NEW GOVERNMENT: THE CLASS STRUGGLE CONTINUES!

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NATIONALISE TO SAVE SPRINGBURN RAILWAY DEPOT!

Workers at the historic railway depot in Springburn, Glasgow, are battling against its closure, with the loss of nearly 200 highly skilled jobs and 160 years of railway history.

The RMT and Unite unions have launched the Rally Roon the Caley campaign,  and marched to the Scottish parliament when the issue was being debated last week. Public support is widespread, but time is short to save this depot, which carries out service, maintenance, repairs, overhaul and upgrades for the entire Scotrail fleet.

The unions have rightly condemned this as an act of industrial vandalism. In a society suffering a desperate shortage of skilled jobs and apprenticeships, with a rail service that provokes public  uproar for its inefficiency, it's outrageous that the profiteers are allowed to threaten a railway depot that has been a feature of life for 160 years. It's another instalment in the horror story of rail privatisation, and the fragmentation that goes with it.

Springburn was historically the world hub of the railway industry. Up until 1995, the Caley was part of nationalised British Rail, a major part of BREL (British Rail Engineering Ltd). Last August, Knorr-Bremse Rail Services sold it to Gemini Rail Services. Five months later, on 17 January, Gemini declared a 45-day consultation period for its closure, apparently with plans to centralise their operations in the south of England.

This is a classic example of vital services and infrastructure, and people's livelihoods, being sacrificed on the altar of profit, as one gang of profiteers passes it on to another. It's also a classic case for public ownership, for the Scottish government to go beyond worthy words of condemnation and sympathy.

In response to claims by Gemini that the St Rollox depot is unsuitable and unprofitable, the unions have demanded on-site electrification and a link to the Glasgow/Edinburgh line. They have highlighted that the cost of this modernisation would be less than £1million, whilst the Scottish government has been allocated £4.8billion for railway infrastructure by Westminster. 

The Scottish government should step in, take the depot into public ownership – as they did with Prestwick airport – and integrate it with a publicly owned Scottish railway service, rather than let an array of capitalist vultures rip up a service for profit, particularly given the urgency of expanding public transport as one concrete measure against environmental pollution and climate chaos.

Time is running out. The unions should consider all options, including a workers’ and community occupation of the depot to prevent asset stripping, whilst escalating the pressure on the Scottish government to ‘stand up for Scotland’, as they pledged to do in past election campaigns.

STAND UP - PAY UP - DEFY TORY AUSTERITY!

Christmas is supposed to be the season of goodwill towards all. Not so when it's the season of budget-setting at Scottish and local government levels. With the knives being sharpened and wielded, far from being a source of good cheer, it threatens ill-will towards public service workers, and wilful damage to public services - including life-and-death services for children and elderly people. 

Most of us are already long-since convinced that the obnoxious Tories are the chief axe-swingers, with a callous record of killing people through health and safety cutbacks, benefits sanctions and decimation of lifeline services. 

Their claims that austerity is ended fools nobody living on below-breadline benefits, the derisory minimum wage, or stressed into a state of mental illness from insecurity in their job. Nor do the Tory soothsayers convince elderly frail people subjected to mere flying 15-minute visits from overstretched care workers; or teachers and students crammed into overcrowded classes; or people absolutely desperate for a home, who confront the slaughter of decent social sector housing.

Words and Deeds

Things are supposed to be different in Scotland. Millions voted for candidates declaring their undying opposition to Tory austerity, particularly in the 2017 general election. That was the central feature of Jeremy Corbyn's improved performance for Labour; his pledge to ditch austerity. That was pivotal to the SNP's appeal to voters, with their 2017 Manifesto declaring "we will roll back the impact of Tory austerity". 

But words are cheap, and they don't put food on the table. Governments and parties will be judged - harshly - by what they do when they are handed the reins of office by voters, as opposed to any ringing declamations in glossy election manifestos. 

And growing tens of thousands of Scottish workers are judging those holding office in Holyrood and the town halls as Ebenezer Scrooges on pay and conditions, rather than being seen as bountiful Santa Clauses. That's why a vast - and potentially very powerful - army of workers are marching, meeting, lobbying, protesting and voting for strike action, particularly on pay.

