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Workers facing low pay, privatisation, poor safety, bosses' attacks, say...

'We're Fighting Back'

THOUSANDS OF workers have been on strike over the last few days to defend working conditions and to fight for a living wage. These strikes have been in spite of determined strike-breaking tactics by intransigent management and in the case of the rail union RMT, personalised attacks on the strike leaders.

BOB CROW, assistant general secretary of the RMT and left candidate for general secretary and GREG TUCKER, RMT activist on South West Trains (SWT) spoke to Socialist Party industrial organiser Bill Mullins.

"The strike is because SWT drivers were given a 7.65% pay increase which lasted for 18 months", said BOB CROW. He continued: "We say 'good luck to them'. What we're asking for is some fairness for our members.

"We have train driver members as well so it's not a fight between the drivers and us. The drivers' union ASLEF fully supports us and told their drivers not to work in any unsafe circumstances today, that is with these managers who are putting the travelling public in danger.

"What management are telling the guards, the booking office and station staff is that they are not essential workers and that's the reason they don't get as much. Well if they're non-essential, how come there's not many trains running?

"Our members have voted by 73% in favour of taking action and we're standing by our members.

"I wouldn't put it past SWT boss Brian Souter to try to sack the strikers. I imagine it's gone through management's mind on a number of occasions. What we should be saying to the TUC is that they should be mobilising the rest of the trade union movement in support of these workers but also any other group of workers facing union busters.

"The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) is backing up the bosses by lifting all penalties on SWT for late trains. The SRA should keep their nose out of this dispute and help resolve the issue, not back the bosses.

"People should be supporting the strikes at SWT, Arriva, and the other workers who don't get the same kind of media attention as us. The TUC should be mobilising the entire trade union movement to support any groups of workers in struggle."

GREG TUCKER, the SWT driver whose victimisation is also the reason for the strikes, told The Socialist.

"It's our fifth day of strike action and it's been solid. The company's trying to break the strike by employing managers to do the guards' and platform staff duties, which we think is pretty unsafe .

"There are seven or eight of us being victimised and it's obvious that the company want to smash the union. Even if it's possible for the company to settle on pay, they have to address the other issues as well.

"Souter can't sack train staff as easily as he does on the buses. He could only do it with the complicity of the government. They could only bring in scabs if the government lets them. You would be asking what the SRA and the railway inspectorate are doing if that happened.

"We should extend this dispute across the country. We have touched a nerve, a lot of other rail workers are unhappy about their pay as well. We have been inundated with members saying 'when are we going to get our ballot?'.

"The national union should take the threat to break us seriously and prepare to call out the rest of the membership nationwide.

 

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1,000 at Strike Rally

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) went on strike on 28 and 29 January, to demand a safe working environment. Government plans to remove screens from benefit offices is a big threat to the safety of the staff coping with a deteriorating benefit system.

 

At a well-attended rally and lobby of Parliament by 1000 PCS strikers on 29th January, the mood was to continue the strike. Mark Serwotka, general secretary elect said:

"The 10,000 incidents in the benefit offices and the Jobcentres last year, including three serious assaults each week, justified the strike alone.

"These assaults included attacks with guns, baseball bats, hammers, chains and knives."

He said Alistair Darling, Minister for the Department of Work and Pensions, was disgraceful when he commented that the assaults were just a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to the millions of visits to the offices each year.

"One incident is enough to justify the strike, never mind 10,000. The national executive of the union was unanimous in calling the strikes in December and January and the membership responded magnificently.

"If the discussions with the government don't make progress we will have to escalate the dispute in February and March if necessary.

"We might have to have a short-term sacrifice for long-term safety."

 

Someone will end up dead

JOHN ROSS, PCS branch secretary and Dudley Allen spoke to John Ewers on the picket line at the Benefits Agency in Gloucester.

The strike was well-supported, even by claimants. They said that a police officer visiting the picket line was amazed that while the police are being more armed PCS members are having protection taken away.

