Huge turnout for Nov 30 shows new developments in activity, and some political mistakes

Huge turnouts in rallies and marches across Scotland have given the lie to those politicians who have been accusing union leaders of bullying and intimidation. In Glasgow and Edinburgh march and rally attendance topped the 10K mark in each city. Glasgow had to put on an overflow rally meeting to cram ‘em all in. IIn Edinburgh the sight of SNP MSPs joining ConDem MSPs going through union picket lines inspired double the ‘permitted’ number of marchers to cram into the square outside the parliament and listen to an equally inspired Rodney Bickerstaffe demolish the attempts to divide public and private sector workers. “If one person has a leg cut off,” he said does that mean everyone has to have their leg cut off, because it’s not fair?”.  

Rallies and marches took place across Scotland. In Kirkwall, Aberdeen, Moray, Inverness, Motherwell, Dundee, Falkirk, Dumfries, Glenrothes, Paisley, Livingstone. At all of them organisers were reporting double plus the numbers expected. While an estimated 300,000 took strike action in Scotland, around 30,000 also went on marches and rallies, picketed and gave other support.

In Glasgow ‘UNISON have filled the gathering point on their own!’ tweeted the PCS. The demonstration started at 12.30pm and the last got moving at 14.15pm! Those who could get in to the Barrowlands heard UNISON’s Scottish Secretary, Mike Kirby point out that “It could cost this country up to £15 billion to support the millions of private sector workers who have been locked out of saving for their retirement."

A number of commentators watching the rallies have been struck by the changing nature of the strikers. Trade unionists, they were certainly, and angry they were too, but they were not the traditional ‘middle-aged male’. Mike Kirby and Dave Prentis both pointed to the key role being played by women in leading the strikes, and others including the president of the National Pensioners Convention, Rodney Bickerstaffe noticed the high proportion of young people involved in the action. Many of the strikers were involved in their first industrial action, and some of the unions taking part - especially small clinical professional bodies - mark a new development, never having taken strike action before.

Are we seeing a new generation of activists taking the  lead? It is maybe too early to say that this marks a significant shift in the levels of collective activity in the young, or in women, or that there is an ‘arab spring’, but there is certainly something in motion that political and trade union leaders ignore at their peril.

The political fallout from the strikes will be interesting, given the  new numbers of activists. My old colleague Dave Watson has blogged about the position here in Scotland and I think his analysis is sound, if a little easy on the major tactical errors made by the Scottish Government. Yes there are very good trade unionists in the SNP ranks, but they are more than outnumbered by their backwoods colleagues. First Minister, Alex Salmond, who rejected union calls for a suspension of the Scottish Parliament, was booed when his picture was held at the Glasgow rally. 

The ConDems in Westminster, too, have seriously misjudged the mood of the nation. Opinion polls and media straw polls for some time now, have been showing increasing support for the strikers, and Tory ministers like Francis Maude and Danny Alexander have been thrashing about trying to find a tactic to demonise trade unions. Now Cameron’s pal, Jeremy Clarkson has let the cat out of the bag. Calling for strikers to be shot in front of their families, is exactly the logical conclusion of Tory government and Daily Mail vitriol. Not that Cameron will be pleased by his dinner pals intervention. The Tories - instead of going on the offensive - have had to spend the day distancing themselves from their fascistic supporter. The BBC too (not for the first time) have spent the day digging themselves deeper into a hole. One does wonder what it would take for the BBC to actually address the damage this presenter is doing to them? As it is they flounder gracelessly making ‘apologies’ that compound the felony.

Media and government attacks will get shriller as November 30 looms - here (hopefully) is some sense.

As the day of the biggest strike in recent history looms we can expect well-heeled government ministers like Francis Maude and Danny Alexander to ramp up the levels of hysteria, media commentators to attack the ‘unfairness’ of ‘gold-plated’ public pensions (from the right) or bemoan the ‘choice of target’ for the strikes (from the centre-left) and politicians to attack each other over tactics. In such a febrile atmosphere, it is handy to hold onto a few counters to the main myths peddled by such people.

