UNISON Conference Week – Class Struggle to Safeguard Public Services

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UNISON Conference Week – Class Struggle to Safeguard Public Services
Day Two of UNISON's National Delegate Conference

German Building Workers Widen Strike

Israel Pledges More Aggression and Occupation

UNISON’s national delegate conference is now in full flow in Bournemouth.

General secretary Dave Prentis addressed national conference delegates yesterday, urging the government to celebrate the hard work of the public sector. In his view, the time has come to judge the government on its promises to deliver investment and improvement in public services.

"If they would spend as much on real doctors as they do on spin doctors," he said, "perhaps all our health service problems would be solved."

The mood to carry out class struggle to safeguard public services clearly imbued the debates, reflecting the sentiment of the delegates not to surrender the initiative.

Conference resumed with a debate on pensions. Conference passed unanimously a composite motion Pensions – Future Provision. The motion noted that Britain is "heading towards a crisis in its pension provisions for the future". It called for a continued campaign for the "restoration of the earnings link and the protection of the relative value of the basic state pension and opposing the means testing of state pensions". The motion also called on the union to work with the Institute of Employment Rights and the National Pensioners Convention to secure better pensions. The motion opposed the whole trend of the government and employers to do away with final salary occupational pension schemes. In the debate a delegate pointed out that increasingly "employers are discriminating against new starters by not allowing them to join or giving them inferior schemes". Another pointed out that good schemes had shrunk from covering 5.6 million workers in 1996 to 3.8 million today. Then he said we are the ones who are blamed because we are living longer. A representative of UNISON's youth forum said that it was important to educate the youth to this problem and said we should "fight employers who continue to rob us of our future".

There then followed a debate on public services. Motion 7 moved by the General Secretary Dave Prentis said that the "future of our public services is at a critical point, with government committed to improving them after years of under investment, but increasingly choosing the private sector, not existing staff, as the solution to the problems". The motion repeated the six principles set out at the conference in 2000: 1) Democratic accountability; 2) Effective delivery; 3) Adequate funding; 4) Equality of access; 5) Fairness at work; and 6) Partnership.

The motion then set out the proposal to continue the Positively Public Campaign. Whilst the main motion was passed, several amendments, one of which called for the union to work with other unions for a national demonstration in the autumn, were defeated. Also, two amendments which pre-empted the debate on the political fund which called on UNISON to withdraw funds from MPs that supported the privatisation of public services were defeated. An amendment that called for the union to ensure that there was no deterioration in terms and conditions when a service was transferred from the public sector to the private sector was passed.

John Reid, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, then addressed conference. He started by warming up his audience with a humorous account of his appointment as Secretary of State. He recounted at the expense of the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how he started in the morning by defending Peter Mandelson to the media and then by evening he had taken his job off him. He then spoke of the castle he was given to live in and the butler that came with it and then of course there was the conversation with the social worker he met having a smoke outside of his bullet -proof car, who of course was a member of "your great union". Following the laughter he switched to more serious matters and went on to defend the government's record in northern Ireland praising the ordinary people and aiming his attack against sectarianism and religious bigotry. "If we are going to hate things" he said " let's hate the things that really exploit people – poverty", he declared hoping the applause would gloss over the centuries of brutal British colonial rule which has been at the expense of the impoverishment and even the starvation of the Irish people. Continuing his theme he defended the government's record on the minimum wage, unemployment, youth employment, GCHQ (still being referred to seven years on), and in the process he heavily qualified everything with numerous statistics on what he claimed to delegates that the Labour government had achieved. "Not enough – but can be done," he declared trying to win over any waverers in the audience. Then he passed off the shift from traditional Labour to New Labour by starting with the "sound economy" as the first thing that needed to be established; then there was the need to invest in and modernise public services on the basis of this "sound economy". Then he moved into the ideological sphere to try and ram this point home. This all required "radical change", and he became the radical politician when he explained: there are "two types of radicalism", the "subjective" and "objective". The "subjective radicals" are those that were always demanding that bit more than the "objective radicals" who secured the changes and could deliver – so it was easy for them. Theirs was "sterile change" he said, probably echoing something he had heard in the debate on public services. The "point is to change the world," he said, now suddenly plagiarising the famous words of Karl Marx for New Labour and using these words to try to wipe out any opponent. Alluding to Marx only to oppose Marx and finish off the public service "wreckers", he said, "Public services should not become the battle for a class war because it will effect mostly those who have little and we will all suffer." Extolling the importance of partnership, John Reid declared, "UNISON should engage with us seriously." He concluded by lauding the compassion of New Labour globally and particularly Tony Blair's interest in and "helping the African countries", glossing over that this new compassion masks the re-establishment of colonial relations all over again. Delegates applauded him – more than just politely for a clever speech – but New Labour will never stop public services workers developing their opposition and engaging in the class struggle to defend the future of public services.

