The next battle in defence of public sector jobs
will begin along a familiar front. A few months ago, with New Labour
clearly bombing in the polls, a move was made within the parliamentary
section of the party to force Brown aside,
ostensibly so that a new leader could be elected – heaving the stinking
carcass of the Blair/Brown years overboard. In spite of a handful of
policy wonks and bureaucrats putting their heads up in interest – David
Milliband had been jockeying for space at the front of the queue for
some time, while Alan Johnson was not without significant support –
no-one was willing to stick the knife in. Past experience has shown that
the person to do so usually writes themselves out of the leadership
contest in the process. Whether by accident or design this left the
Brown premiership isolated from a large section of the parliamentary
Labour party – with perhaps only Alistair Darling holding his nose long
enough to stand with him (when asked about the state of the economy as
the recession really took it’s toll shortly beforehand he had almost
responded simply by miming the placing of a pistol inside his mouth then
pulling trigger) – all the rumours pointed to Geoff Hoon and Patricia
Hewitt as being the architects of this entire affair.
From what can be
gathered it appears this Hoonite putsch in New Labour jostled Brown away
from the levers of power long enough for Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt
to make an abortive attempt to cut back at civil servant redundancy
payments via the Civil Service Compensation Scheme – no doubt in an attempt
to establish their credentials with big business and finance capital by
doing a particularly dirty job without expending any of the political
capital the Tories had available for the post-election cuts. But before
this could be completed, of course, both Hoon and Hewitt were embroiled
in the cash-for-influence scandal, where Geoff Hoon was secretly filmed
peddling his influence and contacts within the upper echelons of
government and policy making in order to secure his next vocation upon
leaving parliament. The scandal cut across this particular career move
of theirs in fairly inglorious fashion – leaving the members of the
Hoonite conspiracy in the political wilderness. The attempt to hack back
at redundancy payments was beaten back by strike action on the part of
about a quarter of a million PCS members across the civil service, with
the decisive blow being struck by legal action brought by PCS, with the
judicial review finding that the changes were invalid.
Once again, though, the new government has
turned its eyes towards the redundancy payments of civil servants. The
Tories reckon on saving more than the £500 million envisaged by the Hoonites
last year when the time comes to destroy over half a million jobs across the
public sector, a good portion of which is to come from the civil
service. In a letter written to civil servants in the DWP, permanent
secretary Leigh Lewis writes that "the broader context of this
announcement [the hacking back of workers terms and conditions] is
obviously the requirement for all of us in the Civil Service to play our
part in reducing the fiscal deficit [which really means that Mr. Lewis
would have us live in the abject poverty of the dole queue so the
bankers and capitalists can continue to spin money out of money]." So,
the government doles out billions in propping up the banking sector –
effectively privatising those billions of pounds of taxpayers money –
borrowing around £800,000,000 from Barclays and HSBC in the process and,
in order to make the repayments (including interest!) to these banks,
hundreds of thousand of public sector workers must now lose their jobs,
have wages and redundancy payments cut away thus leaving those who keep
their jobs to do the same overall amount of work with fewer staff, on
less pay, ultimately receiving pensions which will be cut by around 20%,
if we are permitted to retire before we die! Looking at this 20% cut in
particular, formerly the average pension for a civil service worker was
about £4,200 (£3,600 if you were female), that meaning if we were
permitted to retire at 65 we could subsist on our pensions up to say,
85, that is if we didn’t die of hunger for paying our heating bills, or
of cold for trying to feed ourselves that is – now we can have the same
atrocious standard of living up to around 80 when we will have no money
of our own to put food on the table, clothe ourselves or heat our homes!
As if to insult all workers across the civil service Lewis
continues: “Francis Maude has explained that the new
coalition Government wants to proceed by negotiation with the unions.
Specifically, it wishes to have a permanent and sustainable new scheme
which is both appropriate to current times and also gives greater
protection to less well paid civil servants. The Government has today
written to the Council of Civil Service Unions to invite them to discuss
this.
In order to secure the savings
required in a time of extreme economic pressure and to create the basis
for further negotiations in the light of the current deadlock, the
Government has reluctantly decided that it has also to begin a
legislation process.
Legislation would limit the
cost of future exit payments under the current (pre-reform) terms by:
·
capping all compulsory redundancy payments at 12
months’ salary; and
·
limiting payments for voluntary exits to 15 months’
salary.”.
So! The Tories want to
negotiate with us the least painful way of cutting their pound of flesh
from our collective body – but only after the knife has spilt our blood!
Let us not forget that these redundancy payments may well be the last
bits of money many civil servants will ever receive from an employer as
the wasteland of lifelong unemployment beckons. Let us be clear,
these jobs will never come back. Many parts of the country will return to the nightmare
days of the eighties and early nineties – after the waves of closures
and cuts under Thatcher. These Tories make wonderful noises about
compromise and negotiation with the unions, the elected representatives
of the workers, but they are prepared to force through their demands
regardless. The Tories know the stakes, and have every intention of ramming
this down the necks of civil service workers and anyone trying to tell
us that a deal can be reached on the basis of negotiation or compromise
(as the right wing in the PCS tried to in the recent gen sec and NEC
elections) are foolish, deceitful or both. Our only defences are our
unity of purpose, our collective organisation, not only through our
unions but also through our party and a grim determination to bear many
burdens. First, to the picket line, to hold off this assault on the
working class as a whole. Then , to the party – clear out the pro-big business careerists, bring
democracy back to our party, bring back the youth sections, the branches,
resolutions at congress! No cuts to the public services. Nationalise the banks under workers
control. An emergency program for the construction of public housing.
One restriction only on workers from abroad – they work for union rates.
Ultimately, we must have a Labour Party fighting for socialist
policies.
