? And what should we do this weekend?

2011-10-28T18:43:00.001+01:00

In deciding what to do this weekend, perhaps you are driven to wonder why there is a weekend?

In the period immediately after the industrial revolution employers sought to maximise profit by pursuing the strategy which Marx called "absolute surplus value" - without changing the process of production they sought to extend the working day and week in order to increase the surplus which they extracted from their workers (who created all the value in the first place).

This strategy was defeated by the nascent workers movement, which fought for the "Ten Hours Bill" - to limit the working hours of children in order to limit the hours of the whole workforce. Out of these struggles to limit working time - so that working people should have leisure time and not exist merely as "hands" to do the bidding of their masters - came a requirement upon the employers to change tack. Henceforth, to make more profit, the capitalist employers had to turn to the strategy which Marx called "relative surplus value" - revolutionising the production process in order to make more profit out of the same quantity of working time.

It was because working people resisted exploitation that capitalism found the dynamism which has propelled it forward into the twenty first century. By forcing capitalists to change production processes in ways that drove up labour productivity - because the approach of simply increasing working time had been defeated - it was workers' struggle which initiated the trend for labour productivity to rise over time, which has enabled increases in living standards over the past two centuries.

This struggle for leisure time also gave us the weekend.

So (and regular readers Sid and Doris Blogger will have seen this coming) if we owe both the weekend and increasing labour productivity - and hence living standards - to the organisation of the working class, what should we do about this?

Well, this weekend we should do all we can to remind UNISON members to vote "YES" in the pensions ballot.

Going to the library? Say "vote YES"!

Going for a swim? Say "vote YES"!

Registering a birth, death or marriage! Say "vote YES"!

Visiting a hospital? Say "vote YES"!

Got it?

This is the decisive struggle of our generation.

Don't think that, if we fail in this struggle, the FTSE 100 Directors, descended from the early Victorian mill owners, who have taken massive pay rises in the past year, won't take back the weekend that was won for us. Already precarious workers do not have this.

Don't think that any of our employment rights or trade union rights are secure if we can't win this fight to defend our pensions. Already vulnerable workers do not have these.

Don't think that any of the democratic and social gains of the twentieth century are secure in the twenty first if we lose the strength of the labour movement which won all these things in the first place.

This weekend - remind a UNISON member to vote "YES"!
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Further correction - tomorrow is the day to remind UNISON members to vote

2011-10-27T21:32:00.000+01:00

It’s good to see UNISON pulling out the stops to get the vote out in the pensions ballot. In the Eastern Region an imaginative ballot-paper-posting photo opportunity demonstrates that this dispute is an excellent opportunity for joint service group working. There have been 300 briefings in the North West and 240 in the South East. The West Midlands Region has set up a “walk-in centre” for branch activists – and this imaginative approach to building a constructive partnership between regional staff and lay activists has paid dividends (with, I understand, almost 500 workplace events organised by the Region during the ballot period, additional to events being organised by branches themselves).

It’s not just at Regional level that an unprecedented effort is being made. I know that some colleagues in the Greater London Region have welcomed colleagues from national office to assist in organising and campaigning for a “YES” vote. Regions can clearly learn from other Regions, and our Region in London can learn the importance of cross service group working and of a positive relationship with lay activists. This will be key to effective strike action on 30 November and beyond, and therefore to defending our pensions and our trade union.

Of course the key level for activity is the branch – and branch activists have the chance to make one final push for members to vote. I am therefore correcting both of the last two posts on this blog and now consider that tomorrow, Friday 27 October, is the very best day to remind a UNISON member to vote! (And if you’re not at work, why not remind your Facebook Friends who are UNISON members, and remind them to remind theirs?)

Correction - tomorrow is the day to remind UNISON members to vote "YES"!

2011-10-26T19:39:00.002+01:00

I know that yesterday evening I blogged that today was the day to remind UNISON members to vote "YES" in the pensions ballot.

Reminding members to vote is crucial. The Tories introduced postal ballots for industrial action in order to ensure lower turnouts, giving them the opportunity to claim - falsely - that Unions call action unsupported by our members.

Since the Tories introduced these rules our lives have not got less busy, we don't have less junk mail, and we aren't more familiar with using the post (one member today wanted to know where to click to cast their vote!)

We have to do all we can to drive up turnout in the ballot.

This evening though I got the reminder email from our General Secretary.

I therefore now think that tomorrow may be the crucial day to remind UNISON members to vote "YES".

Friday may also be a good day for that...

It's "Remind a UNISON member to vote Day!"

2011-10-25T23:57:00.002+01:00

UNISON members have until Thursday next to return their ballots in the vital industrial action ballots over pensions - but only until next Monday (Halloween!) to request a replacement ballot by phoning 0845 355 0845.

The UNISON ballot in the run up to 30 November is the largest in trade union history. Many thousands will already have voted - many thousands still can. It's in all our interests that the unions win the pensions dispute.

Whether you are a UNISON member or not you come across us in your daily lives, in hospitals, libraries, parks - you are never far from a UNISON member! Why not make tomorrow, in fact every day until Monday at least, the day you remind a UNISON member to vote?