Pampered, privileged and protected?

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.

Public sector workers need unity

Mixed news today on public sector pay – UNISON members in Scottish Water have voted to strike against a 2.4% offer, and UNITE members in the Health Service throughout the UK have voted to strike against the three year pay deal which the other unions are trying to reopen from the second year onwards.

However, UNISON members in Scottish local government have voted – narrowly – to accept their employers’ two year offer. This may reflect some of the reservations about striking for pay in the current economic climate which appeared to influence the closeness of the recent strike ballot in the NUT.

Against this mixed backdrop I have read criticisms of the decision of the PCS Executive to suspend strike action in response to an offer of negotiations over pay from the Head of the Civil Service. I would have liked to have seen effective united strike action by the public service unions (in line with the policy of the TUC). In the absence of that unity everyone has to make tactical judgements based upon the position in which they find themselves.

As the threat of increasing job cuts compounds the reality of real terms pay cuts for public service workers what we now need more than ever is unity.

PCS strike action suspended

PCS have suspended Monday's strike action in response to an unprecedented offer of national negotiations with the Government (who have agreed that PCS can extend the validity of the mandate for strike action pending these negotiations).

This is a positive sign and is a tribute to the approach of the PCS leadership, who are making it clear that this is only a suspension and that strike action is still on the cards.

Picket lines for Monday morning

Here, for those who can support them on Monday morning, are details of PCS picket lines for the pay strike on Monday 10 November.

I am sure that PCS will welcome other trade unionists - and am equally sure that UNISON will express our full official support for our civil service comrades.

These are the details I have been given;

PICKETS IN Central London -

on Whitehall SW1A- the HQ's of MoD, DEFRA, Cabinet Office, HMRC, Treasury, Department of Health, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, British Council, Department of Culture, Media & Sport

on Victoria Street SW1 - the HQ's of BERR (ex-DTI), MoJ, Metropolitan Police (New Scotland Yd)
Victoria station area - Identitiy & Passport Service, Department for International Development, Department for Communities & Local Gov

Great Peters St/Marsham St SW1 - HQ's of Department of Children, Schools & Families, Home Office, Prison Service, Department for Transport


OTHER LARGE WORKPLACES -
Health & Safety Executive (2 Southwark Bridge, SE1), HMRC/ACAS Euston Tower (Warren St tube), Office of Fair Trading (2-6 Salisbury Square, EC4Y 8JX), Royal Courts of Justice (The Strand), Food Standard Agency (125 Kingsway WC2B 6NH)

Museums and Galleries - National Gallery (Trafalgar Square), British Museum (Bloomsbury), V&A/Science Museum, Natural History Museum (South Kensington), British Library (St Pancras), Tate Modern (Southwark)


Croydon - Home Office (Whitgift Centre, Apollo & Lunar House - all Wellesley Road CR9)
Hastings - Child Support Agency

Around outer London areas and South-East England towns -
all local Tax Offices,
London Met Police stations
Job Centres & Benefit Processing Centres,
Magistrate, County & Crown Courts,
Driving Test Centres,
prisons,
Army, RAF and Navy bases/barracks,
Land Registry.

ports and airports - Coastguard stations in Solent, Dover, etc, Customs (HMRC) and Immigration (Home Office) in Heathow, Gatwick, Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, etc,

Why we need joint union action over pay

Inflation may yet turn into deflation, but right now the living standards of public sector workers are dropping like a stone as our miserable pay rises of the last few years fall ever further short of rising prices.


The decision of the Executive of the NUT not to call further strike action in the light of the narrowness of the majority for action in their national ballot leaves civil service union PCS almost alone as they embark upon national strike action over pay this coming Monday.


The ballot result of health service members in UNITE will not be known for a few days yet - but the large majority of health service workers are now focused on next year's pay claim (as we are in local government).


Reports from NUT meetings show that appeals to "belt-tightening" as recession bites will have some purchase amongst trade union members, and need to be countered with positive arguments about the macroeconomic impact of raising public sector pay, as well as appeals to justice and collective self-interest.


However, I remain convinced that the decisive reason for the real terms pay cuts experienced by local government workers (including teachers), health workers, civil servants and others over the last while has been the deliberate refusal of the trade unions to take disciplined and united action.


We need to find a way build this unity at a rank and file level if we are to achieve our potential and protect the interests of our members.

