The Austerity Programme Can Be Defeated!

Workers’ Weekly Internet Edition salutes the many thousands of public sector and public service workers who are taking action on July 10 in defence of their standard of living and to demand that the government stops dictating and enters into meaningful negotiations over pay, pensions, conditions and security of employment and security in retirement.

These striking workers are fighting for everyone, for all working people, for the public good. They are saying that enough is enough. They are representative of a rising tide of struggle against the fraudulent “austerity” agenda pursued by the Coalition government.

The Cameron-Clegg government has been showing utter disregard for the concerns and conditions of the people. This is doubly insulting since not only does the government ride roughshod over the concerns of the people, but the ruling elite refuses to recognise that it is working people themselves, in manufacturing, in services, in the public sector, that are the creators of the wealth of the country. This wealth is being squandered to enrich the elite, not to invest in the national economy. Social programmes are being attacked, there is a non-stop ideological barrage against the poor and vulnerable, and public service workers are being made the scapegoats for the imposition of monopoly right over public right.

The striking workers on July 10 are saying No to the low-wage agenda and austerity programme of the Coalition. What is at stake is not just a fight for fairness at work. The way the whole economy is structured is the embodiment of “unfairness” for that matter. No, the issue is whose interests hold sway, who is dictating to whom, whose rights are being recognised.

The issue at stake is the demand for a new direction for the economy based on the recognition of the rights of the working class, who, far from being a “cost” to society or to anyone else, are the social force who through their labour create the new value which is the key to a thriving economy. Instead of all-sided economic development, the government is presiding over an economy in which this new value, this wealth, is claimed by the monopolies, and the workers are forced to take action, to strike, and ultimately to assert that they are the ones who show responsibility for the fate of society.

The crucial issue that all workers in struggle must address and are addressing is that they themselves are more than capable of providing the solutions to the issues facing the economy and to public services. To turn things around, the “austerity” programme can and must be defeated.

Defeat the Austerity Agenda!

Local government workers, teachers, civil servants and firefighters are among the sections of working people striking on July 10. Unions involved include the NUT, Unison, Unite, PCS, FBU and the GMB. Workers throughout England, Wales and the north of Ireland are taking part in a day-long protest over continuing public sector pay restraint and the government’s brutal determination to ensure the burden of the economic crises falls onto the backs of working people.

Since the government took office, ministers have either frozen public sector pay or limited pay increases to well below the cost of living, leaving local government workers, NHS staff, teachers, firefighters, civil servants and other public servants on average £2,245 worse off in real terms, according to the TUC.

The TUC points out that council employees and workers across the public sector are angry and upset that the government is set to keep the lid on their pay – with the prospect of pay increases below the cost of living until at least 2018.

With over 450,000 workers in local government earning less than the living wage, many low-paid workers will have taken a difficult decision to lose a day’s pay this week, says the TUC. But with ministers failing to listen to their concerns, they – and other public sector workers – feel that there is no other alternative open to them.

With the RPI measure of inflation currently 2.4 per cent – and likely to rise over the coming year – a combination of pay freezes and pay rises below the rate that prices are rising has left household budgets stretched to the limit, says the TUC.

The government’s mean-spirited approach to public sector pay has had a huge impact on the spending power of almost six million households in England and Wales where at least one family member works in the public sector, according to recent research published by the TUC.

Having struggled to make ends meet for the past four years as their pay lagged behind prices, the news that workers in local government and elsewhere in the public sector may have to wait another four years before their pay prospects start to revive will hit morale hard, says the TUC. The NUT points out that the teachers’ strike in March this year forced the publication of the workload statistics which had been collected more than a year earlier. It also forced the government to produce guidance for head teachers about the evidence demands they place on teachers and on equalities issues in pay determination. A key strand of the teachers’ campaign is to keep up the pressure on the Secretary of State is to communicate to politicians the concerns that teachers have.

Many unions have been campaigning for meaningful national negotiations on pay, jobs, and terms and conditions in the face of the Coalition government’s dictate.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “The economy may be picking up, but having paid the price in pay freezes and below inflation pay increases for several years there is to be no financial let up for town hall employees and other public sector workers. For them there are no shares to be had in the UK’s economic recovery. Instead several more years of penny-pinching and frugal living lie ahead.

