Socialist Party member and PCS rep
I am a Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union workplace representative and Socialist Party member. Like hundreds of thousands of workers across the country, I will be striking on 1 February.
I am a trade unionist because I am a worker who wants to defend my pay from real-terms pay cuts, defend my conditions at work and improve the lives of my colleagues. It would be difficult to find a single worker who has had their wages increase with inflation this year (unless they have fought for it!) Civil servants’ wages have fallen 8% in real terms this year, and over the last ten years we have lost well over 20% pay in real terms – the equivalent of working over one day a week for free.
We are constantly told that there is no money, yet we are in a time of record profits and have seen the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in decades. But with the strike wave the working class is fighting back and getting organised in trade unions in increasing numbers.
The bosses have their organisations including the media, political parties, and so on – they have even transformed the Labour Party into a tool for their interests. And they have the state to maintain their position at the top of society. The laws and the courts are not neutral but when push comes to shove will act against the working class. Look at how the raft of anti-trade union laws try to stop workers fighting back. That’s why we need organisations of our own to fight for workers’ interests.
In the trade unions we have working-class organisations formed to collectively fight back against the bosses – for more wages, for an improvement in our working conditions and so on.
But this fight is a political fight too. We need a mass workers’ party to fight in our interests. But the fight between the bosses trying to maximise profit and workers being able to have a decent wage is inherent to the capitalist system. We need a fundamental transformation of society, so a new mass workers’ party needs to be armed with a socialist programme (see the Socialist Party’s What We Stand For). This includes taking into public ownership big business and the banks so society can be democratically run, based on what we need not what makes a profit for a few.
Socialist Party trade unionists across the country are calling on their unions to coordinate action and demanding that the TUC name the day for a 24-hour general strike because that is part of what is needed to win. Why not strike together on budget day 15 March, when the National Education Union (NEU) already has a strike scheduled? We are doing everything we can with other workers to make this a reality.
We need fighting trade unionists and young people to join with us to help in these tasks. To fight back against the bosses and fight for a socialist world, get in touch with the Socialist Party today.