Solidarity with PCS

Good luck to members of the civil service union, PCS, striking over pay on 10 November.

The Government's rigid imposition of its 2% pay limit on its own direct employees contrasts with the slightly less enthusiastic observance of the limit elsewhere in the public sector.

However, all public sector workers would doubtless be better off if our leaders had shown the same consistent enthusiasm for joint strike action which has been shown by PCS. With the exception of Higher Education workers we have all seen our pay cut in real terms in 2008.

Investing in higher pay for public servants would reflate the economy and help combat the recession, but somehow I doubt that is going to be top of the Government's “to do” list unless we do much more to put it there.

Scots get half a loaf as pay round stutters to a halt

Half a loaf being – quite clearly – better than none, an offer of half a per cent is clearly better than no offer and scurrying off to arbitration (well more dawdling than scurrying!). So to that extent well done to the Scottish comrades, who have been offered a 3% increase this year (up from 2.5%) but only if they accept 2.5% next year.

Forgetting foolish faith in reopener clauses (which clearly do not work) any multi-year pay deal is a significant risk. Going into a recession I suppose it is likely that inflation will now come down, although whether it will fall fast enough to stop 2.5% in 2009 being a real terms pay cut (just as 3% in 2008 is) remains to be seen.

As far as UNISON members are concerned we do seem to be coming to the end of a pay round in which, whilst we may have defeated the straw man of the 2% pay policy, we have failed to protect the living standards of our members, whose pay rises are falling behind inflation.

I think that the 2% pay policy is pretty irrelevant since I understand that whereas in previous years some efforts were made to induce the local government employers to abide by it, there is no evidence of any such pressure this year. I do therefore hope that we won’t – at next week’s UNISON NEC – be invited to pat ourselves on the back for defeating a pay policy which the Government did nothing to pursue.

If we are honest we need to recognise that the current approach of the Union leadership is not delivering pay increases for our members.

This failure to protect living standards in the most unionised sectors of the economy threatens to reduce the union wage differential. It certainly does nothing to build our Union.

Instead of complacency and silence I hope to hear an honest assessment of the weaknesses of our approach next week, and a serious attempt to consider what and how we need to change.

This is an example on my part of what is known as “optimism of the will” and it is counterposed, I think, to the view of the majority of my NEC colleagues which – when it comes to making judgements about the conduct of our Union in relation to pay (or privatisation, or our work in the Labour Party) is best characterised as Panglossianism.

Higher Education workers to get 5% pay rise

Here is the news from the BBC! Our members in HE stand to get 5% as a result of a three year deal in which the final year was 2.5% or the RPI.

As has just been pointed out to me by one of the lucky recipients of this generosity here at the TUC though a 5% pay rise when prices are rising by 5% is really just standing still.

It only looks generous by comparison with the real terms pay cuts the rest of us are being offered. Tomorrow's meeting of the Executive of the trade union side of the NJC for local government workers could set itself the target of matching the pay offer in HE, but we'll also need a strategy to secure that improvement.

TUC to plan strike action shock?

I was accused of being naively overoptimistic (if not inebriated!) in relation to an earlier post when I suggested that the point of the TUC ought to be to coordinate workers’ struggles.

However, whoever has been speaking (anonymously) to the Observer from within the TUC reportedly says that this is what we will be doing in Brighton next week; “Union leaders have been discussing a joint plan of attack, bringing out staff across different public services on the same day, throwing schools, councils, nursing homes and other services into simultaneous chaos.”

Well, maybe.

According to the reports a UNISON insider says that it is difficult to coordinate industrial action (although the same – anonymous – commentator says that we have it on our radar).

We certainly ought to be planning such action but I am not yet convinced that we are. Certainly we seem to have a clearer vision of the obstacles than the objective.

PCS seem able to align strike action by sections of their membership in dispute with other public service workers taking action.

They do this because they have a sound analysis of what they are trying to do – which is to exert political pressure on a hostile Government - and they see that the maximum unity is the best available tactic to achieve this end. They don't start from the presumption that it is only unity within this or that "sector" that is important.

Our members certainly need a more effective public sector pay campaign from our trade union movement. If our leaders wished to announce that they should do so in public, and not by anonymous briefings to sympathetic journalists.

With little hope of a satisfactory settlement of the local government pay dispute in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, I have a personal vested interest in getting this united action off the ground!

As rank and file activists return from our holidays we need to continue to build the unity of the members of the different unions at a local level.

