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May 19th 2000 |
Save Jobs, Sack the Bosses |
THE GOVERNMENT’S car industry and
manufacturing crisis is far from over, despite Phoenix’s acquisition of Rover for
£10. |
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ANCILLARY WORKERS at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield reacted angrily when they heard the Trust board were going to discuss a paper recommending market testing catering, domestic, portering, security and transport services. Adrian O'Malley and Mick Griffiths, Wakefield and Pontefract Hospitals UNISON |
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HE’S BEEN in the news every day, he’s spoken out on the major issues affecting Londoners, he’s advocated a ‘new style’, ‘inclusive’ politics, he’s asked Tony Blair for more money for London. Many of the three-quarters of a million who voted for Ken Livingstone will be pleased that the new London Mayor seems to have hit the ground running. |
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AT THE lobby of Ken Livingstone in London, part of Save Free Education (SFE) day of action, PETER LEARY, non-payer at Goldsmith’s College and one of the organisers of the occupation at Goldsmith’s last year, spoke to Molly Cooper. THE
UNIVERSITY of Kent is implementing cuts for students by changing its
examination policy. The changes mean that, for the first time ever, almost 300 students
will have to sit three, three-hour exams in one day. |
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THE SOCIALIST Party opposes attacks on asylum-seekers’
rights from the media, the far-right, Tory leaders and the New Labour government.
NAOMI BYRON argues for a socialist, internationalist and working-class approach to the
right to asylum. Refugees and asylum seekers – facts not myths |
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South
Africa general strike signals turning point for workers |
In the biggest mobilisation since the early 1990s, on 10 May the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) led more than four million workers - half the workforce – in a general strike that brought major centres and several towns to a standstill for several hours. Weizmann Hamilton of the Democratic Socialist Movement, South Africa, reports. |
THE GOVERNMENT’S car industry and manufacturing crisis is far from over, despite Phoenix’s acquisition of Rover for £10.
John
Dale, Bolsover
On top of huge jobs losses at Ford Dagenham, Nissan UK talks about ending Nissan Micra production unless it cuts costs by 30% at its Sunderland plant within two years. This would threaten 12,000 jobs.
Ford and Nissan claim their profits are ‘savaged’ by the high value of the pound but they have billions in reserves. They should be forced to open their books to see if threatened job losses can be justified.
Other manufacturing companies also claim the pound’s high value is eating into their profits to threaten job losses.
Courtaulds Textiles decision to close its
Meridien factory will be a devastating blow to the workers and their families in the
Bolsover area.
But last year Courtaulds made over £37 million profit. Marks and Spencer who buy much of the clothing made at Meridien made £500 million profits. But because their profits were halved last year, their big investors want even more cost cutting.
Not content with the low wages they pay workers in their Bolsover factory, they are moving production to factories paying even lower slave wages, in countries like Sri Lanka.
Why should these companies get away with wrecking peoples’ lives? They still make massive profits and their fat-cat directors still get huge salaries. The truth is these big business tycoons want to squeeze even more out of ordinary working people to boost profits, whether they work in Britain, Germany, Japan or Sri Lanka.
All workers whose jobs are threatened should be able to inspect their company’s accounts. Then they could see for themselves how much the directors get paid and how much the company’s got in reserves to keep production going.
A big campaign by clothing and textile workers, car workers and other threatened workers around the country - including industrial action where appropriate - could force the government to intervene. But why should public money be handed to big business to further line their bulging bank accounts?
Any company throwing people out of work should be taken into public ownership and run under democratic workers’ control. If you want to help fight against big business and the way it treats working people, join us!
ANCILLARY WORKERS at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield reacted angrily when they heard the Trust board were going to discuss a paper recommending market testing catering, domestic, portering, security and transport services.
Adrian
O'Malley and Mick Griffiths, Wakefield and Pontefract Hospitals UNISON
With less than 24 hours notice, UNISON members organised a petition signed by 1,150 hospital staff and distributed leaflets opposing privatisation. At a 200-strong lobby of the Trust board meeting. TV cameras showed hospital staff with placards attacking boardroom fat cats who want the lowest-paid staff to bail out the financial crisis of the Trust.
