Unity!Unity! Communist Party bulletin June 30th Strike Edition

Teachers and lecturers, alongside colleagues in the civil service, are taking strike action today in response to attacks on our pensions scheme. The government has proposed three main changes to the Teachers' Pension Scheme: Changing the index of

inflation from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – This will knock about 15% off the value of the average teacher's pension;

Linking the retirement age of the scheme to an ever-increasing state retirement age – This will mean teachers working until 66, 67 or 68, as opposed to 60 or 65 as currently;

Increasing the employee contribution level from 6.4% to 9.8% - This will cost teachers somewhere between £60 and £120 extra every month.

Taken together, these proposals amount to teachers being forced to pay more and work longer in order to receive less at the end of their working lives. These Cont. on back page

The industrial action on June 30th is a vital step in building the mass popular movement needed to challenge the Con-Dem government's attack on the people of Britain. Three-quarters of a million workers from the PCS, NUT, UCU, ATL are striking in defence of their pension rights and, in the case of PCS, civil service jobs and pay. But they are not alone. Some 15,000 Unison council workers will be out in Birmingham and Doncaster, protesting against job losses and worse terms of service. Their sisters and brothers in Southampton, already on strike against pay cuts, are being joined by colleagues in Unite. NUJ members in south London are striking against compulsory redundancies, while Camden housing workers were also planning to walk out for the same reason.

The POA is calling upon prison officers to hold lunchtime meetings in solidarity with the public sector action. Of course, the Con-Dem government, employers' representatives and the mass media will try to downplay June 30th. They will claim that the action lacks support from fellow workers and the general public – while bemoaning its impact on travellers, schoolchildren, parents and students. Ministers will bluster that the strike will have no effect on government policy or ongoing public sector pension talks. But then, recent statements have made clear that the negotiations are having little or no impact on government policy anyhow. Nobody should fall for these well-worn responses. There has never been a strike yet when government ministers or employers say they have been

taken aback by its support and effectiveness – so much so, indeed, that they are rethinking their position and want to make an improved offer. More serious is the propaganda drive by the big business press to drive a wedge between public sector and private sector workers. But many private sector workers might wonder whether their loss of decent pensions, job security and superior pay is not unconnected to the decline of private sector trade unionism and strikes. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the 'trade union wage premium' – its term – in 2010 (the extra percentage in wages earned by unionised workers) was 21 per cent in the public sector and 7 per cent in private enterprise. The problem is not the higher level of strikes and union Cont. on back page

A Day for Solidarity & UnityA Day for Solidarity & Unity

Unity in action

Robert Griffiths

Gawain Little

Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that today’s strikes to defend pensions are a mistake. He has also said that the Labour Party has lost touch with its core constituents. But he can’t square this circle when Labour’s core constituents and founding parents are organised labour - the trades unions who are striking today. Unions have taken the democratic decision to withdraw their labour. If Miliband doesn’t respect this, then he is tacitly condoning strike breaking which no union member should do. How much longer will it take before the current leadership of the Labour Party realises that, if it had stuck to its founding principles and respected its historic supporters, ‘new’ Labour could not have been invented to serve the bankers and the Eurocrats. Labour could have won the 2010 general election if, when the last labour government bailed out the banks, it would also have ensured that we got our money back - with interest - rather than letting billions be squandered on obscene bankers’ bonuses. The May elections saw many previous LibDem voters turning to Labour. They felt betrayed by the LibDem leadership’s decision to join a coalition

with the Tories and ditch the policies that 7 million people had voted for in the 2010 General Election. Labour on the other hand made some gains, winning 50 per cent more seats in England than they did in the same elections in 2007, and gaining 37 per cent of the projected national share of the vote (compared to just 29 per cent in the General Election last year). Progress was helped a bit by Ed Miliband seeming to put a little more ‘pink water’ between his regime and New Labour. Now his leadership needs to draw a red line against the past. But as long as the Labour Party continues to accept the false case for public spending cuts – instead of arguing for progressive taxation, public ownership, investment in manufacturing, energy, public transport, housing etc. – then it will never represent an alternative government. It is vital therefore, for the working class and peoples of Britain, that the Labour Party is reclaimed by the labour movement. If the struggle proves to be forlorn then the Labour movement must take steps to ensure that workers have a voice in Parliament. Labour needs to look at the real reasons why they are not advancing more in the face of the Government’s vicious dismantling of public services. The argument that

it’s just too much too quickly is wrong; it’s not a case of ‘our cuts are better than yours’. There has never been a need to make swingeing cuts to pay for the deficit. Simply by enforcing current tax laws and forcing big business and the super-rich to pay their fare share and abandoning disastrous wars and the renewal of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, we could raise enough money to pay off the deficit in one fell swoop. Those unions, that supported Ed Miliband for Labour leader should be demanding a change of policy to support the principles of the trade union movement. Over the past three months more than 90 per cent of Labour Party donations came from the unions. Don’t those who pay the piper have the right to call the tune? The Communist Party believes that as long as many of the biggest trades unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, the potential exists to wage a broad-based, resolute fight to reclaim the party for the labour movement and left-wing policies. But this will require the unions to fight both inside and outside the Labour Party to change to policies that offer a real alternative.