UNISON NEC - leading the fight on pay?

The NEC meeting took place ahead of the outcome of the consultation on health service pay (about which more later) so the main focus of discussion at the meeting was on other pay claims and disputes.

The factual basis of the reports that were given will be familiar to members in the respective service groups and sectors. Members in OFSTED are still in dispute, members in Further Education have rejected an unacceptable offer and most local government members in England Wales and Northern Ireland are being balloted for strike action – with members in Scotland likely to follow shortly.

In response to questions about coordination within UNISON and between UNISON and other Unions the General Secretary emphasised the frequency of his meetings with the General Secretary of PCS and the Acting General Secretary of the NUT, both of whom led strike action on pay on 24 April.

A health sector official was fairly critical of the balloting techniques of those health unions whose members had rejected the health service pay offer. Now that we know that the offer has been accepted there would appear to be some work to be done to repair relations with other unions who felt excluded from the way in which UNISON and the RCN negotiated with the Government.

Dave Prentis summed up our objective as a national Union when he said – in his contribution to this debate – that we must break the Government’s pay policy. I think many of our members would add that in doing this we need to try to secure pay rises above the rate of price inflation!

If we want an overarching debate on pay at our National Delegate Conference we will have to reprioritise Motion 15 - which I hope the Newcastle City branch will leave on the agenda to give Conference that chance.

Off to the picket line

I am on my way to the picket line to support striking members of the Lambeth UNISON branch employed by Ofsted.

UNISON members in Ofsted undertake highly demanding jobs – responsible for inspecting childcare, early education and children’s social care, and ensuring that standards are adhered to and millions of young children are cared for safely and properly.

Ofsted has imposed a pay award which leaves most of our members facing a pay freeze or below inflation uplift for three years.

Rising cost of living

· A third of UNISON members are having their salaries frozen for two years – for a quarter the pay freeze is due to last three years! At a time when the cost of living – gas, food, fuel, petrol – has been going through the roof.

· Even where our members have been given a rise, for half of them it amounts to 2% or less at a time when the real cost of living is rising at 4%.

Winners and losers approach bad for morale

All public sector employers have recently been subject to Government restrictions in what they can pay. But in Ofsted a bad situation has been made worse by the decision to give some staff – in more senior grades – increases significantly above inflation. With a limited pot of money to spend that has led to real hardship for the rest. This has been divisive and bad for morale.

The most recent survey of Ofsted staff showed that stress and workplace bullying had risen. It is time management at Ofsted recognised the demanding work ALL their staff perform.

Campaigning for a fair pay increase for all staff

The unions are calling on Ofsted to release funds it has set aside elsewhere and to secure additional monies from the Treasury so that all its hardworking staff can have a fair pay rise. Seems fair enough to me!

Yesterday and tomorrow

I haven’t had the chance to blog properly about this yet, having spent large chunks of today stuffing envelopes…

However, I have to say that yesterday’s strike action by members of the NUT, PCS and UCU unions was exhilarating.

Accompanied by my children, whose schools were closed for the day, I started out on a local demonstration of 400 strikers and supporters who marched from the Brixton site of Lambeth College, via the Town Hall, where the NUT were waiting, through the centre of Brixton.

From there we went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to join the estimated 10,000 demonstrators who marched to Westminster, where less than a third of that number filled Central Hall to capacity.

I wish that everyone who doubts the confidence of our members to take strike action for fair pay could have heard thousands of teachers, lecturers and other public servants cheering the young teachers and lecturers – and the General Secretaries – who pledged to fight on for fair pay.

The case for a Central London rally and demonstration as part (only party) of a plan to focus media attention on strike action was also made quite unarguably – the evidence is here, here, here, here, here …

A compelling case can be made against the Government’s public sector pay policy and against accepting below-inflation pay rises. Our members can be persuaded that this attack upon our living standards should be fought.

The debate must now turn to the strategy necessary to win this fight with the Government, starting with the campaign to reject unacceptable pay offers in health and local government.

How would it be if our next step was a two day strike involving, on either or both days, local government workers (north and south of the border), health workers, teachers, lecturers, civil servants? What if the decisions about the dispute were taken by the elected representatives of the strikers, cooperating across and between unions? Suppose we could make it clear to politicians that our continuing support for them was contingent upon their support for us?

These may be good questions. Now we need answers.

