Communists at the TUC 2012

Wednesday 12 September

by Kevin Halpin

When the depression hit Britain inthe early 1920s and millions were onthe dole, it was Communists whocoined the slogan ‘Stop the Retreat’and campaigned alongside othersagainst the shameful treatment of theunemployed.In 1931, the final betrayal of the workingclass by Labour Prime Minister RamsayMcDonald saw the creation of a coalitiongovernment and a savage attack on welfarebenefits. And now, in 2012, the fall out fromyet another round of anti-working classattacks sees crippling unemployment andmisery for millions.While not accepting unemployment as hereto stay we should certainly support thereinvigoration of unemployed workers centres

up and down the country.With welfare cuts of £30bn already madeand the decimation of the public sector, everysection in society is affected.Over the past 30 years employment in theUK has become much more precarious withover a third of the workforce now slaving forlow wages with few benefits, little or nocollective representation and no job security. How bad were the ‘bad old days’ of the 70swhen they were also the ‘good old days’ offull employment?The hope of returning to full employmentrecedes as successive governments - at thebehest of EU austerity mongers - raisestatutory retirement age and extend theworking life.But communists do not accept that there isan economic need to increase the pensionage. Labour would be on the winning ticket if

it committed to lowering the pension age forboth men and women and increasing the statepension. This would both increase the quality of lifefor pensioners and put money back into theeconomy. It would also serve to create jobsfor many young workers and further refuelthe economy.Why should workers suffer because thebenefits of our welfare state have meant thatthey are living longer. How can the solutionbe to make them work longer when lateststatistics show that working longer ultimatelymeans living less. Labour should champion decent pensionsfor all in both the public and the privatesectors and look at imaginative ways toimprove the quality of life like providingwinter breaks for pensioners in warmercountries as do some Scandinavian countriesand France. (Not only a social benefit butalso an environmental benefit in fuelsavings.)And, as argued on Monday, an alternativeeconomic strategy can provide an alternativeto austerity and make positive socialmeasures affordable; the cost of higherpensions can be met by tax on high earners,on excess company profits and cracking downon tax dodgers. Full employment was not an era of 20thcentury history, it must be an aspiration forthe 21st century and the crucial element inachieving this - for too long the ‘elephant inthe room’ in terms of the AES - is acommitment to the shorter working week. Remembering the successes in the 1980s ofthe 35-hour campaign, trades unions - withthe TUC’s support - should revive thisdemand as part of the overall aim to forge abetter life for all.Above all we have a duty to defend thewelfare state, our peacetime legacy of thewar against fascism

Unity!

TIME TO STOP THERETREAT

by Martin Levy

As argued elsewhere in this year’s Unity!, the government’sattack on public sector pensions is a central part of its driveto reduce the costs of public services, so that they canprovide rich pickings for privateers. Resisting privatisation requires a coordinated response, involvingboth community campaigning and an industrial strategy which focusesnot only on pensions but also on quality, staffing and pay.Over recent years, under the impact of both Labour and ConDemgovernment policies, public sector workers have seen their pay levelsvirtually frozen while inflation has continued to surge ahead. Educationstaff are now among those being asked to take industrial action: theNASUWT and NUT have issued a joint declaration of intent over pay,workloads, pensions, jobs and conditions; UCU and Unison areballoting on action over higher education pay, with other unions likelyto follow; while, in further education, UCU is consulting members witha recommendation for rejection of the employers’ miserly pay offer.No government-imposed pay freeze can last. But the ability to breakit depends - as with pensions - on more than justified anger. Individual

by Robert Wilkinson

Behind the mask of the clownish grin and clumsyinterventions of Michael Gove as education secretary forEducation there lies a much more sinister agenda. Cold-hearted privateers looking for easy pickings are drivingforward the apparently chaotic and contradictoryfragmentation of the education services. From pre-school topostgraduate research, all are to be up for grabs.Much attention has been focused on fighting back against thegovernment imposition of the pensions robbery. Essential asthis has been, it has served to obscure the more fundamentalcausation of this offensive. In their determination to privatisethe delivery of education, the desire of the Treasury toaccumulate a surplus on the Local Government, Teachers’ andLecturers’ Pension Schemes is secondary to the Government’sobjective of reducing the pension burden on those who wish totake over the ownership and employment of educational assets,both capital and human. The existing pension schemes wereseen as a ‘disincentive’ for private sector investment.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER

