Strike Rally at Pitwood House
30 November 2011 by Paul Rhoades
Today at Pitwood house members from Unison, GMB and Unite unions held a rally as part of their day of action against government cuts to workers pensions.
The threat faced by public sector workers is that after the fiasco Gordon Brown made of bailing out the banks, and the tax avoidance and malpractice of big businesses, the government has literally run out of money. Public sector workers are facing the biggest cuts, as they are seen as being the biggest expense that the government has to pay for.
Within the public sector, its generally acknowledged that a lot of employees are paid significantly less than similar comparably skilled jobs in the private sector. The pension however, has always formed part of their terms and conditions and should be viewed as being a core element of their salaries. Public sector workers have been on a pay freeze since last year, and can look forward to just 1% in 2013 despite massive increases in fuel, energy, food and the cost of living.
But surely this is the case for all of us I hear you say? Well, personally (being self employed) over the last 3 years I've had to renegotiate fees and contracts with all my customers, and have had to reduce my fee in order to maintain the job, some by as little as 10%, some by up to 50%. So as you can see, and as Mr Cameron reminds us, we are all in this together, so please, support the public sector strikers, if all workers stood united then the media, government and banking systems would be in awe of us.
Unsurprisingly, there's been a massive amount of media spin vilifying public sector workers from striking and pitting private sector workers against them in what is nothing other than a race to the bottom for workers rights in the UK.
It's clear that the government strategy over this is to split the working classes in the hope that workers around the UK will not support each other in their fight for fair conditions and pensions. Let's be honest, its all too easy to look at a public sector worker and say "I'm paying your salary and your pension's better than mine". Its a similar rhetoric which us used against the sick and the unemployed by the likes of the Daily Mail, lets be honest, if we are concerned with the likes of benefit scroungers and soap dodgers sponging off the state then we're not going to pay attention to corrupt MP's, illegal media practices and bankers bonuses, so its in the system's interest for us all to fight among our selves.
I will just mention at this point that I'm personally self employed, I've worked in the education sector a long long time ago as a lecturer, but went into private industry over 15 years ago, and private practice 10 years ago. So I've got no vested interest in public sector employees getting a pension or not.
What I do passionately believe in is a worker being paid a fair and reflective price for their labour. Public sector employees do a fantastic job, and fulfil many rolls which a lot of people would not want to do, be it from maintaining parks and gardens in all weathers, keeping the streets clean or indeed teaching your children. So it's because of these beliefs that I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange my time today so that I could attend the rally at 11:00 this morning.
The threat faced by public sector workers is that after the fiasco Gordon Brown made of bailing out the banks, and the tax avoidance and malpractice of big businesses, the government has literally run out of money. Public sector workers are facing the biggest cuts, as they are seen as being the biggest expense that the government has to pay for.
Within the public sector, its generally acknowledged that a lot of employees are paid significantly less than similar comparably skilled jobs in the private sector. The pension however, has always formed part of their terms and conditions and should be viewed as being a core element of their salaries. Public sector workers have been on a pay freeze since last year, and can look forward to just 1% in 2013 despite massive increases in fuel, energy, food and the cost of living.
But surely this is the case for all of us I hear you say? Well, personally (being self employed) over the last 3 years I've had to renegotiate fees and contracts with all my customers, and have had to reduce my fee in order to maintain the job, some by as little as 10%, some by up to 50%. So as you can see, and as Mr Cameron reminds us, we are all in this together, so please, support the public sector strikers, if all workers stood united then the media, government and banking systems would be in awe of us.
Unfortunately at the moment its too easy for them to divide us, and divided we fall.
Anyway, on to today's Rally in Scunthorpe, It was well attended where in total 75 activists joined an already strong picket at the council's headquarters on Ashby Road. A very large banner had been placed in the central reservation opposite the rally, and protesters received a constant barrage of car horns and waves from passers bye which was very nice to see.
There were brief speeches by union activists and former labour politician John Ellis who was scathing about the lack of support the strike was receiving from the labour party and expressed his disappointment over the lack of labour members who had attended the rally.
Once the speeches were over, a group of about 50 demonstrators decided that they would march along Ashby road to publicise the strike more. This again was met with more support from the public, cheers, waves and car horns as traffic patiently stopped to let the protesters past. At this point two vans of police arrived at Pitwood house and there was a brief incident involving a member of the public being led away and escorted home for what police described to me as being drunken and disorderly. Allegedly the man had been swearing at people arriving at Pitwood house and was not thought by police or union organisers to be part of either the picket or the rally.
All in all it was a good event, and it was encouraging to see that so many workers were prepared to stand up to their bosses and venture out to the rally. Hopefully this will give confidence to more workers in the future to be prepared to make a stand in Scunthorpe, which really isn't a particularly militant town, just hard working.
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The public sector employees and their employers signed up to an agreement on how their pensions should be funded and the employers should honour that. People are living longer so the burdens are higher but the previous Labour administration had already addressed this in consultation with the unions. The Coalition mantra that public sector pensions are unaffordable has been shown to be a lie by the independent and government-commissioned Hutton Report showing that the cost of public sector pensions is actually projected to fall as a share of national income from 1.9% of GDP in 2011 to 1.4 % in 2060. Even if there is an issue with future pension funding liabilities it would be fairer to close the final salary schemes to new entrants and let them join a managed fund scheme like the private sector have done. This would make the existing final salary scheme easier to manage and honour (a word applied by politicians to politicians who have no sense of the meaning of the word).
The real reason for the changes was eloquently stated by a striker on the BBC yesterday when he said his pension entitlement shouldn’t be cut just to pay for the mistakes of the bankers. That burden is already being shared by all of us in terms of higher taxes, reduced public services and pay cuts/freezes. Public sector employees are just as prey to job losses as the private sector.
This sort of attack on the working class by the Tories is to be expected but what is the Liberal Democrats excuse? “The bulk of the burden should be shared by those with the broadest shoulders” said Nick Clegg earlier in the week – so why does he prop up a government that not only attacks the earned pension entitlements of the public sector but the state pension entitlements of those born in the sixties who have just had their retirement age rolled back to 67? He is neither Liberal nor Democratic.
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