Anita Halpin is Communist Party Trade Union Organiser

'The first weekend in October will see a carnival of anti-fascist and anti-racist activities to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. On the first Sunday in October 1936, one hundred thousand socialists, Communists, Irish dockers, Jews and other local residents blocked the attempted march of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists through London's East End. 'This year's demonstration will celebrate that heroic victory and reaffirm our determination to overcome racism and the fascists in Britain today. cablestreet75.org.uk

A Party of Labour?

Anita Halpin

Unfair Burdens

International financial institutions treat even relatively rich European nations in exactly the same way that they have treated the developing world for decades – put them into debt, make them cut services, lend them money at higher interest rates than needed and then ask them to start again as economies falter – so much for the much vaunted EU being a level playing ground for labour and capital.

The European Union and European competition law – in making privatisation compulsory and eroding workers’ rights are fundamentally anti democratic and anti people.

falseecononomy.org.uk no2EU.org.uk ier.org.uk

Last year the TUC famously passed a resolution supporting co-ordinated industrial action against the attacks on the public sector and its workers’ jobs, pay and conditions. Despite a slow and stumbling start, there are now signs of a growing resistance. The massive turnout on 26th March; the growing anti-cuts alliances and movements at the local level, and the actions being taken by up to three-quarters of a million workers today in defence of pension schemes, demonstrate the revulsion felt by the majority of the population at the nature and scale of the attacks. Thus far however the response has generally been un-coordinated, localised and sporadic, in contrast to the ConDems broad assault against working people. The ConDems, representing a relatively united ruling class are not just interested in reducing the deficit – they also want to curtail working class advances and divide us. Tax increases are being imposed on working people – their class see their taxes fall. Our pensions are cut. Wealth is transferred from the state to the private sector. Debt is transferred from the state to individuals. Support is given to international financiers. The cuts are already well underway in local authority services, the police and fire services, health services, quangos, the former regional government provisions and to the civil service. Never mind private firm job

losses. The cuts involve all unions and most communities. Any fightback has to unite these forces together. The most visible cuts are those being carried out at local level, from libraries to nurseries, from refuse collections to Connexions offices. Workers are losing their jobs by the hundreds or seeing their terms and conditions ripped up. But jobs have also gone at regional government offices and the Regional Development Agencies, whilst the closure of quangos is hitting employment levels across the country. The cuts affect workers in all sorts of jobs and at all levels of pay and also hit the public as services are closed or provisions reduced. Public sector workers who take action in defence of their jobs and our services need and deserve the maximum possible support; they mustn't be isolated. And this is where local campaigning against the cuts comes in. Made up of local people and trade union activists it has to be a vital element in building support for a fightback and also supporting workers who go into struggle. It needs to be broad and inclusive and willing to be flexible. Many such non-sectarian anti-cuts movements have been built at the local level, but the work is only just beginning in earnest. The ideological attack on public sector pension schemes leaves us with no choice but to fight. If the Condems succeed in pushing through the Hutton

proposals this will cost most public sector workers up to 40% of the value of their pensions. There is no financial justification for doing this – for instance the Local Government Pension Scheme has twice as much paid into it as paid out. Therefore this attack represents yet another attempt to get workers to pay for the capitalist economic crisis. There will be no workplace in the public sector unaffected by these moves – no workplace where jobs have not been cut, where terms and conditions have not been eroded and where pay has either been frozen or has risen well below the rate of inflation. Next year will be worse, with little scope for achieving further job cuts by voluntary means, raising the spectre of mass compulsory redundancies throughout the public sector. We face a real ‘battle of ideas’ within our own ranks, as well as a trial of strength with the ConDems and the class they represent. Surveys seem to show that, while the overwhelming majority of workers have seen through the government lie that “we are all in this together”, a great many still believe that, given that the ‘free market’ system is in a mess, some cuts are ‘necessary’ – or, at least, inevitable. The fact is we can’t build a movement against the cuts strong enough to win if we start with many of our own members believing that those cuts are inevitable. That’s why “The People’s Charter” is vitally important. It spells out “The Alternative” that we all

marched for on March 26th and offers a positive alternative to the cuts of the neo-liberal economic and political agenda of the main political parties in Britain. The People’s Charter has recently produced a detailed program of taxation policies, industrial and social investment, employment and training programs, renewal energy development, public ownership, tight private sector regulation etc which identifies “the alternative” that a progressive government could implement. The Charter is endorsed by the TUC and has 15 national unions affiliated to it – with more signing up all the time. Of course, the ConDems – a government cobbled together out of two failed parties – will never follow such a program. It is a government of millionaires for millionaires, A government which uses the recurrent financial and economic problems of capitalism as a cover to attack workers, while the richest 10% get even richer and more powerful. For as long as they are there, the attacks will continue. We can’t put up with four years of attacks. We need to organise, within our unions and in our communities, to bring them down. The Peoples Charter is a real and achievable alternative- around which we can build a movement to - not only defeat this government - but to fundamentally shift politics in favour of workers, pensioners, students, young people, the unemployed and away from the super-rich and big business .

