Strike! March! Rally!

bristol | protests | opinion/analysis Tuesday July 15, 2008 23:03 by Solidarity - autonomous workers

All out on 16 & 17 July

Disappointing to see that the sudden rush of 3 newswire posts, relating to the working class & struggle, fail to mention potentially one of the biggest ongoing series of strikes in Bristol and the rest of the country for many a year.

Wednesday & Thursday sees 2 days of strike action by many of the lowest paid workers in the public sector. Nationally upto 600,000 members of the Unison & Unite unions could take action in what may be the first of a series of rolling strikes. Next time around it may be 3 days, then 4, then…?

In Bristol many schools and other services managed by Bristol city council will be effected (see the employers website at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/press-releases/20...te.en). Early morning pickets will be followed by a march meeting on Castle Park at 11am, then rallying on College Green an hour later. Be there in support, and if you aren’t on strike take a very long lunch.

The bosses offer of a 2.45% pay rise is below the ‘official’ rate of inflation, and way below the real rise in the cost of living for the lower paid – particularily when you take into account rises in the costs of housing, utility bills, food and transport. Add in the usual bosses productivity clauses (more work by no extra staff basically), and what you really have is a pay cut. No way!

We know that local authority employers are partially hamstrung by central government restrictions on council tax rises and other legislation, we also know they waste lots of money on overpaid consultants and senior council managers, and by their inability to organise effective local services. But the fact remains that central government has excess to plenty of money if they reversed their trend of not taxing the rich & corporations properly. And the UK remains awash with cash from the profits made by many corporations over the last 20 years, or it would be if the bosses & shareholders of those corporations hadn’t siphoned it off for their own benefit, often to places far away that benefit us not at all.

Unison’s supremo Dave Prentis, whilst stating that underpaid & overworked workers have to at some point make a stand, also backed off by saying ‘Nobody wants a winter of discontent; nobody wants a summer of discontent.’ Well bollocks to you Davey boy. You may be on a wage many times that of your lowly paid members, and for sure you don’t want to have to work overtime in yer office, but your members are fighting now because they cant afford the basics in life, and are pissed off being pushed about by governments & councils of all shades of blue. So lets bring on some discontent, and lets make it last until we’ve sorted out the greedy bosses once and for all., and taken on running the services we need ourselves.