revolutionary SOCIALIST
Issue No. 4 January 2012 Price: Donation
Working Class Monthly Published by the Revolutionary Socialist Organization
PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION SELL OUT?
No Way!
Treachery is afoot as the public sector workers of Britain are in serious danger of being sold out by the parasitic leaders of the trade unions. Nurses, teachers, civil servants and the rest of Britain’s public sector workers who bravely defied the government in their millions on the 30 November in defence of a dignity in old age are being betrayed. The heads of the trade union movement such as Brendan Barber and Dave Prentis -who in words claim to act in the interest of the workers they represent- are indeed making deals with the government. These deals will ensure their own privileged position and enormous salaries. However, they will condemn ordinary workers to an old age of miserable poverty and a working life of being forced to pay for an economic crisis they did not cause. The true objectives of the union bureaucrats in the dispute were revealed when TUC general secretary Brendan Barber announced in December that, “we have reached a stage where the emphasis in most cases is giving active consideration to the new proposals that have emerged rather than considering the prospect of further industrial action.” So, the leader of the trade union movement wants workers to believe that he is unwilling to consider the prospect of strike action, as the new deal is so much better than the one 2.6 million workers firmly rejected on 30 November. We ask then, what is the government offering now that it wasn’t before?
*Workers having to work longer before they can retire, 67 for those under 51 years old and 68 for those under 34. *Workers being entitled to a smaller fund upon retirement as their pension pot will now be tied to the lower Consumer Price Index rate of inflation.
Danny Alexander ever so slightly tweaked this on the eve of the strike by offering an accrual rate of 1/80th instead of 1/85th, a rise which is offset by a switch to career salary average anyway. The government also attempted to use the tried and tested “divide and rule” tactic by removing those within 10 years of retirement from the reforms, an ofWell prior to the November 30 fer to buy the workers birthright in Strike the deal on the table con- return for a mess of pottage. sisted of: *Workers paying more in contributions, about 50% more on average or 3% of their gross pay than they are at present.
The government has refused to budge on its paltry offer and many unions leaders are using as their defence for selling out their members that it is the governments’ tough
stance forcing them to capitulate. Leader of the health section of Unite Christina McArea described the negotiations as a “damage limitation exercise” while the Royal College of Nursing called the offer, “the best that can be achieved through negotiations.” Their argument is simply absurd, as if any businessman or politician-when he says this is his final offer-actually means it. It’s simply a ploy, a ruse in the hope that the union leaders will do what they have in fact done and refuse to rely on the collective action of their membership as the way to force the governments’ hand. Unfortunately the willingness of the union bosses to capitulate to the government imposing the will of finance capitalism is nothing new; it’s a problem nearly as old as the unions themselves. The leaders of the unions rake in six figure salaries and receive CEO-esque payments when they retire, such as former Unite leader Derek Simpson who received a £500,000 golden goodbye. They occupy a privileged po-
shape for their capitalist masters. The industrial action over pensions was the least the unions could have done, as a race to the bottom in pay and conditions combined with hundreds of thousands of job losses (710,000 to be precise) created a groundswell of anger and a desire to fight back amongst the rank and file of union members. If the capitalist onslaught is to be at least halted, then it is up to these rank and file members to fight within the unions against the corrupt leaderships for a complete rejection of the governments’ offer and to organize further co-ordinated strike action be it legal or otherwise.
However a strike that is powerful enough to make the government concede to the strikers’ demands poses in itself the question of who holds power in society. As then prime minister David Lloyd George pointed out to the leaders of the looming miners strike in 1919, “if you carry out your threat you will defeat us. But if you do so, have you weighed up the consequences?” He meant that when they won, the workers needed to be prepared to take power and run society for themselves. Then right wing leader of the miners union Robert Smillieterrified by the prospect of working sition in society and are reluctant class power-commented that, “from to threaten their own privilege by that moment on we knew we were encouraging workers to take action beaten.” against their bosses. Today the problem is the same. The Russian revolutionary Leon If the working class is to turn the Trotsky wrote in 1940 that the, tide in its battle against oppression “trade unions of our time can either then it needs to take seriously the serve as secondary instruments of prospect of taking power itself and imperialist capitalism for the sub- running society not in the interests ordination and discipline of work- of a tiny number of parasites who ers and for obstructing the revolu- make up the ruling class, but in the tion, or, on the contrary, the trade interests of the great many people unions can become the instruments who toil day in day out only to be of the revolutionary movement of trapped in a cycle of ever increasthe proletariat.” ing poverty. The consciousness that it is us, the working class, who creThose words have never rang truer ate the wealth in society and it is us than they do now, during the biggest who should decide how it is distribrecession since the Great Depres- uted is currently lacking in broad sion, and the complete onslaught sections of the working class, and instigated against the working class this weakness is an important part by the capitalist class. This includes of the union leaders’ cowardice. a two year pay freeze for public The only way to turn the state of sector workers, on top of pay rises affairs around is to fight everyday limited to just 1%; way below the in the workplaces and in the comrise in the cost of living. The union munities for working class organibosses continue to serve as the will- zation, and eventually for working ing sergeant majors of imperialism; class power and the setting of huwhipping the industrial army into manity on the road to communism.
