The Socialist 6 January 2016

Fight the flood of cuts

2016: Crisis-ridden capitalism will meet with bitter mood of resistance

No retreat on resisting council cuts!

Fight the flood of cuts

Support junior doctors' and student nurses' action

Another black man shot dead by the police

UK's private rail fares six times public rates

Birmingham Labour to axe at least 1,200 jobs in £165m cuts onslaught

UK wage growth will be lowest since 1920s

NHS England chiefs block hospitals from publicising emergencies

What we saw: Sadiq Khan's promises on London transport

Them & Us

Floods, climate change and capitalism

Carlisle Socialist Party's action plan on floods

Profit system exacerbates flooding

Tories' hypocritical green policies pledge

Renationalise the water industry

No government majority as Podemos partially recovers

Union action needed to defeat attack on student nurses

Nationalise rail now! Rail workers strike around the country

Steel: public ownership needed as private buyers threaten pay and pensions

Condescending Tories savage Yorkshire fire service

Workplace news in brief

Dark comic book fantasy throws light on abusive relationships

"I chose to be involved in politics, Michael Crick"

Letters

A 'People's Budget' to defeat cruel cuts

Stop the closure of Calderstones hospital!

2015 marks best fighting fund total this century!

Eleanor Marx: celebrate a life of struggle for socialism

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UK wage growth will be lowest since 1920s

Dave Semple, PCS union rep (personal capacity)

Chancellor George Osborne's pet austerity apologists at the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) have released figures predicting wage growth of just 6.2% over the decade to 2020. This is less than half the 12.7% growth from 2000 to 2010.

Since 2010, growth in prices (inflation) has outstripped wage growth even using the lower estimate represented by the 'consumer price index'.

OBR figures reveal that only from 1900 to 1910 and from 1920 to 1930 was wage growth lower, at 1.8% and 1.5%. These were decades of serious attacks on the union movement.

The 1901 Taff Vale judgment allowed bosses to sue unions for loss of earnings during strikes. The 1927 Trades Dispute Act banned sympathy strikes and mass picketing, and restricted unions' political funds to members specifically opting in.

Parallels with the 2015-16 Trade Union Bill are clear.

Timidity

It is the timidity of union leaders which encourages attacks both on workers' rights and on wages.

In October 2014, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) staged the "Britain Needs a Pay Rise" march. Turnout was high and angry. Behind the rhetoric, however, the TUC and right-wing leaders of the major unions opposed calls for concerted strike action over pay.

There is a clear thirst to fight for more. Public sector union PCS organised monthly "pay day e-actions" in late 2015, including 5,000 emails from individual members to one civil service boss. The recent rock-solid strike action by train workers against Arriva in Wales shows this too.

Decisive, coordinated, escalating action on pay would inspire millions of workers to take on the anti-union laws, and rally the un-unionised majority. This is what the Socialist Party campaigns for.

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2016: Crisis-ridden capitalism will meet with bitter mood of resistance