VICTORY TO THE UCU STRIKERS!

UCU members striking against savage pension cuts and austerity

The breadth and depth of strike action by staff at ten Scottish universities and 61 across the UK are unprecedented. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) voted overwhelmingly to stage an escalating series of strikes in defence of their pensions, with a total of 14 days already named.

The pickets are large, the roving demos colourful and noisy, and the support for staff from students vast and visible.

Pensions Under Attack

This strike is primarily about an assault on staff pensions, with their bosses in Universities UK (UUK) wanting to slash the current defined benefits scheme - the Universities Superannuation Scheme - to a cheap and nasty defined contributions scheme, where retirement income would be dependent on the fluctuations of the stock market. 

Concretely, as the UCU union spells out, this would mean an average annual cut of £10,000 to pensions for lecturers, teachers, librarians, researchers and student support staff. 

As Dave, one of the strikers in Glasgow, told me, "I face a 50% cut! In many ways, this was always quite a conservative workforce, reluctant to take industrial action, and we often put up with the pay levels because at least there is a decent pension at the end of it. But we have to take the pain of losing pay now, through striking, or there'll be nothing left at the end of our careers."

The UUK bosses claim they have to take this slice off pensions because they face a £6billion deficit. But the same bosses have further infuriated teaching staff with their choices of expenditure. As Dave added, "They say they can't afford to sustain our pensions. But the principal is on over £300,000. And have you noticed the £1billion being spent on buildings and investments in Glasgow and Strathclyde universities?"

On the picket lines 

Marketisation of Education 

Another striker gave me her view of the UUK bosses' claim - and of the deeper causes of the strike - as she rushed in to address a 'teach-in' of supportive students:

"This is about our pensions, but also about the power structures behind it. The way the pension scheme is set up tells all: it's based on a flawed risk assessment, which favours those investing, to the detriment of workers. The assumption in the risk assessment is that all 65 universities will all go into administration; if that were true, our problems are a lot greater than the pensions scheme!

In these underlying power structures, we are told pensions are a benefit. But we work hard for them; pensions are part of our wages. And this doesn't just affect lecturers, but all staff, and it's really important workers are not divided. This is about the casualised workforce, temporary research assistants, the library staff, and all the rest too.
We want to shut down the education factory - because that's how we and the students are treated. The irony is that free education means those who pay are treated better. Free education is of less and less value on the market. That's why we have the students on our side. They live through it and know what it's like to live through the marketised universities."

Student Support 

First-year engineering student and SSP member, Max McKay, told me some of his reasons for actively supporting the strikers and attending their picket lines.

"It's vital we support the strikers. They're the ones trying to teach us and be available to us. Now they need us in their moment of struggle. All students should do what they can: join picket lines, not attend lectures, talk to other students to get their support."

I asked Max what difference the attack on pensions makes to him, as a student. 

"If the UCU don't win, and the pension cuts go ahead, some of the best lecturers will be gone, they'll just leave. Their pay is already low, and the only thing making the job OK is a reasonable pension. Some students may be considering going on to become lecturers, but these cuts may stop them, a loss of opportunity. And if the staff lose on pensions, what next? Us as students attacked next? That's why I've been on the pickets showing my support."

SSP supports the UCU strikers

Principal's Pets... and Pension Cuts! 

Pensions are the upfront source of the anger that has erupted into strike action. But that anger is also fuelled by the ongoing attacks on education, the brutally precarious nature of many of the jobs for the likes of tutors and teaching assistants, and the grotesque contrasts between pleas of poverty by the university bosses and their own opulence. 

Take the case of Peter Mathieson, the recently appointed principal of Edinburgh University. He graciously accepted the offer to move from being vice-chancellor of Hong Kong University so long as he got a basic salary of £342,000 - a mere £80,000 more than his predecessor at Edinburgh!

But while UCU members have been driven to withdraw their labour in defence of their pensions, Mathieson enjoys an additional payment of £42,000 "in lieu of pension contributions". On top of his £342,000, that is. And as a reward for the trek north, he was given use of a lavish "grace and favour" home, plus a £26,000 relocation package. Just in case that's not cause enough for outrage, the relocation bung handed over from university funds included the cost of moving his pet cat and dog.

