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CPGB-ML members were in Manchester on Sunday (12 September) for the National Shop Stewards Network rally outside the TUC conference, and attended a NSSN fringe meeting held afterwards.
The rally called on the TUC to get serious about organising a fight-back against public-sector cuts, pay and pensions attacks, privatisation etc. So far, Brendan Barber’s laughable response to the proposed all-out assault on British workers’ pay, pensions and public services has been to call for a demonstration (not any industrial action) to be organised for … next March! Thus politely giving the government time to implement its cuts, slash pay and pensions and lay off thousands of public-sector workers.
‘Fair’ cuts? NO cuts! Take the fight to capitalism. (CPGB-ML leaflet)
Bob Crow and several other speakers at the rally made the point that blaming the Tories for the cuts, or putting hopes in electing a Labour government as the solution, was a total waste of time. The unions have been spinning that yarn for 50-60 years, he said, and this is where we’ve ended up as a result. He called for the unions not to get sidetracked into a pointless campaign to get Labour re-elected, but to work together now to coordinate strike action right across the public sector.
At the meeting later, many reps spoke about their experiences in trying to carry out useful work in the teeth of union leadership opposition. One of our party members pointed out that most of the union leaders aren’t interested in giving the leadership their members expect and deserve, but instead excuse their own inaction on the basis of ‘member apathy’.
She pointed to the leaders of her own union, Bectu, as a prime example of this – in particular how they fail to educate members about what the issues really are that face them and how attacks on their pay and pensions in particular might be combatted. Instead, the leadership tell members that they don’t have an interest in fighting against the introduction of the divided conditions that management continually use to erode the pay and pension position of all staff.
She called for the public-sector unions to take the lead in launching a massive campaign to mobilise public awareness and support for their actions in defence of conditions and services, since these actions are in the interest of all of us. This is particularly important given the current stranglehold of the corporate media on people’s consciousness, since those media are universally hostile to attempts by the working class to resist attacks – constantly seeking to demonise and divide workers and brand them as lazy, greedy etc.
Our member also made the point that as well as coordinating action (something that many reps there were calling for) between unions, so we strike together as much as possible, we should be breaking the anti-union laws en masse – since the current legal framework is explicitly designed to render industrial action useless in achieving its aim of defending workers’ conditions and protecting public services.
Judging by the applause that greeted this point in a packed meeting of union reps from all over the country, this isn’t an unpopular position as far as many rank-and-file members are concerned. It’s the union leaderships who are terrified of losing control of their asset portfolios, or losing their respectable status as important members of the establishment.
Meanwhile, at the TUC yesterday (14 September), a limited motion was passed against the anti-union laws. It was a composite of several, and was supported by Bectu, among others, following the adoption at the last Bectu congress of a motion calling on the NEC to work with other unions to build a mass campaign to DEFY the anti-union laws.
Typically, the resulting joint unions motion to the TUC was totally toothless. Its main substance merely being to call on MPs to back a bill in parliament that might stop the courts from being quite so harsh in how they interpret the current legal framework.
About the need to dismantle that framework completely there was nothing but a ritual reference. About the need to defy the laws in the meantime, there was not a dicky-bird, although there was a slightly coded call from Bob Crow for the unions to do just that.
Calling for consistency in industrial strategy Mr Crow added to rapturous applause: “It’s no good walking down to Tolpuddle and then next week debating whether to engage in civil disobedience to oppose the cuts.
“If it’s good enough for the Tolpuddle Martyrs 160 years ago it should be good enough for us today.”
We would add the following points:
In order for our unions to put up any kind of a fight in defence of pay, pensions and services, workers are going to have to radically transform these currently ineffectual institutions. Either pressure from below will see new, militant leaderships emerge, or the current leaders will find their members deserting in droves to set up new fighting organisations, willing and able to take on the employers head-on.
A vital part of this campaign to transform our unions is the campaign to break the link with the imperialist Labour party, whose suffocating control of most career trade unionists is responsible for their complete inability to act in their members’ best interests. Instead, they act as one more layer of policemen for the ruling class – controlling, diverting and dampening down the growing anger and militancy of workers on the shop floor.
Most of all, workers in Britain need to belatedly wake up and realise that while we continue to confine our struggle to aiming after the best possible conditions for selling our labour power under capitalism, we will never achieve job, housing, health, education or pension security.
All the concessions won when the welfare state was set up 60 years ago are being taken away; it will take a massive, coordinated and extremely militant fight just to get back to where we were then – and as soon as we are there, the whole process of attacking them will start again.
There is only one way to guarantee a peaceful, secure, civilised and sustainable existence for our children and grandchildren – and that is to get rid of this destructive, parasitic, polluting system and build a socialist society in its place.
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Members of the BBC pensions scheme called an urgent meeting of the scheme’s trustees on Tuesday night (14 September) in order to call them to account for not doing or saying anything about the BBC’s plans to dismantle the final salary pension scheme. (More on the BBC’s proposals here.)
