AT a time when the whole of the working class and the middle class is under the most savage attacks from the Tory Lib-Dem coalition, it is only natural that the radical bourgeois newspaper, the Guardian, should make available its Guardian On Line for a vicious attack on PCS leader Mark Serwotka.
His crime, for which he must go according to Daniel Calder, is that he challenged the Labour government’s decision to unilaterally rip up the redundancy agreement it had negotiated with the PCS and other civil service unions. The PCS defeated the Labour government in the Law Courts. The proposed action of the government was found to be illegal.
The Guardian article championed the leaders of the POA, FDA, Prospect, Unite and the GMB who were willing to surrender their members’ redundancy agreement, and unwilling to test out the legality of Labour’s actions in the courts. They were therefore willing to coalesce with an illegal action, and show the incoming Tory government just how soft, malleable and useless they are at defending workers’ rights.
Bravo to the PCS and bravo to its general secretary for making the legal challenge.
Shame on those union leaders and others who think that the working class must roll over and play dead, otherwise the bosses will bring in something even worse. These are professional, reformist grovellers!
The fact that the Tories are being forced to take a dictatorial step and bring in emergency legislation to smash the agreement, and thereby make any struggle to keep the old agreement illegal, shows what a sham bourgeois democracy is, and also proves the desperate economic and political position of the bourgeoisie that is driving it on.
Serwotka is accused of the following crime by Calder: ‘Civil servants are now, thanks in no small part to the Raglan-esque tactical clod-footedness of Serwotka’s Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), facing a 67% cut to their redundancy entitlements under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS). As yet, the finer details of the changes are unclear, but what we know from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is that the maximum paid out in the event of compulsory redundancies will be 12 months’ gross pay, down from the current limit of three years’. Still not a terrible settlement, particularly by comparison with the statutory redundancy pay cap of £11,400, but certainly a significant drop for those of long service soon to be among the 600,000 out the door.’
Interestingly, The Guardian’s e-mail commentator actually thinks that the 67% redundancy reduction is ‘Still not a terrible settlement…’ Perhaps he and the union leaders that he seems to be speaking for are in favour of accepting it.
However, the fundamental point is that this 67% reduction has to be imposed after the legislation is carried.
Calder does not even dream that the PCS union, having wrecked the Labour attack on its redundancy agreement, has actually prepared the conditions for the working class to take on and defeat the Tories.
His attitude is that of a slave. What the Tories want they will inevitably get.
Of course, if this was the case then we would never have achieved the Welfare State and the NHS in the first place, the two great gains that the Tories are being driven on by the crisis to destroy.
Having defeated the Labour government, the PCS and its allies must organise the public and private sector trade unions for a general strike action to stop the cuts.
Such a general strike will not be a protest action, but a revolutionary action, to bring down the Coalition and bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers and bring in socialism and a socialist planned economy.
The brave action of the PCS that defeated the Labour government in the courts has actually opened up the situation for defeating the Tories and the Lib-Dems through the mobilisation of the working class for a socialist revolution.
