Tomorrow, from 2.6 to 3 million (depending on which newspaper you read) UK public sector workers are planning a 24 hour strike over government attacks on pensions. This is the biggest strike since the General Strike of 1926 (http://en.wikipedia.org/...). Irrespective of government claims that their latest offer is a good and fair compromise, trade unions have rejected the offer which never addressed the shift from Retail Price Index to Consumer Price Index inflation indexes, which has lowered the value of existing pension contributions and which also required that people work longer and pay more to get a lower pension (http://uk.ibtimes.com/...).
But there is more to tomorrow than a national strike of public sector workers, the impact of austerity measures is bringing others out to demonstrate against government policies and in support of state sector workers and to fight the attack on those on benefits and services. Rather than treating this strike as an end in itself, it must be the beginning of a continued fight-back on the part of the poor, working and middle class (http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/...).
According to The Guardian, 50 branches of 30 unions are going out on strike representing state sector workers. These unions represent workers from unskilled labour to professional skilled labour. Of general public sector workers unions, while only PCS (and only some locals of UNITE and UNISON) went out on June 30th, this time, UNITE, UNISON and GMB are striking and they represent larger numbers of workers. 4 teachers’ unions in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) from the National Union of Teachers (NUT; http://www.teachers.org.uk/), Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL; http://www.atl.org.uk/), NASUWT (which did not participate June 30th is striking this time http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/...) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT; http://www.naht.org.uk/... for the first time in its 114 year history; see also for more information: http://www.edexec.co.uk/...) are going out, and the UCU (university and college lecturers union) are participating, NHS workers including radiographers, physiotherapists, chiropodists and podiatrists, support staff, doctors and nurses. Professionals working in Education and Child Services (ASPECT), Association of Educational Psychologists, Prospect (professional’s union), and FDA (senior civil servants) are going out. Border Control workers are going out meaning quite a bit of delay at Heathrow, which quite honestly should be closed down (For the full list of unions that are planning to go out on strike see http://www.guardian.co.uk/...; see also the south-east region of the TUC (SERTUC) for a list of events tomorrow: http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/...).
Is that a new recession that is on the horizon or is it the same one?
While workers are striking over attacks on their pensions tomorrow, today the government released their latest economic data in which economic growth is predicted to be .7% in 2012 (this is probably generous and is a government projection; http://www.guardian.co.uk/...). Still blaming the EU and eurocrisis and the previous Labour government, the government have introduced a two-year pay cap on public sector workers of 1% (http://www.bbc.co.uk/...) in a situation where inflation is over 5% and workers are facing increases in pension contributions will only further undermine workers’ incomes means a cut in real wages; moreover, retirement age will increase to 67 by 2028. Also the Office of Budget Responsibility has again revised their earlier findings indicating that rather than the projected 410,000 public sector workers losing their jobs, the figure is actually 710,000 by the first quarter of 2017 (this is 100,000 more than the initial projection of 610,000; see http://www.guardian.co.uk/...). The dismal economic news is still being treated as a liquidity crisis by the government. As such, two days ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has offered government backing to banks for loans to small business called the “National Loan Guarantee Scheme (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).”
“What is happening, under what will be named the National Loan Guarantee Scheme (a moniker dreamed up for the last Tory manifesto), is that some of what banks borrow from investors - up to £20bn of the debt that banks sell in the first couple of years of the scheme - will have a guarantee from the Treasury. To put it another way, the lenders to the banks will know that in the unlikely event that the banks can't pay them back, taxpayers would pay them back. So the inherent riskiness of these loans will be lessened - and that means that the banks will be able to borrow at lower interest rates (http://www.bbc.co.uk/...).”
However, the problem is that it is not a crisis of liquidity; it is actually a realisation crisis where producers are not making investments because they know that the purchasers for goods and services are simply not there. As such, profitability arising from the sale of goods at a higher price than costs is not happening. In fact, as the Guardian notes, more loans have been paid off rather than being taken out by small businesses in the past 9 out of 12 months (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...). Increased levels of unemployment, cuts in income and benefits mean that effective demand has decreased; lowering the rate of interest (which at this point is non-existent), lowering corporate taxes, and increasing money available for loans will not mean that investment is forthcoming; one does not increase employment and plant size with expected effective demand decreasing.
Government and MSM propaganda against the strike
Unsurprisingly, the government and mainstream media are working overtime to try and destroy support for the strike. Shamefully, I watched BBC announcers babbling like Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy of the Simpson “think of the children” who are missing one day of school rather than raise the impact of cuts on benefits and education and service cuts and projected rises in child poverty and their impact on children’s lives. Cabinet office minister, Francis Maude, has argued that the strikes will cost the economy in excess of £500m (http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/...). This is clearly a gross exaggeration, which even the Treasury admits (http://www.egovmonitor.com/...). Even if it were the case, that would not matter as workers clearly have no other choice but to strike; the idea that we are all in this together is perhaps one of the biggest lies of this government. The Education Minister, Michael Gove, ratcheted up the rhetoric and blamed “militants” in Trade Unions for the strike arguing that they are “itching for a fight” and arguing that teachers want families to be inconvenienced (http://www.bbc.co.uk/...).
