ON Tuesday the GMB annual conference decided that a sub-inflation cap on pay negotiations is completely unacceptable to GMB public service members.
The conference called for coordinated industrial action across the public sector against government pay restraint.
The GMB press release states: ‘With disputes now reached across the NHS, local government, the civil service and teachers it is clear that public sector unions face a showdown with Gordon Brown.
‘Brian Strutton, GMB National Secretary said: “Gordon brown is setting sub-inflation caps on negotiators and refusing to accept review body recommendations.
‘ “As a result nearly five million public sector workers face pay cuts in real terms and this is simply not acceptable.
‘ “The government is deliberately picking a fight with public sector workers and we should respond with a co-ordinated campaign of industrial action”.’
Contradiction rules. Of that there is no doubt.
On the same day, at the same conference, Gordon Brown was thanking the GMB for nominating him as Labour Party leader, and congratulating the union for its campaigns in the most flattering way, spreading compliments about left, right and centre.
GMB leader Paul Kenny, reciprocating, managed to read into Brown’s speech that: ‘The GMB concludes that the fat cats are losing the argument on tax and it was very noticeable that he did not leap to the defence of the industry which he has done before.’
At the same conference and on the same day as Brown and Kenny were enjoying a minor love-in, delegates voted for a coordinated campaign of industrial action across the entire public sector.
The trade unions to win such a campaign would have to bring down the Brown government while a Brown victory would mean the trade unions having to bear the full brunt of the capitalist crisis, in terms of big wage cuts and massive job losses as the intensity of the crisis emerges.
Brown was at the centre of the Blair governments and is determined to carry forward the same policies as Premier, since he is a fervent admirer of global capitalism and a determined servant of the British bosses.
However, at the GMB conference he was courting the trade union bureaucracy for all he was worth.
The GMB leaders reciprocated, but neither Kenny nor Brown could smother the anger and hostility of the mass of GMB members at the Blair-Brown governments’ policies of wage cutting and job losses.
Out of this sharp contradiction emerged the resolution calling for coordinated industrial action against a Brown government, a ‘showdown’ as the press release says, a massive political strike against the Labour leadership.
The resolution will be hailed by all of the membership of the public sector trade unions, who are facing the brunt of the Brown onslaught.
There will clearly be coordinated industrial action against the Brown government, since he will not change his policies.
What is equally clear is that the trade union bureaucracy has not got the slightest intention of leading such a campaign to its victory, since that would mean bringing down the Brown government and bringing in a workers government.
It will do as it has always done, adapt to the anger of the working class, make some left speeches and then at the crucial moment sell the movement out.
The WRP and the News Line urges the entire public sector to unite and organise indefinite strike action against wage cuts and job losses.
However, for this struggle to be won there must be the development of a new and revolutionary leadership inside the trade unions to replace the clapped out and treacherous reformist leaders.
Only the WRP is building the kind of Marxist leadership that is necessary. Join it today.