TV cameras and security guards are not enough to replace the screens. One case against the attackers of a member of staff has already had to be dropped because the cameras didn't record the incident. In the Gloucester office there's been three incidents in the last fortnight where the police have had to be called.

"Management claim this is a 'once in a generation' opportunity to change the benefits system. This would hold some water if they actually improved the services rather than just tarting up the offices."

All the pickets thought benefits should be higher and the system should be simplified. Despite being at the sharp end they could see why people resorted to abuse. They warned this will get worse when sickness interviews are introduced.

MPs have put in security systems, following the attack on the MP for Cheltenham by someone armed with a sword. So it's OK for them but not government employees.

They were firm that the strike action should continue unless the government changed their minds. "Someone will end up dead if they take the screens away" a picket warned.

 

Five picket lines in Sheffield

SHEFFIELD SOCIALIST Party toured five PCS picket lines on 28 January, getting a welcome at each one.

Sheffield is home to the Employment Service head office - importantly there were pickets outside both offices we visited. At one, Steve told us that their divisional boss had said about the Pathfinder project: "Get the brainwashing of local offices done first." So much for being customer-friendly.

At another office, Fraser told us that quite a few staff, especially new starters, had joined the union in the run-up to the strike.

There was support for banning overtime and working to rule, on top of continuing strike action. "What's the point of going on strike if we make up all the work when we go back?" asked two benefits agency pickets.

All the strikers understood that their dispute had gone beyond the issue of safety screens - the management wants to break the union, especially since Mark Serwotka became general secretary elect.

At Steel City House, a Royal Mail van driver readily agreed not to deliver the mail. However Melanie told us that the same postie had crossed the picket line in December - perhaps a sign of the times, now postal workers are balloting for action themselves.

 

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Enron scandal

End Bosses' Rule

HOW DOES big business get influence with top politicians? After your firm's share prices soar by 1,700% in 16 years, your fortunes fade - how can you lie about your profits to keep those share prices looking healthy?

Roger Shrives

If that fails, how do you destroy evidence to hide the truth? How can you get yourself a windfall while your workers lose their jobs and livelihoods?

Ask American energy giant Enron! When this company became the biggest bankrupt in US history, it showed up how the world's biggest capitalist enterprises rule political parties both sides of the Atlantic.

Last autumn Enron shares plummeted from $90 each to around 60 cents, but the company's executives sold over $1 billion worth of shares and got rich. Ordinary Enron employees weren't allowed to sell the share options which they relied on for retirement pensions. So when the lights went out at Enron thousands of workers were sacked and impoverished while their bosses made fortunes.

Enron however subsidised US President Bush by more than $500,000 after he first stood for governor of Texas in 1994. Other Bush administration members also got Enron gold.

These political place-men helped push Enron's interests in government. They'd helped deregulate energy markets. Bush's tax breaks for the rich saved Enron $254 million - more than any other company. But even Bush couldn't save Enron.

Enron wanted political influence in Britain too. Tory peer and former cabinet minister Lord Wakeham was a director of the company.

Enron Europe paid out £36,000 in a "charm offensive" to become Labour's sponsors. They also hired Labour chancellor Gordon Brown's former adviser Karl Milner's firm to win a deal to build a huge privately owned gas-fired power station in Teesside.

Enron got the deal after Peter Mandelson lifted the moratorium on gas-fired power stations, which had been banned to try to save Britain's coal industry. Mandelson also gave the green light to Enron's purchase of Wessex Water.

New Labour even gave Ralph Hodge, head of European Enron, a CBE in last year's new years' honours list.

Some pro-big business papers are worried about the message that's coming across on who calls the shots in business and politics. But corruption is normal in capitalism.

If you want to stop our lives being ruined by big business and our governments dominated by corporate interests, you should join our fight for a socialist society!

 

 

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Solidarity And A Bold Leadership Needed

THE THREAT to sack striking train workers at South West Trains (SWT) by Brian Souter is the most serious development for trade unions in the last decade. 

