Weekly Worker 569 Thursday March 24 2005

Left gives Blair helping hand

At the 11th hour leaders of public sector unions, notably Unison and the PCSU, called off our 24-hour strike.

Following individual ballots, the unions had a massive mandate for one-day action over attacks on their pension rights. The government plans to increase the retirement age from 60 to 65 for public sector workers and to change the method of calculating pensions from ‘final salary scheme’ to ‘average salary scheme’ - ie, based on average salary over the entire course of each worker’s employment rather than the final few years, when they would normally have earned the most. PCSU, the 300,000-strong civil service union, had also balloted for action over job cuts and redundancies and in defence of a range of terms and conditions that are also under attack.

At the start of the weekend before the proposed action the government offered new talks on the issue of pensions, claiming there had been a “misunderstanding” of its position. It agreed to withdraw the date for the introduction of the changes, April 2006, but it has not actually withdrawn the proposals themselves (at least, not for the civil service, though it appears some temporary concessions may have been granted to local government workers). Unison, with 800,000 local government members due to take strike action, were the first of the major unions involved to pull out - doing so on Friday March 18. Talks will now take place on the future pension scheme.
New Labour, with its focus very much on a May general election, needed to have a million public sector workers taking strike action at this time like it needed a hole in the head. It does not take a genius to work out that these talks are simply a delaying tactic to string the unions along until the election is out of the way.

It was reported to the national executive of the PCSU that substantive talks on pensions were highly unlikely to take place beforehand. Apparently it would take weeks and weeks to set up the machinery to allow negotiations, which would cover all public sector unions, to take place. The only meetings we are likely to see in the meantime are those to “agree procedures for the negotiations”. The left-led NEC of the PCSU has made a mistake in calling the action off without any guarantees from the employer - all the union has gained is talks. The action should have gone ahead unless the government pulled back altogether.

The dominant force on the PCSU NEC is the Socialist Party, together with members of the Scottish Socialist Party. They were supported in their decision to suspend the action by Sue Bond and Martin John of the Socialist Workers Party. The only NEC member to oppose suspending the strike was John Moloney, a member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the Socialist Caucus. As he says, it is important to keep in mind that the strike ballot was not only over pensions: it concerned jobs and pay as well.

“We have achieved nothing tangible in return for calling off the strike,” said comrade Moloney. “There have been no pledges to reduce the number of job losses; no slowing of the pace; no guarantees on compulsory redundancies; nothing on levelling up wages to the highest already existing in the Civil Service.”

John did point out that the government had been forced to agree to talks, including on retaining 65 as the retirement age: “Just a short while ago Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for the department for work and pensions, was adamant that there would be no talks, let alone negotiations, on these changes. Yet through the threat of industrial action the public sector unions have forced a U-turn. It is just a pity that we did not press our advantage when we had the opportunity.”

The Socialist Party members of the NEC are claiming the union has gained “significant concessions”, but they are unable to point to anything apart from the talks themselves. The SP claims that these represent “a major climbdown and change in government direction and a significant victory for PCS members”. From the Socialist Party point of view such a reaction is understandable, as the SP does not believe the government can be defeated by strike action. SP members of the NEC will be relieved they have been given an ‘out’ - and some are already putting the blame on Unison.

The position of the SWP is more complex. On the one hand it argues that strike action can win, and yet its NEC members readily go along with the Socialist Party in suspending the action. They must have known that calling off the strike was hardly likely to be the position of the SWP leadership (in fact within two days Socialist Worker published an article criticising the union for doing just that). Recently Martin John voted to accept a poor pay deal (tying the hands of 100,000 department for works and pensions members for three years), and then voted against a motion trying to commit Left Unity, the PCSU broad left, to at least campaign for a ‘no’ vote in the subsequent ballot. The position of comrade John in continually ignoring the discipline of the SWP can only be put down to personal ambition. There are a number of leftwing officials that have recently taken up residence as PCSU full-timers and only by keeping in with the Socialist Party can you guarantee positions on slates for NEC and officer posts.

As for the most important group in all of this - the members - many will be confused by the action taken by a left-led NEC. The members are not daft: they can see that the government is stalling until after the general election, and they can see that no substantive concessions have been gained by calling off the strike action. They know that it is possible to talk and walk at the same time.

Members will have expected more from the NEC and the union’s leftwing general secretary, Mark Serwotka.
Lee Rock
national secretary, PCSU Socialist Caucus

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