Good luck to tomorrow's strikers

Good luck to teachers striking tomorrow, also to civil servants and college lecturers. Oh, and thousands of UNISON members in Birmingham too…

As we consult members about national pay offers in health and local government (both well below the Retail Price Index in the current year) UNISON activists could do worse than bear in mind the following information from the PCS website;

Food prices have increased by 7.4%
Petrol by 20.5%
Water by 5.5%
Gas by 12.9%
Electricity by 7.9%

There will be those who say they cannot afford to take strike action. It’s an old cliché, but – can we afford not to?

Three days until the start of the fight for fair pay for public servants in 2008

Knowing first hand that a number of parents have missed the news that many schools will be closed on Thursday by the NUT strike action, I am pleased to see this getting some coverage.

Striking alongside members of PCS and UCU, NUT members will be opening this year’s public sector pay fight. UNISON members in health and local government now have the opportunity to decide to join in.

We need to mobilise support for Thursday’s action (and do all we can to help) and win the argument for action among our own members. We need to develop plans for effective and achievable industrial action, and articulate a progressive policy alternative to the reactionary approach of holding down the pay of public servants.

We have to get beyond the argument of “don’t we work hard and deserve more money” (although we do and we do) and put a case for an economic policy which is based upon investment in services and the people who provide them. This is what we need from the TUC.

With plenty to do I am now happy to be going back to work this morning.

The incredible importance of 0.3%...?

I am just preparing for today’s National Executive Council and am struck by the importance of that extra 0.3%.

Because 2.45% is bad.

Yet, we are told, 2.75% is good.

I can’t help noticing that one opinion is expressed by an elected body of lay representatives and the other isn’t.

Guess which is which…

Support the Teachers on 24 April

Good news received this evening from my friend and comrade Alex Kenny of the NUT Executive...

The NUT has decided today to call members out for a one day strike on 24th April.This follows a ballot result of 75% in favour on a 32% turnout.The decision of the NUT Executive was unanimous and everyone was very positive about the ballot result.Regional rallies and demonstrations are being planned. Support for these will be welcome from other unions.

UNISON activists need to discuss how we can help the NUT to maximise the impact of their action in the opening battle of this year's pay round - and an appropriate riposte to those in the movement who were saying that the teachers were not part of a pay fight this year.

Both the turnout and the "yes" vote are positive and impressive, and compare favourably with results which have produced effective action in the past.

Debate on pay at the UNISON NEC

Appropriately enough the issue of pay was high up the agenda for today’s UNISON NEC meeting, although much of the progress that could be reported related to what is on the website.

It was reported that the NHS employers have yet to make an offer (in the context of discussions about the possibility of a multi-year pay deal which would encompass matters beyond the remit of the Pay Review Body) and that local government employers won’t make an offer until 19 March. Opinion is divided as to whether they will make a single year offer and if so at what level they will pitch it. The Scottish local government employers have just made a very low three year offer.

UNISON’s Service Group Liaison Committee will meet in March to consider the position and we were advised that this is the first time in history that UNISON’s Service Groups have agreed to talk to each other before accepting pay offers. Truly today the UNISON NEC was walking with destiny…

We shall just have to be patient, as I was advised that “anyone with half an ounce of sense” would know that we can’t start talking about strike action when we don’t even have a trade dispute yet. We were also told to concentrate on unity with unions in our own sectors (although bizarrely this doesn’t seem to include likely strike action by a key local government union in April…)

Local Government NEC member Paul Holmes expressed the view that national strike action will be unavoidable and will be supported by members, since the employers won’t make an acceptable offer and our members can’t afford more years of declining living standards. I tend to agree and certainly think it’s prudent to be preparing now for the eventuality of national strike action.

Is now the time for action?

As in comedy so in industrial struggle, timing can be everything. At a branch level you know when it is too early to argue for strike action over impending job losses (when everything is too vague and uncertain for people to be sufficiently worked up about it) and you know when it is too late (when the majority know that they are safe and only a few people face possible redundancy). Getting that moment in the middle isn’t easy.

So I do have some sympathy with those at the top of the movement who can’t quite decide whether this really is the year to stop the public sector pay freeze. Last year UNISON members in health were balloted without a recommendation on pay (and woe betide any who tried to issue recommendations!) In local government we were recommended to reject but in the face of equivocal views from sections of the lay as well as the full-time leadership, our strike ballot delivered a result which did not lead to action. So 2007 wasn’t the year.