The Lost Decade

Millions of workers have suffered over a decade of pay cuts, in both the public and private sectors. It's been officially declared the longest period of real pay cuts since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. Plunging wages have choked off spending power and added to the horrendous epidemic of job insecurity, with workplace stress and mental ill health spreading like a modern plague. 

In the recent survey of 10,500 members of my own union, Usdaw, we discovered 63% feel worse off compared to five years ago, with a shocking 76% of them relying on pay day loans, credit cards and overdrafts to pay everyday, essential bills. As well as two-thirds of these workers - employed in the second-largest sector of the entire economy - saying financial worries are damaging their mental health, a full 10% of retail workers who put food on the shelves are unable to put food on their family's table, resorting to food banks over the past year!

Unison Scotland surveyed 2,000 Scottish union members last June. The picture that emerged is a bleak condemnation of the politicians who promised to end or roll back Tory austerity. A full 74% of these public service workers have witnessed job cuts in their department, leading to 52% feeling their workload is unmanageable, and 57% of them regularly working unpaid overtime to try and catch up in the provision of services to often vulnerable people. 

Their horror stories of overcrowded, mouldy housing; increased rat infestation; and vulnerable children and adults not getting the services they desperately need, led to 78% of council workers having no confidence in the future of local services. And exactly half of them are thinking of leaving their council job for something less stressful elsewhere; good luck to them in finding that, we have to add. 

Which Response to Mayhem?

Such dire conditions of insecurity, falling incomes and unprecedented stress and anxiety can fuel one of two types of response. Utter despair and resignation (and for some, openness to right-wing demagogues who blame immigrants). Or an angry, well-directed collective revolt through trade union and political struggles, to put the blame squarely where it belongs, the profiteers and their political representatives, with a rational alternative based on putting people before profit. 

The potential for the positive, latter course of action is to be seen in a rash of recent outpourings against pay cuts, unequal pay for women workers, and demands for proper funding of local services. 

Pay Revolt Erupts

Over 8,000 low-paid Glasgow city council workers, about 90% of them women, recently staged the biggest equal pay strike in the country's history. They are in revolt against a pay system which means they are £3-an-hour worse off than they should be under equal pay legislation - a criminal system in place since at least 2012, mostly under a Labour-run council, now under the SNP-run administration. This was an eruption of working-class anger and mass, collective power - not calls for equal places on company boardrooms by a handful of extremely privileged women.

The power and vitality of the strike - driven from below by carers, caterers, cleaners and classroom assistants - has raised the sights and confidence of thousands of other workers, and put the SNP council on the run. So much so that a vocal section of ultra-loyal nationalists have insulted the intelligence of these workers by claiming they are mere puppets in a cunning Labour Party plot to discredit the SNP council and SNP Scottish government. They should try telling that to one of the mass meetings of women, who are seething at being treated as second-class citizens for years, furious that far too many of them have died before getting the equal pay and back-pay compensation that was rightfully theirs. 

Labour's Stench of Hypocrisy

Of course the hypocrisy of Labour on this issue stinks to the high heavens. Up until 2017, it was a Labour council which resisted union demands for equal pay - including during 10 different strikes against the council - and squandered over £2.5million of Council Taxpayers' money on court cases to overturn rulings in favour of equal pay. And they suppressed the findings of the Equality & Human Rights Commission in 2010, which found the Labour council guilty of discrimination.

Equal pay will cost the council at least £500m, plus the ongoing increase in the wages bill when the necessary new pay structure is hammered out in talks with the unions, to banish pay inequality for the years and generations of workers ahead. But as union activists have rightly insisted, this must not be at the cost of pay cuts to other workers, nor even further cuts to services; it should be a case of equalizing upwards, with demands for adequate funding off the Scottish government. 

Education, education, education?

The 2016 SNP Manifesto declared: "The defining mission of this government will be education." 

