STRIKE BULLETIN

10 JULY 2014

STEP UP THE ACTION

AND FIGHT TO WIN

More than one million workers have

joined todays strike. This is the biggest
protest since the 2011 strike to defend
pensions.

Even though the BBC and the media

will as usual try to minimise its impact,
the government, the bosses and everyone who relies on public services will
be reminded who does the work to
keep our society running.

Across the country, schools are closed,

as teachers and support staff are united
in action, council services are locked
down and government departments are
shut down. Even if they try and maintain a skeleton staff in some of these offices and depots, they will not be able
to provide a meaningful service. Nearly
a million and a half workers will be
missed.
We must organise to ensure today is
not a strike with no tomorrow but the
start of a movement that is prepared to
fight to win.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has denied 1.3 million NHS workers even a 1
per cent pay rise because he thinks
they wont fight. Nurses, porters and
ancillary staff are rightly livid, so we
must demand Unison and Unite ballot
them for strike action alongside us in
September.
Winnable
This is not just a protest. We can win.
The economic crisis caused by a system that allows a greedy minority to

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enrich themselves by exploiting millions

of working people has left a third of
families in Britain living in poverty.

But were not all in this together. The

stock exchange, GDP and profits are
all up. Yet our meagre wages are
pinned to the floor. After inflation is
taken into account, we have lost on average 20% of our real pay since 2009.
Gas prices have risen by 57%, electricity by 22%, food by 16% and petrol by
11%, while our wages have staggered
upwards by a mere 2%.

All the statistics show the rich boss

class has benefitted at our expense.
Top CEOs have seen their pay rise by
200,000 last year and are expected to
receive a 33% rise this year. They now
earn 160 times more than their staff,
pocketing the average workers annual
salary in just two days!

If we taxed these scroungers properly

and only restored corporate tax to its
2010 level, all our demands on pay and
pensions could be met many times
over.
The general public know this. Theyre
on our side because they are workers
too, and they know that we are standing up not just for our own living standards but also for decent council
services, against privatisation and for
education for all. What they need is a
fighting lead.

If we dont fight back now, we will soon

be back in a recession and the

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argument will be that theres no

money and we should be grateful for
having a job. To stop that downward
spiral where we lose in the recession
and the recovery, we have to make a
stand.
Winning
But weve got to do more to win. The
Tories wont give in to our demands
simply because they make sense.
We will have to wring every last
penny from their grasping Etonian
hands.

After all weve been here before. In

November 2011 2 million of us came
out on strike, only for our union leaders to call off the action and disappear into sector-by-sector talks.
As a result, some of us got a few
crumbs from the negotiating table
and others got nothing. Unity was
shattered.

A winning strategy has to include the

following:

Stepping up the action

Unisons proposal for a two-day

strike in the week commencing 20
September is a good start but it
needs to escalate to a weeklong
strike, then all-out until all our claims
are met in full.
If Lambeth College teachers can
mount an indefinite strike to defend
their contracts, then so can we all. If
the FBU can refuse to wait till the

autumn and call an eight-day strike

next week, why cant we?

Link the claims

No union should settle until all unions

are satisfied. Instead of scuttling off into
secret talks to engineer a hasty retreat
from the battlefield, union leaders
should present a real united front. No
one should be left to fight alone.

Rank and file control

After what happened last time round,

we cannot leave our leaders to negotiate on our behalf, to decide on our tactics only to settle rotten deals with the
bosses behind our backs. We think that
those who are suffering the pay freeze,
facing increased workloads and worrying about losing their jobs should be the
ones who decide what action is necessary and when to call it off.
Lets form cross-union workplace, local,
regional and national committees. Here
delegates could decide when to strike
and for how long, what to concede and
what to fight for in talks, how to
broaden the movement to include
young people and students, other sectors like cinema and care workers, as
well as service users.

Defy the anti-union laws

Even though the government is our

common enemy, striking together until
we all win could be deemed unlawful
under the deeply undemocratic and
class-biased anti-union laws. Already,
Unison leaders have cravenly left academy staff out of todays action because
their lawyers warned judges could
have slapped an injunction on their
action.

But every time our union leaders bow

before these laws, which ban solidarity
between one section of the workforce
and another, the Tories think up new
ways to stop industrial action. Now they
are talking of new laws to make public
sector strikes illegal unless over 50% of
those balloted vote Yes. In other words,
every lost or misdirected ballot will
count as a No.

As Paul Kenny of the GMB pointed out,

Not a single MP has secured 50% of
those eligible to vote.

Now, while empty benches in the

House of Commons might seem an attractive sight at this moment in time, it
shows how hypocritical and outrageous
the Tories are. Unfortunately Kenny has

never once defied these laws, nor has

Labour repealed a single one of them.

To win our strike, we need defiance not

compliance. And to ensure our movement ends austerity once and for all,
we need to break the unions from
Labour and build a new party a party
of working class struggle not just electioneering.

We need a party committed to smashing the legal shackles that bind the
unions, committed to making the rich
pay for higher wages and decent services and committed above all to the
struggle for the abolition of capitalist exploitation and the victory of socialism
and working class power.

Escalate action to win

Organise rank and file control

of our struggles

Defy the anti-union laws

Build a class struggle party to

fight for socialism

STOP NATO WAR DRIVE

The EUs support for the nationalist junta in Ukraine and its fascist allies has provoked a devastating civil war. Hundreds of
thousands have fled their homes.
Nato and the EUare backing the governments military offensive in order to smash resistance to the imposition of an IMF
austerity programme.
A labour movement campaign has been set up to provide solidarity with the workers of Ukaine who are defending themselves from the Kiev regimes tanks, bombers and fascist allies.

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