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After 4,000 gather at the Peoples Assembly...

n Wednesday George Osborne announced the Tories Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). This CSR means a 2.8 percent cut for 2015/16, and the following two years will be worse at 7.6 percent. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies the CSR will mean a further 23bn cut for 2017 and 2018. In other words, if the Tories get re-elected they will just cut harder. And Labour offers nothing different. Last week Miliband said, So when George Osborne stands up next week and announces his cuts in day-to-day spending, we wont be able to promise now to reverse them. And all the time the richest people in society are becoming better off. The very people who got us into this mess are rewarding themselves with more pay while we face pay cuts. The FTSE 100 bosses gave themselves an average 10 percent pay rise last year. The average British worker has suffered an effective 7 percent pay cut since the recession began. Its the poorest who are suffering the mostfrom the bedroom tax to attacks on Disability Living Allowance and the vicious benefits sanctions regime.

WE NEED MORE UNITED STRIKES TO BEAT AUSTERITY

of more sporadic group strikes would have helped to rally our forces and give people a renewed sense of confidence ahead of the branch consultation. The branch consultation is a brilliant opportunity to debate the way forward for a programme of action which can force the Tories to back down.

1,000 teachers marched in London on Tuesday

Solidarity

was broken when union leaders like Unisons Dave Prentis and Unites Len McCluskey backed away from the fight. As Serwotka put it on Saturday, there was the potential to beat back the Tories over pensionsthe next step should have been to call a further united strike in January 2012. Since then though, the PCS has been the only union to organise a serious national fight back. It is good that civil servants are taking to the streets around the country in protest at the further cuts unveiled in the CSR today. However, it was a mistake for the PCS NEC not to call a national strike this week. The unions national conference in May endorsed such an approach. This would have been a far stronger response from the union to the cuts that are going to hit PCS members directly. A national strike on the 26 June would have sent out a clear message against austerity. Equally, a strike on 27 June would have meant we would have been out with the teachers in the NUT and NASUWT who are on strike in the North West of England. Surely, this would have helped to push the question of coordinated strikes and a general strike? Having a national strike after a long period

Directly

At the centre of this we have to have an approach which builds solidarity with all those fighting austerity. It was good to see during the joint regional HMRC and DWP strikes that some areas invited Disabled People Against the Cuts speakers and anti-bedroom tax campaigners to their rallieswe need more of this. The PCS branch at Euston Tower have organised protests in their local Starbucks with Starbucks pay your taxes placardshighlighting tax justice. In the culture sector a campaign against arts funding cuts could involve well-known artists. The PCS has to continue to push for maximum coordination across the unions and prepare to up the strikes.

Attacks

Anger at the Tories was well represented at the Peoples Assembly in London on Saturday. Around 4,000 people gathered to discuss how we move things forward. Part of the programme of action it called for includes the national demonstration in defence of the NHS at the Tory Party conference in Manchester on 29 Septembercalled by Unison, Unite and the GMB. Every PCS member should mobilise for this. PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, made a rousing speech and threw the gauntlet down to the other trade union leaders. He said, PCS represents some of the lowest paid workers in Britain, and we have had a strike in every single week for the last month. How much easier could it be for us to win if every union joined us and took industrial action?. The strike over the attacks on our pensions on 30 November 2011 saw 2.5 million workers take part. But the unity and potential of that strike

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