Music to the ears of parents and teachers alike, after decades of cuts, rising class sizes, class-based inequality in attainment, and mind-breaking workloads for staff. But such melodious promises are turning into an ugly echo of Tony Blair's infamous mantra that his Labour government would prioritize 'Education, education, education', only to then slash the service. 

The same noisy handful who have accused Glasgow's equal pay strikers of being puppets worked by Labour Party plotters have likewise claimed the eruption of school teachers' demonstrations and ballots for their 10% pay claim is all a ploy to discredit the SNP government. I doubt if even the most big-headed Labour MSPs or spin doctors could dream of having the power to pour out 30,000 teachers on their recent mass demo, with its combination of family carnival atmosphere and determination to turn the tide on pay cuts, work overload and recruitment crisis in many schools! 

No, Cabinet Minister! 

It was an outpouring of years of teachers' frustration and angry rejection of the divisive 3% offer from COSLA and the SNP government. And far from being mere stooges of some Labour plot, it's a fair guess that a majority of the teachers on this 3-mile-long demo will have voted SNP in a recent election! No wonder they were dismayed at the letter jointly issued by COSLA bosses and SNP Cabinet Secretary John Swinney, designed to bypass the teachers' union representatives, in the vain hope of atomizing and browbeating individuals into surrender. 

On the heels of the demo, EIS teachers voted by a landslide 98% majority, in a whopping 74% turnout, to reject the 3% offer, and look set to ballot for strike action in the New Year. 

Parallel to these high profile pay battles, local authority workers in the three unions - Unison, Unite and GMB - have rejected COSLA's 3% pay offer, and have started to vote for strike action. 

Simultaneously, lecturers in Scotland's further education colleges are voting for strike action in pursuit of a cost-of-living pay rise. These members of EIS-FELA union are furious at college management only offering a 2.5% pay rise over three years - a pay cut, given inflation levels - with the added atrocity that the employers want to tie this offer to the pay increases won through strike action for pay equality across all the FE colleges two years ago, robbing back up to £1,000 from the rises won then. 

Combine - Make Them Pay Up!

These combined workforces make up nearly 200,000 workers. The coming together of these separate strands of the same struggle - for decent pay that compensates a bit for inflation and years of pay cuts - should be an opportunity for coordinated campaign rallies and industrial action. 

The 'Pay Up' lobby of the Scottish parliament on Budget Day, 12th December, and similar localized events targeting council meetings, should be used by union leaderships to spell out a clear, bold alternative to the litany of annual cuts to pay, jobs and services. 

No Cuts Budgets

Given the slaughter of services, jobs and wages over the last decade and more, we actually need a crusade to reverse austerity cuts. But as an absolute bare minimum, unions should demand that the Scottish government and all 32 local councils set No Cuts budgets for 2019/20, incorporating the immediate pay claims and equal pay claims of the workers already taking action. And also including the minimum employment standards in their budgets of a £10-an-hour minimum wage and guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all their staff and contract workers who want it - as unanimously demanded at our recent Scottish Usdaw conference, representing 45,000 members. 

Roll Back – or Roll Over?

Some will plead that councillors or MSPs simply cannot take such a defiant stance, given the budget cuts handed down to them by Westminster. If that's the case, why make false election promises to "roll back the impact of Tory austerity"? Why not honestly declare "we will roll over in the face of Tory austerity"?! 

It's true that after all the huffing and puffing and claims to have ended austerity in their recent Budget, the Theresa May Tory government has only increased the block grant to Scotland by a minuscule 1.8%, to £30.5billion. 

But where's there's a political will there's a way! May's Tory government is in an unprecedented crisis. Surely the political leadership of Scotland, in collaboration with the leadership of about 200,000 trade unionists already poised for action - and those of over 600,000 organised trade unionists in Scotland as a whole - can turn the Tories' difficulties into our opportunity? 

By setting No Cuts budgets, and mobilising mass demonstrations and supporting any strike actions voted for in union ballots, the Scottish government and council leaderships could cudgel the besieged Tories with demands for extra funding to avoid all cuts and meet workers' demands. They could popularise the demand "Give us back some of our stolen £billions!" That's what a socialist council or government would do. 