Souter, billionaire owner of Stagecoach, which in turn owns SWT as well as many other transport companies, is a man who has jumped on the band wagon of many anti-working class and reactionary social issues over the last few years.

He spent at least £2 million on a referendum in Scotland against the repeal of the infamous Thatcher-inspired Section 28 by the Scottish parliament.

He has taken over many bus routes in Britain by ruthless use of his monopoly power over other bus companies. He has driven down the wages and conditions of tens of thousands of bus workers by breaking up national pay agreements set by the TGWU since the 1950s.

Souter has used all the anti-union laws available to him against unions in dispute after dispute and now he seems intent on leading the charge by the capitalist class against the well-organised rail union RMT.

As Greg Tucker indicates in this week's The Socialist, the only way a "union free" SWT could be run, would be for the government to give the okay to the rail inspectorate and the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to ignore the safety repercussions of a rail system run by untrained managers and scabs brought in from the street.

The bosses don't give two hoots for safety if it interferes with their profits. The terrible crashes of Hatfield, Ladbroke Grove and Southall show what could happen if they succeed in smashing the RMT.

Railworkers and their unions stand for a fully safe rail network. The New Labour government like the Tories before them will ignore safety laws in their efforts to smash the power of the unions.

Before the next round of strikes, not just on SWT but Arriva, Connex, Silverlink and others, the RMT leadership will have to face up to train drivers in ASLEF, and some in the RMT, driving trains on strike days staffed by Brian Souter's "strike breaking" force of managers.

If SWT bosses get away with it then other rail bosses will do the same on the rest of the system.

Mick Rix, general secretary of ASLEF, says he supports the RMT. Well the best way of doing that is to instruct his members not to drive any train that is staffed by scabs.

The rail bosses claimed they were able to run 600 of the normal 1,700 trains on the last two days of strike action. This is no doubt management propaganda, but to stop this becoming a reality the rail unions must step up action by organising an all-out strike across the system.

If the bosses attempt to replace strikers with a scab workforce (they can legally sack them after eight weeks of the dispute) then the whole trade union movement should be mobilised. The entire rail system should be closed down, including London Underground.

The TUC is playing a despicable role, with secret meetings involving government ministers preparing to back the bosses.

The RMT should go over the heads of the TUC and make a direct appeal to trade union members to come to the aid of the rail workers.

The stage is being set for a mighty struggle. Perhaps not yet on the lines of the 1970s, but the issues are the same - solidarity with those in struggle and the need for a bold union leadership.

 

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WEF Meeting

War, Exploitation, Famine

THE WORLD Economic Forum (WEF) - the annual get-together of politicians and big business representatives - takes place this week in New York rather than its usual venue, Davos in Switzerland.

No doubt the organisers hope that by holding the forum in New York, with 11 September still fresh in many people's minds, anti-globalisation protests won't be as big as at previous events.

One multinational company won't be there. US energy corporation Enron have been struck off the guest list. Andersen, Enron's disgraced auditors, still got an invite but nobody's sure if they'll dare show their faces.

The Enron scandal shows exactly what forums like this are really about - multinational corporations and pro-big business politicians united together to exploit workers and the world's resources in the interests of profit.

Their system means that 16 million people die every year from easily preventable diseases; four-fifths of the world's population live below the poverty line and the richest 50 million people have the same income as the poorest 2.7 billion.

Yet, the UN estimates that "the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and safer water and sanitation for all is roughly $40 billion. This is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the world's richest people" (UN Human Development Report 1997).

Thousands of young people and workers will protest outside the WEF, while hundreds of delegates will converge on Porto Alegre, Brazil for an alternative World Social Forum.

At both events, members of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) - which the Socialist Party is affiliated to - will be explaining that the only alternative to capitalist exploitation worldwide is a socialist system.

This would mean public ownership of the multinational companies under democratic workers' control and management. Then the world's resources could be democratically planned and used in the interests of the majority of the world's people and environment, and not just the privileged few.

