N30: Bristolians strike back against Con-Dems

Huge demonstration in Bristol today. ‎20,000 on Bristol march according to police estimates so likely much higher. Biggest demo in the city since 1932. Socialist Party leaflets calling for the TUC to set another date and continue the fight were snatched up in the thousands. John McInally of PCS went down a storm when he called unequivocally for a new workers' party...

4,000 in Exeter, 4,000 in Truro, 3,000 in Gloucester, 1,000+ in Bath and 2,000 in Taunton. 1,000 in Dorchester and even 500 in Torquay which is a first for that part of Devon. As one woman comment "the peasants are revolting!"

Pictures and in-depth reports to follow soon!

N30 Video: Hear the truth

November 30th: Day of Action Map

See this interactive Day of Action map for all events in the South West and beyond, courtesy of False Economy:

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/nov30/uk/all

Bristol: TV Licence workers to join November 30 strike

From CWU Website: http://www.cwu.org/news/archive/tv-license-workers-to-join-november-30-strike.html

Hundreds of workers at TV Licensing employed by Capita will join millions of public sector workers by going on strike next Wednesday, November 30.

This will be the fourth day of strike action that these members of the Communication Workers Union will have taken in a long-running dispute over pay. The majority of them had never been involved in any industrial action before Capita refused to increase a pay offer worth around 2.6%. Capita makes more than £1 million profit every day and last year gave the CEO and other senior executives a 17% pay rise.

Andy Furey, CWU assistant secretary representing Capita members, said: "There are many similarities between what our members are fighting for - a fair pay rise - and the dispute that public sector workers are in - seeking fair and affordable pensions.

"We both face powerful employers who say they can't afford more. In our case the truth is the company makes over £1 million profit every day and gives its senior executives generous pay rises, while in the case of public sector workers the costings by independent parties like ONS show that the government's changes aren't necessary for affordable funding. In both cases there are political and ideological forces at play.

"We're here to speak for people who being treated wrongly. We want to resolve this dispute through negotiation and I'm again appealing to Capita to return to talks to resolve this dispute before Christmas."

Picket lines Wednesday 30th November:

Bristol: 7:30 - 10:30am 100 Temple Street, Bristol, BS98 1TL

Strikers will join the public sector march from College Green to Castle Park in Bristol.

Staff in Bristol and Darwen, and a small number in Glasgow, work in call centre and support roles and will be on strike on Wednesday 30th November. Enforcement officers who work in the field are on strike from 4 - 9pm on 30th November.

Watch live video coverage of previous strikes at both the Bristol and Darwen sites onCWUTV.

Enough is enough! Make N30 the start of a fight to stop all cuts

The Socialist editorial, from The Socialist newspaper, 23 November 2011

This government of millionaires claimed that its programme of savage cuts in public spending would eliminate Britain's structural deficit by 2014-15. Now, as the Socialist predicted, David Cameron has been forced to admit that this is impossible.

The government's assertion that the private sector would fill the gap created by slashing the public sectorhas been shown to be the nonsense it always was. Instead the deepening of the capitalist economic crisis, combined with the surge in unemployment and fall in taxes collected as a result of the public sector cuts, has even raised the prospect of an increase in the deficit.

The Con-Dems, however, are continuing to cut regardless. Only the super-rich are getting better off in Cameron's Britain. In the last year alone directors' pay in FTSE 100 companies grew by 49%. The latest figures from the High Pay Commission show that the gap between the richest and the rest of us is now the highest it has been since Queen Victoria was on the throne!

Meanwhile, government cuts are destroying the lives of millions - of the young, the old, the sick, the disabled - and will mean a lower quality of life for the vast majority of people.

Enough is enough! The time is overdue to stand up and fight back. That is what millions of public sector workers are doing by taking strike action on 30 November (N30) in defence of their pension rights. This is the biggest single day of strike action since 1926 and is terrifying the government.

