Marco Tesei, University and College Union National Executive Committee, personal capacity
The anger is out there and mounting. At the cruel attacks on pensioners and disabled people; at the continuing slashing of public services; at the thousands of looming job cuts in the NHS, the civil service, universities and elsewhere. At a Labour council in Birmingham – fully supported by a Labour government at Westminster – attempting to slash bin workers’ wages by £8,000. For many, life is even worse than under the Tories!
My own sector, Further Education (FE), is on its knees: crumbling infrastructure, wages worth 35% less than fifteen years ago, unsustainable workloads because of understaffing. And a recent further cut, thank you Chancellor Reeves, of up to 6% to our adult education funding.
There’s a real feeling that we’re reaching a crisis point. Starmer is clearly hell-bent on protecting the bosses and their system in a context of global turmoil. But we, the workers in this system, cannot and will not endure any more squeezing to prop it all up for them. Enough!
What can we do? Simple: get organised to resist and fight back! We have our trade unions with six and a half million members. If we link up between branches and between unions, together we can resist Starmer and Reeves!
At the moment, in my workplace, University and College Union (UCU) branch reps are working hard to get members’ votes out in a consultative ballot for national strike action in the autumn. We’re also liaising with other FE colleges in building nationwide sector support for the fightback.
But we’re aware much more is necessary. If we want to win against this government, we need to join forces with reps in other unions, as well as of course with the Birmingham bin worker strikers, to build a truly united, mass workers’ offensive. We need to build towards a national all-union demonstration against austerity and war, and prepare for coordinated national strike action.
Reps, union members, young people – let’s go to the NSSN conference!
