Editorial of the Socialist issue 1225
Despite the efforts of the Tory government and bosses to end the strikes with poor pay offers, threats and court action, once again workers have demonstrated that the strike wave for a real pay rise is well and truly still on.
2023 May Day – International Workers’ Day – was marked with four days of strikes and workers’ demonstrations. Teachers in the National Education Union (NEU) in England took two days of strike action on 27 April and 2 May. Civil servants in the PCS took their third day of national strike action on 28 April. Nurses in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) struck from 8pm Sunday to midnight Monday 1 May. A Northern Ireland-wide strike of education and the civil service took place on 26 April.
Unite strikes also took place in the NHS on 1 and 2 May, including Yorkshire, South Central, South East Coast and West Midlands ambulances, and a number of hospital trusts including East Lancashire, Sandwell and West Birmingham, and Guy’s and St Thomas’s in London.
Demonstrations and rallies took place in many towns and cities. PCS members protested at Downing Street and up to 10,000 NEU members marched through Westminster.
Throughout the strike wave it has been the members that have pushed forward, delivering overwhelming votes in the reballots required by Tory anti-union legislation, and in many of the votes on pay offers.
The RCN leadership tried to get members to accept the latest government offer – so hard that they called the police on members who were campaigning for reject! But the members pushed back. That pressure has meant that Pat Cullen, RCN general secretary, has felt compelled to protest at the Tories’ disgraceful court action that blocked the planned strike for Tuesday 2 May.
Lead
Where a lead has been given, members have responded: in the NEU’s consultation on the government offer, in which the National Executive recommended rejection, 98% voted to reject! NHS workers in Unite have joined RCN members in voting to reject, as have radiographers. In Unison and the GMB, where the leadership campaigned strenuously for acceptance, members have voted to accept – although in Unison 40,000 members still voted to reject, and in the GMB 44% voted to reject!
A meeting of the NHS Staff Council, made up of representatives of NHS unions and employers took place on Tuesday 2 May to decide whether the NHS pay offer would be accepted. But that body has no power to make a binding decision. Members of unions that have voted to reject can bank that inadequate 5% pay rise and still fight on for more.
PCS, RCN and NEU are all reballoting to maintain their strike mandates. In each of these unions, there now needs to be a serious plan for escalating strike action to win. Wherever possible that should be coordinated: many nurses and junior doctors argue to strike together, as could four teaching unions (NEU, NASUWT, NAHT and ACSL) in the autumn.
Other workers are also potentially joining the action, including Unison members in local government and schools, which, if they vote to strike in the upcoming ballot, could bring hundreds of thousands more workers into the field.
As reported in last week’s Socialist, postal workers in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) will be consulted on the proposed deal negotiated by the union’s leadership with Royal Mail senior management, in a vote that runs from 17 May – 7 June. The deal only offers a 10% pay rise over three years, and over 400 reps and members remain victimised or sacked. Consequently, Socialist Party members are campaigning for a reject vote, alongside other activists in the union in CWU Forward (see meeting advert).
The Tories’ latest anti-union measures, the Minimum Services bill, could become law within weeks. But this is a divided government acting out of desperation against workers, and can be defeated. But that requires a serious response. The unions must meet urgently to prepare for mass coordinated action, up to and including a 24-hour general strike. The TUC should organise a national demonstration to launch such a campaign.
The organised working class in action has the power still to bring down this Tory government sooner rather than later, with the likelihood of a Starmer-led Labour government coming to power. Action now will help build the pressure on that government, which, as Starmer further underlines every day, has no intention of granting inflation-proof pay rises or fully funding public services such as the NHS and schools, never mind renationalising Royal Mail.
NSSN conference
The annual conference of the National Shop Stewards Network, on 24 June in London, therefore takes place at a vital time. The fight for inflation-proof pay rises, against imminent further anti-union legislation, and in preparation for a potential Starmer government, are all crucial and urgent issues for strikers, union reps, members and activists to debate.
Those same forces that have propelled the strike wave forward all through, have the opportunity to come together at the NSSN conference to thrash out a fighting strategy. If you’ve been on the picket line, this conference is the next place you need to be!
Mega-strike
Hundreds of thousands walked out in May Day weekend ‘mega-strikes’. Socialist Party members went along to picket lines, strike demos and May Day rallies in support.
Teachers
Elaine Brunskill reports that the numbers on NEU picket lines in Gateshead are growing.
Some of the strikers at Oakfield School on 27 April were from Kells Lane School, who then organised their own picket line on 2 May. At Glynwood Primary School, teachers had friends and relatives in the PCS and RCN. Everybody knows somebody who is out on strike!
Strikers made the point that, alongside the deal on offer not being enough, there is no extra funding for it. Any extra money given to them comes out of existing budgets, meaning cuts to support staff.
Children were shouting out “toot, toot!” as they walked by – a generation of young people learning a valuable lesson about workers’ solidarity!
NHS
Across Leeds, nurses and ambulance workers both took part in strike action on 1 May. As the RCN picket line supervisor at St James’s Hospital kept saying, “Every time I look, there’s more of us”.
Nurses said they rejected the 5% pay offer not only for how low it was in relation to inflation, or restoring the decade of lost pay, but also as it reflected a total failure to address safe staffing and nurse retention.
There was enthusiasm about striking alongside ambulance workers, and for coordinating future action with junior doctors. At the ambulance picket line in Bramley, we were told that Unite was struggling to process all the new members signing up to join.
At Torbay Hospital, RCN members told Ryan Aldred: “I joined the RCN because it had a no-strike policy, but it’s now that bad that here I am on a picket line.” “I don’t work overtime and I can’t afford holidays.” Another added: “You even have to pay to come to work because of the car parking fees.”
Corinthia Ward reports from Good Hope Hospital, in Sutton Coldfield: “Nurses were being offered £50 an hour to come in today, with one shift effectively being worth a week’s normal wages.” At Birmingham Children’s Hospital a picket sarcastically said: “It’s a funny coincidence that after 13 years of the Tories we’re being paid less, bursaries have been scrapped and we’re more understaffed than ever. But that’s not saying it would have been any better under Labour!”
A striker told Joe Foster at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham: “We have doctors coming from other areas to work here, and we tell them that we can’t carry out basic procedures, due to not having the equipment or the staff.”
Civil service
Hundreds of PCS members descended on Downing Street in London on 28 April. Helen Pattison reports that the picket lines were big, loud and angry, with lots of new and younger members of the union. Strikers said there were lots of reasons why they had joined the union recently: the action on pay, and also working conditions. These new, young reps were keen to discuss a strategy to escalate the action.