 

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Middle East conflict:

Sharon Out To Crush Palestinians

AFTER INTERCEPTING a ship carrying arms in the direction of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israeli government forces have stepped up their brutal repression in the PA areas.

Judy Beishon

On 14 January a leading activist in the al-Aqsa brigades (a Palestinian militia attached to Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation) was assassinated by an Israeli hit squad. In revenge, the brigades carried out a suicide attack on an Israeli Bat Mitzvah party in Hadera in which six people were killed and dozens wounded, and a shooting spree in Jerusalem in which two were killed and around 20 injured.

Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has ordered the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to continue to assassinate Palestinian 'terrorists', to destroy many homes and parts of the infrastructure in Palestinian areas and to storm into towns and cities in the PA in temporary re-occupations.

In the worst demolition operation since the start of the intifada (uprising) 16 months ago, 600 Palestinians in the Gaza strip, half of them children, were made homeless when their homes were bulldozed.

The airport in Gaza has been bulldozed and the PA police headquarters in the West Bank town of Tulkarm was destroyed with missiles. The IDF went on to seize the whole town of Tulkarm for 30 hours, searching for 'terrorists' and hoisting the Israeli flag.

Four activists of the Palestinian Islamic militia Hamas were killed by the IDF in Nablus, and blockades were tightened in other West Bank towns, including in Ramallah, where PA leader Yasser Arafat has been trapped for two months.

Israeli military leaders are divided on what strategy to pursue. Some want an all-out invasion to crush the last vestiges of the PA and remove Arafat, while others argue for the present course of action, a continuation and stepping up of military pressure which could lead to the same result eventually.

Sharon would like to see the end of Arafat, having already declared him "irrelevant", but is being held back for the time being by some of the military strategists in the IDF and by pressure from the US administration. However, US President George Bush, having declared victory over the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, has shifted his position to being increasingly hostile towards Arafat and the PA.

He recently stated his "disappointment" in Arafat, accused him of "enhancing terror" and his administration issued a statement saying they could "now understand" Israel's policy of blockading Arafat in his headquarters.

Outrage

The mood in the Palestinian areas is one of outrage at recent assassinations and other IDF attacks, and support for the armed struggle of the militias.

The latter are seen as the only people doing anything, in the absence of democratic organisations of struggle based on the Palestinian masses, that could represent their interests and involve them directly. Arafat's effective imprisonment and humiliation is viewed as further evidence that the peace process is dead.

Following his betrayal of the Palestinians in the Oslo peace process and his complete failure to lead opposition to the IDF onslaught, support for his Fatah organisation remains at only 20-30% of the population.

In the Palestinian areas, thousands have been storming prisons to demand the release of arrested activists. The militias have abandoned any talk of a ceasefire, with the al-Aqsa Brigades declaring it "cancelled, cancelled, cancelled" and Hamas announcing that the murder of their four activists "has opened the door wide to total war that will hit the Zionists everywhere and with all means at our disposal".

In Israel, fear and insecurity are giving leeway to Sharon for the time being to step up repression, but there is widespread realisation that military action or war will not solve the root problems.

This is recognised by some representatives of the ruling class: for instance, a former leader of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security force, has said Israel should unconditionally withdraw from the PA areas.

Strike wave

Sharon, though, representing a position much further to the right, has a set the path for worsening conflict. He refuses to contemplate any degree of self-determination for the Palestinian people and wants nothing short of the dismantling of the PA with the exodus of many of its people, the remainder being forced into small, isolated enclaves.

However, Sharon is also facing another battle in Israel itself, with a flexing of muscles by the working class.

A wave of strikes in the public sector broke out at the end of last year and has resumed in some sectors this year. National Insurance workers have recently taken strike action over under-staffing and 50,000 civil servants have planned a strike over pay and staffing levels.

This is against a background of increasing economic crisis; there was a 29% increase in job-seekers in January this year, following a loss of 155,000 jobs last year.

