The conference of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) met on 5 July, bringing together trade unionists from around the country at a crucial time. A video showed photo after photo of NSSN banners and supporters on picket lines and protests. In the hall were striking workers, trade union reps and leaders, NHS and education workers, civil servants, workers in the private sector; young people at their first conference and movement veterans.
Helen Pattison, Socialist Party Executive Committee, reports.
‘Starmer can be forced to retreat – now the workers’ movement must take the lead ’
In opening the conference, NSSN chair Rob Williams reminded us that last year, NSSN conference took place during the general election. The Tories were weeks away from being ousted from power, that was clear. That’s why the discussion last year focused on the need to fight for a workers’ manifesto. Similarly, the bakers’ union BFAWU had put out their aptly named “Bakers’ Dozen” manifesto, listing demands on the next government.
But a year on, this Labour government has gone on the offensive against the working class, including its most vulnerable sections. Labour may have won a sizeable majority in parliament, but events have shown it can still be rocked by crisis. Starmer, Kendall and co. “wanted to celebrate their year in office by inflicting vicious welfare reform, billions of pounds of cuts, against some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities”. But they had suffered a massive setback, forced to U-turn on big sections of their welfare reform bill.
“The fight against that bill must continue but the biggest lesson from last week is that Starmer and his government can be forced to retreat. Now, the trade unions, representing millions of workers, must lead that struggle.”
Katrine Williams, chairing the conference, explained how Cardiff Trades Council’s motion to the national Trades Council conference, against attacks on disability benefits, will be going to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in September. It says that the TUC should call a mass demonstration against the austerity Starmer’s government is delivering. The NSSN encouraged all attendees to pass a model motion which repeats this call, and for a lobby outside the TUC in Brighton on Sunday 7 September, to put pressure on the TUC to take these next vital steps.
In fact, the theme of the day was that now is the time for the workers’ movement to take a lead on the many issues facing the working class. And there are many issues: from the whipping up of racism and division, the welfare attacks, the Supreme Court ruling being used against trans rights and the huge alienation from politics felt by millions.
The workers’ movement can’t take a back seat on these questions, it must take a lead.
Strike solidarity
The largest group of striking workers represented were bin workers from Birmingham and Sheffield. They were joined by the inspiring Caroline, a striking Gloucestershire phlebotomist: “For years we have been asking for our pay banding to be reviewed,” in recognition of their skilled work. But when they were denied yet again, she said they drew the conclusion “that the only way that we were ever going to get anywhere… was to join a union.” Now all the ‘magnificent 37’ are in Unison and have been on strike since 17 March.
The bin workers from Birmingham and Sheffield were introduced by Onay Kasab, Unite the Union lead officer. Before inviting them to the mic, he listed some of the recent victories by workers in Unite.
Not only do both bin disputes involve Labour-run councils, both have employed scab labour. Dan from Birmingham said their dispute is against a huge attack on pay which would see drivers lose £8,000 a year and a safety critical role. Using court injunctions, backed up by heavy policing of picket lines, the employers are doing all they can to prevent pickets from stopping wagons leaving depots.
In Sheffield, Veolia, which runs the bins outsourced by the Labour-led council, refuses to recognise Unite as the workers’ chosen union – “Unite members are simply asking to have the rep of their choice at the negotiating table”. Joel told the conference that their strike “has lasted nearly as long as the miners’ strike” – 11 months.
Pete Randle, who spoke at NSSN conference in 2022 as a striking bin worker in Coventry, reported on that strike victory.
- There will be a second ‘mega-picket’ in Birmingham on 25 July and a mass picket in Sheffield on 9 July.
A workers’ political alternative
The NSSN doesn’t take a position in relation to political parties. Nevertheless, discussion on the need for the workers’ movement to have its own party was a huge feature of the day.
We met just days after Zarah Sultana’s announcement that she plans to co-lead a new party with Jeremy Corbyn. Ian Hodson, president of the BFAWU, welcomed the announcement. “While we queue at foodbanks, they dine on caviar and champagne… Starmer’s Labour Party has chosen to balance the economy on the backs of the poorest in our society… We as working-class people have to organise to defeat this Labour government”.
Steve Wright, newly elected general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), reiterated his intention for the union to work with the NSSN. He said he wants to make sure that every workplace in the fire service is “a bastion of the FBU”. The NSSN can help bring together “activists in workplaces up and down the UK and bring that power and strength to the forefront”.
