Strike for pay rises and a socialist recovery

Socialist Party Scotland editorial statement

Workers and their families are facing a tsunami of cost of living increases, with inflation now hitting 4%.

By early next year working families will be, according to the Resolution Foundation, more than £1,000 poorer than they are today. So much for a recovery after Covid.

Employers and governments are imposing pay restraint. Tory cuts to universal credit will steal £6 billion from the poorest and lowest paid in society.

In addition National Insurance increases, fuel and energy cost rises, job insecurity in many sectors and even shortages of goods add further pressure on living standards.

In response to this onslaught the number of workers either balloting or taking industrial action is growing by the thousands.

Bin workers, carers, school janitors, classroom assistants, dockers, rail workers, bus and delivery drivers, NHS staff, university lecturers and those on oil rigs to name just a few.

Where trade unions have campaigned workers have enthusiastically voted for action.

It’s increasingly understood either we, the working class, through collective action, impose a “new normal” or the bosses and employers give us insulting poverty below inflation “pay increases” assault our terms and conditions and threaten redundancies.

The heartless Tories are trying to allow the bosses to make us pay with a race to the bottom.

But the SNP-Green government is no opposition. In fact they too use Thatcherite language to attack rail and council workers, previously called heroes, fighting for pay increases and against job cuts.

Workers are looking to the trade union leaders to organise nationally coordinated strike action for pay rises, secure jobs and fully funded public services.

Such mass action could link up with young people’s walkouts and protests against the planet wreckers gathering at COP26 in Glasgow.

It could show the way forward in the struggle to build a mass working-class movement for indyref2.

What is clear is that capitalism is not going to deliver any recovery for young people and the working class.

We need to fight for a socialist recovery and an end to the anarchy of the profit-driven production of capitalism.

To do that workers need a new mass workers’ party, based on the trade unions, that fights for socialist policies.

mood to fight

There is a growing fighting mood among workers. The experience of the pandemic, with “key workers” keeping society running, has meant a pro-trade union class consciousness has increased among many workers.

The idea that we will not pay the bill for Covid and for real pay increases that lift living standards to compensate for the misery of 13 years of vicious austerity is growing.

The upturn in industrial disputes does reflect a new period of developing struggle and is the first bright embers of burning societal subterranean anger that is beginning to surface.

Workers and trade union activists, with the Socialist Party Scotland playing a role, have forced an end to the period of “national unity” with the bosses and governments, which many trade union leaders capitulated to at the onset of the pandemic.

The SNP government are continuing to back ScotRail bosses against the RMT.

Any attempt to organise a major strike-breaking operation during COP26 will be a declaration of war against the working class.

The whole labour movement in Scotland should respond with solidarity action.

Pay offers from the Scottish government have also been rejected by the RCN union in the NHS and in a national members survey by the main teachers union, EIS.

Ballots for strike action over the last few weeks have forced employers like Yodel, a number of haulage companies and Stagecoach to grant drivers pay increases. Unite dockers in Leith, Dundee, Rosyth and Fife are balloting against a pay freeze.

Attacks on terms and conditions at the Shetland Gas plant and Culzean rig is seeing a strike ballot of North Sea oil and gas workers.

The UCU university union is holding a UK wide ballot over pension cuts.

While the planet burners, including wealthy politicians and CEO’s, wine and dine by the Clyde and fail to solve the climate crisis, Glasgow’s working class suffers cuts causing a waste crisis and the refusal of the council to reopen community venues.

shifts

Important shifts, reflecting anger from below, are taking place in the unions often reflected in the election of new left leaderships, including in Unite (general secretary Sharon Graham) and Unison (now a majority left NEC).

These are being quickly tested, including in Unison where a major conflict has already broken out with the right wing general secretary and the full time officials and the democratically elected majority of the NEC.

As well as pressuring the union leaders to call coordinated action the process of building fighting trade unions requires building and rebuilding fighting democratic trade union broad lefts.

Not only to hold left leaders to account but also to develop a fighting strategy and develop new trade union members into reps and shop stewards in local and national disputes to take on the employers.

The trade unions and workers’ movement also has the critical role in the struggle for the fight for self-determination and indyref2.

We can have no trust in the pro-capitalist SNP leadership to take on Johnson and capitalism.

Only an independent mass movement of the working class can deliver democratic rights.

no cuts

Socialist Party Scotland fully agrees with newly elected Unite leader Sharon Graham (who we campaigned for) that a “workers politics” is needed, as she recently stated at the union’s policy conference.

It’s a big step forward that Unite conference agreed that the union would only back parties and candidates that support Unite’s aims. And that the union supports councils setting no cuts needs budgets.

We appeal to Unite members to consider standing as candidates for the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition at next year’s Scottish council elections.

A new mass party of workers and youth based on the trade union movement fighting for socialist policies could not only strengthen and organise the struggles that are already taking place, but also be a reference and organising point for the mass latent anger that exists in society.

The left-led trade unions, including Unite, should organise a conference to discuss launching such a party.

Young people face no future under this rotten, rigged capitalist system. Poll after poll view “socialism” positively.

The incapacity of capitalism to solve the climate crisis will be seen at COP26. Even if a “deal” may emerge to reduce emissions on paper, the real action that is needed, socialist change to democratically plan the economy for the needs of the planet will not even be considered.

Those who can give real fighting content to socialist ideas have the most to gain.

We fight for an independent socialist Scotland in a voluntary socialist confederation with England, Wales and Ireland as a step towards a socialist world.

This would mean taking over the decisive levers of the economy, the top 150 companies and banks, and planning them under working class control and management.

Join the fight for socialism and to end planet-wrecking capitalism