So the university bosses plunder workers' pensions, but pay out travel costs for the principal's pets! You couldn't make it up... and you don't need to; it's a metaphor for what the university bosses think of hardworking staff. 

The School of Struggle

A new generation is being educated in the fundamentals of trade unionism in the heat of battle. For many, this is their first-ever strike. 

As Strathclyde University UCU chair, Brian Garvey, told me, "Many members are on strike for the first time. And many, many more have joined the union since we started this strike action. They may have been scared to take action at first, but once it gets going, it's like being liberated."

Another key feature of this struggle is the rapid learning about unions, strikes and solidarity that a new generation are living and learning. Whilst withdrawing their labour, lecturers are staging 'teach-ins', addressing hundreds of students on issues like privatisation, the marketisation of education, and as Brian remarked, "I'm going in to speak about what unions and strikes are because consciousness of those issues had declined amongst younger people for a time."

The UCU strikers need and deserve the solidarity of every reader, every trade unionist, every SSP member. Show support on their pickets and demos; invite them to your union branch; help win a victory for the UCU - which would be a victory for all workers, in the face of austerity cuts designed to boost the perks, privileges and profits of the rich and big business.

 

Brian Garvey puts the case for pensions justice 

FROM THE FRONTLINE: article by a strike leader for the Scottish Socialist Voice:

The staff, students and supporters of the strike know that while this strike is about pensions, it is about more than that. 

The unprecedented turnout is a clear message that we, together, have had enough of austerity, where pensions are cut while those cutting them award themselves £0.5million salaries. 

Enough of cuts in education, enough of taking more and more from workers, enough of taking an axe to our pensions and spending billions elsewhere. 

This strike is wakening academic staff up to the fact that their future is tied up with nurses, construction workers and all working people, and not the heads of UUK taking £10,000 a year from pensions. 

We call our members, staff, students and supporters to join us in our ongoing strike action that will continue until we win this fight for dignity.

 By Brian Garvey, Chair, UCU Strathclyde University

END AUSTERITY: RELY ON WORKERS' UNITED ACTION

Something major must be happening when you get a senior Tory party conference delegate declaring on TV: "We need to rename our party to the Conservative Workers Party"! 

The proposed launch of the CWP isn't just a sick joke, when compared with the Tories' obnoxious track record on slashing wages, slaughtering public services and aiming to wipe out workers' rights - all in the name of turbocharged profit for the few. 

It's also a half-acknowledged reflection of the latent power of working class people to change the society we live in, and the sheer dread of the Tories and their millionaire cohort at the mounting anger and opposition of workers - including the growing outbreaks of protests and strike actions.

Age of Austerity 

We live in the infamous Age of Austerity. Since the bankers brought the economy to the brink of collapse in 2008, working class people have paid the terrible price of capitalist profiteering - twice! 

First, through the £1.3trillion bailout of the bankers from public funds in 2008. Since then, through the systematic theft of wages under the seven-year public sector pay cap; robbery of wages and conditions in the private sector; and savagery against public services and the benefits of society's most vulnerable people, including the sick and disabled. 

The Tories are panic-stricken at the potential of the lid blowing off the pressure cooker of plummeting pay and rising inflation, with outbreaks of strike action over recent months - and unanimous backing for a Motion at the recent TUC conference for coordinated demonstrations and strike action against the pay cap. They dread a winter of discontent. 

Savage Pay Cuts

TUC research has shown five million public sector workers have lost between £2,000 to £5,000 in wages from the zero and 1% pay cap of the last seven years.

Recent official inflation figures of 3.9% have added to workers' fury. 

Trade unions in the civil service and local authorities have lodged pay claims of 5% to stop the ongoing annual pay cuts; and at least the current RPI inflation rate of 3.9% in the case of NHS unions. 

Tens of thousands joined the demo outside Tory conference. The civil service PCS union held pay-day protests in over 100 places on 29 September, and is starting a consultative ballot of 160,000 members on strike action on pay from 9 October. 

At the TUC, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly called on other public sector unions to do likewise, to seriously prepare the grounds for actual strike ballots, building up the readiness of members, in order to overcome the high-hurdles obstructions to action imposed by the 2016 Tory (anti-) Trade Union Act, with its 50% threshold. 

PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka

Divided Tories Seek to Divide Workers 

As we warned in articles back in early July, the Tories are divided on how to respond, but determined to divide and defeat workers as they beat a retreat on their brutal pay cap.

They know a total, across-the-board climb-down would embolden millions of workers - including in the private sector - who are struggling to survive the planned poverty that is austerity.

But they also know the pay cap is unsustainable, a recipe for explosions that could even threaten the downfall of the enfeebled Theresa May regime. 

The Tories resort to divide-and-conquer trickery, with talk of responding to the Pay Review Bodies' Reports - hiding the fact these bodies only cover less than 45% of public sector workers - and offer piddling pay rises to prison officers and police that don't even match half the 3.9% inflation rate.

The warnings we've made of their divisive tactics have materialized: after seven long years of draconian pay cuts, they might offer token rises a bit above the 1% cap to prison officers, police, firefighters and nurses - but exclude civil service and council staff, in the hope they don't enjoy the same levels of public sympathy.

On top of which, any pay concessions are poised to be paid for by job cuts and slashed services. Already, the GMB union has calculated the loss of nearly a million public sector jobs since 2010 - driving down that sector to 17% of all workers, the lowest proportion since the year before the NHS was founded! 

Scrap the Cap - by how much? 

Workers will all welcome the promises of both Jeremy Corbyn and the current SNP government to end the Tory pay cap. But what remains unanswered from both is what level of pay rise is on offer when they 'scrap the cap'. Neither has openly backed the modest demands of 5% demanded by civil service and council unions. 

In the most immediate situation, will any pay rise from the Scottish government be funded by taxing the rich, and mounting a serious struggle to win back some of the £billions robbed from Scottish budgets by successive Tory and Labour Westminster governments?

Or just from a reshuffling of the block grant budget between pay, jobs and public services? Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In the private sector - such as retail - any recent concessions on paltry pay have been accompanied by savage attacks on other terms and conditions, such as premium payments for working Sundays, bank holidays, nightshifts or other antisocial hours. Robbing Peter to pay Peter! 

Don't Trade Jobs or Services for Pay 

The real danger is that unless the unions take united, decisive action to prevent it, the Scottish and UK governments - and alongside this, local councils - will try to trade off pay rises for cuts to jobs, conditions and public services.

The anti-austerity message from Jeremy Corbyn has emboldened workers in England that something radically different is available. The brutal realities of pay cuts and other assaults on conditions has led to outbursts of small strikes - such as BA cabin crews, and the courageous group of McDonald's workers - which, in my own experience, has encouraged some other workers to talk about the role of the unions. 

Posties on the picket line

Stand by Your Post! 

Royal Mail workers in the CWU - 110,000 of them - have voted for strikes against the loss of up to 30% of their pensions; for a decent wage on retirement; against the introduction of lower pay for new starters - a two-tier workforce; against assaults on union reps; and for reduction of the working week to 35 hours, without loss of pay, inclusive of paid breaks. 

In the first national ballot to be held since the 2016 Tory Trade Union Act threw up barriers against winning a vote for action that would make Aintree's Becher's Brook look like a molehill, CWU members smashed through the Tory blockades to democracy with an astonishing majority. In a 73.3% turnout, a whopping 89.1% voted for strike action.

Their anger has been fuelled by the handout of £770million in dividends to shareholders, and the payment of up to £200,000 a year to top Royal Mail bosses' separate pension pots, which remain untouched. 

The CWU's call for a shorter working week without loss of earnings, to tackle workload, protect full-time jobs, and prepare for the impact of 'the fourth technological revolution', exactly matches workers' needs in general - and matches the polices of the SSP. 

RMT members across several profiteering rail companies are striking against the safety- threatening Driver Only Operated trains being imposed as government policy. They are showing admirable courage in the face of government-sponsored brutality by the rail companies and a vicious media onslaught. They deserve the solidarity of other unions. 

For Coordinated Action  

The time is increasingly ripening for coordinated action on pay and related conditions.

Not at the expense of jobs, or public services, but at the expense of the obscenely rich and profiteering corporations. 

The TUC has a horrible history of doing little or literally nothing to implement their own agreed policies and actions. Rather than simply sit and wait for them to implement the agreed demos and coordinated strikes to scrap the pay cap, socialists and other union activists need to bombard their own union leaderships with demands for action. 