“In local government – and right across the public sector – workers believe that ministers neither care about nor understand the pressures on their already stretched household budgets.

“Meanwhile the government seems happy for the public purse to miss out on billions through income tax cuts for the wealthy and corporation tax reductions for big businesses, yet says there’s no money to give a decent pay rise to struggling care assistants, nursery workers, dinner ladies and other local authority employees.”

Frances O’Grady emphasised: “Spending cuts, attacks on their pay and pensions, thousands of posts lost through redundancies – all have taken their toll on a demoralised public sector workforce. Public servants have understandably had enough – now is the time for ministers to start listening and to realise that it was never going to be possible to keep the lid on the public sector forever.”

For details of the July 10 march and rally see: http://www.teachers.org.uk/strikerally

The 66th anniversary of the coming into being of the National Health Service on July 5, 1948, has seen broad sections of the people in struggle to safeguard the future of the NHS, to reverse the drive towards privatisation and to uphold the principle that health care is a right which governments must guarantee.

There has been a constant battle over the years to safeguard the future of the health service. In 1948, the NHS as a component part of the social welfare state came into being in the context of the victory of the world’s people against Nazi fascism. The ruling circles at that time were compelled in this context of the progressive movements of the working class and people to ensure that elements of their vision of a new society would be established. Without, however, the establishing of the people as sovereign and enshrining their rights as fundamental in the running of
society, the stage was set for an ongoing battle over the future and principles of the NHS. This contradiction has continued to be exacerbated as the all-round crisis of society, with its basis in the private ownership of the means of production, has intensified.

It is well known how Margaret Thatcher put privatisation of public services and the programme of neo-liberalism in the first place. The crisis of post-war monopoly capitalism was met by putting the interests of the monopolies as the priority, and developed into the headlong pursuit of turning every aspect of society into a mechanism to pay the rich.

The fact that today wherever one looks in the country there are struggles to stop the dismantling of the health service, to oppose its privatisation and to save hospitals and guarantee health and social care is indicative of how compromised the right to health care has become.

As Workers’ Weekly Health Group pointed out last year: “Today, the fight to safeguard the future of the NHS, which our Party took up as its call fourteen years ago under a Labour government, has now taken a centre place in the political demand of the Workers’ Opposition and resistance of the people in fighting for the alternative. Such an alternative is not just a call for a change of policy … but must become a recognition by broad sections of society and especially by its organised forces of health workers and the working class movement that a new direction for society is needed.”

The fight to safeguard the future of the NHS is one of the most crucial battles in which the working class and people are uniting in action and are giving substance to their vision of a new society.

Safeguard the Future of the NHS! Health Care Is A Right!

As actions took place across the country to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the birth of the NHS on Saturday, July 5, a coalition of East London campaign groups also marched to highlight government cuts, which threaten the closure of 22 East London GP surgeries. Newham Save our NHS, Tower Hamlets KONP (Keep Our NHS Public) and Hackney KONP organised local feeder marches and a main “Save Our Surgeries” rally in Altab Ali Park. The rally followed a smaller successful march last month and a protest outside Whitehall on July 4, when a Save Our Surgeries petition with over 13,000 signatures was delivered to Jeremy Hunt at the Department of Health.

This government is reducing funding to some GP practices which will mean that Newham practices will have to make cuts in services and in some cases, even close completely. The Newham Save Our Surgeries campaign held a rally with speeches on July 5 starting at Stratford rail station before moving off on an open top bus to mobilise the community to participate in the campaign.

Elected mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman told the crowd at Altab Ali Park, a local symbol of unity and resistance, that the campaign could force ministers to intervene to save surgeries. Mr Rahman called on the government to find the money to keep practices open. “We need to open more surgeries,” he said, and promised to continue to “squeeze” property developers for section 106 planning funding for GP premises.

Jubilee Street practice partner and campaign leader Dr Naomi Beer said all political parties had failed general practice over the years, but that the 2012 Health and Social Care Act failed the people of the country. She condemned inaction by the “ineffectual quango, NHS England”, and the failure to listen and act by ministers. Dr Beer called on government immediately to reinstate Minimum Practice Income Guarantee (MPIG) and reverse the “disastrous effects” of the Health and Social Care Act.

