Star Quality

I realise I promised that my next post would be a report from last week's UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, but that was before I had read today's Morning Star - and the article by my fellow UNISON NEC member, Moz Greenshields (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/118142).



Moz makes the sound point that all aspects of the Government's assault upon our movement, our members and our class are elements of their over arching policy of privatisation and that, as such, we need a coordinated labour movement response based upon this understanding.



I couldn't agree more.



It is truly risible that there are union officials trumpeting the "triumph" of preserving the "fair deal" for pensions (securing the continued membership of privatised workers in public sector pension schemes) when all that has been done is that our pension schemes have been cheapened to the point that the privateers can happily afford them - thereby removing a sizeable obstacle to privatisation.



Those who favour capitulation on pensions (which is what the "recommendation" that "this is the best that can be achieved by negotiation" always means) do not believe that we can resist the Government's privatisation programme and seek therefore to accommodate to it.



The strength of Moz's Morning Star article is that it provides a convincing argument that there is a positive alternative to this trade union politics of despair and articulates elements of a strategy to be pursued by those for whom the interests of workers (and therefore of lay trade union members) are the primary consideration.



Those in the upper reaches of our movement who like to consider themselves, in some sense, "supporters" of the Morning Star would do well to pay heed.

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