It is estimated that 1.5 million Israelis now live in poverty, including a quarter of all children.

A decent future for Israeli workers and youth lies in building a new workers' party that can challenge all the horrors of capitalism and pose a socialist alternative. Likewise the Palestinian masses will need to take the future into their own hands, overthrowing their corrupt PA leaders and turning away from support for terrorist actions which only bring further retribution.

In this way the basis can be laid for a complete transformation in the lives of all, in a socialist Palestine, alongside a socialist Israel, in a socialist confederation of the Middle East.

 

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Free The Funds

AS TRADE union branches meet to discuss conference resolutions, the question of the relationship of the trade unions with New Labour will be discussed by many union members. 

GLENN KELLY, Bromley UNISON branch secretary, explains about the campaign in public sector union UNISON to free the union's funds from the Labour Party.

UNISON MEMBERS are increasingly angry and frustrated at the Tory attacks on their jobs, conditions and the services they provide. But these attacks, privatisation, cuts and low pay, are being inflicted by New Labour.

That is why delegates voted at last year's UNISON annual conference to review why the union gives so much to the Labour Party, £1.5 million last year.

The trade unions together gave about £6 million to Labour for the general election campaign. This is at the same time as public sector workers were being sacked, like in Hackney council and NHS workers like those at Dudley hospitals were fighting privatisation.

That's the background to the fundamental break between the union and the Labour Party which delegates debated and decided on at last year's UNISON conference.

Stifling debate

The union national leadership denied delegates the right to debate stopping the funding. The leadership fought tooth and nail against the resolution which called for consultation with the branches and the regions about funding but the conference voted in favour.

Since then the leadership has been prevaricating on the consultation so they don't have to put the report or rule changes to this year's conference, which they were instructed to do.

In spite of that, a number of branches did start consulting their members but the leadership stopped it, in a deliberate attempt to flout the wishes of the membership.

The general secretary hoped he'd be baled out in the meantime by promises and assurances about privatisation and PFI which he got at the Labour Party conference. That has now backfired because the Labour government has just continued to slap UNISON around the face.

UNISON organised a national day of action in defence of public services on 4 December. In a deliberate attempt to put the unions down, Labour announced on that very day that they were handing over health services to BUPA, a private profit-making company. And they've recently announced further privatisation of health services.

During the conference debate I was accused of wanting to take the union out into the wilderness. But within weeks of the vote we saw the GMB cutting donations from Labour and in words at least threatening to stand candidates against them. Rail union RMT and the Fire Brigades Union also voted to review their links with Labour.

The UNISON leadership think they can avoid a debate by manoeuvring. But we are preparing for this year's conference from a stronger position. With each cut and each privatisation our position gets stronger.

How do we ensure we can change the rules come the June conference? It's been agreed through the UNISON United Left, which I chair, that we will campaign for the consultation to take place in the branches and regions between now and the conference.

Socialist Party members believe we should then argue that the union should create an open political fund, which has become known as the 'third fund'.

At the moment the union membership can choose to pay to Labour, through the affiliated political fund, or to the general political fund for general campaigning, or to none of them. We believe they should have another choice, to fund election candidates who support anti-cuts and anti-privatisation policies.

The union has set up a national working party of senior union officers but refused a branch representative on it. As I was the one who moved the resolution at last year's conference, it was proposed on the national executive to put me on this working party. But this was defeated.

The leadership's intention is apparently to present an interim report to this years' conference, that way avoiding the consultation and rule changes. They want to postpone it for another year, hoping Labour will turn up with something to rescue them.

We want branches to carry out the consultation, to organise debates and campaigns and report back nationally. Then at the June conference we'll be able to say how many branches have responded.

When the leadership consulted on the question of the branches' right to campaign, they produced a document in effect vetoing this right, on the basis of response from just 31 branches.

I'm confident that if we can have the debate on the conference floor, we'll win.

 

For model resolutions and campaign material, contact Free the Funds:

PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD, email: free_the_funds@hotmail.com

 

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