The welcome pledge by PCS leader Mark Serwotka to initiate meetings of all public sector unions could help mobilize millions of public sector workers. 

Those of us in private sector workplaces should build solidarity with workers in Royal Mail, the railways, and the public sector, making demands on our own employers for pay rises to compensate for years of eye-watering pay cuts, but without loss of jobs or other terms and conditions. 

Demand No Cuts Budgets - and £10 Now! 

The season of budgets from the Westminster, Holyrood and local authority governments is upon us, and the unions should unite with community groups and socialists in demanding real and concrete actions to reverse the tsunami of austerity. 

The SSP is calling on unions to mount a battle to demand the funding for a (voluntary, non-statutory) £10 Living Wage for all 500,000 Scottish workers employed directly or indirectly by the Scottish government and the 32 Scottish local authorities. 

This would help combat poverty pay. It would set a benchmark for the other 80% of workers employed in the private sector.

It would be a serious step by the unions to implement the "£10 minimum wage for all workers" that they agreed - unanimously - a long, excruciating 3 years ago, at the September 2014 TUC conference! 

But Scottish and council politicians should be bombarded to set No Cuts budgets, demanding the funding off Westminster and Holyrood to at least protect existing jobs and services, with the £10 minimum included, and equal pay for women - not rob Peter to pay Pauline (or Peter!). 

The Acid Test for Labour and SNP 

SNP Councillors, MSPs and MPs won mandates by claiming to be anti-austerity. 

In England, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour won massively increased support with its anti-austerity message. Now in Scottish Labour, Richard Leonard is seeking votes as leader by association with Corbyn.

All these political forces need to be put to the test with demands to turn grand words into meaningful action. 

Instead of passing on nearly £3billion of Westminster cuts since 2010, the SNP government needs to face a movement - led by unions and community organisations - demanding they defy all Tory cuts and win back some of our stolen £billions through mass action. 

The teachers' union, EIS, is currently in tripartite talks where the Scottish government and COSLA (councils) have offered 1.5% pay rise for new teachers and those at the top end of the pay scale, and only 1% for other teachers. That hardly matches Nicola Sturgeon's bold public promises of ending the pay cap! 

Labour and SNP councillors need to be pounded with pressure to reverse their sorry record of cutting jobs, pay and public services. 

Birmingham bin collectors strike against Labour council axe-wielders

Labour and the Brummie Bin Strike 

The acid test for Corbyn's Labour has been their baleful role in the battle between Birmingham bin workers and the city's Labour council.

There, Labour has acted to 'delete' 113 safety critical bin collectors' jobs, with a £5,000 pay cut; employed agency workers to undermine the resultant strike action; and then reneged on a deal brokered through ACAS - issuing real, live redundancy notices to their own workers. This was only halted by the resumed strike action of the bin workers, which helped Unite the union win a court ruling that outlawed Labour's redundancy notices. 

Here's the crunch; the warning to anyone falling for the idea that workers should "wait for a Corbyn government" rather than fight back now, with strikes where necessary.

Not once has Jeremy condemned the role of Birmingham's Labour councillors. Not once has the massively popular, anti-austerity, left-wing Corbyn leadership issued a call to its own Labour councillors, anywhere, to defy Tory funding cuts, to set No Cuts budgets. Instead, as well as the savagery suffered at the hands of years of Labour councils in Scotland, their counterparts in Durham and Derby have provoked strikes by teaching assistants, against Labour council pay cuts of 23%; with no condemnation, let alone expulsion, of these Labour axe-wielders by the national, Corbyn Labour leadership.

Waiting for Godot? 

Workers have been undoubtedly enthused and encouraged to fight back by the inspiring speeches of Jeremy Corbyn, with their core message of standing up 'for the many, not the few'. And the Corbyn surge in England has seriously weakened the May Tory regime.

But it would be fatal to rely on 'waiting for Godot'. How are workers and their families meant to live whilst waiting for the election of Corbyn as Prime Minister? How can workers topple the enfeebled Tory regime without taking action on pay, pensions, jobs and public services, here and now? And can we believe there will be an outright end to austerity under Labour - even when led by Jeremy Corbyn - given their failure when the chips are down in several local authorities, and the absence of any sanctions against right-wing Labour councillors from the left-wing UK leadership? 