The government has told public sector workers that they must pay more for their pensions, work longer and get much less on retirement. They say that 'gold-plated public sector pensions are no longer affordable. But as one PCS member tweeted, Tory cabinet minister Francis Maude is set to get a £731,000 pension pay-out and an annual £43,825 pension, while the average PCS member gets £4,200 a year.

N30 is in defence of pensions, but it is also a powerful weapon in the struggle against all cuts. Workers are facing pay cuts, job cuts, having to do interviews to keep jobs that they have worked in for decades, as well as cuts to all the services they rely on. Three million workers on strike will provide a taste to the Con-Dem bullies of who they are messing with. Working class people have huge potential power when they are organised and have a leadership that is ready to fight to win.

The trade unions need to make it clear to the government that N30 is not a token strike but part of a determined strategy to win. The TUC must set the next strike date for further coordinated action - another 24-hour strike or stepping up to 48 hours to make it clear to the government that they are on to a loser. That should be in the next two months.

Further action should also be spread to the private sector. A discussion should be held on making the next 24-hour strike a general strike, including private as well as public sector workers. As a minimum a call must be put out for all industrial action - private and public - to be coordinated. For example, construction electricians are currently balloting over attacks on their national pay deal (with pay cuts of up to 35%) by construction companies who are lining up to receive government bailouts.
Other strikes

National action on the pensions can also be supplemented by strike action in areas facing specific cuts such as the over 21,000 HM Revenue and Customs staff who could strike over privatisation plans.

If a fighting strategy is to be implemented it is essential that decisions on the struggle are not left in the hands of the national trade union leaders. We demand that trade union members have democratic control of the negotiations at every stage.

Within the trade unions we need to begin to build fighting left organisations that struggle to ensure the trade unions fight in their members' interests. One demand of such organisations should be for regular elections of full-time officials and for them to be paid no more than a workers' wage. The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) also has an important role to play in bringing together militant trade unionists.

Coordinated strike action has the potential to bring down this rotten Con-Dem government. To succeed in doing this would give huge confidence to millions of workers. However, Labour coming to power would not lead to an end to the attacks workers are facing.

The overwhelming majority of Labour's funding comes from trade unions that are taking part in N30, but it does not represent trade unionists' interests. Ed Balls made it clear at this year's Labour Party conference that a Labour government would also cut public sector workers' pensions, demanding, just like the Con-Dems, that workers work longer, pay more and get less. At local level every single Labour-led council has implemented the Con-Dem cuts. Incredibly, not even one single Labour councillor has voted against a Labour council implementing cuts.

Ed Miliband showed which side he was on when he condemned the 30 June strike. To add insult to injury Ed Miliband was then photographed in parliament laughing over a cup of tea with Cameron and Clegg, while the pickets stood outside. Now he has refused to give support to N30 despite pressure even from the Daily Mirror not to criticise "carers, dinner ladies, council workers, NHS employees, teachers, Jobcentre staff and tax collectors [for] rebelling at being asked to pick up the tab for banksters' bonuses" by taking strike action.

N30 demonstrates the enormous potential industrial power of the organised working class. However, if we don't have a political voice as well, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. We argue that the trade union movement should begin to build a new party - a party that stands in the interests of the majority.

For the last 18 months the Socialist Party has participated in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) an electoral alliance involving leading militant trade unionists from the RMT, PCS and NUT. TUSC plays an important role, enabling trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to stand candidates against the pro-austerity consensus of the capitalist parties. However, the potential exists for this to develop on a far wider scale in the coming period. During the strike on 30 June, every call made for trade unionists to stand for election themselves as trade union 'anti-cuts candidates' was cheered to the rafters.
Programme

Even if trade union candidates were to initially stand on a limited programme - opposition to all cuts in jobs, pensions, services and benefits, and repeal of the anti-trade union laws - it would mark a major step forward. However, the struggle that public sector workers are currently fighting goes beyond those immediate issues, in reality it is a struggle against the consequences of capitalism today and therefore poses the need for a socialist alternative.

