LEN McCluskey, winner of the election for the post of Unite general secretary, said on Wednesday that ‘I have a huge agenda in front of me . . .
‘Let me just mention a couple of the major points on that agenda. Firstly, working people are under massive attack now. This government is expecting them to pay, through job losses and spending cuts, for the crisis made in the City.
‘Resisting that assault must be priority number one for any trade union leader. What Thatcher tried to do to the unions, the Con-Dems are trying to do to the welfare state – erase it from the nation’s life.
‘Britain’s first Cameron Christmas is going to be a time of bleak uncertainty for millions of people – not just those who work in the public sector, but anyone in any way dependent on them. Only the bankers with their bonuses will be celebrating.’
He continued: ‘Unite will support any of its members that wish to take industrial action to save the one million jobs at threat across the public sector and to protect their pay and conditions. Indeed, I believe such action will likely prove inevitable.’
McCluskey added: ‘Working people are under massive attack now. This government is expecting them to pay, through job losses and spending cuts, for the crisis made in the City.
‘Food, fuel and essentials are all rising. VAT will jump in January but wages are frozen. For ordinary people, this is not a “good recession”, as some Tory peers would have it, but a miserable and frightening time.’
McCluskey is certainly suggesting that he is to the left of joint General Secretaries Simpson and Woodley, who have both stated that taking strike action against the Tory-LibDems savage cuts will play right into the hands of the coalition, and were previously stating that wage cuts are better than job losses, refusing to understand that one led inevitably to the other.
Derek Simpson, who retires in December, backed right winger Les Bayliss as his successor, while McCluskey was the preferred candidate of Unite’s other general secretary, Tony Woodley, with whom he will work with as ‘general secretary designate’ until Woodley retires in December 2011, after which he will take control.
The problem with McClusky’s left words is that such words were frequently used by Woodley, just before he sold out his members.
In 2005 after 800 Gate Gourmet workers were sacked by megaphone, he repeatedly told them ‘We all came out together and we will all go back together.’
At the 2005 TUC Congress he made an impassioned left wing speech challenging the state to jail him and calling for all action, short of illegal action, to be used to win the Gate Gourmet struggle.
The only problem was that he had already agreed to 144 compulsory sackings at Gate Gourmet, as well as hundreds of other job losses, as well as supporting the venture capitalists ‘survival plan’.
Also Woodley, more recently, had to be forced by the British Airways cabin crew union, BASSA, to halt his support for Walsh’s survival plan and cancel a ballot in which Unite was recommending support for Walsh’s proposals.
Left words from McCluskey are not enough.
McCluskey must show that he is not another verbal deceiver by immediately agreeing to meet the Gate Gourmet sacked workers to right the grave wrong that was done to them and also organise a strike ballot against Walsh’s proposals at Heathrow. This would begin to resolve the doubts that he is just another left talker.