My father was fond of telling the story of the
labourer breaking stones on the road, given the news by a passing horseman that
they'd chosen a new King of Ireland.
“Aye,” said the labourer, “but I'll still be
breaking stones tomorrow.”
So it will be with the newly (re-)elected
Scottish Government, with their enhanced mandate. The struggle of workers to
survive continues the day after the election circus moves on.
But the advantage to workers fighting to protect
their pay, conditions, jobs and workplace rights is that the newly elected
administration cannot deny it was in large measure put in office by voters on
the basis of not being Boris Johnson, not being the Tories, being anti-Tory and
of pledging to tackle recovery from the Coronavirus crisis.
Whilst precious little was said about the savage
economic consequences of the pandemic to the livelihoods of workers by the SNP
or Greens, the new government now needs to be put on the spot, called out to
take sides in the savage clash of interests between profiteering or axe-wielding
employers and the workers they want to punish for the cost of Covid, whether
that be in the private or public sector.
The class struggle continues; if anything
intensified, as economic gurus wax lyrical about predicted ‘bounce back’ in the
economy – but fail to explain upon whose backs the restoration of profits will
rest.
Public sector disputes are where the Scottish
Government has the most direct responsibility for and power over the outcome –
given that transport, education, and local government are all devolved to
Edinburgh, even without the full leverage available under independence. And
they’ve been given a mandate by the Scottish people to demand the necessary funding
from a Tory regime that hasn’t won the popular vote in Scotland since 1955!
ScotRail Strikers for Equality Face Management Scabs
ScotRail staff continue to fight for pay
equality and fair treatment for all different grades when it comes to enhanced
payments for working on their rest days - which they received prior to the
pandemic but which was since removed, for all grades bar the drivers.
Ticket Examiners have now joined battle
alongside conductors/guards, with engineering staff currently being balloted
for action. The latter are responsible for train maintenance, so even a work-to-rule
- let alone strike action - would have a huge impact, as trains are booked in
at set times for repair and maintenance.
Those trains which still have conductors/guards
cannot move without one of these safety-critical staff on board.
That's why the tactic of Abellio ScotRail bosses
has been to cancel all services on Sundays and then viciously twist and spin
propaganda to try and blame the conductors - striking on their rest days! - for
the lack of services to the travelling public.
However, this underhand method has largely
backfired, with furious responses on social media to the naked propaganda
pumped out by Abellio bosses.
Free Lunches for ScotRail Scabs!
The situation with Ticket Examiners is
substantially different.
Under what is called the Strathclyde Manning
Agreement, for example, which was signed years ago, there ‘should’ be two staff
on a train.
Strictly speaking, drivers can run the train
without a second member of staff on board, but in an act of solidarity they
have refused to do so.
This has led to ScotRail planning to use
ill-trained managers to substitute for ticket examiners; to scab on the
striking staff, in a way they couldn’t possibly be ‘trained’ to do with the
conductors.
Conductors/guards require extensive training,
for instance on route knowledge and enhanced safety duties, whereas (lower-paid)
ticket examiners do not require safety training.
They are primarily deployed to collect revenue
for the company, checking and selling tickets. Abellio ScotRail bosses are
quite prepared to play Russian roulette with public safety by drafting in scab
managers – albeit on drastically reduced train services.
Those managers who allow themselves to be used
to prevent fairness and equality of treatment should hang their heads in shame,
particularly when it's become known they've been given free lunch boxes for
their filthy services; a cut-price version of thirty pieces of silver!
Voice readers should bombard both Abellio bosses
and Transport Scotland - an arm of the Scottish Government - with demands to
meet with the RMT union and negotiate pay equality for rest day work.
As one RMT representative told me, “This strike
has dragged on for so long that the concern of staff is not so much the money
as fury at the contempt we've been treated with, where Abellio ScotRail are
refusing to even meet with the union, hiding behind Transport Scotland as an
excuse.”
The stance of the outgoing SNP government on
this has been a disgrace, where they conceded Abellio have permission to
negotiate, but insisted they cannot come to any agreement incurring additional
costs.
That can only mean one thing: if these workers
get restoration of enhanced payments for working and providing a service on
their rest days, then they're going to have to accept other cuts to pay, terms
and conditions, maybe even jobs.
The new government needs to be confronted with
widespread, systematic demands from all trade unionists and the travelling
public to drop this scandalous stance and show that their talk about focusing
on a Covid recovery isn't just empty, deceitful election rhetoric. Because any
genuine recovery has to include fair pay for workers and an end to the
austerity passed on from Westminster via Holyrood during the previous three
periods of SNP government.
Unite NHS and Council Workers' Battles
Similar issues arise in the struggles for decent
pay for the vast workforces in Scotland's NHS and local authorities.
During the past 13 years of SNP rule about
£3billion cuts to local government funding, originating from Westminster, has
been devolved by the Edinburgh government, alongside which NHS staff have
suffered average pay cuts of 20 per cent.
At the time of writing this, the result of the
ballot of NHS union members over the last-minute, pre-election 4 per cent pay
offer by the Scottish Government is still unknown.