The turn out and anger on display visibly shocked the directors who had convinced themselves that the union was unrepresentative and that the workers would meekly accept privatisation.
Adrian O'Malley, UNISON branch chair, was allowed to speak at the meeting backed up by workers who had walked out of work to join the lobby.
Reflecting the mood within the hospital, the board deferred a decision for another month to give the union time to bring alternatives to market testing. For the directors to even defer a decision is a major achievement especially as some senior directors argued for privatisation during the meeting.
UNISON's position is clear. We will not co-operate with the tendering procedure. If the Trust insist on market testing we will ballot for strike action, as was unanimously agreed by the lobbying workers.
We are NHS workers employed on NHS terms and conditions and want the private contractors Initial kicked out of our sister hospital in Pontefract. UNISON members in Wakefield will fight to retain the jobs. Management have been warned.
The morning following the lobby Adrian was interviewed by local radio. The Trust director who argued most strongly in favour of tendering was forced to eat humble pie as he proclaimed that the decision to defer was a good one.
Many new union members were recruited to UNISON and the branch morale has been boosted with many new activists becoming organised. Management have also now offered to end the Initial contract at Pontefract.
The Socialist demands:
+Bring the NHS into public ownership. Cleaning, catering and other services should not be run for profit.
+Remove the trusts, abolish the internal market. Representatives of NHS workers, trade unions and health service users should make the decisions about how the NHS is run and what its priorities are. +Nationalise the drug companies and medical equipment suppliers under working-class control and management to end the massive subsidy these parasites drain from the NHS.
+A socialist programme to eliminate poverty and inequality – the biggest killer and cause of ill-health.
HE’S BEEN in the news every day, he’s spoken out on the major issues affecting Londoners, he’s advocated a ‘new style’, ‘inclusive’ politics, he’s asked Tony Blair for more money for London. Many of the three-quarters of a million who voted for Ken Livingstone will be pleased that the new London Mayor seems to have hit the ground running.
Paula
Mitchell
Ken has promised his supporters: “What you have invested in me, I will never betray.” But central to his mayoral campaign was his opposition to tube privatisation. And shortly after becoming mayor he threatened the government with a “judicial review”.
Yet, unfortunately, within days he had already made concessions. In order to get New Labour GLA members into his cabinet, he has agreed instead to an independent committee (chaired by the former editor of The Times) to look into the government’s privatisation plans.
Livingstone has also thrown himself into the debate about the future of Ford at Dagenham. He rightly said that the future of the plant is in the hands of the workers and if they decide to stand and fight then they will have his backing.
Yet when asked in a TV interview what could be done, his answer was “immediately nothing”. His policy consists of asking Ford’s bosses to keep the plant open ready for when the value of the pound falls. If that fails and the plant closes, Dagenham he argues should become an enterprise zone. In other words put your faith in big business.
The reality is that Ken Livingstone is trying to look both ways. He wants to be the ‘people’s champion’, while simultaneously defending big business. He makes radical speeches about the international financial institutions killing more people than the Nazis but then says: “I will build a strong partnership with every section of London business”.
The Lib Dems rejected his overtures of involvement in a grand coalition government of London, but New Labour’s Nicky Gavron has accepted the job of deputy mayor. Known as the “Quango Queen”, Gavron is credited with turning Haringey into a New Labour council. Late last year Haringey council workers were on strike against attacks on their pay and conditions, meanwhile Gavron lives in a £1 million home.
Another Haringey Blairite, Lord Toby Harris, has been appointed to head the Police Committee.
At the same time, Ken is trying to maintain the radical image. The Greens’ Darren Johnson eagerly accepted the top environment post. Leader of the National Assembly against Racism, Lee Jasper has been appointed to race relations and liaison with the police.
But this radicalism is unfortunately just an impression. Lee Jasper has worked as a Metropolitan Police adviser and police trainer for years and even Jack Straw picked him as a race adviser.
This cross-class alliance has been justified with statements such as “we’re all Londoners at heart.” Calling on voters to “name and shame governments that discriminate against Londoners”, he claims London receives proportionately less money than other areas. He rightly says that the Mayor has to lead a campaign for more money but demands that the extra money should be taken from other areas, particularly Scotland.