Workers' Potential Power

The Tories, in their own perverse fashion, recognize the potential power of the organised trade union movement, and its potential allies amongst students and other young people. 

In battling against austerity, pay cuts, attacks on pensions, jobs and services, we need to rely on that potential and help mobilize it - not wait for some future salvation by politicians, no matter how decent or well-intentioned. 

Those who rule the roost, making profit out of working people, are past masters at divide-and-rule tactics. Trade unionists, community campaigners, young people and socialists need to help build the campaign for coordinated demos and strike action to reverse the tide of cuts to our share of the wealth which we created in the first place. 

SSP is Battle-Ready 

The SSP is ready and willing to play its part (in our unions, communities and colleges) in the struggle for a £10 minimum wage here and now, with no loss of other conditions; to scrap the cap, with pay rises to compensate for seven years of wage cuts; No Cuts council and Scottish budgets, with a struggle to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland by Tory and Labour governments; for an immediate 35-hour maximum working week without loss of earnings, to share out the workload and take advantage of new technology; and ultimately for a socialist society run by the many millions, not the few millionaires. 

SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS IN MINI STRIKE-WAVE

A flurry of strikes has hit Scotland this week, with public and private sector workers fighting back after sweeping majorities in union ballots for collective action, primarily in defense of their wages.

The Scottish Socialist Party has no hesitation in offering 100% support and solidarity to all these trade unionists, who are showing tremendous courage in the frenzied anti-trade union atmosphere coming out of Westminster, which has served to encourage employers to think they can ride roughshod over workers' pay and conditions.

Grangemouth Port

Workers at Scotland's biggest port, at Grangemouth, have started a two-week all-out strike, to be followed by an overtime ban, after Forth Port bosses stonewalled Unite union's requests for a negotiated settlement. Crane drivers and cargo handlers taking this action will hit the port hard, an action they voted 100% in favour of in a 97% turnout!

This strength of feeling is in response to imposed changes of shift rotas that will slash £1,600 a year from weekend premium payments and another £200 a year from nightshift allowances.

This is an increasingly common form of attack on workers' incomes, in pursuit of even higher profit margins and public sector cuts. Those affected also include whole swathes of retail workers and thousands in budget-slashing local government - regardless of whether run by Labour, SNP or various coalitions at council level.

FE Colleges 

Thousands of college lecturers are taking their first sustained national strike action in over 20 years. As with the Grangemouth port workers, these members of the EIS Further Education Lecturers' Association (EIS FELA) voted by a sweeping majority to strike; 93.5%.

At the heart of this dispute is the demand for equal pay, to end pay disparities of £10-13,000 between different colleges across Scotland. Their determined action is further fueled by frustration at years of education cuts, and fury at obscene 'golden parachutes' awarded to Principals and other senior management figures during the SNP's mergers and centralisation of colleges.

The SSP not only offers unqualified support to the EIS-FELA union members taking this action, but in fact we have campaigned for restoration of national pay bargaining since our formation in 1998, and even produced a special edition of the SSP's Scottish Socialist Voice on the issue about 15 years ago.

It is to their eternal discredit that the SNP government has carried on where their Labour-LibDem predecessors left off, failing to step in and remove these outrageous pay disparities, with salaries dependent on which college, in which town, lecturers doing exactly the same job happen to work.

On top of that, the SNP's centralisation of colleges has led to no educational improvements, has reduced jobs, and contributed to the loss of at least 144,000 places for students - overwhelmingly working class students; hardly a track record matching the SNP's claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'.

Council Workers

Smaller workforces are continuing their strike action against Labour-controlled Glasgow city council, and it's arms-length offshoots, Cordia and Community Safety Glasgow (CSG).

About 130 Unison members - school jannies - have staged a 3-day strike as part of their long-running battle to win payments they deserve for duties their job includes, including dirty and heavy jobs. Parity with other workers doing the same type of work would mean an extra £500-1000 a year for the jannies.

CCTV staff, employed by CSG, who earn the giddy sum of £8.25 an hour, have started strikes for parity with others employed by the same CSG - who get payments of up to £7,500 for doing the same anti-social, 24/7 shift patterns as the CCTV staff.