Tax the rich – double the money!

Furthermore, the SSP has for 20 years persistently advocated an immediate, straightforward, fully-researched alternative form of council funding which could shield Scotland from the atrocities of austerity. 

It's true that the majority (54%) of all council funding comes directly in a grant from the Scottish government. But 18% of all funding (last year) came from the Council Tax, and amounted to £2.24billion across Scotland. But the Council Tax is an unfair, regressive tax, that hammers the poorest and middle income families, and merely tickles the wallets of the rich with a feather. 

Scottish Service Tax

The SSP has fully costed our alternative, a Scottish Service Tax, based on income, on ability to pay, with rising tax bands. And the beauty of this progressive tax proposal is that about 80% of people would pay less, but by taxing the rich minority the funds raised would be double that coming from the regressive Council Tax; over £4billion a year instead of £2.24billion. 

So instead of hammering workers with higher Council Tax bills, or pay cuts, or job losses, or the slaughter of services... and in reality a cocktail of all these multiple attacks... the Scottish government has the full powers under devolution to stop all austerity, pass legislation to implement such a Scottish Service Tax, and shelter Scotland from the Westminster storm. And the additional £2billion raised would almost reverse the cuts of the past five years in one year alone! 

Whose Side Are They On?

We approach 2019 with Scotland at a crossroads.

We can sit down in surrender as the Tories at Westminster issue austerity, which the Holyrood government meekly devolves to local councils, health boards and college managements to implement, which in turn they do without a whimper. 

We can blithely pass by while SNP MSPs line up alongside Tory MSPs to block an end to the profiteering debacle of Dutch-owned Abellio ripping the profit out of ScotRail workers and ScotRail passengers - so that the same profiteers can two weeks later announce abolition of free travel for children. 

We can accept poverty pay, cheap casualised labour and a mental health epidemic with the plea "there's nothing we can do about until independence". 

Or we can seek to weld the several strands of struggle on pay and public services into a coordinated resistance movement, armed with a vision. 

The vision of an alternative system that taxes the rich; that demands well-paid, secure jobs, including a minimum wage of at least two-thirds average male earnings, and a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week; that provides cradle-to-grave public services fit for the 21st century; that constructs a free, publicly-owned transport system that helps tackle poverty, pollution and provides decent jobs and apprenticeships at one fell swoop; a clean, green socialist Scotland that builds green energy technology instead of warships. 

The Scottish Socialist Party is determined and willing to stand up on our hind legs in resistance; to play our part in pursuit of these aims, in the workplaces, unions, colleges and streets. 

We appeal to fellow-workers to demand the same of their unions, and those who regard themselves as socialists in Labour or the SNP to demand nothing less of their own party leaderships. It's time to decide whose side they are on! 

I spoke to a teacher about her reasons for preparing to strike for 10%...

Q: What has created such strength of feeling – the 98% vote to reject the 3%?

A: Teachers have reached the end of their tether like all workers in the public sector, working increasing hours through more changes in education, and in mitigating some of the worst poverty-related issues we have seen since the Thatcher and Major years with their time and money. The huge cuts in provision, our salaries, and the increased pressure of increased classroom sizes, really have pushed teachers to emotional limits.

Q: What did you think of letter from COSLA and John Swinney?

A: I think John Swinney and COSLA made huge errors in treating teachers as scabs. Swinney and the SNP won the elections after betrayals of workers by New Labour. Swinney should carefully reconsider his disregard of workers’ representatives and proper negotiation.

Q: Why is 10% justified - when most workers get 2%?

A: All workers should have confidence in fighting for what we are due. Tory austerity is completely ideological. It is a cover for the robbery of all workers. The millionaires and billionaires are becoming richer beyond most people's imaginations while workers are paying their gambling debts.

Q: How will employers pay for it? Cut other services or jobs??

A: Simple. Raise taxes of the highest earners, and replace the dreadful council tax with a fair, Scotland wide, service tax.

Q: What should the union do now to win the 10%?