Here are some. Public pensions are affordable now, and are likely to become more so in the future. Who says so? Not the PCS or other ‘militant TU leaders’ but the Assistant Editor of that comfortable read for Tory ministers, the Daily Telegraph! Yes Jeremy Warner, back in March pointed out that the Hutton report had identified that these pensions have peaked at 1.8% of GDP currently, and even without his ‘reforms’ will now decline steadily in cost. (interestingly, while he repeats the ‘crowding out’ myth, he also argues for better pensions in the private sector) - ‘there is something plainly unsatisfactory about "race to the bottom" policy, or levelling public sector pensions down to the disgracefully low standards that rule in the private sector.’

Of course, it is also the case that public sector pensions support the private sector. Something that polemicists on the other side tend to overlook as they scream about paying for ‘gold-plated’ bureaucrats’ pensions . As well as fair pensions meaning that pensioners can buy goods and services from the private sector, public pension funds are huge investors in private industry. And, as they are successfully and sustainably funded - UNISON estimates that £300m more is going into the Scottish LGPS before investment income, than is being paid out in pensions - that means, as Scottish Secretary, Mike Kirby says ‘Current attacks on both pensions and on public sector employment will be bad for the schemes - and in the long run bad for the economy. The UK Government won’t be putting any of the money they raise or save from stealing from pensions into the schemes - just using it to pay back debt run up to bail out their friends the bankers’.

The strikes are understood and generally supported by the public. Despite the constant battering of government and media attacks, the BBC is today reporting that 61% in an opinion poll they ran believe public service workers are justified in going on strike over the issue. That backs up previous straw polls run after the large UNISON vote to strike. These polls were run in the rabidly anti-union Daily Star, whose readers out-polled the liberal Guardian in support of strikers, and back to our old favourite - the Daily Telegraph. (Might have to think about changing my reading!).

Of course, many of those polled will be strikers or colleagues or family or friends themselves. The voting turn-out in the union ballots is phenomenally good, despite what Francis Maude and others say. Many of the MPs who lead the attacks on trade union democracy a) would give their eye teeth to have levels of support like these and b) are themselves directly responsible for the difficulty in getting improved turnouts in union ballots. Using on-line technology would have helped, (as indeed would workplace ballots), and at least one of those methods has been approved in principle, but not yet put into law. Even so, the ballots from the 30 unions, across many thousands of employers (UNISON itself balloted members in nearly 9,500 employers) show a huge consistency and massive level of support. The best summary is on the impressive ‘Pensions Justice’ site.

The level of support and the breadth of union coverage on this dispute also answers some of the (deliberately?) misinformed attacks by some ‘sympathetic’ commentators that pensions is the ‘wrong issue’. That unions should all co-ordinate a strike over ‘cuts’. Would that they could!! Failing to understand the realities of ‘Trade disputes’ in legislation despite having had them explained, could be put down to deliberate disinformation, more likely it indicates a deep-seated prejudice that is proving immune to reason.

Finally, the (somewhat cheesey, but well-intentioned) supporters single continues to build support. Watch and buy it here. The AFL/CIO (after Wisconsin) went for Tom Morello’s ‘Union Town’!!

See you on the picket line!!

Action on pensions would be part of the anti-cuts campaign

It was only to be expected that the report of the Hutton review into pensions should mean the opportunity for big business supporters to have another go at the fair pensions provision in the public sector, but it is a pity that an otherwise balanced and well-informed columnist, Iain MacWhirter joins such unusual attackers (Sunday Herald - 13 March 2011). This is the latest in a series of his irregular attacks on the pensions of our nurses, police, classroom assistants, social carers et al, and seems to be on the point of becoming obsessive. He isn’t alone in these attacks, but they usually come from well-known free marketeers and private sector defenders, not independent (in the true meaning of the word) commentators.  