The economic crisis was not caused by working class people; it is a crisis of the capitalist system. The same bankers and financiers who triggered the crisis by gambling vast sums are now demanding that governments bail them out. Not just in Britain, but across Europe, governments are willingly doing the financiers' bidding.

A socialist society would be run in the interests of the millions, not the billionaires. For a start it would nationalise the banking and finance sector - not to prop them up and leave the bankers in charge like New Labour did - but to run them democratically to help meet the needs of the majority. However, that would only be the start.

Capitalism has led to enormous economic destruction. In Britain around 10% of wealth has already been lost as a result of the recession, due to factories and workplaces closing, resulting in 2.62 million and rising officially unemployed. That is why a crucial step towards solving the crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership in order to allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit.

Fair Pensions For All - All Out On November 30th

BADACA Circular: http://www.bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk/

23 unions are now joining the strike next Wednesday. Although the primary focus of the strike is public sector pensions, in reality millions of people wil be striking against the government's whole programme of cuts that threatens services and jobs as well as pensions. There will be a huge demonstration in Bristol. Make sure you're part of it. A flyer for the demonstration on November 30th can be downloaded from here. The front of the flyer makes a good poster. Print it out and stick it in your window. See latest updates here and on Facebook here.

Make sure you're on the demonstration and rally - assemble at College Green at 11am before marching to Castle Park.

If you can, go to the BRI for midnight on Tuesday/Wednesday to greet the first strikers as they leave the building. There will then be a candlelit vigil. Some people will meet earlier in the Zero Degrees bar in Park Row before going to the BRI - from 10pm in Zero Degrees

We will be handing out copies of Bristol Fightback on the march. If you can help with this please email admin@bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk as soon as possible

BADACA and unions involved in the strike have stressed to the local media that we see the OccupyBristol camp on College Green as part of our movement against government cuts. Wednesday's demonstration will help put the them even more in the spotlight. Please support them in any way you can. They have appealed in particular for: firewood, blankets, food, money, entertainment, volunteers, campers, arts & crafts materials & wooden boards. Go down to see them. Check out their FaceBook pages here and their website here. Call the camp information line on 07415 139 464. There is more information on the BADACA website here which will be updated regularly. Photos of the camp can be seen here .

While next Wednesday's strike is the most important step so far in the fight against the cuts, there are two important announcements that we need to be aware of - the government will announce details of more cuts for next year and Bristol City Council will publish its draft budget including major cuts to jobs and services from April 2012. BADACA will publish information on these cuts as soon as possible. Look out for this information over the next week or so and join us in the fightback.

On December 14th there wil be a lobby of South Gloucestershire Council, opposing their plans to privatise the Home Care service with the loss of 140 jobs. Please support if you can - details are below.

Kazakhstan: Free Georgii Epshtein!

At 11.30 this morning, Georgii Epshtein, a leading member of the Russian CWI, on a visit to Kazakhstan, was arrested by the police in the office of the “Leave People’s Homes Alone” campaign in Almaty. No explanation was given by the police.

He was first taken to the office of the immigration police of the Bostandykskii region, who refused to explain on what basis he had been arrested and has now been dragged before a court, where he has been charged with breaching the residency rules. It is highly possible the decision will be taken to deport him from the country. Although by law, a Russian citizen has to register with the police on their arrival, which Georgii did, there is no restriction on where in the city they can be at any one time.

Please urgently call either one of the following numbers to demand on what basis Gerogii has been arrested and his immediate release.

Aidis Dunshebaev – the Police inspector responsible for arresting Georgii – mobile number +7 705 555 79 39

Berik Dusenbaevich – Head of the Migration police in the Bostandyskii region +7 727 394 10 14

Or of course the Kazakhstan embassy in your country.