A: Industrial action, in my opinion, is the only way forward. A simple work to rule would be a start. Teachers in my school are working 50-60 hour weeks. Working 35 hours a week will expose the huge hole in funding we are plugging with our extremely stretched good will. Teachers really don't want to impact on already stretched working class families. But the increasing pressure on delivering a curriculum with less resources, fewer adults in schools and with ever decreasing free time, is pushing teachers towards industrial action that will see schools closed.

SCOTRAIL STRIKERS WIN FOR PUBLIC SAFETY!

The courageous determination of ScotRail guards, who sacrificed 13 days' pay by striking for public safety, has won a clear victory in a deal which will now be considered by the national executives of both the RMT and ASLEF unions, with negotiators recommending acceptance. 

After prolonged talks with ScotRail Abellio bosses - latterly involving combined negotiating teams from both unions - the employers have massively retreated from their original plans to extend Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains across the Central Belt and beyond. 
The deal reached retains the fundamental role of the safety-critical guards. It comes nowhere near the bosses' and government's original plans to dump core safety procedures - door operations and train dispatches - on the driver. It is a substantial victory for strike action by RMT members. 

ABELLIO BOSSES' ORIGINAL PLANS 
The Abellio bosses, driven by the franchise issued to them by the SNP government in October 2014, had hoped to get rid of the safety critical guards/conductors - and replace them with lower-paid, lesser-trained Ticket Examiners, who in at least 20% of cases are absent from DOO trains due to chronic staffing shortages. 
It was a case of cutting costs in the medium term, and to hell with the safety consequences. 

Contrary to any slick spin from Abellio bosses over the next 24 hours, we need to recall how they bullied staff; tried to bypass the union by use of social media and letters to guards' homes; refused to even meet the unions for weeks on end, let alone enter meaningful negotiations; conscripted management scabs to run trains at public risk; deployed fearful agency staff to hand out their propaganda; used a compliant capitalist media to belittle the role of guards and silence the workers' case from being heard and understood by the travelling public; threatened to use Westminster Tory anti-union laws against the RMT, to bludgeon their members into submission; and enjoyed the encouragement of the SNP government, whose Nicola Sturgeon also belittled the skilled guards' role, and the cause of the strikers, by echoing Abellio's contemptuous remarks about it being "all about who presses a button". 

THEY UNDERESTIMATED THE GUARDS! 
The Abellio bosses - and indeed the Scottish government who spurned the chance to take our railways back into public ownership, and instead actively encouraged the Dutch state-owned franchise-holders to implement DOO - severely underestimated the passion for safety and principled courage of RMT members.
Strike action has forced through a deal that is overwhelmingly a success story for the solidarity of workers taking action. 
It will guarantee a guard on every one of the new electrified trains (EMUs) planned for next year. 
That guarantee will apply for the remainder of the Abellio franchise - and indeed beyond, with a pledge that it will be transferred over to any future franchise, through TUPE. 
Furthermore - and critically - none of these trains will be allowed to move without a guard on board, which prevents the government or ScotRail bosses using weasel words about 'a second crew member being scheduled' - but then not actually on board, as happens with at least one in five DOO trains right now, where the train moves whilst being literally driver only, without a Ticket Examiner on duty. 

DOOR OPERATIONS & TRAIN DISPATCH 
The one area of concession by the unions is on operation of the train doors, but even on that the Abellio bosses have failed to fully get their way. They had intended that the driver would not only face the onerous task of driving, but would also be responsible for opening and shutting the doors, thereby making drivers in charge of train dispatches from stations, with all the huge risks to passengers that we've explained in previous articles and videos. 
But in the deal now being recommended by both the RMT and ASLEF negotiators, the driver will open the doors and the conductor/guard will close the train door, thereby retaining their vital role in checking for passengers' safety at the Passenger Train Interface (PTI). 

Compared with the current system that is a step backwards. It adds pressure to the driver; it increases the risk of trains stopping short on platforms (especially with the new, longer, eight carriage EMU trains) without the driver spotting the problem, which potentially could mean passengers spilling out onto the track. 
But with agreement that the guard will dispatch the train after safety checks at the station, and door technology that will help them correct mistakes by the driver on door controls, the most fundamental demands of the RMT strikers have been granted. That's a far cry from the original aims of the profit-driven Abellio bosses and Scottish government, to remove all control of the doors from the guards. 