This is simply London populism. He makes radical sounding speeches and pledges to support Londoners, but denies the fundamental fact that the interests of Londoners are not all the same. Instead he should be demanding a united campaign of the working class throughout Britain against big business.
An opportunity to lead a real fight looks like being lost. Livingstone could use his authority to mobilise hundreds of thousands in defence of the tube, to take over Ford or to win extra money for London. He could use his position to call for a new party to represent working-class people and take concrete steps towards that. But instead Livingstone is already working towards re-entry to the Labour Party.
Nonetheless, his election victory is far more significant than his individual actions. Millions have seen that it is possible to defeat New Labour and many will draw the conclusion that Ken hasn’t; that a new party to defend working-class people is not only necessary but possible.
AT THE lobby of Ken Livingstone in London, part
of Save Free Education (SFE) day of action, PETER LEARY, non-payer at Goldsmith’s
College and one of the organisers of the occupation at Goldsmith’s last year, spoke
to Molly Cooper.
LIVINGSTONE IS a significant figure, with a lot
of support from the people of London. He’s obviously someone who could make a
difference.
Last year Livingstone put down an early day
motion in Parliament in support of our occupation.
When he was looking for students’ votes in
London, although he’d have no direct control over education, he implied that
he’d use his influence to condemn the current system of education funding, to back
the fight against tuition fees and support
the reintroduction of an acceptable means of support for students.
Now he’s mayor, we shall see if his desire
to appeal to Labour members in the assembly will dilute his commitment. But we can’t
rely on one politician to create a campaign for us.
Is
non-payment still the best way to beat tuition fees?
Yes, it’s hard to see another way! People
refusing to participate in the system can be very effective. We also have to think about
how we defend students, who can be excluded from college facilities such as libraries or
computer rooms.
We should consider boycotts of these facilities
if the authorities use this tactic. Each college reacts in a different way, so we have to
be imaginative, but make sure we’re effective in what we do.
We should keep talking to students to build a
mass campaign of non-payment. We need to convince them not to pay before the start of next
year. We also need to talk to people in FE colleges and Sixth Forms who may be coming to
university next year.
What
about occupations?
When non-paying students face exclusions from
college, you need action to defend those students. An occupation can be the most effective
weapon that the student body can use when they need to defend students and confront
college management.
But used in the wrong way, occupations could
leave students vulnerable. There can be a danger of occupations for occupations’
sake.
I’ve seen one occupation this year by a
very small number of people, in an irrelevant part of the college, where the authorities
just left them there until they got bored. It can make a laughing stock of the students
involved.
The real danger is that if students were really
facing exclusions, and they’d already done a fake occupation, they might not be able
to mobilise students when it is necessary.
Should
students fighting tuition fees link up with Ford and Rover workers in joint demonstrations
to unite the campaign against Tony Blair?
Yes. There’s a lot of feeling against this
government and Blair’s really unpopular. If we could all link together it would
provide an effective opposition to the attacks people are facing.
Occupation in KentTHE UNIVERSITY of Kent is implementing cuts for students by changing its examination policy. The changes mean that, for the first time ever, almost 300 students will have to sit three, three-hour exams in one day. The vice-chancellor, professor Robin Sibson has again put Canterbury’s conference guests before fee-paying students by fitting exams into a short periods allowing maximum income from conference guests after the students have finished. On Wednesday 10 May, as part of SFE's national day of action, students at the university demonstrated outside the university registry which had been closed and was manned by security guards for fear of occupation. Students then made their way to the Senate Building where about 25 students went into occupation. Students will remain in the building until the university reconsiders its policy on examinations. The students’ union is organising this campaign which also calls for the vice-chancellors to promise not to introduce top-up fees. |
THE SOCIALIST Party
opposes attacks on asylum-seekers’ rights from the media, the far-right, Tory leaders
and the New Labour government. NAOMI BYRON argues for a socialist, internationalist and
working-class approach to the right to asylum.
