Labour's war on public sector workers

Oppose three-year wage deals
by Richie Venton, SSP workplace organiser

New Labour Ministers have declared war on the wages of 5.5 million public sector workers, invoking the spectre of the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent, when millions went on strike against crucifying wage cuts from the Labour government of Jim Callaghan.
Chancellor Alistair Darling (of the rich) has declared his government's plans for 3-year pay deals across the entire public sector. This is allegedly to 'stabilise the economy' and 'defeat inflation'. The proposal is married to New Labour's oft-declared diktat that no public sector worker should be allowed a pay rise of more than 2 per cent.
Thus they continue to peddle the crude myth that wage rises create inflation when in truth wage rises are often the first victims, especially amongst the low paid.
The arguments for this measure are shot through with holes, peppered with crude political calculation to try and help New Labour cling onto power.
The very same week they threatened such multi-year pay limitations, official figures emerged that Retail Price Inflation is up to 4.3 per cent - higher than the previous month. The government is seeking to dodge that inconvenient fact by fiddling inflation figures down to the lower Consumer Price Index.
But anyone who eats, heats their home or lives in a house knows that the cost of living is letting rip, and that wages are failing to catch up.
Announcements of 17 per cent (£1,000 a year) hikes in the price of electricity and gas come hot on the heels of the price of a litre of petrol breaking through the £1 barrier, and an escalation in the cost of food, by the biggest rate in 14 years.
A quick stroll round your local supermarket will tell you that prices have risen far more than the 2 per cent Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling want to suppress wages to - and far more even than the official inflation figures.
New Labour hope the imposition of their three-year deals will prevent industrial action for inflation-linked wage rises this side of a Westminster election, which must be held within that time-span.
They are aware of the looming economic storms blowing across the Atlantic from the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.
They have been jolted by the Northern Rock disaster, where they happily bailed out profiteering bankers to the tune of £25billion, so that some new profiteer can be seduced into buying it; a case of temporary nationalisation to prop up the profit-crazed banking system.
But Labour want the working class to pay for a crisis not of their making.

The credit crunch adds to the pressure on working class families who have staved off catastrophe through several years of extended credit, paid for in exorbitant charges to the robber banks.
So the growing pressure to improve wage deals to try and catch up with inflation is the real picture - NOT the myth that wage rises CREATE inflation. Workers are the victims of inflation, not the creators of it.
Already, workers are falling behind, as evidenced by recent IDS figures showing that average pay rises for 2007 stood at 3.5%, whereas inflation stands at 4.3 per cent.
Leaders of both the GMB union and the Police Federation have rightly asserted that there is absolutely no evidence that public sector pay is key to inflation.
In fact, public sector pay rises are lagging behind the rest of the economy, with increases at their lowest since May 1998.
As the GMB union leader Paul Kenny rightly put it, "Can you tell me what the price of a litre of petrol is going to be in two years time?"
The stark fact is that under a capitalist economy, where private profit is the central motivator, the government cannot hope to control price rises - but they do have the power to hold down wages, especially in the public sector. Provided the unions let them get away with it.
This was the central lesson of the 1974-9 Labour government fiasco, which imposed pay cuts across public and private sector jobs, whilst inflation ran riot.
In 1978, pay was restricted to 5 per cent whereas inflation was well above 30 per cent. That crude wealth transfusion from workers to bosses, from the poor to the rich, is what triggered the explosion of anger manifested in the mass strikes of the lowest paid in the Winter of 1978-9.
Whether New Labour's new version of a very old idea is allowed to happen, or whether workers across the entire public sector are organised and united in action to resist the wage-cutting 3-year pay deal scheme, very much depends on what leadership is offered in the unions.
Workers have plenty of direct experiences of New Labour's multi-year pay deals.
Low-paid NHS workers have just suffered a pay cut with a phased rise of 2.5 per cent over 2 years in England and Wales.
Prison officers are up in arms at a similar form of pay cut, and further enraged by the recent annoucement by New Labour that they are re-imposing the ban on their right to strike which the Tories had in place previously.
The Police Federation are demanding the right to strike - denied them these past 90 years - and holding demos outside Westminster, because of the government's phased pay award.
Currently civil servants in the Department of Work and Pensions are striking back against an imposed 3-year deal that means 2 per cent in 2007, zero rise in 2008 and 1 per cent in 2009.
The lowest paid of these workers earn just 24 pence above the government's derisory minimum wage.
Of course, pay limits below inflation are not applied to everyone under the glorious free market economy. Last year the bosses of the FTSE 100 top companies enjoyed 'pay' rises of 37 per cent ... to an obscene average of £2,875,000 (each, that is!).
And now those elite 'public servants' - MPs - are facing a quandary on how to disguise their own greed and hypocrisy whilst demanding such severe pay limits on 5.5 million other public sector workers.
Their Salary Review body recommends 2.8 per cent rise for the MPs. Gordon Brown and others are urging 'restraint' - that is, a 'mere' 1.9 per cent - so as to reduce the blatancy of their hypocrisy.
What he fails to remind the general public of is that 1.9 per cent on an MP's salary of £60,675 is a damned sight different from the same rise for civil servants on as low as £11,000, or the vast army of public sector workers on £15-20,000 a year.
Nor does Brown broadcast the fact MPs' pay has risen by 127 per cent in 17 years - compared to official inflation figures of 72 per cent in the same period.

The government's sweet talk about aiming at stability, at workers knowing what pay to expect in two years' time, is absolutely bogus. The government already has a shoddy record of reneging on such deals amongst NHS, local government, teachers and other workers.
Not even Gordon Brown can guarantee the levels of inflation two years hence - and he tries to deny the figures for last year!
So workers need the option of taking industrial action if annually negotiated pay rises fall short of the rising cost of living.

The need for united resistance across the entire public sector screams out at the union leaders, who agreed coordinated action at September's TUC conference.
The time has arrived to turn fine words into decisive action. The TUC, STUC and national unions should call immediate regional rallies and conferences of union activists from every public sector union to build momentum for united action to defeat the three-year deals. Even the threat of such unified action has paid dividends in the recent past, forcing big concessions on pension rights for civil servants, teachers and health workers two years ago.
And we all need to re-learn the lessons of the 1974-9 Labour government's wage-cutting Social Contract, which provoked the strikes of 1978-9.
Be warned. In the coming hard times, the government wants to share out the pain, but only amongst those at the lowest end of the payscale.


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