FULL CREDIT TO THE STRIKERS 
This prolonged battle has shown the willingness of workers to take action if given a lead by their unions. It is to the eternal credit of those union activists who refused to just roll over and accept the DOO plans at the very start of the process. Their refusal to comply, or to just 'see how it goes', has been vindicated by the outcome. Above all, every one of the strikers who was prepared to put public safety top of the agenda, willing to lose wages in order to 'Keep the Guard', deserves the admiration and applause of every trade unionist, every passenger, every self-respecting worker. 

NOW DEMAND A GUARD ON EVERY TRAIN! 
This successful workers' struggle should now be the launchpad for the ongoing campaign to make trains safe: to win back a guard on every train that was converted to a DOO train, in most cases over 30 years ago. To win investment in safe, comfortable, fully staffed stations. To halt the cuts to infrastructure jobs and ticket offices. And to further the struggle for democratic public ownership of the railways, so that safety is put before profit, passengers before shareholders, the millions before the millionaires. 
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to have fought alongside these courageous fighters - and we will continue to do so in favour of a fundamental change in the type of society we live in. 

DEMAND PUBLIC OWNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ON OUR RAILWAYS

The battle to ensure public safety and job security on Scotland's railways continues, and the Scottish Socialist Party is determined to play its part alongside the rail workers' unions and passengers. 

The RMT union have called a major demo outside the Scottish parliament on 8 September, and a series of public meetings to acquaint the travelling public with the facts. 

The prolonged talks between ScotRail Abellio bosses and the two railway unions - RMT and ASLEF - have yet to reach an acceptable agreement on keeping the guards. Many workers are furious at the bosses' stalling tactics, and are willing to resume strike action if they don't rapidly offer an acceptable package that puts safety critical guards - not drivers, who should be left to drive - at the heart of train dispatch procedures, as demanded jointly by the RMT and ASLEF. 

Plague of Privatization 

Every event surrounding these issues proves that the plague of privatization and profiteering is totally incompatible with public safety and people's jobs being secured. In battling shoulder-to-shoulder for safety alongside railworkers and their unions, the SSP is arguing for democratic publIc ownership and control of the railways - and transport in general - as the only route to guaranteed investment in safety, instead of the big business racketeering and chaotic fragmentation of the railway system under privatization. 

Public Funds Bail Out Profits 

Perhaps the worst current example of how profit threatens safety and rips asunder public services is that of Southern railways - the busiest lines in the whole UK. Under privatization, French-owned Govia has the franchise, and has caused absolute mayhem and meltdown for passengers, whilst treating their staff like slaves to be punished for daring to stand up for public safety. When train drivers took industrial action to stop the company breaching safety agreements, they plundered about £250,000 from ASLEF through the capitalist courts, and seized drivers' mobile phones to gather evidence of orchestrated industrial action, whilst robbing them of their staff travel concessions. 

Reward for Failure

Hot on the heels of this, the same profit-crazed bosses have tried to bypass the RMT and brutally enforce Driver Only trains - removing the safety-critical guards. And just to rub salt into workers' wounds, this week the same company announced a phenomenal 27 per cent rise in their profits - to £99.8million for the year up to July. That's from revenues rising to £3.4billion. 

In case anyone dares get angry at this profiteering by a company that has made failure to deliver its watchword, its chief executive, David Brown, has generously waived his annual bonus and this year's salary increase. Before you forgive this benefactor, we should add he took home a humble £2.16million last year! 

Not content with this thick slice of profit, Govia's political puppeteers - the Tory government - had made their very own announcement regarding Southern railways... literally the day before. They declared that £20million of taxpayers' money was to be taken from government-run Network Rail's budget and thrown into the bottomless pit that is Govia-run Southern railways! An obnoxious example of workers and passengers bailing out the profiteers, after they've made the service a bitter laughing stock, at home and abroad. Reward for failure; propping up the profiteers at public expense. 