It’s clear from the BBC’s approach that ‘solving the deficit’ is not its aim. Transferring the risk to pension scheme members and lowering the BBC’s pensions bill are the priorities. Along with helping the government by getting one major public-sector pension slashed before the main assault on all the others begins. There’s also a clear drive to get all current defined benefit schemes closed to new members before the BBC starts recruiting lots of new staff in Salford at the end of the year.
The meeting was dominated by a lot of hand-wringing from the Trustees, particularly Jeremy Peat, the Chair, who went on about how they’d been bypassed and couldn’t legally do anything about it. Yes, in retrospect, he said, maybe they could have been more vocal in defence of the scheme. Mark Thompson was aware they weren’t happy, he said, but there wasn’t anything they could do, since their legal advice was that the BBC was within its rights and there are precedents for this sort of underhand action.
One speaker from the floor pointed out that with the new proposed definition of ‘basic’ salary, BBC employees in the future could end up with a ‘salary supplement’ several times bigger than their ‘basic’ (ie, pensionsable) salary. Several people pointed out that Trustees are supposed to work in the best interests of the members and asked why hadn’t they done something – at the very least, a public statement condemning the move might have had a significant impact on the atmosphere surrounding the debate in the press.
The elected union-backed trustees had very little to say for themselves either. One talked about feeling ‘personally offended’ by the proposals, whilst the other merely ‘recognised’ that there really is an ‘enormous deficit’ about which ‘something’ would need to be done, etc. Much applause was received for the point that the defecit could be got rid of by staking BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm) and Television Centre as assets against the pensions scheme.
One very vocal campaigner made good points about the outrageous and underhand way the BBC is changing its definition of basic pay and asked the Trustees why they hadn’t taken a public position against that.
A Bectu branch rep pointed out that, in 2008, the BBC had signed an agreement with the Trustees (the Statement of Funding Principles, which remains in force) saying that if there was a deficit they would pay it off through increased contributions. This agreement is now being comprehensively broken. The Pension Trustees’ lawyer said that BBC management’s behaviour was not illegal. The Pension Trustees’ actuary and chairman refused to express an opinion when asked more than once whether BBC management’s behaviour was reasonable or ethical.
An NUJ rep gave an excellent speech based on detailed analysis of pensions regulation, in which he called on the Trustees to ‘fail to agree’ to the new ‘concession’ being offered by Mark Thompson in the hope of staving off a strike, which is a very poor Career Average proposal, but which, unlike the other changes being proposed, would have to be approved by the Trustees in order to be offered at all.
Before the debate closed, another Bectu branch rep made the following points:
- All the emphasis on the lack of legal avenues is just aimed at demoralising us.
- It’s not surprising that we are legally powerless, since it’s been clear for some time now that the courts are colluding with the government and employers in enforcing a concerted attack on pensions across the board.
- The BBC’s is not the first pension scheme to be attacked in this way, but we have found ourselves in the front line as far as the public sector is concerned.
- So the real question for the Trustees is: Are you going to help the employers/government to decimate the BBC scheme?? Will you need pensions yourselves one day? Do you think it’s ok for us to be denied ours?
- We don’t need you to be having a ‘strong word’ with Mark Thompson over a cup of tea or a glass of sherry; we need a public expression of support from you, denouncing the BBC’s attack and coming out strongly in our defence. (Much applause for this point!)
- You’ve complained about being ‘bypassed’ by the BBC; but it seems to us that you’ve LET YOURSELVES be bypassed. It’s not too late to do something; are you going to continue in the same way?
- No matter what the legal advice is, no matter what the BBC management says, WE are going to be fighting in defence of EVERYONE’S pensions; in defence of the right to a dignified old age.
- When we do that, the media will try to demonise us. They’ll ask the public to forget about £850bn to the banks and try to brand us as ‘greedy’ for upholding our right to a pension we can actually live off.
- So the real question is, are the Trustees going to help us in that fight or not? (More applause)
Overall, the feeling of the meeting was extremely clear, reflected in the unanimous vote calling on the Trustees to oppose BBC management’s proposals. Some of the Trustees (including the chairman) expressed their personal opposition to the proposals, and it’s at least possible that they may now be more forthright in expressing that opposition either publicly or privately – they have a meeting with Mark Thompson in the near future.
For reasons that are totally unclear, the members present were refused the right even to discuss an alternative/supplementary (and much more militant) resolution that over 100 members had signed in the days before the meeting. The Trustees claimed it was against the rules of the meeting to discuss it without prior notice (of some unspecified period). But in fact the rules of the meeting say nothing about this at all.
The motion that was passed at the meeting was as follows:
This meeting of members of the BBC Pension Scheme calls on the Trustees to perform their duties to protect the benefits of the members. Specifically, we call on them to oppose the BBC’s plan to reduce the eventual value of contributions already made to the Scheme.
But the tenor of the meeting overall was far stronger and the Trustees went away in no doubt as to how the members felt about their performance thus far.