Austerity
Fire services have lost 12,000 firefighters due to austerity. “We cannot see the difference between Tory austerity and Labour austerity… but we need to start demanding that change.” Steve went on to say that “at our conference five weeks ago, our delegates debated whether we should stay affiliated to the Labour Party. I said ‘We’re in the party, we need to demand change from inside’. But that line won’t last much longer.”
Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA), said Labour “had an opportunity in 1997 to make major changes to the lives of working-class people, just like Starmer’s government has had a major opportunity. And over the last year, I’m afraid to say it’s just as bad as what happened in 1997”. While arguing for socialists to fight within the Labour Party, he added “Who would have thought a Labour government would endorse a two-child benefit cap?” Workers aren’t looking to Reform because they have all the answers, but because “they are filling a void”.
Eddie Dempsey, transport union RMT general secretary, unfortunately couldn’t make it but we did hear from RMT London regional officer, Jared Wood, speaking from the floor in a personal capacity. On Zarah Sultana’s announcement, he said unions had to “not just observe this development”, but “the trade union movement has to shape the development. It has to talk to Zarah Sultana, to Jeremy Corbyn, to others; it has to put forward demands for how that party should develop” and take the lead.
Sign the petition
Nancy Taaffe, a Unite workplace rep, said the announcement would “change the atmosphere in this country, already people are talking about the possibility of a new formation on the left”. She urged support for the petition ‘Time for trade unions to take the lead in forming a new working-class party, initiated by former Labour MP and socialist councillor Dave Nellist and 35 current and former executive members of different trade unions.
David Maples, a Unison member, said that disgracefully hardly any of the 60 Unison-supported Labour MPs voted against the welfare reform bill. He said that Unison should put pressure on the others to vote against the bill when it’s back in front of parliament on 9 July. Because if they don’t, the debate already taking place among members about the union’s links to Labour would intensify.
Speaking on behalf of Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) was Paula Peters. She listed the names of three Labour MPs who had abstained on the welfare reform bill. “That is not good enough, there is only one way to vote and that is to vote the bill down!” A PCS member speaking from the floor said that his union was, and can be again, a force which defended both workers’ rights and people using government services. In the DWP, union activists are fighting for a socialist social security system, an end to sanctions and instead to provide the services claimants need.
Newly elected University and College Union (UCU) National Executive Committee (NEC) member Marco Tesei told the meeting how he had taken a motion to UCU conference calling on the NEC to invite Jeremy Corbyn and other pro-worker MPs to discuss how they can best represent the union and its battles in parliament.
Anti-union laws
Still, POA members are banned from taking strike action because of restrictive anti-union laws. The Labour government has already had a year, and yet that ban, the Tory turnout thresholds, and the other anti-union laws which Starmer said would be repealed, are still in place. As Lois Austin pointed out when she reported on the Spycops inquiry, the government can act quickly to proscribe protesters as terrorists, but workers are now being told we will have to wait till 2027 for any action on employment rights.
It’s a political choice by Starmer not to repeal anti-union laws. As Fiona Brittle, from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) NEC, speaking in a personal capacity, said: “Any new party… has to be built on trade unions and trade union democracy”. Otherwise, she said, it risks losing accountability. “Who does Keir Starmer go back to? He goes back to big business. We need a new party to go to the working class to ask for approval, to hand power to workers organised in trade unions”.
National strike action
Fiona Brittle reiterated that the trade unions shouldn’t be propping up Starmer’s government by offering “industrial peace”. But workers are wise to Starmer’s attacks: “Partly because we can feel it in our wallets, partly because we haven’t noticed any increase in our living standards – in fact, we have seen a decrease”. She said: “Labour promised the greatest wave of insourcing in a generation, where is that?” Instead, she said that outsourcing had continued and as many as one in ten jobs were at risk in the civil service. “The time for hollow words from politicians who implement austerity and prop up capitalism is well past time to be over; and the time of fighting talk without action must be next on the chopping block”.
Ed Harlow, vice president of the National Education Union (NEU) said that since 2010 it’s just been “cut, cut and cut” in education. He highlighted “an entire generation of children who have been though an education system knowing only cuts and decline”. He also revealed that nine of every 30 kids in a class are living in poverty. He said that we needed to be “genuinely fighting for an alternative that puts people not profit at the heart of our system”.