Capitalist Chaos on Railways 

This capitalist chaos on the railways - with the drive for profit threatening public safety and robbing both railworkers and passengers - applies across the UK, including Scotland. And all the pro-business, mainstream political parties prefer and perpetrate this profit-driven chaos; the Tories, LibDems, Labour and indeed the SNP. 

The roots of current battles to keep safety critical guards on our trains, and to stop cuts to station staff, ticket offices, signaling and track maintenance, go back to the McNulty Report of May 2011. 

This cringingly titled Rail Value for Money Study was commissioned by the Labour government of Blair and Brown - who retained Tory rail privatization throughout 13 years of Labour governments - but published and enthusiastically embraced by the subsequent Tory/LibDem Coalition. 

As the late, socialist RMT leader Bob Crow wrote at the time:

"The basic message of the McNulty report is that rail workers and passengers are being asked to pay the price of privatization. The multitude of private competing interests who make up our fragmented industry are not only let off the hook, but are given even more powers. The report is far from independent. It is based on the same crackpot ideology that led to the original privatization of our railways."

McNulty: Right Diagnosis, wrong Medicine

Sir Roy McNulty utterly ignored the damning evidence against privatization that his own study unearthed. For instance, that (by 2011) privatization had massively escalated costs of running the network, requiring three times as much public subsidy as under previous nationalisation; costing three times as much to run; being 30% less efficient than the railways in other European countries. In large measure because the latter are mostly state owned, and don't suffer the plague of scores of competing profiteers, each requiring their own dividend payouts to shareholders, individual borrowing costs, and chaotic lack of coordination - with a whole system of fines and incentive payments that are often contradictory, for instance between Network Rail and train operating companies. With train operators (TOCs) vying with rolling stock providers (ROSCOs) which lease them the trains, and a myriad system of payments between Network Rail and these, money ripped out of the labour of rail workers and passengers' fares has poured out of the industry into the coffers of numerous franchise-holders. 

Annual Waste of £1.2billion 

A full five years ago, in 2011, an RMT-commissioned study showed that £1.2billion a year was wasted this way. That's £1.2bn that could have been invested in track maintenance; new rolling stock; longer, faster and greener trains to match the rocketing number of passengers; safe, friendly, fully-staffed stations and ticket offices; and extension of safety-critical guards on every single train in the land. 

But that would have required coordination, rational planning, and a system driven by public need not private greed; it would need renationalisation of the entire railway network, with a democratic system of working class control and management. 

Instead of that, we've suffered the consequences of privatization before and since the McNulty report - a document which scorned the option of an integrated public rail network, and instead made many of the proposals for savage cuts and assaults on safety that are being rammed through right now, five years on

Passengers Suffer from Privatization 

Passenger numbers have rocketed since the mid-1990s; even by the time of the 2011 McNulty report, by 59%... and trains are even more overcrowded now. 

In Scotland, passenger journeys have exploded by 35% in the last 10 years, to 93 million a year. But rolling stock has lagged drastically behind the booming numbers of passengers. For instance, a recent report showed only one new seat on Scotland's trains for every 3,300 extra passenger journeys over 10 years! 

Fares have leapt up to the dearest in Europe - 30% higher than the average in Sweden, France, Switzerland and Holland (homeland of Abellio!), for instance. 

The McNulty plan for savage cuts earmarked 35% of all 'savings' to come through staff cuts. And the government and myriad competing train profiteers have gone about this business like demented axemen, with rampant closure of ticket offices, cuts to station staff, reduction of infrastructure and maintenance crews, and concerted removal of guards - one thing the rival train companies certainly agree on and coordinate their plans for. 

In the case of Scotland, successive franchise-holders - First Group and Abellio - have been hellbent on extending Driver Only Operations (DOO). In this they are carrying out the explicit aims of the McNulty report to the letter : 

"The default position for all services on the UK rail network should be DOO, with a second member of train crew only being provided where there is a commercial, technical or other imperative." (McNulty, May 2011)

SNP Implement McNulty 

But here's the rub: McNulty was a Westminster plan, initiated by New Labour, pursued by the Coalition and Tory governments with crazed zeal. However, transport is a devolved issue in Scotland, with control in the hands of the Holyrood government - the SNP government, elected on claims to be anti-austerity and to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. 

