March against the cuts. Build a 24 hour general strike
STUC March against the cuts. October 20th 11am George Sqaure
By Brian Smith Glasgow City Unison branch secretary (personal capacity) OctoberA rage is building across the working class as every aspect of our lives comes under attack from the ConDems, their big business pals and chums in the right-wing media. We suffer. They get richer. With 85% of their cuts still to be implemented the ConDems are about to step – up their war against workers, the disabled, the unemployed, women, young people and minority communities.
The trade union movement must also now move up a gear and lead the fight back. Therfore the decision of the UK Trade Union Congress to call for a general strike is a significant step change in the fight against the ConDems austerity programme.
The UK TUC motion calls for co-ordinated action, far-reaching campaigning and the consideration of how to organise a general strike.
We agree with John McInally, vice president of the PCS civil service trade union, who in supporting the motion at the TUC said “a 24-hour strike as a start to an effective programme of co-ordinated industrial action and wider campaigning would irrevocably shift the balance of forces in our favour”.
Anger is bursting out. Faced with cuts to services and benefits that disabled people rely on, 80,000 people at the Paralympics booed Tory Chancellor George Osborne. The ConDems should be warned. Among the first expressions of anger in Greece, which has since seen a massive movement of the working class against austerity, was jeering and booing of pro-cuts politicians.
Here in Scotland, both the SNP and Labour in the Scottish Parliament and local councils are making the overall level of cuts in public spending asked of them by the ConDems.
Labour’s UK leaders Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have repeatedly confirmed their support for the ConDems’ public sector pay freeze (really a cut in wages of course) and the current anti-trade union laws. Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont has disastrously come out in favour of even deeper cuts here in Scotland.
The need to build a new mass working class party that will oppose cuts and austerity is vital. The TUC demos in Glasgow, Belfast and London on 20 October will provide a fantastic opportunity to show the support there is for co-ordinated strike action.
We are in the fight of our lives. A motion calling for a 24-hour general strike should be moved and debated in every trade union meeting, community organisation, student union and anti-cuts group. At the moment in Glasgow Unison the stewards are debating and consulting members on the idea of a general strike based on the TUC motion. Stewards will feed in the outcome of these discussions and workplace votes to the next branch committee. If agreed, the branch will take the call for a general strike to the UNISON Scotland Council of all Unison branches in Scotland to be debated and hopefully agreed.
A one-day strike must be the first step in a determined strategy against austerity. It could also have a transformative effect with working class people gaining a glimpse of their potential power as the most significant social force in society, and showing how this hated ConDem government can be forced out.
