The strike last Thursday by public sector workers – including teachers, fire-fighters, civil servants, council officials and health staff – may have inconvenienced many, including parents; however, given the recent statistics for executive pay in Britain,it was wholly justified. Executive pay has now reached 162 times the average worker’s wage, following a 15% pay rise for the top 100 bosses in the UK. This, along with tax breaks for the super rich and with no let up on bankers’ bonuses;........ are you surprised that members of the public sector went on strike, with more strikes planned for the autumn? I’m surprised we haven’t had a General Strike like we had in the 1920’s. How much more will people take?
Teachers and many other public sector workers have had a pay-freeze imposed on them, changes made to pensions, working conditions and the continuous threat to our essential services by a deceitful, under-handed Government to privatise the NHS, education and much more. An insidious assault on the public sector. There is little wonder they’ve responded as they have with industrial action. Enough is enough!
The strike was justified because many people are working longer hours for less pay and having their pensions changed and contracts altered. This takes us right back to the decline in the standards of living issue. An issue which will dominate the next General Election. The issue of Britain’s role in the EU is a distraction. However, Cameron’s reaction to the strike tells us much about what a future Tory Government would do to the Unions.
This direct attack on British public servants has led to a major strike. People have had enough of Austerity and enough of Cameron’s ultra-right-wing policies. Are you surprised at the back-lash from the TUC? Frances O’ Grady, its general secretary, along with other union leaders, condemned outright Cameron’s peevish assault on British workers striving to protect themselves from unprincipled exploitation by a Government intent on obliterating all the rights that workers have won over the past 160 years. They will continue to fight and they’ll win, one day.
Cameron intends “clipping the wings” of the Trade Unions by imposing tough and controversial new laws in the next Conservative manifesto. He claimed that the strike action [based on an NUT strike ballot back in 2012] only had a 27% turn out. How does he know? The strike I witnessed last week was well supported and I know this was the case all over the country. His peevish reaction elicited a prompt response from Ed Miliband who said his words were only: “inflaming the situation.” A spokesman said: “The Government should be getting round the table not ramping up the rhetoric.” However, Frances O’ Grady was angry and inflamed by Cameron’s “Threats” and countered this by saying: “This is nothing more than a renewed Thatcherite onslaught on trade unions.” The TUC will not go away. It will continue the fight against Cameron.
The Prime Minister wants to introduce a threshold on union ballots. He intends using the law to prevent unions holding strikes. This only “if” he wins the next General Election. Given the mood of the nation, I hope this is highly unlikely, however we can get a glimpse of what another five years of Tory rule (misrule) would be like. First, public sector pay would be held back well below inflation (which has just risen again to 1.9%) until at least 2018. Secondly, the law on industrial action would be changed in ways to make strike ballots so hard to win that it would be almost impossible for public sector workers to do anything about it. These measures would be “Draconian” indeed a state of tyranny would exist. This would be the most provocative right-wing assault on ordinary people that would lead to either a massive General Strike or violence and revolution.
It is clear that a ‘majority’ Conservative Government of the future would look to a renewed Thatcherite onslaught on trade unions, particularly in the public sector. With the roller-coaster of privatisation surging ahead, unimpeded. However, the one hope we do have, and it is a real, solid hope. The likelihood of there being a Majority Conservative Government after May 2015 is as remote as the moon being a piece of cheese!
They are a “minority” Government already, only in power by virtue of the coalition. Clegg has had little to say on what a future Conservative Government might or might not do. One thing I’m certain of he and his Lib/Dems will have been washed into history, - the best ‘disappearing act’ in recent times,- and he will have become an MEP on a fat-cat salary. So who will Cameron find to support him then? Ukip, perhaps? Very unlikely. The trade unions know that a long, hard battle lies ahead. A Tory victory would spell economic disaster for ordinary working people, and for the future of this nation. My hope is the 60% of British people who didn’t vote last time, do so, next year. I hope they focus on the decline of their living standards and the insidious erosion of their “Rights” inflicted on them by one of the worst Governments in recorded time.