United 24th September strike success
by Richie Venton, SSP workplace organiser
Public services ground to a halt on 24 September, as nearly 200,000 council workers across Scotland walked out in anger at low pay.
Every area of the country reported at least 90 per cent success – with many areas seeing even more solid action than in August. A few extra scabs here and there were more than compensated for by larger, angrier pickets in most areas, as workers vented their fury at the broken promises of an improved offer from CoSLA.
As Angela from West Dunbartonshire told the national rally in Edinburgh, “We don’t want to be on strike, we want to be back doing the jobs we are good at. But we have no choice. CoSLA’s offer of 2.5 per cent is just not acceptable with rising prices for food, fuel and housing. Get back round the negotiating table and give us a decent pay rise!”
Bin collections were cancelled, schools and nurseries closed, many day care centres shut, and virtually every major council building empty – bar the odd over-zealous manager or non-trade unionist who insisted on sitting idle as others fought for their future pay.
In a few councils – such as Borders and West Dunbartonshire – council leaders insisted on keeping schools open, in flagrant breach of health and safety. In others, the strikers’ unions – UNISON, UNITE and GMB – appealed to the teachers and won complete closure for the day.
The strike embraced all grades and categories of workers, united in common purpose; some reasonably well paid coming out in solidarity with their lower paid colleagues, others fighting for financial survival.
As Colin Turbett, chair of North Ayrshire UNISON told me, “The lowest paid workers were the backbone of the action. They are really angry at the lack of improvement on the 2.5 per cent. Many of them are so furious that they simply ignored the exemptions from strike action that the unions had agreed!”
Building on the shoulders of this united strike, UNISON is now calling national selective action of groups of workers throughout October. The first batch will be Call Centre staff for a week, beginning 6 October.
Scottish Socialist Party member Stephen Smellie, who is on the joint
union campaign group coordinating the national action, told me:
”These are mostly low-paid workers, mainly women, who have never been
on national strike action as a group before. "That is why I suggested
a conference/rally of them during their week-long strike, to get a real
feel of the issues they face and help them fight for those through the
union after this battle has been won.”
Other groups have been identified for national action the subsequent two weeks. The GMB is pursuing an overtime ban, which all three unions are discussing.
The break-up of Labour’s historic fiefdoms and the unique combination of political forces that now run councils, CoSLA, Holyrood and Westminster makes political campaigning alongside industrial action even more critical than usual.
Union leaders who are up to their neck in New Labour denounced Alex Salmond at the Edinburgh rally and at local picket lines – rightly demanding that he stop getting into bed with Donald Trump and the bankers and start siding with the council workers. Matt Smith, UNISON’s Scottish secretary, called on Salmond to “protect that other great Scottish institution, local government, in the way he has declared he wants to protect HBOS.”
All good stuff, which highlights the need to pound the SNP government into conceding extra funding for a decent pay settlement. But aside from the rank hypocrisy of Labour politicians and their trade union loyalists denouncing the under-funding by the SNP – after decades of under-funding, vicious cuts, privatisation and anti-trade unionism from New Labour at council, Holyrood and Westminster levels - this does also put New Labour council leaders on the spot. Let them put their money where their mouths are, take a clear public stand beside the unions and fight for the unions’ full, modest claim for 5 per cent or £1,000, whichever is the greater.
The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently fought for funding off Holyrood and Westminster, Labour and SNP governments, to match the unions’ attempts to catch up with inflation. We have advocated inside the council unions that members who are not on selective strike action this month should be consciously involved in lobbies of local council meetings all over Scotland; pickets and delegations to councillors’ surgeries to enlist their support or expose their lack of support; and for the selective strike action to target council leaders’ areas, to help bring home to the public in their wards just what this battle is about.
Alongside the current ballot of 250,000 civil service workers for strikes against pay cuts, the besieged governments of Labour and the SNP can and must be forced into conceding decent pay through a mighty combination of industrial and political action. And if the October month of action still doesn’t shift them, further escalation may be needed, including national all-out strikes for more than one day.