By a PCS activist
In his June 2006 Mansion House speech Gordon Brown promised to peg increases in the public sector pay bill to 2% over two years. It is symptomatic of his politics that he should assure an audience of rich men and women of his commitment to cutting the real pay of many thousands of public sector workers in this way.
Public sector workers have to take pay cuts while the public sector paid out nearly £2 billion last year to external consultants — leading even the Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, to comment, “.. a good proportion of [the pay out] looks like sheer profligacy”. Public sector workers could give Mr Leigh chapter and verse — and the “profligacy” is a great more than he suggests.
Brown’s determination to cut real pay is a critical factor in the current national PCS (civil service) dispute, along with mass job cuts and compulsory redundancies. It also lies behind:
• the CWU (post office workers) pay dispute;
• the health dispute — with Unison and other health unions objecting to the Government’s decision to stage a crummy 2.5% rise for health workers in England and Wales so that the in-year total pay bill increase is in fact only 1.9%;
• the Unison Local Government Conference decision last week to instruct the leadership to ballot for industrial action over pay;
• the anger amongst the membership of the National Union of Teachers — with the Government vetoing the Salary Review Board’s request to revisit pay arrangements for teachers as inflation has soared above the increase delivered under the multi-year settlement.
Rightly, activists across the unions are calling for a joint public sector fight back on pay and support is growing amongst the wider members of the different unions.
A public sector pay rally in London on 14 June, initiated by NUT branches and supported by PCS London and South East Region, drew a large audience (about 250) who voted unanimously in favour of united action. A Leeds public sector alliance launch meeting on 13 June drew a healthy audience for united action.
Yet it is obvious that at least most union leaders are anxious to avoid a real clash with the Brown/New Labour regime. Union leaders have had ample notice of Brown’s public sector wide policy but have managed to avoid a clear, unequivocal commitment to a public sector wide industrial and political fight back.
Indeed for the likes of Woodley and Simpson, running the huge new union Unite, it seems that nothing Brown could do would ever have stopped them from backing him for leader of the Labour Party. Similarly, whilst Education Secretary Alan Johnson is well capable of cutting the real pay of teachers, being a firm advocate of anti-union laws, and a supporter of the “liberalisation” of postal services, the CWU leadership had no problems in supporting him for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (a decision overturned by CWU Conference).
At last week’s Unison conference General Secretary Dave Prentis said that he did not believe that Brown as Prime Minister would be “as enamoured by market policies on health as his predecessor” — as if PFI had nothing to do with Brown the Chancellor! Unison and other health unions are drifting towards a decision to campaign only against the staging of their 2.5% award. Even if they won on staging, that would still leave health workers with a below inflation award — and therefore leave Scottish health workers, who are receiving the award without the staging, out of the fight.
Nevertheless rank and file pressure is growing on all the union leaders to bring their unions together in a common fight against Brown’s pay policy. Most ordinary members instinctively recognise that unity is strength, do not readily appreciate why the unions do not fight together, and could be quickly won to the argument that a clear demand for a public sector pay policy guaranteeing increases in real living standards is the unifying, response to Brown’s pay cut policy.
All talk of the complexity of bringing together different unions from different sectors (different settlement dates, different occupational issues, different pay regimes) ignores the fact that their inability to address their various problems is due to Brown’s public sector pay policy.
Activists across the unions urgently need to make links and fight for a common line of march — for public sector unity with joint demands and a joint mechanism so that Brown cannot easily divide and rule union bureaucrats; local joint action committees; for a public sector pay policy that will increase living standards over the coming years and allow the many thousands of low paid workers to share in the rising wealth of Britain; linking demands on pay to demands for a halt to job loss and an end to privatisation.
All this should be said without in any way supporting the idea – espoused by union bureaucrats like Prentis and in fact also by the “left elements” that run PCS (the Socialist Party and their subordinates in the Socialist Workers’ Party) that no one union can fight and win on its own. It is a recipe for passivity in the absence of a genuine united campaign. When Prentis wrote on 15 May to the PCS General Secretary proposing a meeting to discuss coordinated campaigning (with the vaguest of statements about joint industrial action), he claimed “unions cannot fight these battles alone.” This of course was his excuse for failing to mount any serious fight-back in health and local government; and it will be his excuse in the future.