Which Scotland?! The Scotland of ScotRail workers and working class people relying on a cheap, integrated, safe rail service? No, by their deeds, the SNP have imitated the actions of other pro-big business parties when it comes to the railways.

As far back as May 2012, under Alex Salmond's government, the Scottish parliament's Infrastructure & Capital Investment Committee left us in no doubt about their intentions - probably feeling secure in the knowledge the general public wouldn't read such a document! They stated, in black and white:

"We heard ideas that Transport Scotland could use to ensure that efficiency savings recommended in the McNulty Report are realised... Passengers care little about how the franchise is run... paving the way towards meeting the targets recommended by the McNulty Review...".

So instead of using the powers already devolved to set a clear, inspiring example of what Scottish independence could deliver regarding rail services, the SNP grabbed onto the poisoned plans of McNulty and sought to implement them.

Government Behind Abellio Bosses 

Of course some welcome investment and improvements have been implemented. But not a finger has been lifted by the SNP to remove the profit motive from the service, despite all the evidence in favour of public ownership that McNulty's research inadvertently provided. 

Instead of ScotRail being taken into Scottish government control in 2014, the SNP handed it over to Dutch government control, via the Dutch state-owned Abellio. And just to prove their zeal for McNulty, the Transport Scotland arm of the SNP government insisted on extension of DOO as a clause in the franchise awarded to Abellio. 

It's the hand of SNP government that lurks behind the cost-cutting crusade to get rid of guards, regardless of the cost to public safety. It's only the courageous strike action by the same guards that has stayed the hand of the butchers. 

Literally Driver Only!

Alongside that, the Scottish government has turned a blind eye to trains running literally driver only - without even a lower-paid, lesser-trained Ticket Examiner on board. 

During the RMT strikes, the government and Abellio were quick to endlessly repeat that 57% of ScotRail trains are already DOO. But whilst there are 600 guards on the minority share of trains, there are only 300 Ticket Examiners employed to staff the 57%! It doesn't take a Maths degree to spot that means there aren't even enough Ticket Examiners to ensure one on every DOO journey.
Monitoring by drivers in recent months proves at least 20% of DOO trains run without even a second crew member - with all the horrendous potential safety consequences.

Alongside that, by the SNP government's own admission, 70 per cent of all Scotland's stations are totally unstaffed. That's a factor behind several heartbreaking incidents of disabled people being left stranded on the station at night, with no station staff, or guard, or Ticket Examiner to help them. 

Safety Demands Public Ownership 

The SSP strongly supports the rail unions' campaigns to ensure safe trains. We call for every one of the current 600 guards' posts to be retained, undiluted, with full control of train dispatch. We demand that safety-critical system be extended to a guard on EVERY train, including those converted to DOO in times of much less jam-packed trains 30-plus years ago. 

We want every station to be staffed, with a ticket office, and provision for passenger comfort and safety. We call for full investment in infrastructure and maintenance. 

And the SSP goes even further than opposing the crucifying fare increases used to fuel privateers' profit: we campaign for an integrated, fare-free public transport system, a measure to combat poverty and pollution, a policy that would generate vast numbers of new and skilled jobs for this and future generations.

SSP Track Record 

Railworkers and passengers alike should study the track record of the pro-capitalist parties - regardless of the colour of their rosettes at election time - in contrast with that of Scotland's socialist party, the SSP. 

The first set stands up for profit through privatization, with horrendous safety consequences, and rampant waste to the public purse. In stark contrast, the SSP campaigns tirelessly for democratic public ownership of our railways and wider transport services, to ensure investment in people's needs and safety - as part of the broader aims we share with the RMT union Rule Book, which declares, "for the supercession of the capitalist system by a socialistic order of society". 

Join us in that struggle: your safety, security and environmental well-being is at stake.