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The real Jobkillers
Student robs shop
He couldn’t pay his fees!
Remember how Labour, Lid Dems and Tories told us that tuition fees wouldn’t affect working class people going to Uni? Michael Hill, a student who could not afford to pay his tuition fees has recently been jailed for an armed robbery he committed out of desperation. Michael, 25, was kicked off his course at Salford University after a loan he had applied for failed to materialize. In thousands of pounds worth of debt, living rough after being evicted from his student accommodation for being unable to pay the rent and losing his part time job he became desperate. On August 26 after wandering around Manchester with his few belongings in his rucksack and £6 in cash to his name, he caught a bus to a coop supermarket in Astley, Wigan, where he used to work, and carried out the robbery. He was making off with £20,000 (roughly the average student debt at current fees rates) when a motorist saw him being chased by a security guard and stopped him with his car. Hill was arrested, tried and convicted and now faces three years in prison. In court friends and family testified to Michaels honesty and how out of character his actions had been. It was clear that his decision to attempt the armed robbery was one made out of sheer desperation and a complete lack of any other alternatives after the university had threatened him with legal action for non-payment of fees. Michael, who wanted to get on in life by working hard and studying found out the hard way that in capitalism, education is a privilege of those able to afford it. His attempts to get on led to him living on the streets and deciding that it would be less risky to commit an armed robbery than take his chances surviving the winter sleeping rough. Of course things like that don’t occur to those who had an easy ride going to Eton and elite universities whilst living off parental allowances. As university fees treble this September a lot of working class youngsters will not be able to afford higher education. Michael’s case shows that
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggests that 160,000 “British Jobs” have been lost to foreigners in the last 15 years. The tabloids quickly came up with loads of headlines saying things like “160,000 Brits lose jobs to migrants!(The Sun)”. This is utter nonsense. But like every time the capitalists get us in a big mess they try to blame it on someone else. Immigrants seem like an easy target. There are a lot of non-domestic workers in the UK, especially from the EU.
Michael Hill: He became a robber because he was unable to pay his fees. not all is as the Con-Dem government wants us to believe, and that indeed, working class people have to struggle with higher university fees. One would think that in our society education should be a right for all people. However, in a system driven by profit interests of a few financial capitalists, the interests of the broad majority are constantly ignored.
The Revolutionary Socialist Organization (RSO) is fighting against capitalism and for a new socialist economic and social order. Every day it becomes more evident that the so-called “free market” has nothing to offer for most of the world’s population. Capitalism means hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, war and misery. Even in the richest countries in the world, millions live at or below the poverty line. In contrast, a small portion of the population owns the majority of the assets; in Britain 1% of the population owns more than a third of all assets. Two classes are facing each other in the capitalist society. On one side are the capitalists who own the means of production. They are faced by the wage earners who are forced to sell their labor power. Many workers today are isolated, discouraged, and full of capitalist
The capitalists don’t want to take the blame for the misery they produced. So they and their media try to blame foreigners to split the workers and causing disunity. If the workers in the UK would take a united stand against the bosses, then they could really topple the roots of their problems and they would be a massive force. As long as the workers let themselves be disunited by divisions of nationality, they will be in a weak position and are easy targets in the capitalists’ hunt for profits. Workers in the UK-no matter what nationality-have a common opponent: the British capitalist class.
Let them eat fruit-cake! New studies show that low income families bought 30% less fruit and vegetables last year. That is not surprising with food prices going up almost 20% last year. An average family is now spending £24.50 on food a week, which is 11.5% of its income, a low income family even spends as much as 15.8%, just on food! Of course with rising costs the first things to drop out of the shopping baskets are relatively pricy food items, such as fresh vegetables and fruits. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that healthy nutrition is the key to health in general, which is especially true for children. But last year, children from low income families only got an average of 2.7 units of fruit and veg a day. This is almost half of the recommended 5 units a day. Now even
Who we are A brief summary of the political positions of the RSO
These workers however are not stealing anyone’s jobs. Freedom of the movement of labour is a fundamental and necessary right. After all, about 6 million Britons live and work abroad. Are these 6 million jobs ones the British have stolen from other people? As for wage dumping, who is it that discriminates against foreign workers by paying them lower wages? It is the bosses and capitalists! They want to use foreign workers as a tool of pressure to force down wages in Britain, to have lower costs for labour and more money in their pockets. So instead of blaming foreigners, wouldn’t it be more sensible to demand fair wages for all workers in Britain, no matter where they come from?
