THE General Council of the TUC is set to meet on Tuesday, in a meeting that has been kept a secret, lest large numbers of workers decide to pay their leaders a visit to demand that they call a general strike.
The meeting is one day after union leaders have sat down with Tory ministers who told them that their new proposed anti-trade union laws will smash the trade unions and that their best course of action will be to capitulate now, and agree that their only challenge will be a legal one, which the unions are certain to lose after paying tens of millions in legal costs.
On Tuesday, the RMT and ASLEF will join GMB and nursing union the RCN to discuss the Tory plans to impose huge fines on mass strike actions, and legally force trade unions to allow strike-breaking.
Tory PM Rishi Sunak is planning to resolve the major crisis of British capitalism at the expense of the working class and its trade unions, using anti-strike laws that will jail strikers, while runaway inflation destroys working class’ living standards – all for the benefit of the bosses.
On Tuesday, the TUC will form what has been described as a ‘war cabinet’ to plan their next legal move to defend trade unionism, some very limited measures akin to trying to drain oceans of capitalist anarchy with a teaspoon.
Union officials are already saying that there is no appetite for a general strike – not seen since 1926. In fact, they are speaking for themselves alone! They however warned the bosses that the PM’s anti-union crackdown will result in mass walkouts, and mass unofficial actions, even mass occupations!
The TUC has said: ‘Tuesday’s meeting is one in a series of regular meetings to think about how we best support unions engaged in industrial campaigns.’
Meanwhile, Tory Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has urged teachers not to vote to strike this week.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak, who represents 48 unions, said last week that members aren’t interested in a ‘general strike or taking on the government’ but are ‘interested in a decent pay rise’. As if you can have one without the other.
Nowak said compromise is possible – if ministers are prepared to enter into negotiations. He said: ‘Our members are interested in a decent pay rise; the government, the employers treating them with respect, recognising that they’ve got genuine issues and problems.’
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace however took a hardline stance as he visited troops filling in for Border Force staff, saying he would not be ‘held to ransom’ and there was ‘no magic wand’ to secure the livelihoods of 5.7million public sector workers.
He brazenly claimed they were ‘better off’ than the private sector – despite private sector wages rising by 6.9% and public sector wages by just 2.7%.
He added for good measure: We’re not going back to the 1970s where the trade union barons thought that they ran the government.’ In fact they are going forward to try to impose a military police dictatorship over the working class as the only way that British capitalism can survive.
He wants to go back to the 1930s when the ruling class lorded it over millions of the poor and the unemployed.
Yesterday TUC leader Nowak said the government has ‘a fundamental problem with working people coming together in unions, and organising and wanting to bargain with their employer’.
The new TUC chief said compromise is possible – if ministers are prepared to enter into negotiations.
‘There has got to be a landing zone somewhere between the 4%-5% the government has offered and the 19% some unions have claimed but what is crucially important is that the government actually sits down and negotiates,’ he said. In fact, there is no landing zone!
Ministers are planning to pursue anti-strike legislation which would ensure minimum service levels on transport services – and potentially in all other industries – during strikes.
They are planning to destroy completely the foundation of the Welfare State, including the NHS, that the Attlee administration introduced after the 1945 war.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said yesterday: ‘This government is spinning a web of lies to divert the blame for who is really responsible for the economic crisis engulfing the country. The unions ‘‘holding the country to ransom’’ is another to add to their long list.
‘Ben Wallace’s comments are puerile. The truth is that it is bandit capitalism that’s holding the country to ransom.’
Tuesday’s TUC General Council must call an indefinite general strike and establish Councils of Action in every town and city to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and a nationalised and planned economy and socialism. This is the way forward to the British socialist revolution.
