Southampton trade unionists march
Nick Chaffey, Socialist Party Southern Regional Secretary
With over 100 days of the new Labour government passed, Southampton and South West Hampshire Trades Union Council (STUC) hosted a rally and meeting on Saturday 2 November.
STUC secretary and Socialist Party member Declan Clune outlined the importance of the discussions: “We have suffered the impact of austerity, witnessed the horrors of war in Gaza and Ukraine, and seen the rising threat of racism and the far right. Our trade unions need to be to the fore in uniting our workplaces and communities against a new round of cuts.”
NHS cuts
Public sector workers from local councils and the NHS explained how Labour’s Budget had not addressed the fundamental problems of underfunding, overwork and low pay. The local rep from the Royal College of Nursing explained how nurses had overwhelmingly rejected the government’s pay offer. Another health worker warned that the new funding for the NHS was simply not enough.
Council cuts
Council workers at Southampton City Council and Hampshire County Council also raised their concerns that the budget had left councils massively underfunded.
Hampshire County Council is preparing to privatise the school meals service and is attacking the workers’ sickness policy – that will become a ‘sacking charter’ if implemented.
Workers are being pushed beyond their limits. This can be seen with the strike ballot of local hospital porters, who have reacted angrily to bullying management demands that workers report to their managers if they want to take a toilet break. Is that what Labour health secretary Wes Streeting means when he talks about increased productivity?
Outside the public sector, pay disputes are continuing. Unite the Union members at Eaton Aerospace in nearby Fareham are escalating their strikes next week.
Housing crisis
Other campaigners present took up the growing housing crisis, with over 8,000 on the council waiting list, and the problems of rising rents and terrible housing conditions. Students from the university explained how, for some, housing costs take up their entire loans, and that many students work 30-hour-a-week jobs on top of full-time studies. They are launching a housing campaign demanding student rents be capped.
Others who have marched against the war on Gaza highlighted how important it was that those protests continue to call out the hypocrisy of Starmer who says there is no money for funding public services, but finds billions for war and destruction.
Sue Atkins, Unite Community, STUC chair and Socialist Party member, brought a motion to the meeting, supported unanimously, calling for united action to oppose a new round of cuts, giving support to all workers and communities in struggle, and for councils to use their reserves and borrowing powers to set legal, no-cuts budgets and demand the restoration of the billions cut from local authorities since 2010.
The meeting agreed to lobby future council meetings in Southampton and Hampshire, as well as reaching out to other areas such as the Isle of Wight, where activists fighting school closures on the island sent a message of solidarity to the meeting.
Summing up the discussion, Rob Williams, chair of the National Shop Stewards Network, posed the important task for the trade unions ahead: “After 100 days isn’t it clear that the TUC, as agreed, needs to recall Congress and assess what 100 days have delivered? To discuss how the outstanding public sector pay disputes need to be resolved, and to prepare a common pay claim for next year. To demand that the Tory 2016 anti-trade union bill, that continues to prevent public sector workers in local government and the NHS from taking action, needs to be withdrawn immediately.”
It is clear that underlying problems facing workers, young people and our communities are not being addressed and new rounds of struggles are inevitable. Offering a way forward and a bold socialist alternative to inequality, capitalist crisis, war and division is the challenge we need to rise to in the coming months.
Wakefield: ‘Make the super-rich pay’
Iain Dalton, Socialist Party Yorkshire
People were queuing up to sign petitions in defence of pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance, against the two-child benefit cap and more. The Socialist Party had a campaign stall throughout a protest organised by the National Shop Stewards Network on Budget Day in Wakefield city centre.
The rally heard from several local campaigners, including activists from Unite Community who had been campaigning against the cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, including in chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Leeds West and Pudsey constituency.
Susan from Unite Community reminded passers-by that Wakefield MP Simon Lightwood was amongst the vast majority of Labour MPs who voted to cut Winter Fuel Allowance. She also pointed out that, when the £2 cap on bus fares was brought in, companies also made that the minimum fare. She called on West Yorkshire Labour Mayor Tracy Brabin not to raise the cap to £3.
Adrian O’Malley from Mid Yorks Unison pointed out that health secretary Wes Streeting’s ‘reforms’ are about more private sector involvement in the NHS when what is needed is to drive the profiteering leeches out of the NHS. He encouraged those listening to join a trade union to fight for the NHS we need, a point echoed by Yasar Ahmed from the Wakefield Drivers’ Association – representing private-hire taxi drivers.
The protest was an important stand against a budget that, as many speakers said, falls short of the change that people wanted to see after the general election.
Speakers put demands on the Independent Alliance, suspended Labour MPs and others to fight the workers’ side in Parliament – demanding that the wealth is taken off the super-rich to fund the services we need.