THE TORIES are playing the race card, desperate
to scare people into voting for them. The press, competing for sales in an overcrowded
marketplace, are looking for stories to sell papers.
Preying on some existing prejudices - and
growing dissatisfaction with government priorities - the press encourage an
anti-asylum-seeker mood by wild exaggeration and by suppressing most relevant facts. New
Labour meanwhile use asylum-seekers as a scapegoat for their own unpopularity.
The bosses use immigration controls to keep the
poor and dispossessed “in their place” and divide and rule working-class people.
To justify repressive new laws they want and divert attention from their own failures,
establishment politicians use asylum-seekers as a scapegoat.
But attacking refugees’ rights won’t
help solve any problems working-class people face, such as the crises in health,
education, housing and transport.
Racism is clearly increasing in Britain as shown
in a growth of racist attacks. The racist far-right, driven virtually out of public
activity a few years ago, are again spreading Nazi lies.
The neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP) got a
worrying 781 votes (23.7%) on 4 May in Tipton Green in the Black Country and 2.87% in the
Greater London Assembly elections.
On the same day however, the Tories lost Romsey
in a by-election. Most people are repulsed by Hague’s recent racist binge.
Significantly, in Tipton Green (by far the Nazis’ highest vote) the BNP’s
leaflet didn’t mention asylum-seekers or immigration: the racism it contained was
relatively veiled and they pretended to be a local alternative.
Anti-asylum seeker propaganda has stirred up
prejudice. We must combat this by explaining where the real problem lies.
When we show that the housing crisis is caused
by privatisation, not asylum-seekers, most working-class people back our call for an end
to the sell-offs and investment in public, affordable housing.
Such class-based policies will convince a
broader layer of working-class and middle-class people to stand against the attacks on
asylum-seekers.
Moral appeals and slogans like
“asylum-seekers welcome here” appeal to people who are radicalised and already
consciously anti-racist, but they can unnecessarily push people who otherwise have a good
class approach into the racists’ arms.
THE ARGUMENT that stronger measures against
economic migrants would protect “genuine refugees” is false. Firstly many
“genuine refugees” aren’t protected.
A mountain of obstacles prevents refugees even
getting into Britain: from fines on airline companies, ferry operators and lorry drivers
who let people without the correct immigration papers into Britain, to the “safe
third country” rule which deports around 10% of all asylum-seekers immediately
without investigating their claims.
Thousands of refugees are imprisoned every year,
with fewer rights than convicted criminals, for claiming asylum in Britain.
Many refugees genuinely fleeing persecution have
their applications turned down because the Home Office refuses to admit that the regimes
they fled are repressive.
Only political, public campaigns, linked to
legal challenges to Home Office decisions, stop many thousands of refugees being deported
back to persecution, imprisonment and possible death.
When they’re told the real facts of a case,
most people strongly support refugees’ right to stay in Britain. We must develop this
sympathy by explaining how the current system creates these injustices every day and every
hour.
The government complains about ‘economic
migrants’, but the exploitative policies of globalisation and neo-liberalism which
New Labour maintains create them.
This government still sells arms to repressive
regimes and supports British-based multinationals’ profits at the expense of the
underdeveloped world’s peoples. These policies lead to repression and gross
exploitation.
The world’s richest 20% consume 86% of the
goods and services produced world-wide; the poorest 20% get only 1.3%; the income gap
between these sections has risen to 74:1. In the last decade, income per head of
population has dropped in more than 80 countries!
Enough food is produced to feed the world, yet
governments pay farmers to destroy millions of tonnes of food every year to keep prices
high and maintain agri-business’ profits.
TORY ATTACKS on economic migrants are utter
hypocrisy. The Tories initiated most post-war immigration into Britain to provide
much-needed workers. They also used it as an excuse to try and drive down workers’
rights by giving immigrants jobs on lower pay and conditions than existing British
workers.
New Labour recently organised international
appeals for foreign workers to come and work in the NHS and schools. It organises other
schemes to bring foreign workers into industries where there’s a shortage of labour.
10,000 seasonal workers from Eastern Europe are
brought into Britain annually between April and November under a government scheme to
recruit farm labourers - few British people will do such intensive work for the wages
offered.