He also seems to think that Trade Unions work ‘top down’ and that all any General Secretary has to do is snap their fingers and the membership walks out. Quite the reverse is usually true. Union members - particularly those in the public sector - put up with a lot before becoming angry enough to strike. But attacks on their the pension they agreed to, contribute to and depend on, is something that does irate them sufficiently. Any TU leader would be well advised to think carefully before suggesting a line similar to Iain’s.

Unfortunately, in the past, Iain’s attacks have not exactly been accompanied by any clear arguments or indeed factual justification - he has in the past been known to quote approvingly from that bastion of anti-public sector misinformation - the Tax Dodgers’ Alliance in support of his campaign. This time he uses more reputable sources, including  the Institute of Fiscal Studies, although the figures he comes up with do seem similarly questionable. In particular the government figure of £7,800 for an average public sector pension seems very high, when we know that the average in one of the biggest schemes (Local Government) is only £4,000+. How is this average almost doubled? Certainly other public sector schemes are unlikely to vastly inflate the average, given that they are all based on salary, and that no public sector pay is that large. And the small number of very well-paid public sector staff (yes, there are a few, mainly in the Civil Service and NHS schemes) are unlikely to raise the overall average.

However, one way this figure might have been increased is if the pensions awarded to senior private sector bankers who have been bailed out by public sector investment are taken into account. I don’t know if this has occurred, but I have seen other figures from think tanks and others that now include these people as part of the ‘public sector’. This is significant in two ways. One, it distorts the real cost of public service provision by adding in the inflated bonuses and other private sector waste, thus assisting the arguments of the ConDems and others who point to these inflated figures as justification for ‘cutting the public sector’, although almost never the ‘new’ part of it. On the other hand it does provide a useful highlight for those who wish to see it, illuminating just what sort of salaries and pensions senior managers in the private sector receive. Whatever the reason, that figure needs further explanation.

Of course most people working in the private sector get far less than either figure, and Iain’s view appears to be ‘because we private sector staff have had our pensions robbed, then the public sector should as well’. Bitterness - however well justified - has never been a particularly good basis for public policy decisions, and is not so here. It is true that many decent, affordable, private sector pension schemes have been shut to new entrants/ removed completely/replaced by far cheaper (to the employer) schemes (delete where applicable), but that does not mean we should accept the demands of the same robbers who perpetrated these scandals to do the same to our public service workers. 

The real ‘pensions apartheid’ is the difference between the level of pensions enjoyed by many private sector directors and senior managers and the levels that they are now forcing their workers to accept. One of the reasons for the private sector average being so low, is the closures and cutbacks that private sector directors and managers have forced their workers to accept. Decent pensions for our workforces in both the public and private sector should be a right, and employers should be forced to face up to their responsibility. Where they don’t we should support workers in the fight to achieve and maintain a decent pension - whether they are in the private or public sector. Indeed one of the strongest private sector dispute in recent years - at INEOS in Grangemouth - was on exactly this issue.

Should the attack on public sector pensions advocated by Lord Hutton lead to an industrial dispute (and the leader of the largest public service union has already called for the government to negotiate), public service workers should be supported in their campaigns, in exactly the same way as private sector workers fighting for a decent pension. Hopefully this co-ordinated attack (and let no-one doubt it is co-ordinated) will be met by a co-ordinated response across the public and private sector workforce, starting with a massive demonstration on March 26. The stories of ConDem scab preparations to undermine and defeat the workforce in the event of public service strikes remind all of us of a certain age of Thatcher and the miners. No-one is pretending that public service workers and their unions are miners, and any major dispute will have to be handled with great subtlety. But it WILL BE part of the overall struggle against the false economy being adopted by the governments in the UK. To suggest that low-paid public sector workers should simply sit back and accept these attacks will be damaging to the overall campaign and, far from threatening future joint action with the community over cuts, could help to make the links stronger.