This specially produced 60 minute documentary, made in association with Platform Films, charts the 90 year history of Britain’s Communist Party. Featuring previously unseen interviews, footage and much more. DVD £5.50 (inc. p&p) from www.communist-party.org.uk

Andy Chaffer, Moz Greenshields, Ray Walker & Midland Red

A day for solidarity & unity - Cont. from front density (56 per cent) in the public sector, but the low level of strikes and unionisation (14 per cent) in the private sector. Further attempts may soon be made to split private and public sector workers through a new round of anti-union laws. The Con-Dems may try to impose longer notice periods or a balloting threshold (for example that the majority for action must be of all those eligible to vote) in 'essential' public services. If so, workers in the private and 'non-essential' sectors can be sure that such restrictions will be extended to them in due course. 'We're all in it together?' – that's true of public and private sector workers, although it hardly includes the bankers and speculators! Mass action in unity can defeat the current ruling class offensive against public services, jobs, wages, pensions and trade union rights. Disunity will guarantee defeat. June 30th must be the next step, after the great TUC demonstration of March 26th, towards generalised strike

action by all workers against this government's EU-backed austerity and privatisation programme. All unions need to work together for that essential goal, with no single union arrogating to itself the 'right' to lead such an alliance. It will be vital to mobilise trade unions, trades councils, community groups, students, the unemployed, pensioners and service users to defend the essentials of a civilised society. That is why the Communist Party supports the formation of local, broad, non-sectarian and union-based anti-cuts campaigns. The aim should be to create the conditions where this illegitimate government, with no democratic mandate for its reactionary policies, turns in on itself, topples and falls. But bringing down the Con-Dems might itself bring little improvement, unless the labour movement begins to project policies like those in the People's Charter, and fights to make them the policies of the next Labour government.

Robert Griffiths is General Secretary of the Communist Party

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Support Teachers and Public Servants - Cont. from front changes will affect every teacher, from those already retired, right through to those who have not yet trained. The impact will be most severe on those at the beginning of their career but no-one will escape unscathed. The argument being used by government is that teachers' pensions, and public sector pensions as a whole, are “unaffordable” and are “costing the taxpayer”. However, this is simply not true. The Teachers' Pensions Scheme (TPS), like other public- and private-sector pension schemes, is funded through a combination of employer and employee contributions. It is therefore deferred pay for the work teachers have done. Describing this as “taxpayers money” and painting public sector workers as a burden on “the taxpayer” is an open attempt to divide the working class and to pit us against ourselves. Over its lifetime, TPS has more often been in surplus than in deficit. In 2006, changes were made to the scheme to make it even more affordable and these apply to all new entrants from 1st January 2007. Since these changes, the government has not carried out a valuation of the scheme, even though this is required by law, so it has absolutely no basis for judging the affordability, or otherwise, of teachers' pensions. Last month, a report from the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts confirmed the view of the National Audit Office that costs are falling and public sector pensions are affordable. It criticised the government for proposing

further changes without considering what is affordable. The report went on to warn that the government has failed to use pensions to recruit and retain workers to vital public sector jobs. This goes to the root of the problem. The attack on TPS is part of two broader processes. Firstly, the assault on all pensions, in both the public and private sector. The change from RPI to CPI has already been implemented for all public sector pension schemes and this is having a knock on effect in both privatised public services and the rest of the private sector. Workers are already seeing their pension rights under attack across the board and those who escape today are likely to be swept up in a second wave of “affordability changes”. But changes to TPS are also part of a more generalised programme of cuts to education and all public services. These have seen the loss of a whole range of local services provided by local authorities – libraries, youth centres, school support services, social care and services. It is also leading to the complete privatisation and break up of the National Health Service and the state education system, as outlined in the Health and Social Care Bill and the Academies Bill which preceded it. This is effectively open class warfare. This government is attempting to destroy all the gains made by working people over the past 70 years and take us back to a time when our lives were dependent entirely on the whim of private employers; to a time when universal health care and education were little more than a dream. The trades unions, and the working class as a whole, need to take this fight to the government. Pensions is an issue around which all public sector (and many private sector) unions can be united but it must be linked to the broader battles against cuts if we want to engage all sections of the working class. And it is a battle we cannot afford to lose.

Gawain Little is President of Oxford & District TUC and local NUT officer