The real job killers are the capitalists! It is them outsourcing literally millions of jobs for the reason of a cheaper workforce abroad. It is also them and their Tory government who have slashed 376,000 public sector jobs since the general election in 2010. And Mr. Osborne in his review said that there will be a total of 710,000 public sector jobs cut by 2017! Unemployment in the UK is sky-rocketing (currently 2.62 million unemployed) and wages are dropping. Taking into account inflation workers in the UK had their wages cut by 4.5% last year!
political ideas and filled with capitalist prejudices. Nevertheless, only the wage earners through strikes and other collective forms of struggle can bring the capitalist mode of production to a halt and hit the capitalist class at the critical point, their profits. Capitalism in its neoliberal phase after the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91 is politically and militarily on the rise world wide. The working class of the European countries is subject to massive social attacks. Trade unions and social democratic parties are unable to oppose this, but are perfectly integrated into the system. Their representatives participate in cutting public services and creating racist divisions. The Green Parties are not an alternative, they are bourgeois parties, some of which have a progressive rhetoric on human rights issues, but, where they participate in government, show that they are part of the normal capitalist state. The different imperialist blocs are arm-
school meals have gone up by 4-5 pence a day, a rise which seems tiny. However, if your budget is already stretched to the max-something more and more working class families are experiencing-even a little can be too much. Therefore, many parents cannot afford letting their children eat at school anymore and have to give them less nutritional meals. Far away seem the dark days where people were suffering from the effects of malnutrition, at least in the Western World. But due to the rise in food prices and the resulting shortage in healthy nutrition, more and more people in Britain (sadly, the majority of which are children) are diagnosed with cases of mal- or even undernourishment. Of course the bourgeois press isn’t short of constantly portraying the “bad parenting” of working class
ing themselves. The imperialist “global player” is still the United States. But the EU is trying to downsize the military gap with the United States and is also more and more acting as a militarily independent bloc. In contrast, we support the resistance against imperialist wars and occupations and combine this with the slogan: “The main enemy is at home.” To secure its domination, capitalism is (also) using and fostering the division of the working class. We are fighting against the oppression of people because of their ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation and we oppose these divisions with the unconditional support of every fight for equal rights. We are for the socialization of large corporations and their transformation into co-operatives under democratic workers’ management and control. Capitalism can not be eliminated by a few votes or parliamentary reform. All attempts to overcome capitalism through reforms have failed (and have often led to bloody defeats). Only a fundamental upheaval, a revolution based on the active participation of large segments of
families as the main cause of this development. But what are working class parents supposed to do when healthy options just do not fit into the budget? After all they don’t have the nice fat pay check of a tabloid journalist. All this shows once more what a failure the capitalist system is. The cause for the rise in food prices is not shortage (in fact, the world is producing more food today than at any other time in history) but speculation on food prices. And as we know, when eggs are rare, eggs are dear. So to keep their profits high the capitalists create a shortage of their own! Half of the worlds’ food production is wasted, most of it before it actually lands on a shelf in the shop. This system is pure madness, and there is no reason why we should let it go on like this.
the population can destroy the state of the ruling class, eliminate the bases of inequality, oppression and exploitation and create a free society. We are Marxists and follow in the tradition of the “left opposition” against Stalinism by Leon Trotsky. Our alternative is socialism. Our socialism is a free, democratic society built on elected councils. We refer positively to the Russian October Revolution of 1917. This revolution has indeed failed in the Stalinist degeneration in the twenties, but the idea of an alternative to capitalism retains its validity. Our socialism has thus nothing to do with the “social” democratic parties, or with the Stalinist dictatorships in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and China. Capitalism is internationally organized and networked. Therefore, our revolutionary
Contact: If you want to know more about the Revolutionary Socialist Organisation, check out our English website: www.revolutionarysocialism.blogspot.com or e-mail us at:
[email protected] or just simply talk to the person who sold you this paper.
alternative has to be international and internationalist. The RSO is not “the” revolutionary party. None of the currently existing organizations can claim that for themselves. A new revolutionary party will emerge from a process of transformations and mergers. The RSO will try to play a positive role in this process to build such a party and therefore put forward a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. If you are interested in this project, then get in contact with us and support us in building a revolutionary and socialist organization!
