The Socialist 10 April 2004

Fight The Low Pay Scandal

Fighting Back Against Low Pay And Government Attacks

NUT conference: Time For A Change

Left Candidate Defeats Blairite For Presidency

Military Families Speak Out Against Bush's War And Lies

Iraq: Coalition Plans In Chaos

Rwanda's Killing Fields: A Legacy Of Imperialism

Sri Lanka: Election To End Crisis Ends In New Crisis

Immigration: Fact And Fiction

Support Scotland's Nursery Nurses

Previous issues, etc

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Fight The Low Pay Scandal

Support the PCS strike

Stop the jobs slaughter

BLAIR'S GOVERNMENT has declared war on its own workforce. 70,000 civil servants in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP, mainly job centres and benefit offices) are being forced to strike against low pay for a further two days directly after Easter, on 13 and 14 April.

Bill Mullins, Socialist Party industrial organiser

In a leaked memo from the top civil service managers to government ministers, they declare that they will exclude the trade unions from representing their members in pay negotiations in the future.

The bosses, who pay themselves £100,000-plus salaries, want to drive down the living standards of people who do a vital job for the millions who are forced to claim state benefits every week.

25% of civil servants are on less than £13,500 a year. 41% are on less than £16,000 a year (the EU decency threshold). 14,000 are on less than £9,500 a year. It's no wonder that they are going on strike next week.

Civil servants are in the front line of the fight against low pay and the defence of public services. The government's plans for the whole of the public sector are more privatisation, more job cuts and more attacks on workers' pay packets. It is the trade unions that can stand in their way.

The bosses and the government want to smash the unity of the workers in the public sector, just as Thatcher set out to do with the miners 20 years ago. For the bosses and the New Labour government it is vital that they try to break the will of the workers to fight back. The strike of DWP workers is also our fight. Join the struggle to oppose low pay and join the Socialist Party.

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Fight The Low Pay Scandal