This offer in itself was a big retreat by the
SNP administration compared with just weeks before the May elections, when they
were still saying there would be no settlement until the summer of 2021, after they
had refused to even meet with the health trade unions for negotiations over the
previous year.
NHS Workers for Fair Pay
It was the relentless, courageous persistence of
rank-and-file NHS workers - under the banner of the NHS Workers for Fair Pay
campaign (Scotland) - which in particular forced this climb-down, combined with
a desire to win votes by appearing distinct from the Tories, who had offered an
even more contemptuous 1 per cent pay rise.
But as I said when speaking on behalf of the SSP
at the rain-drenched NHS workers' Protest Rally on 3 May:
“If the best the Scottish Government can boast
is that they are ‘better than Boris’, then how can we take them seriously in
combating poverty pay and the ills of society which blight the working class?”
Anyone satisfied with being ‘better than Boris’
seriously lacks any ambition to end the situation where nurses and other NHS
workers have had to resort to loan sharks and food banks to survive -
particularly after the year of unmitigated hell they’ve faced, striving to keep
people alive from Covid, working typically 12-15 hour shifts under the most
dreadful stress, leading to an epidemic of mental illness and burn-out amongst
NHS workers themselves?
They unreservedly deserve 15 per cent, and the
real shame is that the different health workers’ unions didn't combined forces
and vigorously campaign for the past year for such a restorative pay increase -
and have since been divided on what they recommended to each of their
memberships in the ballot on the 4 per cent offer.
The GMB and RCN both recommended rejection –
primarily as a result of the fiery opposition of their shop stewards. Unite
made no recommendation to accept/reject, with the absurd explanation that all
their members are on different grades! And the Unison leadership went from a
similar cop-out neutrality to actually recommending acceptance of the 4 per
cent offer.
The latter position is even less honourable when
compared with the situation in local government, where the Unison leadership
recommended rejection of their pay offer and helped to achieve an 88% majority
against what was offered by COSLA, the employers’ umbrella body - with 74 per
cent voting in favour of industrial action.
Yet the difference between the two offers in
concrete terms for most workers is minor: £800 over the year for council
workers compared with £1,009 for most NHS grades.
As Mark Sands, Unison steward in Glasgow City
Council said at the latest meeting of the Scottish Workers’ Solidarity Network,
“We should unite workers in local government and the NHS in the fight for
decent pay, and if that requires coordinated strikes, then so be it.”
The Difference is Striking!
To use a pun made popular during the recent FE college
lecturers’ struggle, “the difference is striking!”
As we explained in depth in the recent Voice
Extra, well-prepared, well- organised ballots for collective
action - with teams of trade unionists formed in each workplace to get the vote
out - in itself can force employers to the negotiating table where previously
they refused to talk.
More to the point, when in turn actual strike
action occurs, with full involvement of the membership, regular systematic
communication - and an elected leadership from within the ranks of the
workforce itself acting as the negotiating team - then strikes can win.
Such a victory is made even more likely if
systematic solidarity is built, as happened during the FE college national
strike action - with the Scottish Workers’ Solidarity Network playing a
substantial part in that solidarity campaign.
The outcome of the lecturers’ strike is a
victory not just for EIS-FELA members but every trade unionist facing an
onslaught by the employers and government, as they seek to sacrifice workers’
terms and conditions - often including jobs and pay - to recoup the costs of
the pandemic. Once again, making workers pay the price of a crisis not of our
making.
The lessons of the FE sector victory should not
just be studied but applied accordingly to the battles in the health service
and local government.
The Valley of Fire and Rehire
However, despite winning a national agreement
that forced college bosses to accept that somebody who prepares lectures, delivers
lectures and assesses the learning of students is indeed a lecturer and should
be on a lecturer's pay, terms and conditions, nevertheless the college where
this fight all started - Forth Valley College - is still embroiled in battle.
There the principal, Ken Thompson and his board
of management are digging their heels in, refusing to honour the deal reached
at national level between the union and the employers’ association, Colleges
Scotland.
In human terms that means 27 lecturers who were
removed from their roles by means of ‘fire and rehire’ have still not been
reinstated, even though that is the essence of the national agreement reached
at the end of the national strike.
These college workers have been obliged to
sustain strike action, and plan for it to continue right into June, because they
cannot trust Thompson and his board to reinstate the FVC27.
They are not striking for the fun of it; as good
professionals, they are worried sick at the impact on their students, often riddled with
guilt.
It's Ken Thompson and his board of management who
should be guilt-ridden and ashamed of the way they are damaging education - not
just short-term but longer-term - by replacing qualified lecturers with instructor/assessors
on £10,000 a year less and near zero preparation and marking time. That’s a
perfect recipe for disaster, both in terms of the educational standards offered
to mostly working-class students, and to the mental health of those who've been
fired as lecturers and rehired on these drastically worse conditions.
The Forth Valley bosses should realise the
reputational damage they are doing to the college they have the privilege and
inflated salaries to manage, now they are increasingly recognised as the pioneers
of the obnoxious fire and rehire weapon, certainly in the public sector.
Readers should step up the pressure on
these bosses, demanding they reverse fire and rehire and reinstate the FVC 27
to their rightful positions as lecturers, with the wages and conditions to go
with that.
