November 30th is a milestone. It’s the biggest co-ordinated strike since the 1926 General Strike, which led the then-Tory Government to fear imminent “red revolution”. Up to three million workers from across the public sector will take part in the most widespread form of direct action the Cameron regime has faced so far.
Public sector workers are often dismissed as “vested interests”, or demonised as parasites on the taxpayer, so it’s worth describing who we are talking about. Those going on strike range from dinner ladies to teachers, lollipop ladies to health workers, care workers to bin collectors. They are pillars of our community – and of any decent society. (And taxpayers, while we’re on the subject).
Technically, this dispute is over pensions. The Government has argued that public sector pensions are becoming unaffordable. This isn’t true. According to the report commissioned by the Tories, and written by arch-Blairite ex-Minister John Hutton, public sector pensions are projected to fall as a proportion of our Gross Domestic Product. An agreement struck with the last government means that workers pick up the bill if they end up living longer than expected.
But this isn’t really about pensions. The extra contributions the Government is forcing public sector workers to pay aren’t going to their pensions – the money will go straight into the Treasury’s coffers. It is a tax on public sector workers to pay off a deficit they had no role in creating – it’s as simple as that.
Some activists may wonder why the dispute isn’t much broader. Why only strike over an unjust deficit tax on nurses and librarians – what about the deepest cuts since the 1920s, the shredding of the welfare state, the privatisation of the NHS, and so on? There is no shortage of injustices to protest or strike about in Britain. But – as Tony Blair once boasted – British labour law is “the most restrictive on trade unions in the Western world.” Workers cannot strike unless they are in direct dispute with their own employer: pretty much the only issue where that applies is pensions. If the laws are broken, then unions will have their funds seized by the state and they will be bankrupted.
But just because – for legal reasons – the official reason for the strike is “pensions”, doesn’t mean workers won’t really be striking over all the other great injustices of Cameron’s Britain. Indeed, the reason there is such widespread support for industrial action is because of the sheer scale of attacks from all directions.
And the strength of support should not be underestimated. Strike ballots have shown support for action ranging from 3 to 1 and 4 to 1. The Conservatives and their media allies argue that turnout undermines the legitimacy of the strike. There has been chatter about introducing even harsher anti-union laws that would ban strike action unless 50% of eligible workers support it. If the same principle was applied to Parliament, there would be virtually no MPs left. The Conservative Party itself received the support of less than a quarter of eligible voters, and yet still claims a mandate to radically transform British society. If the Government was really concerned about turnout, they would allow unions to ballot members electronically or at the workplace.
There will be a lot of vitriol and venom thrown at public sector workers, so it’s crucial that other activists stand by them. They will be called overpaid, even though the average wage of a civil servant is £22,850, and nearly a quarter of British workers being paid less than £7 an hour are in the public sector. Indeed, public sector pay has been frozen even as inflation soars to over 5% – meaning they are, in real terms, suffering from major pay cuts.
They will be called lazy, even though public sector workers do the equivalent of 120 million hours of unpaid overtime a year – the equivalent of employing an extra 60,000 people. One in four public sector workers put in unpaid overtime worth almost £9 billion a year.
It will be argued that they have “gold-plated” pensions, even when the average pension of a civil servant is £4,000 a year.
And – most cynically of all – there will be attempts to play “divide-and-rule” politics by setting private sector against each public sector workers. The media will cry: private sector workers have rubbish pensions – so why should they be subsidising workers in public services? Private sector pensions are one of the great scandals of our age (and let’s face it, there’s stiff competition for that accolade). Only 40% of private sector workers are now in an employer-sponsored pension scheme; for low-paid workers, it’s just 20%. But we should be arguing to drag private sector pensions up, not to drag public sector pensions down – otherwise we get a race to the bottom. Why punish public sector workers for the bad practices of private sector bosses?
Above all, this strike is part of a broader movement. It should be seen as the latest stage in the struggles that have emerged against the Tory-led Government. Our current “age of rebellion” began when 52,000 students took to the streets of London on 10th November 2010. The size of the protest surprised demonstrators and participants alike, and sparked off a wave of occupations and protests. It was argued that the British weren’t like those hotheads in France or Greece: but the students shattered that myth, and showed that it was possible to fight back.
Len McCluskey – the general secretary of Unite – said that the students have put unions “on the spot”. Their action gave other people the courage and confidence to defend themselves. It was undoubtedly part of the reason hundreds of thousands turned out on March 26th at the TUC-organised demonstration against Tory cuts.
And of course these strikes should be seen as part of the same struggle as Occupy. The great achievement of the activists surrounding St Paul’s Cathedral is they have helped turn the debate around. The Tories took a crisis caused by the free market and turned it into a crisis of public spending. They have cynically “forgotten” the fact that they backed Labour’s spending plans pound for pound until the end of 2008; they don’t mention the fact that deficit was – above all – caused by a collapse in tax revenues and increased welfare spending because of mass unemployment.
But Occupy have helped remind us who caused the crisis – and who is being made to pay for it. They have forced the media to debate issues that would never otherwise be discussed – even about the very nature of capitalism itself.
Protests, strikes and occupations – these are all part of the same struggle against the Government and against neo-liberalism. It’s a struggle that is taking place not just here – but from Athens to New York.
November 30th is the most important stage yet of the struggle here in Britain. It’s when hundreds of thousands of working people defy attempts to punish them for the crimes of a wealthy, unaccountable elite. If it is successful, it will be a springboard for an even greater wave of popular resistance to the neo-liberal project.
I know that Occupy will be standing in solidarity with them.
Owen Jones is the author of CHAVS: The Demonization of the Working Class (@OwenJones84)