The government sees immigrant labour as an
alternative to improving wages and conditions. To cut across this, working-class people
and the unions must fight against reduced rights being given to immigrant workers and take
this weapon of divide and rule out of the bosses’ hands!
It is capitalist exploitation which causes
problems both for existing populations and migrants. Blaming economic migrants for social
and economic problems is falling into the bosses’ trap.
The UN reports that European Union countries
need 1.6 million immigrants a year over the next 50 years to fill jobs left open by an
ageing workforce, They need 13.5 million immigrants yearly to keep the ratio of workforce
to pensioners stable.
THE SOCIALIST Party supports any steps towards
better rights for refugees and migrants. But these rights will never be guaranteed under
capitalism; we need to keep up pressure constantly..
As well as defending refugees’ right to
asylum, we recognise that most refugees want to return to their countries of origin. We
support their struggle to do so, by backing and organising movements of opposition to
repressive regimes and the criminal waste of capitalism internationally.
We organise international solidarity to defend
those under attack in their own countries. The CWI, the socialist international to which
we’re affiliated, recently helped force governments in Kazakhstan and Nigeria to
release political prisoners including our own members.
We campaign to end the imperialist grip of the
multinational corporations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These
institutions have a stranglehold on most underdeveloped countries, forcing privatisations
and cuts in social spending as a condition of aid or investment.
We argue for socialist policies to be
implemented world-wide to ensure the democratisation and economic development of the
ex-colonial world.
By democratically agreeing how the world’s
resources can best be used in the interest of workers and other oppressed peoples, a
socialist plan of production can utilise human talents to develop a world free from
hunger, poverty and exploitation.
Human society has developed through constant
migrations; the transportation and mixing of cultures, science and technology. Immigration laws control people’s movement in
the interests of big business. They help block the future development of society.
Socialists stand for a society where people can
move around the world and live free of fear, persecution or poverty.
This would allow people to choose freely where they want to live. This includes people’s right to stay where they are and not be separated from their family, friends, culture and lifestyle: a right denied to many millions today.
A REFUGEE is someone forced to flee their home due to persecution, repression, civil war or disaster. The UN estimate there are 15 million refugees world-wide and 30 million people displaced within their own countries.
“Asylum-seekers” are refugees who’ve applied for the right to asylum but haven’t yet had a government decision. It takes over a year for an asylum claim to be processed in Britain.
Most refugees world-wide stay in the same region as their home country; seven million refugees in Africa live outside their country of origin. In 1998 Iran received 1.9 million refugees, Jordan 1.4 million and Pakistan 1.2 million; Britain had asylum applications from 58,000 people in 1998 and 74,000 people in 1999.
Britain’s not a “soft touch” – it’s one of the hardest countries for refugees to enter, with some of the least liberal asylum laws. 81% of asylum applications are turned down at the first stage. This autumn the government is reducing asylum-seekers’ rights from two appeals against this initial decision to one appeal.
While they await a decision, asylum-seekers are entitled to, at most, 70% of income support. All but £10 of this is paid in vouchers tied to one or two supermarkets, humiliating refugees and marking them out for discrimination.
£590 million was spent on asylum-seekers in Britain last financial year – tiny compared to the gaps in the health budget, the housing crisis or the £10 billion a year the government gives away to big business in corporation tax cuts.
Laws reducing refugees’ rights have little impact on the numbers applying for asylum in Britain. The numbers are much more affected by the severity of the crises which produce refugees.
6,680 people applied for asylum this March. Most were from ex-Yugoslavia followed by Sri Lanka, China, Afghanistan and Somalia - countries with serious human rights problems.
98,365 asylum-seekers are awaiting decisions. This isn’t because of “floods” of asylum-seekers into Britain as Hague argues - a “bottleneck” would be a better description.
Like last summer’s crisis in passport processing, the backlog of asylum claims was caused by privatisation of part of the processing service. The new computer system failed and workers dealing with the cases have only just started catching up.
As a proportion of population Britain has a low number of applications for asylum: at 1.5 per 1,000 inhabitants Britain ranks ninth in Europe.
