Development and Organisation Committee report

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?

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

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!

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!

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!

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?

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/).

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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!

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

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...

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)

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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Pensions - teachers do the maths!

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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