I think it should be 2008. I don’t believe anyone who says they think that 2009 looks a better bet. With a General Election likely I fear that there will be a battening down of political hatches. If we don’t fight back against below inflation pay rises this year then we are likely to walk into multi-year pay deals (whether they start this year or next) which will cut the living standards of our members year on year for the foreseeable future.

I have heard a fair bit now about how complex it is to coordinate action on pay between different Unions – indeed between different bits of the same Union! I am sure it is complex, but I think that we have a national leadership precisely in order to do complex and difficult things so I am not persuaded by that argument to the conclusion that we cannot achieve coordination.

I have also heard it said that national strike action is somehow out of date, but this unoriginal argument (which I am sure I first heard parroted by “Eurocommunists” more than twenty years ago) belongs in the undergraduate politics seminar where it was first thought of (particularly since its adherents haven’t the first idea what we can put in place of strike action).

I’ll let you know what is said on Wednesday at the UNISON NEC on this topic. I have heard it said that UNISON has been hostile to calls for action at the TUC, but I’m sure that can’t be right, because such calls are in line with our agreed policy. I expect it was a joke. But then in comedy, as in industrial action, timing can be very important to the humour…

UNISON London Region backs coordinated pay fight

A full and considered report from Wednesday's Annual General Meeting of the UNISON Greater London Regional Council will have to wait for the weekend.

Gloria Hanson was elected Convenor and Conroy Lawrence Deputy Convenor and I have sent both my congratulations. The first opportunity for the new team to show leadership will be in Newham on Monday evening – to support victimised activist Michael Gavan (for whom the Regional Committee expressed their full support).

In the brief time I have now I will remark upon the perplexing sight of a small bloc of delegates (including fellow NEC members and Regional Council officers) voting – against the policy of the Regional Committee – against a motion calling for coordinated action over public sector pay (which motion was entirely consistent with UNISON national policy and with what our guest speaker, UNISON President Norma Stephenson, had been saying).

The speaker against the motion rallied a small minority of delegates in opposition with the thought that national strike action is outdated and that we need “new thinking” – quite what this new thinking is about, where it is leading and how it will help our members facing real terms pay cuts we were not told. Perhaps someone who also opposed the motion will be able to elaborate in public on this “new thinking”.

Even stranger, the text of the gist of the speech which was read out by the delegate who spoke against the motion (and some of its keynote imagery of “sabre rattling”) is available online (as an article in the February 2008 edition of the journal of an obscure and secretive political group). If this is the inspiration for “new thinking” on pay I can’t wait!

Happily the Regional Council overwhelmingly agreed the motion for coordinated action on public sector pay and agreed to submit it to National Delegate Conference in the name of the Region.

The duty of all those in leading positions in the Region is now to work to implement the policy to coordinate the fight against the Government’s public sector pay policy – starting with wholehearted support for our comrades in other Unions.

Pay matters - pay review bodies don't...

It is good to learn from the UNISON website that the Institute of Fiscal Studies are critical of the “staging” of pay awards – the latest penny-pinching wheeze from a Government determined to make public sector workers tighten our belts whilst ladling cash at the favoured few.

I think the staging of pay awards is wrong because it steals money from the workers. I am less troubled by the fact that this might “undermine the credibility of the review body process.”

What credibility?

If a “pay review body” were to replace collective bargaining on the basis that it guaranteed above inflation pay increases on some sort of “RPI plus x%” formula then that might be acceptable, as might a formula such as that which emerged from the 1977 firefighters dispute which linked earnings for a group of public servants to earnings growth in the economy as a whole.

Pay review bodies in which “experts” make pay awards having considered “evidence” undermine the role of trade unions in negotiating pay without giving us anything worthwhile back. I can see the attraction to those in our movement who think that we should do the best we can by putting sound arguments the Government and then selling the outcome to our members as the best that is possible. For those of us who are trade unionists the attraction is a lot less obvious.

The only good thing about the fact that the Government has taken to stealing from awards made by pay review bodies is that they reveal the fiction upon which the whole process is based.

The Government won’t honour pay awards from pay review bodies if they don’t want to – and trade unionists don’t have to accept such awards if we don’t want to (ask the teachers!)

Now let’s just start preparations for the massive strike action which will be required to wring a fair deal out of this wretched reactionary Government shall we?