Email Ken.Thompson@forthvalley.ac.uk
Whose Side Are You On?
The industrial temperature is rising, even if the
Spring weather isn't.
With BT workers balloting for strikes, alongside
the struggles already mentioned, and workers and communities start to resist a horrendous
rash of closures to libraries, community centres and sports facilities by
councils and their offshoots, such as Glasgow Life, there is increasingly no
room to wriggle or dodge the question “Whose side are you on?”
For the Scottish Socialist Party there's no
hesitation; it's a matter of principle that we combine with workers to defend
or improve their living standards, as the one productive class in society. Which
means we actively back them to the hilt when that inevitably leads to conflict
with money-grabbing capitalist profiteers or axe-wielding, overpaid bosses at
the tops of undemocratically-run public sector outfits.
The same challenge “Whose side are you on?” needs
to be thrown down as a gauntlet at the feet of the newly elected Scottish
Government. They are the people with the power to immediately defend or enhance
the living standards of over 500,000 Scottish public sector workers directly,
and vast numbers of others indirectly. For instance, as major contractors with
the likes of BT (or British Gas), the Scottish government and local councils
could use enormous leverage even on these privately-owned capitalist profiteers
to end their vicious assaults on their workers.
Waiting for Nicola??
Workers cannot afford to ‘wait for
independence’. We need action now, from a government mandated by the Scottish
people to ‘lead us to recovery’, as Nicola Sturgeon endlessly promised during
the elections.
In turn, workers and their communities cannot
just ‘wait for Nicola’ to take the necessary action, judging by the experience
of the previous three SNP governments. We need collective, coordinated action
by workers, with fighting, determined leaderships, to force the Scottish
government to provide the wherewithal to tackle poverty pay, mass underemployment
and unemployment, threadbare public services and the obscene inequality that
curses this rich nation. Otherwise, the labourer of my father’s story will
still be breaking stones regardless of who is on the throne,
WORKERS' VOICES ON FRONTLINE STRUGGLES
Melanie Gale, nurse, GMB union rep
“I ran a Covid Ward last year, one of the first.
We had to put a brave face on it, not knowing what was coming through, trying to
keep staff positivity up with Covid patients arriving.
We had ten patients with Covid, very bad Covid,
where they couldn't breathe, didn't know where they were, frightened, scared, terrified.
And they had no relatives or no way to even phone them or FaceTime them.
We had to watch our patients die. We were the ones
holding their hands, sitting with them, comforting them, doing our best.
We had five staff members to care for 30
patients; disgraceful, disgusting.
But you know what? We still went to work, we
still cared for patients and we still gave them the best care we could. We had
the crappy PPE, the crappy masks. We went to work, not seeing our family
members to care for other people’s family members and still we didn't have
enough staff.
Management and governments don't give a shit about
any NHS workers.
Experienced NHS staff don't want to be there
anymore, we're burnt out, tired.
I've wanted to be a nurse since I was 10. I'm so
proud of being a nurse, so proud of our NHS, but what I'm not proud of are the
bigwigs and governments offering us this crappy 4 per cent. Well, you can stick your 4% up your kilt! We're
not accepting it. We deserve 15% and we're going to fight and get it.”
Brenda Eadie, nurse, NHS Workers for Fair Pay
campaign
“We need to build up the NHS and this is not
about a pay rise, it's about pay restoration. We've lost £6,000 through pay
cuts in 11 years and then they offer to give us back £1,000 of it. That won't
stop us having to work 60-hour weeks to make up the pay deficit. It won't stop
staff having to use food banks.
And London Economics have done a report that even
if we got 10% of our wages back, 81% of the cost of that would go straight back
into the economy, through taxes and National Insurance.
It would increase staffing levels. It would
reduce sickness and the use of costly agency staff. It would recruit and keep staff.
Right now, our NHS is dying; we're losing it if we don't do something about it
now.
If we need to strike, we need to strike. If we don't, the NHS would be gone in a couple of short years. I for one can't afford private healthcare. People won't be able to afford monthly life-saving medications. More people will die. If we have to strike, we should strike now.”
Anne-Marie Harley, Branch Convener EIS-FELA Forth Valley College and Vice-President of EIS-FELA
"The fight against 'fire and rehire' at Forth
Valley College (a public sector organisation) continues.
The EIS-FELA Union remain in dispute with
College management where 27 members had their lecturing roles removed and they
were given new contracts to do the same job on poorer terms and
conditions.
Despite offers from the union to suspend the
strike action if they would reinstate the 27 members or agree to a joint
review, management have failed to change their position. Instead, they will
only agree to move the dispute into the hands of the National Bargaining
Joint Secretaries as per protocol, when they have completed an internal review
in mid-May.
This dispute has gone on for over a year and we
find these further delays unacceptable.
With the full support of EIS-FELA nationally and
the main body of the EIS, we will continue to fight to maintain our profession
and the quality of education for our students."
Also published in the Scottish Socialist Voice. SUBSCRIBE to the fortnightly Online edition here: https://socialistvoice.scot/subscriptions