DELIVERINGORGANISATIONAND BUILDINGOUR CAMPAIGNS

by PCS communists

A number of resolutions on this week’s Agenda stress theimportance of organising and the requirement to recruit thevast majority of those workers that are unorganised.Such resolutions aren’t new but apart from the rise in actualmembership during the last government due to the increase inemployment in the public sector; actual membership of unions hascontinued to fall since the highs of the 1970s. And this is despite thefact that there are now more people unemployed.A recent bit of research undertaken by PCS shows some useful pointersthat should be built upon. Previous research said that the reason whypeople didn’t join unions was that they weren’t asked and this mayremain the case in some instances. But what the new evidence suggestsis that people now join unions if they see them as being relevant andstanding up for the values that they believe in. The view that people join as some type of insurance policy wasdebunked; it was more the case that people supported the union’scampaigns because they still thought they were needed. Unions and theirmembers must become better at campaigning and putting over the viewsof the majority of the population – opposing privatisation, unfair taxation,

supporting industrial development – supporting their values. The growthin public sector union membership across all unions prior to last year’sstrike proves this point. Employees saw unions standing up for them andjoined in their thousands.Most unions are still sectionally organised along craft lines and this initself causes a problem in reaching out to workers in the so called newindustries on green field sites. PCS’s response is radical at one level –it has set ambitious targets for increases in density and this is on top ofalready impressive increases as the figures show. At a time of significantcuts PCS is not retrenching but looking to increase its density by 2% ayear over the next three years. It is aiming to increase the number oflocal reps to 1 per 25 from a current average of 1:26. It aims to havedirect electronic communication to over 100,000 members in the sameperiod. Budgets are being directed to campaigning both in workplaces andmore widely. This approach, along with the traditional organisingapproach, is one of many that can be used. But, and it is a big ‘but’, howdoes the existing trade union movement make itself relevant to thosewho have no contact with trade unions. Many work in the private sector– many of the jobs are part-time and minimum wage – so we shouldsupport the Living Wage Campaign.

Many work in industries that are just this side of the law – so we needto be more aggressive on exposing such places. Many work where bossesdo no more than meet the basic legal minimum - so we need to fight toimprove these. But many still work in reasonable workplaces that followthe law and have reasonable conditions and pay. Unions will need to work together and break out of their sectional areas– it is good that Unison and GMB are working together, that NASUWTand NUT are now campaigning together rather than recruiting from eachother. PCS and Unite have signed a joint agreement which has a potentialto develop into something more. And this is all to the good but it isn’tenoughThe union movement and the TUC needs to take our messages out intothe community – we have the policies around the Peoples’ Charter. Weneed to engage with people who see unions as irrelevant and get theminto the movement – workplace organisation then comes later. Our first step must be to get unorganised workers onto the march on20 October and that means not just supporting our own members. Canwe not sign people up to join our anti austerity campaigns? Can we useit as a place to recruit? Communists and the left would say yes – but willthe bureaucracy will run scared?

The commitment to privatise the education sector is not simplythe warped and selfish ideology of this cabinet of millionaires. Itgoes much deeper than that and has a far longer pedigree.The Single European Act of 1986 enshrined a more aggressiveinsistence on adherence to neo-liberal, free market principles. Itembodied four ‘freedoms’ of goods, services, capital and labourand required all sectors of the economy to be opened up tocompetition. The principle of opening services, including education, toprivate sector competition was enshrined in the GeneralAgreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World TradeOrganisation of 1995. This was followed by the EuropeanServices Directive of 2006 that required member states to ‘ensurefree access to and free exercise of a service activity within itsterritory’.There is of course a major barrier to this drive to privatisationand that is the high level of trade union membership in mosteducation services. However the fundamental flaw in thisapparent strength of potential opposition has been thefragmentation of the workforce into numerous and sometimes

competitively hostile trade unions. Successive governments haveset out to divide and weaken the trade unions in order toimplement their privatisation agenda and recognise that theprocess of privatisation itself will have the effect of weakeningtrade union organisation even further. The initial united rejection of the government’s pensionproposals was a source of considerable strength but all the timehad a fatal flaw in that separate negotiations could be used bythe government to divide the unions and weaken the campaign.A purely defensive strategy was bound to fail as public sectorunions were seen as protecting their own members at the expenseof the rest of society. What is needed now is a united campaign to protect publicservices against the inequity of privatisation schemes that willput profit before the needs of people, reinforcing and deepeningsocial division. In this, as in other struggles, the battle lines nowneed to be broadened to include the users of those vital services.

Robert Wilkinson convenes the Communist Party Education Services Commission

sectors or unions going alone are likely to be picked off. There is anurgent need for public sector unions to coordinate their industrialaction plans and to broaden the basis of their campaigns.On the policy front, UCU’s two motions to this Congress deservebroad support. The first, Valuing further education, draws attention tothe savage government cuts to a service that is ‘a vital gateway toeducation and work that fulfils individuals’ and provides access ‘foryoung people and adults needing a second chance. And the second,on post-16 education, exposes the attempts already being made to openup universities and colleges to for-profit providers, including privateequity funds.The attack on post-16 education is doubly ideological. As elsewhere,it is intended to remove from public consciousness any suggestion ofcollective provision. But it is also designed to recalibrate socialperspectives downwards. Not only will students pay, whether in furtheror higher education, but ‘unprofitable’ courses will disappear. Thewealthy will be able to command places at the most prestigiousinstitutions, while many potential students from lower-incomebackgrounds will become excluded altogether.Trade unions need to be equally ideological, recapturing a vision of