Retired Newham GP and chairman of the Unite doctors’ section Dr Ron Singer said, “GPs have taken a magnificent lead in starting this fightback. We say restore the funding to practices and restore quality to practices by giving them adequate funding to do their job properly.” Dr Singer said campaigners were drafting a pledge to ask general election candidates to commit to supporting expanded and adequately funded General Practice and the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act.

MPIG Cuts

Due to Government changes in the way General Practice is funded, some inner-city and rural practices in England will suffer big budget cuts from April 2014. Minimum Practice Income Guarantee (MPIG) payments were introduced in 2004 to ensure that practices in deprived areas with a high turnover of patients, and practices in sparsely populated areas, had enough money to deliver high quality General Practice services. Now the government plans to phase out these payments over the next seven years.

All the evidence shows that one of the biggest factors affecting health is poverty. Phasing MPIG out means that East London and other inner-city areas will lose out, even though high levels of poverty mean that more people have serious long-term illnesses at a much younger age. The cuts also affect people in rural areas. It is a just demand that all surgeries be properly funded.

The Save Our Surgeries campaign is raising the slogan: “A threat to one practice is a threat to all practices!” As many as 98 General Practices are already feeling the strain. If practices are forced to cut back or close there will be more pressure on the rest, risking collapse of the whole system. If that happens, it opens the way to GP services being taken over by private providers such as Virgin or Care UK. At the same time, there are huge cuts to the whole of NHS funding with privatisation of NHS services.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt's decision to strip MPIG funding from GP practices and redistribute it through the global sum formula will have a catastrophic effect on the ability to function of those worst hit – and it is far from just a tiny minority who will struggle. Accountants suggest that as many as one in five General Medical Services (GMS) practices could become unsustainable under the MPIG reforms.

Funding swings threaten a fifth of GMS practices in England. One in five GMS practices could become unsustainable as MPIG funding is redistributed over the coming seven years. Practices hit hardest will lose up to three times the amount gained by those faring best from the redistribution, according to GPmagazine. Data from more than 200 GP practices assessed by specialist medical accountants Ramsay Brown Partners show that practices will lose up to £32 per patient from annual income by 2021.

(acknowledgements to Save OurNHS-EastLondon and the Save Our Surgeries
campaign: See more at: http://saveournhs-el.org.uk)

On Tuesday June 10, teachers at St Joseph's Catholic Academy in Hebburn, members of the NUT, had a one day strike as part of a planned rolling programme of strikes against redundancies which will seriously effect education at their school. About 35 took part in the picket which was well supported by teachers, parents, pupils and people in the community with people waving hooting their horns and taking leaflets. The strike was organised so that there were sufficient teachers so that those pupils that needed to were able to continue with their exam preparations.

St Joseph's was for many years one of the top performing schools in the local authority area of South Tyneside. Two years ago, in spite of the opposition of teachers and parents the school was transferred out of local authority control by the government drive to get schools to take up academy status. This was done under the guidance of Avec Partnership Ltd., a private company in the North East set up to guide schools into academies and to “help” run their affairs afterwards. The company failed to point out to the teachers that this would leave the school with a shortfall of £600,000 in its first year of operation. Why this has happened and where that money has gone has not been answered. As a result the school announced compulsory redundancies and the passing of that extra workload onto the remaining staff.

Immediately the NUT organised a successful ballot for strike action as well as entering into negotiations to oppose these redundancies. On the day of action it was reported that the school had withdrawn from imposing compulsory redundancies and opted for voluntary redundancies but that the union was requesting more detailed financial information so that the union could propose alternatives, which so far had not been forthcoming and to have further discussions about how teacher's concerns could be addressed.

Those concerns were expressed in a leaflet that if colleagues went that support discipline, manage poor behaviour, who have expertise to include the most vulnerable pupils, this would worsen discipline and support. Quality of education would also suffer as teachers would have two extra hour-long classes on their fortnightly timetables giving them less time to prepare outstanding lessons, mark students’ books and give useful feedback. They point out that figures from the Department of Education show that the average working week for a secondary teacher is 55 hours and that one extra hour of teaching requires a further one and a quarter hours of planning, marking and associated paperwork. So two hours extra teaching will mean five hours extra work and that pupils will not benefit from having tired and demotivated teachers.