“They want mothers to give up a day's work, or pay for expensive childcare, because schools will be closed. They want teachers and other public sector workers to lose a day's pay in the run-up to Christmas. They want scenes of industrial strife on our TV screens. They want to make economic recovery harder - they want to provide a platform for confrontation just when we all need to pull together."
He went on to say it was "unfair and unrealistic" to expect taxpayers to foot the increasing public sector pensions bill. "So today I want to appeal directly to teachers - and other public sector workers: please, even now, think again (http://www.bbc.co.uk/...).”
Yesterday’s comment in the London Evening Standard was typical, titled “Strikes don’t help:
“Wednesday’s strikes by public sector workers angry at having to work longer and contribute more to their pensions may get limited sympathy on the day from the public. Many ordinary people will be inconvenienced by school closures and businesspeople will be infuriated that Heathrow will be effectively non-functioning for a day.
But there is also the question of fairness. Private sector pensions have faired less well than state ones, even after the new arrangements. What’s more, unions cannot say that this is compensation for poor pay in the state sector: a full-time public sector worker is paid £4000 a year more on average than elsewhere. The reality of living longer is that all of us have to work longer and pay more; that must be as true for state workers as for private if there is not to be a damaging divide between them (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/...).”
Needless to say, this is a rather pathetic piece of propaganda, it is a bit misleading and there are a few errors. The response from to Dave Plummer from the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) is well-done and worth reading:
If ‘ordinary people’ (is this the Evening Standard saying that public sector trade union members are extraordinary?) are inconvenienced the blame should be laid at the Government’s door, not the unions’. The Government has refused to negotiate meaningfully, has misled the public about the affordability of our pension schemes, bribed and blackmailed the unions. Strike action is the only option available to us.
[…] Actually, the average defined benefit private sector pension is £5800, £120 more than the £5680 public sector average. It is true that too few people in the private sector have pensions with their employers but that is an argument for them to take up with their employers, preferably through their unions. Attacking poublic sector pensions isn’t going to help that.
[…] This is rather misleading. Much of the lowest paid public sector work has been privatised and there is a higher percentage of professionals in the public sector than the private sector. These both have the effect of raising the average wage and render it irrelevant. […] The reality is that the proposed increases in public sector pension contributions are nothing the do with making pensions more affordable. the increased contributions will go straight to the Treasury to help plug the deficit, a deficit we didn’t cause (http://pcseuston.org.uk/...).
Happily, the government and mainstream media’s attempt to increase opposition to the strike is unsuccessful. In a BBC sponsored poll, 61% of those surveyed supported the statement that “public sector workers are justified in going on strike over changes to their pensions;” among women, 67% support the strike, among 18-24 years olds, support runs to 80% of those surveyed (http://www.bbc.co.uk/..., see also http://www.comres.co.uk/...). Of course that does not stop the right-wing press from saying that there is not support for the strike and that the poll is misleading as the question did not ask whether they supported the strike but whether they think workers are justified (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/...).
Last night I went to a Coalition of Resistance (http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/) meeting to get an update on the economic crisis and took some leaflets home to distribute in my area of East London. I heard that Greek workers are planning a general strike on Thursday and have proclaimed their solidarity with UK public sector workers; I heard the same about Belgian and Austrian Workers and the global federation of public sector unions (PSI) (http://www.pcs.org.uk/...).
I took home about 500 leaflets. My friend that lives in Ilford took some of the leaflets planning to distribute them with her daughter in her neighbourhood. Today, I talked to neighbours. I went to the local mom and pop shops and the local Chippy (fish, chicken and chip shop) to ask if they would put up the leaflets about the demonstration (they all agreed and put the signs up immediately). Then I went to the Primary School (the teachers are on strike tomorrow) to drum up support for the strike and to try and get people to get the word out about the demonstration tomorrow in London. Not only did people take the leaflets, they all were strongly supportive of it and opposed to the government’s austerity measures. The vast majority said that they would participate in the demo, get the word out to friends, family and neighbours. People asked for extra leaflets to distribute. Now, I live in a working class area of East London where Tory support is virtually non-existent, so in many senses this is unsurprising. However, there was serious Lib-Dem support. Given the reaction from my neighbours and the mothers and fathers that I talked to on the street, something tells me that Lib Dem support will simply disappear at the next election (which they will put off for as long as possible).
As always, the struggle continues!