Further examining the leading role of the working class and the perspective that only it can save the day

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Further examining the leading role of the working class and the perspective that only it can save the day

5,000 Nursery Workers Demonstrate

London Political Forum:
The Struggle for a Living Wage

Recent figures for manufacturing has shown that it employs only 14% of the workforce now and the union amicus describes the situation as "meltdown". It believes that at current rates there will be no manufacturing jobs at all in 25 years.

How important then is manufacture and what implications does it have for the working class as we know it? Can we indeed view the working class in the same way as before?

Manufacture at the outset of the industrial revolution has itself changed. Production has been revolutionised many times with the use of machinery and we have seen the effects of the technical and scientific revolution on production with electronics and computer technology in the forefront. Manufacture has seen the loss of many kinds of skills and jobs even from the time of the introduction of the electric lamp up to robot technology. However, what was characteristic of the 1990s after the Thatcherite agenda was the so-called "jobless growth", where despite a temporary upturn in the economy, more jobs were lost than were created. In the present period when whole sections of industry are being decimated, the scientific and technological revolution itself is being used as a factor against the workers and is intensifying the crisis further.

Whereas modern industry was created on the foundations of conquest, plunder and slavery in the colonies, together with the forcible uprooting of the peasantry at home and their treatment with the utmost violence and exploitation to be moulded into the modern proletariat, the present period of imperialist globalisation is advancing with millions being thrown out of work with the movement of capital and the destruction of the manufacturing base, while wars of annexation and the devastation of the people of whole continents are occurring. The state itself is playing a leading role in implementing these anti-human, anti-social mechanisms. Production for the needs of the people is not spoken of but only the need to compete in the global market, and destruction of the productive forces is the result.

It is the working class which has suffered the most from these developments of neo-liberal globalisation not only from the direct onslaughts on the industrial workers, but from the denial by government that workers have any independent rights and interests at all and the pressure to de-class the society as a whole, which is ideologically disarming the workers and other sections of the people. Those that benefit from neo-liberal globalisation are but a tiny economic and political elite, but they are attempting to shape the world according to their own image and outlook. Even then, they do not have a coherence and in competing with each other are also causing devastation and wars. This leads to further destruction of the productive forces and overproduction at one pole with famine and destitution at the other.

One aspect of the production process is the discipline it brings to the class. The overseers and demands on the workers exist at the point of production and the class battles they have to wage survive along with their unity and organisation. Where are we to look now? Is it the office workers, bank and insurance workers, shop workers, designers, civil servants, or the workers in the service sector? The fact is that the majority of the population is being drawn into the struggle against the withdrawal of government from its responsibility to society. This growing realisation is facilitated by the fact that the mechanism of capitalism and imperialism is giving rise to an ever larger-scale integrated and interdependent system of production and exploitation on a global scale. It is this social environment that is leading to the demand that the people themselves should become the decision-makers, as the rich become richer and the poor poorer.

Nevertheless, the answer to the question as to who is to lead society out of the crisis must still be that it is the working class, and that without this leadership the socialist outlook of the majority cannot advance. The working class and its independent programme remains at the centre of the forward march to a new society.

Thousands of Scottish nursery nurses took to the streets on June 24 to protest against poor pay. They are demanding an increase of up to £4,000 a year to reflect current workloads and increased extra responsibilities. Nursery nurses are paid an average of £13,000 a year. Around 5,000 staff walked out of council-run facilities in the biggest protest since the dispute began in May. Many of the centres were forced to close as workers travelled to Glasgow to stage a mass rally.

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities had proposed a job evaluation scheme to measure workload.

The national rally was described by Unison as the culmination of the "first wave" of its ongoing campaign for better pay and conditions, which began in May and has seen a number of well-supported walkouts.

Last week 2,000 nursery nurses from central Scotland, Dundee, Fife and South Lanarkshire came out on June 17, followed by other strikes in Falkirk, Stirling, Dundee, and Perth & Kinross, who stayed out for two further days.

"It is increasingly frustrating that Scottish employers seem prepared to accept continuing disruption to young children’s education rather than making a fair offer to deal with the unfairness of nursery nurses' pay and responsibilities," said Carol Ball, chair of Unison's Scottish nursery nurse working party and a nursery nurse in Glasgow.

At its meeting on June 25, the London Political Forum discussed the important issues of workers defending their right to a living wage – and to a pension when they retire which also respects their right to a livelihood.

Three contributions initiated a discussion which highlighted the problems low paid workers experience. As well as the challenge of surviving on low pay, with poor terms and conditions of service, was added the fact that such workers – porters, domestics, cleaners, ancillary staff – are often employed by private firms where services necessary to ensure hospitals operate efficiently are severely curtailed in the drive to guarantee profits. The struggle of these workers to defend their livelihoods was giving rise to many campaigns both to oppose the effects of the privatisation of NHS services and also the driving down of wages and conditions – which affects all NHS workers – those on full time contracts or those employed by agencies or working for private firms. As a result with the many campaigns to defend workers’ rights the question of what constitutes a living wage was being put on the agenda, together with the importance of all staff uniting to defend their jobs and conditions. These were some of the issues highlighted by speakers with several years’ experience working in large hospitals.

The experiences over the past few months of a group of low paid workers at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London showed that in pursuing a wage claim these workers had become more organised, unionised and confident and prepared to make sacrifices – often at great personal cost – in defending their rights and placing on the agenda important questions of how such services should be delivered. Their campaign, which is ongoing, has included strike action and collaboration with local community organisations, and other trades unions. A significant result of their campaign and others like it has been the transformation of the debate form demanding a minimum wage to calls for a living wage – an important distinction generating recognition of the need for workers to also defend their pension rights, and a society that meets its members needs to health, childcare, education and affordable housing, for example.

A recently held Stop the War Coalition Activists conference had been attended by participants at the Forum and it was announced that the People’s Assembly for Peace was to be reconvened in August. A call to the convenors of the Assembly and the anti-war movement had been made at the last meeting of the Forum. Its aim was to strengthen the Assembly by, amongst other things, empowering delegates to set the agenda to develop the Assembly as a tribune of the people which embodies the people’s will for peace.

The Forum agreed to consider the conditions faced by young workers, in the context of the youth themselves taking control of their future, at its next meeting to be held on July 23.