And in neighbouring Labour-run West Dunbartonshire council, teachers in the EIS union have staged several days of strike action, and are now voting on whether to accept the council's new offer on restructuring of schools that would have meant savage attacks on kids' education, being a cost-cutting exercise falsely dressed up as shiny new 'modernized' restructuring of staffing and departments.

Solidarity with the Strikers

The Tories are doing their damnedest to eliminate the last vestiges of collective action by trade unionists. Labour pretend to be the new-found friends of the unions, ahead of the looming elections - but when in power, attack conditions and pay like the worst employers. The SNP make warm, cooing noises towards the unions, but show their unwillingness to take sides in situations where they could make all the difference, such as the FE colleges.

The Scottish Scoalist Party has an unrivaled record, spanning nearly two decades, of taking the side of workers, and building support for their struggles. We offer that ABC solidarity to all those taking action right now, in defiance of attempts by employers to crush their wages even further in favour of profit, and despite the vicious anti-union laws being made even more repressive by the Tories.

TORY CLASS WAR ON WORKERS' RIGHTS

Anyone who doubts we are in the midst of a class war hasn't been awake recently!
The Tory party election manifesto for May's Westminster general election includes an open declaration of continued class war by the rich on the rest of us. That applies to most of their aims, but specifically new anti-trade union measures, a de facto ban on the right to strike for millions of workers, especially in the public sector.It comes as no surprise to trade unionists or socialists, but it highlights the need to struggle or face starvation.

The Tories want to legislate a 40 per cent threshold of all potential voters - NOT just those who ACTUALLY vote - in any union ballot for industrial action, before workers can take lawful action in self-defence from the government's escalating assault on their jobs, wages and conditions.


RIPPING UP OUR RIGHTS

The Tories have already ripped apart the few remaining rights we have at work.
Prior to the 2010 elections, the UK already boasted the most vicious, reactionary, anti-worker employment laws in the whole of Europe - after not just the 1980s Thatcher Dark Ages, but also the subsequent 13 years of Labour governments. Tony Blair shamelessly boasted of "the most restrictive employment laws in Europe", as his government unleashed a profit-crazed, totally deregulated banking and business regime on the population.

Then the present Westminster Coalition was foisted upon us in the rigged 2010 election outcome - rigged, because nobody was ever asked to vote for a Tory-LibDem coalition, and many were stupid enough to imagine voting LibDem was an anti-Tory vote!

Cameron and Clegg's Westminster boot-boys have trampled on the rights of workers in a systematic crusade to rob our wages, pensions, public services and jobs, so the rich can get obscenely richer.

PRICED OUT OF JUSTICE

Fees for taking cases of workplace mistreatment to Employment Tribunals have priced workers out of any pretense of justice. The Citizens Advice Bureaux report a fall in the number of new cases submitted since fees were introduced (in 2013) from an average 48,000 a quarter to 13,612 in the third quarter of 2014.
Cash is the chief barrier - and those workers not in a trade union are totally defenceless, as they'd have to fork out up to £1,200 just to get a Tribunal case heard.

In the CAB survey, 4 out of 10 workers with an issue they'd like taken to a Tribunal only had £46 a week left after paying their essential bills, meaning they'd have to save up for 6 months just to pay the fees for an Employment Tribunal - with no guarantee of success either, of course.

BLOCKING THE RIGHT TO STRIKE

Recently the Tories and LibDems introduced a rule that industrial action ballots require a turnout of over 50 per cent. That in the context of clamping down on the ability of unions to meet or function in workplaces. Most notoriously, the same government has abolished the facility for union membership fees to be collected from civil service workers' wages - in an attempt to smash the socialist-led PCS union - accompanied by removal of facilities for elected PCS reps to represent their members at work.

Now the Tories want to add the clause that unless over 40 per cent of all potential voters in such a ballot actually vote for it, any industrial action is illegal, and union funds could be seized.

They want this to apply to workers in the NHS, transport and fire services. Their excuse is that these services are 'essential' - something the same axe-wielding capitalist politicians deny in action as they slash jobs and public service provision in all these sectors.

LEGAL WEAPONS IN WAR ON WORKERS

Their aims are nakedly obvious. As the Tories gear up to force through the remaining £55billion in public sector cuts of the £90billion total that they've previously declared, they want to crush the resistance of workers in the frontline.

