WHY STRIKE TOMORROW? #J10strike

• Because Local Government workers are chronically underpaid.

• Because our inadequate pay levels have been subject to a freeze, meaning a pay cut of 20% since the coalition came to power.

• Because our employers seem happy to leave millions below the living wage level, rather than pay wages that would take them off benefits

• Because low wages and salaries leave local government workers facing food or fuel bills they cannot afford. Eat or Heat should not be a dilemma we face.

• Because local authorities are sitting on reserves of £18 BILLION

• Because local government cuts mean that as redundancies bite, the remaining workers face an uphill struggle to keep services running.

• Because further cuts to services are just around the corner with consequent increased workload for the remaining staff

• Because privatisation, outsourcing and restructuring are disrupting delivery of services

• Because the democratic accountability and character of public services is being undermined by current government policies, such as the Council Tax cap and the provisions of the Care Act;

• Because the services that our communities rely on, from care for the elderly, to family services, from education to food hygiene, from bin collection to museums and libraries are being decimated.

• Because politicians, both local and national, have washed their hands of local democracy

• Because if no one else will stand up for well paid, well resourced, locally accountable democratic services, local government workers must.

STAND UP FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT – TAKE ACTION TOMORROW

Jane Carolan

The case for an improved pay offer in local government is unanswerable

#J10strike 'What has motivated our members to take strike action this year when they were reluctant last year and the one before that? Quite simply – that ‘nothing to lose’ feeling and the growing realisation that if they don’t act now, they might soon be paying councils for the privilege of having a job at all! We have done the sums on their pensions too and the results don’t make pretty reading. Unless a stop is put to the decline in their pay, they will spend the rest of their lives on even lower pensions than the pittance most were in line to receive anyway. And the state will have to foot a larger bill for their retirement' UNISON head of local government Heather Wakefield writes on the Public Finance blog:
http://opinion.publicfinance.co.uk/2014/07/a-pay-offer-council-workers-must-refuse/

Turning the tide against privatisation

Opinion polls have consistently shown a massive majority for the return of outsourced services to public ownership. Yet the privatisation juggernaut is bulldozing through the NHS and probation services at an unprecedented speed. Despite overwhelming evidence that it is in the public interest, Labour’s leadership is resisting pressure to include renationalise rail services. Anne Karpf, writing in the Guardian, calls for a ‘new language to talk about public ownership, one that detoxifies it and taps into the wide recognition that natural resources and essential public services should not be treated as commodities’
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/04/public-ownership-common-good-privatisation?CMP=twt_gu

Sequence for South Africa by Denis Brutus

1.
Golden oaks and jacarandas
flowering:
exquisite images
to wrench my heart.

All systems go for July 10 national pay strike!

#J10strike Enormous momentum is building for next Thursday's NJC pay strike in England, Northern Ireland and Wales with UNISON being joined by GMB and Unite in a united front that has often proven elusive in recent years. Many UNISON branches are reporting high levels of recruitment since last Monday's call to action. Membership confidence has been lifted by decisions this week by the FBU, PCS and NUT to strike and make 10 July a very welcome day of co ordinated action. Each of those long running disputes are broader than the NJC pay strike involving pensions and workload issues but the root cause is of course the same - austerity and the offensive launched against public sector workers launched by the Con Dem government since its first spending review in October 2010:
https://www.unison.org.uk/at-work/local-government/key-issues/local-government-pay/home/

Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Roses

Avoiding a stooshie becoming a stramash

From a Scottish Correspondent: There's a referendum going on in these parts and it's caused in UNISON what we call a stooshie.

A leading UNISON figure has come out for independence (big surprise) in 'a personal capacity' and 40 Scotland national conference goers (out of 281 - big news) have signed one of those petition things for independence - also in collective personal capacities (if that is not a contradiction).

All this has precipitated a message on the UNISON Scotland website reminding activists that:

David MacLennan – Plays, Politics and Popularity

I was in Italy when the news came through via a friend on Twitter. David MacLennan, the theatre writer, director and producer, had lost his short battle with Motor Neurone Disease. The co-founder of 7:84 Theatre Company and Wildcat Productions, the man who had been part of the foundation of MayFest, and who created the Play, Pie and a Pint format, who was in a new ascendancy with the National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) commissioning him and David Greig to co-curate The Yes, No, Don't Know, Show, had left us and in particular, left a huge hole at the centre of Scottish Theatre, Political Theatre and Popular Theatre.

Another anti austerity demonstration, another media blackout

Over 50,000 attended yesterday’s London demonstration organised by the People’s Assembly against austerity and speakers included media celebrity Russell Brand. Once again a protest against government cuts received minimal coverage from national broadcasters. Last September’s Manchester demonstration in defence of the NHS received the same censorship treatment even though news organisations were in town in force to cover the Tory Party conference.

There is a long history of structural bias in the UK media against trade unions and the left. It will not change unless unions work together to confront it argued Tom O’Malley at the recent UCU Congress: ‘all unions, in all sectors, have to work together to formulate communications policies that are coherent and workable and which can gain widespread popular support as well influence in mainstream politics.

 

'I also think that all unions should, even in these economically exacting times, support campaigning organisations such as the CPBF. History therefore tells us that we should work together to challenge the structural biases in the media, and seek a much more inclusive, open and accountable. In so doing, we will be building on the thoughts and struggles of women and men in the movement, who for the last 100 years have been forced by necessity to confront and challenge the media, and work for something better.’

The Song of the Wage-slave by Robert W. Service

When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay,
I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say.
And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met —
All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget.