MOVING the Public Services composite motion at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday, Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis said: ‘Conference, today we face a coalition with no democratic mandate – taking a chainsaw to our public services.
‘Public service workers, our members, keeping families and communities together, keeping our children learning, keeping the vulnerable safe.
‘And in our most damaged communities, standing between us and another lost generation. Picking up the pieces, giving rays of hope when it looks so bleak. Putting people on a path to a better future.
‘But the services people rely on most, are now targets for swingeing cuts and privatisations.
‘Redundancy notices scattered like confetti. At the time that we need them most, we’re adding public service workers to the dole queue.
‘And for those that are left, their living standards squeezed between rising prices and frozen pay.
‘Ordinary people, our people, paying the price for the reckless greed of the rich, and now the Coalition coming for their pensions.
‘Pensions that are affordable, worth less than £100 a week. Pensions that they’ve saved for the dignity of an old age free of means-tested benefits. And now they face a punitive hike in contributions. Not a single penny to go into any pension fund, but siphoned off by the Treasury to pay off the deficit, the biggest con trick of our time.
‘Expected to work longer for worse benefits. Members who are privatised, cut off from their pension and that is why we have said: “enough is enough”.
‘We’ve spent eight months in negotiations – searching for solutions. We will continue to negotiate – that’s what we do. But we are now balloting millions of workers for action on 30 November.
‘Conference, my members are no militants. But they will stand up for what’s fair, what’s right, and to those who say we shouldn’t strike, who say striking doesn’t work, that we’ll only harm the economy, make things worse, put jobs at risk. Just remember, that’s exactly what they told the matchgirls who shut London’s sweatshops.
‘The gasworkers who won the eight hour day. The builders who fought for health and safety legislation. Our women who won the right to equal pay. Sometimes you have to remind people what you are worth.
‘You have to show people what they’d miss if you weren’t there. Sometimes you have to let people know that you cannot be taken for granted.
‘And I want to make it very clear today, if we vote to strike – a hard decision, always a last resort – millions of public service workers and our union will expect the support of their party and its leadership.
‘The campaigns we are fighting are not just about jobs, or pensions, they are about creating the type of society we leave for our children.
‘They are about preserving and defending all our grandparents fought for; a welfare state, universal public services, they’re about saving the gains we made together, while we were in government.
‘Our members have not given up the fight, and nor must our party.
‘So conference, it’s no time to sit on the sidelines, while this government tears down all that we built. It’s no time to sit on the fence when this country faces a stark choice between taking on the powerful and privileged, or letting the price be paid by the poor and the powerless.
‘And this – there’s so much talk about reaching out and reconnecting, but now really is the time to reach out to millions of public service workers, to show we are on the same side of the street as them.
‘To those nursery workers fighting for their jobs, to those care workers fighting to protect their services. And yes, yes to the millions fighting to protect their pensions, they look to Labour now more than ever to support them, to speak up for them.
‘They will never forgive us if we let them down and neither will their union.’
Commenting on the shadow chancellor’s speech to the Liverpool conference, Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers said: ‘Ed Balls is right to highlight the problems caused by the coalition government’s cuts.
‘The government’s attacks on the public sector have caused unemployment and reduced spending power, choking off the growth we need.
‘Teachers have been hit by job losses, and seen their pay frozen at a time of continuing high inflation – a pay cut in real terms.
‘Teachers and other public sector workers have been punished for problems created in the financial sector, yet that sector has quickly returned to high levels of profits and bonuses.
‘Labour must go further with its plans and accept that additional public sector investment is essential to economic recovery.
‘Instead of cutting school and college funding in real terms, we need to increase spending on education to equip our young people with the skills needed to secure economic growth.
‘The present economic slump has shown that cuts, job losses and the breakup of our public services will make our problems worse not better.
‘Public services are a significant part of the solution and not the problem.
‘Championing our public services, alongside a system which addresses tax avoidance and evasion and implements a Robin Hood Tax, is the way forward.’
Speaking at a conference fringe meeting, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey called upon Labour to offer a clear alternative to the coalition’s strategy: ‘People are crying out for leadership.
‘They need to know they can feel hopeful about the future of our country.
‘Labour must lead this – but it cannot simply be the party that cuts a little less than the Tories. That will not win the next election.
‘Labour must offer a vision of hope with policies that will deliver growth, jobs and fair taxation.
‘It needs to tell the voters straight – Labour will improve your living standards, no more must you fear your children will be worse off than you.’
The trade unions leaders’ appeal to the Labour leadership will fall on deaf ears.
Both Miliband and his shadow cabinet are seeking a Labour-led coalition and will not allow anything to get in the way of this project.
Meanwhile, the trade unions’ leaders are refusing to call a general strike to bring down the Cameron government and instead are urging a mass movement of civil disobedience.
They are peddling the illusion that the nature of the struggle today is similar to the times of the Poll Tax mass movement which forced the Tories to change policy and ditch Thatcher.
This leaves the desperate crisis of the world capitalist system out of the equation.
The ruling class are fighting for their lives and will not be swayed by civil disobedience.
The only way that the struggle can be won is for the November 30th pension strike to be the precursor of an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition and to go forward to a workers government and socialism.
This requires the building of a new leadership in the working class and in the trade unions.
This leadership is the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists which must be built up without delay.