In the biggest mobilisation since the early
1990s, on 10 May the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) led more than four
million workers - half the workforce – in a general strike that brought major centres
and several towns to a standstill for several hours. Weizmann Hamilton of the Democratic
Socialist Movement, South Africa, reports.
CALLED TO protest against what COSATU general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi described as a “bloodbath of job losses”, the general strike signifies a turning point in the political relations within the Tripartite Alliance between COSATU, the South African Communist Party and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
It is the beginning of open opposition to the ANC government’s policies by COSATU. At the end of this road lies the end of the Alliance itself, when the question of the political independence of the working class and COSATU and the need for a mass workers, party forces itself unavoidably onto the agenda.
The biggest demonstration was in Johannesburg, where 150,000 gathered in the city centre, delaying the commencement of the march to the Stock Exchange and to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature by over two hours.
The marches were distinguished by their discipline. With the exception of a minor incident in Kwa Zulu Natal, the general strike went off without incident. Generally, there was a serious mood with the leadership surprised by the large turnout even in the smallest towns.
After five years of ‘democracy’ more than half of South Africans earn less than R300 ($43) a month, half of all schools have no electricity or equipment, 15 million are illiterate, hundreds of thousands are homeless and living in squatter camps. Millions are living with Aids as 1,500 a day are infected. Whereas the government had promised to redistribute 30% of the land, the current figure is only 2%.
The general strike reflected the anger of workers who had voted the ANC to power expecting the fulfilment of its pre-1994 elections slogan “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”. Unemployment is conservatively estimated at running at 30%, and is more likely anywhere between four and six million (40%-60%).
As a direct result of its neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy, tariff reductions have seen thousands sacked in textile and clothing. More than 300,000 have lost their jobs in the mining industry over the last few years. The government has also destroyed 170,000 jobs and is placing the axing of a further 120,000 jobs on this year’s public-sector wage negotiations.
Whilst carrying out these attacks against the working class they have followed a programme of the enrichment of the capitalists and a new black elite through privatisation and over R8 billion tax concessions in the last five years.
The government insists on repaying the debt inherited from the apartheid regime because “we cannot renege on our obligations” for fear of the reaction of foreign investors - that consumes over 20% of the budget.
The general strike was the culmination of a campaign of rolling mass action that commenced in March but was largely ignored by the media including the government controlled television. The rolling campaign of mass action developed immediately after president Thabo Mbeki’s ANC government was re-elected with an even bigger majority in June 1999. Within less than a month the bosses, sacked tens of thousands of workers and used provocative disciplinary measures including the first ever use of the lock-out clause in the new Labour Relations Act.
Provocatively, the the ANC government had ever undertaken they walked out of the annual public-sector wage negotiations and unilaterally imposed a derisory increase. It led to the first ever public-sector general strike, involving even the predominantly white-led conservative unions in joint action with the COSATU unions for the first time ever. The demand for a general strike – for 48 hours – was first raised in this context.
The workers’ mood and the massive support for the 10 May strike radicalised the speeches of the COSATU leadership.
Addressing workers in front of the Stock Exchange, COSATU president Willie Madisha announced that the bosses had six days to respond to their demands. “If you don’t listen we will be back and after six days we will fight until we win. The strike is about poverty, joblessness and the greed of capitalism.” He threatened an indefinite general strike if their demands are not met.
The actual demands around which the strike was called are very weak and can easily be met without altering the situation - the reduction in the rate of tariff reduction, consultations with workers over redundancies and privatisations, etc.
The bosses’ main problem is the timing of such concessions. To do so in the face of a general strike is highly problematic. It may appease the trade union leadership but the workers are to the left of the leadership. In reality, the working class came out to warn the bosses that they would retreat so far and no further.
There will be no respite ahead. The South African economy is sinking into deeper crisis. Mbeki is determined to speed up privatisation and to hold the line on wages and to set an example in the public sector to the bosses on wages, conditions and jobs.
Mbeki and the ruling class are in a no-win situation. But his arrogant over-confidence will accelerate the process of political differentiation, placing the question of a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme to the fore.