HELP THE NSSN BUILD SUPPORT FOR 10 JULY STRIKE!
The line-up for the July 10 strike is now complete. Fire-fighters defending their hard won pension rights will be walking out on the same day as up to 1½ million council and school workers, teachers, civil servants and others who are resisting the continuing public sector pay freeze.
Workers from Unison, PCS, Unite, GMB, NUT, FBU and NIPSA will be on strike together. Transport for London workers as well as power control operators on London Underground will also be out on strike that day, meaning that RMT and TSSA can be added to the growing list.
It’s vital that we build for the strike and get our message across – the need to use the strike as a launch pad towards a 24 hour general strike of public and private sector workers. That's why NSSN supporters across Staffordshire will be building support for Thursday’s strike action.
We will be leafleting workplaces on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
- Can you spare an hour or two this week, in the day or evening, to help?
- Can you give out some leaflets in your workplace? – you don’t have to be upfront about it, you can just leave them where workmates will see them. It doesn’t matter whether your workplace is on strike or not.
- You could give leaflets out to friends, leave some on buses, in shops – anywhere really.
- You don’t have to collect leaflets – we can drop them off for you.
We will also need help on the day of the strike to give out leaflets on picket lines, on the streets and at the Strike Rally outside the Civic Centre in Stoke on Thursday from 11.30am onwards.
One NSSN supporter is taking the day off work on Thursday – can you do the same or for a few hours?
Can you get your union banner and take it along to a picket or to the rally?
Have you got any other ideas how we can build support for workers taking strike action on Thursday?
Please get in touch asap if you are able to do any of this stuff so we can plan how your valuable time can be put to good use.
You can call or text us on 07845893607 any time
END LOW PAY
Fight ’till we win!
Build for a 24 hour general strike
J10 – striking against low pay
Over a million public sector workers are taking strike action to demand an end to the pay freeze. Public sector pay has been virtually frozen since 2010, meaning inflation has cut 16% out of the value of a pay packet.
But the super-rich are not touched. Britain now ‘boasts’ 104 billionaires, with a collective wealth of £301 billion, up by more than a fifth in a year. To add insult to injury it’s reported that their cost of living is actually falling. Prices for caviar and fine wines are dropping.
We pay the price
Almost half a million local government workers earn less than the living wage, set at £7.65 or £8.80 in London. This is not enough to live a decent life – but is more than the measly current £6.31 minimum wage level.
Unison, GMB and Unite are calling for a pay rise of £1 an hour for local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That would mean that workers on the lowest scale wages would rise to £7.45 an hour.
The Socialist Party gives its backing to this campaign – but we also go further. We argue for a campaign for the immediate implementation of the living wage a step towards a minimum wage of £10 an hour with no exceptions, and with regular increases to cover price rises. At their recent national conferences the demand for £10 an hour was taken up by the BFAWU bakers’ union and the GMB.
A higher minimum wage needs to be part of a programme of other measures, including a major investment in job creation, an end to zero-hour contracts, the introduction of rent controls and the construction of new council housing.
But, if we are to win, J10 must be a step in a determined campaign of action. Workers have shown their determination to struggle time and again. Two million walked out in de-fence of pensions in mass coordinated strike action on 30 November 2011.
But their courage has not been matched by the right-wing trade union leaders who, instead of building on the big success and popularity of the strike, settled for a few crumbs. That gave the Con-Dems and their big business masters the confidence to relentlessly turn the screw in pushing down workers’ pay and conditions.
First step
The 10 July strike is another opportunity to launch a battle against austerity. In doing so, the unions could draw behind them millions of unorganised workers and all those suffering from these brutal cuts.
Unison has already named 9 and 10 September as the next dates for action in this pay strike. They should be the next steps in mass coordinated strike action, building for a 24-hour general strike that can smash the pay freeze. This will open up the prospect of defeating this government of the 1%.
It is understandable that some workers are sceptical about the prospects for this struggle given the woeful role of the right-wing trade union leaders in recent years. However, the only way to defeat the attacks of the employers and the government is to determinedly set out to organise and fight until we win. The strike on 10 July is an important first step.
The best way to keep pressure on the union leaderships is by building the broad lefts, democratic fighting left organisations in the trade unions, through organising local strike committees and involving more members in the activity and structures of the unions.