For instance, the Coalition has already shut down 39 fire stations since 2010, and shed 5,000 firefighters' jobs - so they want to neuter the ability of the Fire Brigades Union to fight back, as they are currently doing through strike action in several regions.

As they impose even more pay cuts on public sector workers who've had pay cuts for 6 or 7 years, the political arm of capitalism want to make collective action to win better pay legally impossible.

LEGALISED SCABBING

Alongside the 40 per cent threshold, the Tories plan to end the current restrictions on the use of agency workers as scabs during industrial action - so they can dragoon desperate people into undermining the conditions of fellow-workers, knowing full well that agency workers feel helpless and without rights in many cases.

And they want to 'review' minimum service levels during strikes, so as to prevent total shutdowns. Over the years I've often encountered situations in the likes of local government and the NHS where strikers' unions have had to agree levels of cover for emergencies during the strike that actually meant MORE staff on duty than on the average day before the strike, such are the appalling levels of under-staffing! Now the Tories want to turn the screw even tighter, as part of a package to effectively outlaw the right to strike for millions of workers.

MPs AND MORALITY!

The MPs who want to further shackle workers have absolutely no moral basis for their 50 per cent and 40 per cent thresholds on union votes. These chancers enjoy full rights and resources to put their case in the media and at meetings in a fashion workers' union representatives can't even dream of being allowed to do in their workplaces.

They spend £millions on election propaganda - on top of their free access to compliant, sycophantic media, owned by the same billionaires who use the mainstream media to smear and demonise trade unionists.

NO GOVERNMENT GOT 40%

But despite all these advantages, those MPs who have hamstrung workers' unions with their anti-union laws can't even get the kind of share of the vote they want to impose on the unions.

Since 1945, not a single one of the successive Westminster governments got over 50 per cent of the votes cast, let alone a majority of the entire electorate.

In fact, not one UK government since 1945 has gained the votes of over 40 per cent of the electorate - the threshold the Tories plan to impose on union ballots.

In the 2010 Westminster general election, 433 out of 650 MPs gained their bloated salaries despite getting less than 50 per cent of the votes cast.

Cameron's Tories only gained 36 per cent of the votes cast in 2010, in a 65 per cent turnout of voters - meaning these capitalist dictators only got 23.5 per cent of the electorate to vote for them! And that's across the UK, not Scotland, where they were overwhelmingly rejected.

Even if you distort reality by adding on the LibDems' share (a distortion, because not a single MP was elected as a Tory-LibDem candidate), the Coalition still only managed 38 per cent of the electorate.

SCOTLAND 1979

The 40 per cent con-trick is especially bitter-tasting in Scotland. In 1979, a clear majority of voters favoured a Scottish parliament, but were denied their wishes by the '40 per cent of the electorate' threshold that had been imposed on that year's referendum. Scots were denied a parliament for another 20 years.

NO TRUST IN LABOUR

Trade unionists and socialists must resist these escalated attacks on workplace rights by every available means. But relying on a Labour government is not one of those means.

It was Labour in government from 1997 to 2010 which retained Thatcher's brutal package of anti-union laws. It is today's Labour party that refuses to pledge repeal of these laws.

It is today's Labour party that pledges to cut public spending every single year they are in office until they have cleared the public deficit - making workers and communities pay for the debts created by Labour's £1.3trillion bailout of the bankers that the same Labour government had given free rein to 'get rich quick'.
In fighting these draconian additions to the worst anti-union laws in Europe, trade union leaders should give workers some confidence by declaring that where the issues demand it, the unions will simply defy the anti-union laws and take decisive action to defend workers. These are laws imposed by governments elected by minorities, ruling in the class interests of the 1% who own the bulk of the wealth created by the working class in the first place.

WORKERS' RIGHTS AND SOCIALISM

Working class people need to shape their own future, demanding full democratic rights at work, through their trade unions, community organisations, and by building a mass socialist party.

The SSP has consistently fought for workplace democracy, including the rights of free trade unions to function, and the right to take action by a majority vote after full debate.

As long as we are dominated by an economic system that seeks maximum profit for the few, workers will face attempts to castrate their unions and ban their rights to resistance. We need to combine the struggle for workplace rights with the broader battle for democratic ownership and control of the economy - for socialism.