Sheila Caffrey from the NEU NEC, speaking from the floor in a personal capacity, said “First we had an announcement of a 2.8% pay offer with no funding, leaving schools to foot the bill”. Even when the offer was increased to 4%, after a big vote in the union’s indicative ballot, it left a £500,000 shortfall in funding. ‘Partnership’ isn’t working for education workers or children: “There’s only one solution: fight! We’ve had hundreds of local NEU strike ballots across England since January, winning against redundancies, winning against changes to conditions and winning improvements for hundreds of members. But without national funding, education is in absolute crisis. We need a national ballot for a national fight back!” Sheila demanded.
UCU activists spoke, including NEC member Duncan Moore, who outlined the strikes taking place across universities and FE colleges against cuts and redundancies. Some have succeeded in beating back redundancies. Another NEC member Christina Paine backed these points up. UCU congress had voted for national strike action in HE and FE, but parts of the union’s leadership are trying to frustrate steps towards action.
In local government, Unison activist Hugo Pierre said that Starmer could decide tomorrow to end the funding crisis in councils, where one in three could have to file for ‘bankruptcy’. “He could write that cheque now!” Hugo argued for councils to set no-cuts budgets and demand the money from the government, something the Socialist Party has campaigned for. Onay Kasab pointed out how that is Unite policy. Unite predicts that a 1% tax on individuals with assets exceeding £4 million could generate £25 billion annually for public services. That money could easily plug the hole in council funding and the NHS.
NHS worker Roger Davey outlined the lack of funding and huge amount of privatisation going on in the NHS. He warned that “venture capitalists” are taking over community services, but at the same time he said “not to underestimate what Wes Streeting’s ‘productivity drive’ is going to do”.
Workers’ unity against war and division
As hundreds of thousands of workers and young people have marched against the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, Kevin Parslow, Waltham Forest Trades Council secretary, argued that trade union leaders should “put the union movement at the front of the anti-war movement”. He said that it was wrong to welcome increased defence spending – instead, as well as backing workers in the defence industry who object to sending arms to Israel, unions should demand nationalisation of the arms industry. In place of “huge profits from death and destruction”, democratic nationalisation would both defend jobs and allow discussion about production for social need.
A related theme of the conference was about how the workers’ movement can fight division.
Ellie Waple from Surrey Unison, who had stood for Unison NEC and faced attack in the press as a trans woman, talked about transphobia being whipped up by the right-wing media, Reform and Starmer. She said: “Starmer welcomed the Supreme Court guidance (against trans people) and that’s not a Labour Party I want to belong to, that’s not a Labour Party I want my trade union to belong too”.
Odun, a Nigerian socialist, updated the conference on the court case in Nigeria, where activists have been charged with treason for protesting against the government’s anti-poor policies. Lawanya from Tamil Solidarity and the Refugee Rights Campaign answered Starmer’s divisive rhetoric that Britain could “become an island of strangers”, with clear demands for pay, jobs and homes that can unite all of the working class.
NIPSA
Carmel Gates, general secretary of Northern Ireland public sector union NIPSA, sent a video message. She linked the need for fighting trade unions with the fight against racism and division. NIPSA is a growing union, 18% in the last four years, which Carmel put down to “the activity we’ve been engaged in”, including the public sector general strike in January last year. Within a fortnight of the strike, the collapsed Northern Ireland assembly was back, “largely in part due to the action that we took and the pressure we put on them to come back and resolve the pay dispute… We managed to win additional funding.”
The “cost-of-living crisis and working-class communities being driven into extreme poverty has fuelled the lies that are being told by the far right”. The north of Ireland has “the longest waiting list in Europe of people waiting for operations” and a significant housing problem. But “NIPSA has been to the forefront of all of the counter-protests that have taken place. We have argued, sometimes as a lone voice, for the trade unions to front up demonstrations.” NIPSA has asked other trade unions to join it in “providing stewards, so those who are attending the counter-protests and challenging the far right can do so safely”. NIPSA has also called on ICTU (the TUC in Ireland) to set up and train formal stewards to keep protesters safe.
Youth walk out against Trump
Starmer was quite happy to pass on the King’s invitation to Trump for a visit. But ordinary people are not so pleased. Adam Gillman from Socialist Students spoke to highlight the campaign calling for Trump walkouts in schools, colleges and universities. He reported that a union in Los Angeles whose leader was arrested protesting the immigration raids “has just led a 48-hour strike of 50,000 LA county workers”, and asked for the trade unions pass a motion to show solidarity with students walking out.
