Industrial news

Tourists
looking down from the Castle saw history being
made
below them as Johnston Terrace was jammed with
clerks, cooks and cleaners,
teachers, librarians, radiographers, nurses,
lectures, bin men and women,
jannies, curators, students, thousands more of
good humoured but determined
public sector workers and their bairns
determined not to be “robbed of their
pension”, as I was told by a First Davison
Association (top management
union) picket at the court.

More than two million public sector workers took strike action yesterday. That amounted to a virtual general strike of the public sector. In terms of numbers, the action was bigger than the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979  – bigger even than the 1926 General Strike. Even The Financial Times, the organ of Big Business, surprisingly described Wednesday’s strike as “undoubtedly historic”.

On the eve of the 30th November  I, like many other public sector
workers in Worcester, was making sandwiches, filling flasks full of
coffee and digging out themal T shirts ready for cold picket lines.The
pickets were set up before sunrise at the hospitals in Worcestershire.

One of the biggest protest marches held on Nov 30 was in London with thousands of workers and students joining feeder demonstrations from various parts of the capital. These merged with the main protest through Central London from Midday – official estimates put the number on the march at over 20,000.

Here is a brief report from a London picket line – one of many which were held yesterday as part of the Nov 30 strike and protest.

800 public sector workers marched through Barnsley yesterday – and an estimated 4,000 did the same in Sheffield.

Nov 30: Report from Newcastle!

Around a thousand trade unionists marched thru the centre of Chelmsford in Essex in what must have been the largest such protest since the days of the Peasant Revolt!

Tomorrow’s Public Sector strike will be easily the biggest
strike day since the General Strike of 1926. In fact far more workers will
participate in the strike than on the first day of the 1926 General Strike.
Schools, Government Departments, Council Depots, Offices and Health Services
will grind to a halt as workers protest about massive increases in contributions
and cuts to their pensions.

The ballot results are now pretty much all in for November 30th -  here
is a summary (provided by the PCS union) of the various unions’ ballot
returns. Clearly the mood exists for a mighty struggle, not only on
November 30th but beyond. The TUC needs to take the next step and widemn
this fight out to take in all workers arounfd a 24 hour general strike.
The fight is not just over pensions; it’s jobs, pay and services – this
affects every worker in Britain and everybody must be involved in the
struggle against this government and the rotten system it defends at our
expense.