THE Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Brighton yesterday backed motions demanding better public sector pay and the right to coordinated strike action.
Moving Motion 34, Bev Laidlaw of PCS civil servants union, said: ‘For over ten years public sector workers have had their pay stripped. If public sector unions work together they are a powerful force.’
Seconding, James Robinson of Unison said: ‘We need a credible strike threat because workers are not being paid what they need to live. We want to get rid of the 50 per cent strike threshold, it is an absolute disgrace.
‘How dare governments curtail the right to strike. The current Labour government must overturn this.’
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: ‘The TUC backs all striking workers’.
Sean Vernell, of the University and College Union (UCU), called for a national demonstration and a body able to call coordinated strikes rather than ‘small isolated strikes where one workplace, one college, one university is left to fight on their own’.
He added: ‘It is war or wages.
‘While the government increases the defence budget it is clear that other budgets will go down and workers’ wages will be held down at the same time. We must come together as a movement to oppose higher defence spending.’
On Composite 9 on insourcing, Andrea Egan of Unison said contracts must be taken back from ‘the privateers’ who ‘treat their workers poorly and provide terrible services’.
Suzanne Abelho of Unite, an outsourced worker at a London hospital, said: ‘They have held down our wages. We want to be insourced and work again directly for the NHS.
‘I work with my hands, why are my hands good enough to do the job I do but not good enough to be treated with fairness?’
Congress votes today on Motion 77 in support of Palestine, moved by Artists’ Union England.
The motion will commit the trade union movement to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, an end to all arms sales and military cooperation with Israel, divestment from companies complicit in its crimes, and wide-ranging government sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
The motion cites Israel’s ‘genocidal assault since 2023, killing over 70,000 Palestinians’ and United Nations findings of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and pledges support for trade unionists who refuse to handle goods linked to violations of international law.
Amendments from Unison call for a permanent ceasefire, a ban on trade with the illegal settlements and suspension of the UK-Israel trade agreement; Unite would make the campaign ‘worker-led’; and the National Education Union adds settler violence backed by the Israeli army that has killed children and closed schools, extending the motion to education workers.
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