education that the rest of society can subscribe to. Instead ofCameron’s ‘Big Society’, we need a ‘Good Society’, with education asone of the main pillars. That would be a society whichn regards everyone as educable;n ensures that subjects are made more accessible – not less – toworking class n requires education institutions to promote living and learningtogether;n projects democratic participation and more collective control inworkplaces as part of learning;n involves a new vocationalism addressing the youth employmentcrisis, including local integration of social partners; schools, FE,employers, HE, local authorities, parents and regeneration agencies.Can this be achieved? Yes, but only within the context of building amass movement around a broad alternative economic and politicalstrategy, such as outlined in the People’s Charter for Change.

Martin Levy is on the UCU delegation, but writes here as a member ofthe Communist Party executive committee and editor of the Party’stheoretical and discussion journal, Communist Review

by Robert Griffiths

In every modern, industrial country,the trade unions are the bedrock of acivilised society. We are the biggestdemocratic and representative bodiesin Britain. Together with our families,we represent more than half thepopulation. But more than that, werepresent the interests of society as awhole. The debates and discussions at Brighton thisweek have reflected the interests andaspirations of millions of people – not only inBritain, but around the world.People want dignity at work and inretirement, they want equal opportunities,they need decent public services, they needpeace.Our trade unions could do more to speakand act for them. Are we not sometimes tooquiet, too defensive? Every day brings freshnews of some outrage, somewhere in Britain orwider afield. It might be a 'balance sheet'redundancy in a viable enterprise, a hospitalward closure, a racist attack, a young familybeing deported, someone with disabilitiesbeing refused benefit or yet another scandalinvolving the corporate gangsters whodominate our economy. Perhaps another tradeunionist has been murdered in Colombia, or ajournalist silenced in Russia. And there arealways people starving while their countryexports food or valuable minerals to the West.Then there's the hypocrisy of the British andUS governments, armed to the teeth, up to

their necks in 'extraordinary rendition' (ie,transport for torture), bombing or invadingsovereign states around the world, lecturingChina and others about human rights.Why are too many of our trade union leadersso quiet? Some speak out and are attacked bythe right-wing media for doing so. Otherscondone injustice and oppression by theirsilence. And far too often, the silence from theLabour Party leadership is deafening. That'swhy I'm asking you to consider two things inparticular as you leave Brighton.Firstly, what more can you and your union dofor the Morning Star – the daily voice forpeace, jobs and socialism? You could, forinstance, order a copy every day from yournewspaper shop, show it to friends andcolleagues, make a regular donation, advertiseevents in it and get your union body andtrades council to take out shares. Own anational daily newspaper!Secondly, consider joining Britain'sCommunist Party. We continue to fightexploitation, oppression, racism and war, 92years after our foundation. We have links withmore than 70 communist, socialist andnational liberation parties around the world.Would the trade unions be stronger if Britainhad a bigger, more influential CommunistParty? Would the Labour Party leadership beso timid?The labour movement needs the CommunistParty – and the Communist Party needs you.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party

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BEWAREREGIONALPAY!The Coalition has made no secretover recent months of its intentionto introduce regional pay in thepublic sector whenever andwherever it can get away with it. The idea is to con everyone that

there are already huge regionalvariations in the cost of living and thatpay in the private sector is based onlocal market conditions. Yet researchshows this to be a complete fabrication. There’s little regional variation outside

London and the majority of largerprivate firms pay national, not regionalrates. The truth is that this is a thinly

disguised attempt to impose furthermassive wage cuts on the public sector,enhancing its attractiveness to profit-seekers as jobs and services areprivatised. The whole thing is designedto cause maximum division and conflictbetween groups of workers and breaktrade union power in national paybargaining.It won’t be only public sector workers

who suffer. Wage cuts in so-called ‘low-cost’ areas (for which read ‘alreadypoor’) will increase skills shortages andhit services to the most vulnerable. Slashing spending-power will in turn

further depress struggling economies.Private sector businesses will close withfurther job losses and misery in a spiralof decline.It’s all part of the age-old ruling class

strategy of ‘divide and rule’.Stand together against regional pay!

Always say ‘Never’!

Useful sitesBritain’s Communist Partywww.communist-party.org.ukIreland’s Communist Partywww.communistpartyofireland.ieYoung Communistswww.ycl.org.ukNews from the workers andcommunist parties of the worldwww.solidnet.orgPolitics and culture bloghttp://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.comEurope in revolthttp://revolting-europe.comInstitute of Employment Rightswww.ier.org.uk