In the afternoon there was presentation by the National Young members Forum and this was followed by an important motion on Developing the Young Members Organising Culture. Motions also followed on Putting the Members at the Centre of UNISON and other motions. The debate on the Political Fund was started but not yet concluded.

Germany's first nation-wide construction strike in over 50 years began on Monday. Workers on building sites are continuing to join the strike. About 50 more sites in the capital Berlin and the key cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Dortmund stopped work early on Tuesday, according to the IG Bau construction union's figures. About 9,000 workers at 550 building sites were expected to be involved in the strike during the day, the union said.

Union officials in Frankfurt said IG Bau members in southern Germany would be joining the industrial action on Wednesday. They said support for the strike was high and that no problems with strike-breakers had been reported.

The IG Bau construction union is seeking a 4.5-percent pay increase and has rejected an offer by employers of a three percent raise from September this year for the sector's 850,000 workers. "There has to be a better offer from the employers, and at the moment, I don't see one," said the head of the IG Bau construction workers union, Klaus Wiesehügel. "There's a storm brewing."

Bringing wages for construction workers in the economically depressed east up to levels in the west is one of IG Bau's key demands.

"I am all for sitting down at the negotiating table again," head of the building sector's employers federation, Michael Knipper, said. He added that "as far as minimum wage earners are concerned, we are prepared to improve our offer". "If 40,000 construction workers strike, that means euro 20 million (£12.8 million) a day in lost gross," Michael Knipper said.

The strikes come after talks involving a mediator broke down and the union called for a vote on industrial action that won the support of 98 percent of members who took part.

Last month, workers in the key electrical, engineering and metalworking sectors managed to secure four-percent wage increases by staging large-scale walkouts that lasted nearly two weeks.

The German building industry experienced a short boom with the help of government subsidies following re-unification of East and West but it has been in trouble since the mid-nineties. It is now in its eighth year of crisis, and the volume of construction contracts has shrunk continually since 1995. In 1995, investment in construction in eastern Germany had made up almost 30 percent of total investment. Tax benefits for new housing were cut back in 1996.

Around one third of the sector's workers have lost their jobs at one time or another in the last eight years and begun contracting alone or in groups, further increasing competition. The contractors association says that some 6,000 companies whose principal business is construction will go bankrupt this year. More than 600,000 of the then 1.5 million construction workers in Germany have lost their jobs since the middle of the 1990s. Cheap subcontract labour from countries like Poland and Hungary has contributed to the job losses, and the government imposed a moratorium in July 1997 on approvals for subcontracting from the central and eastern European countries.

Israel announced on Wednesday that it was once again to respond to any future suicide attacks by recapturing and holding parts of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Ariel Sharon further dismissed the idea of creating even a provisional Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority condemned the declaration as an open invitation to more violence. Palestinian officials said that it showed that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon wanted to block any international peace moves. The White House had no immediate comment on the Israeli response.

The move shows the contempt of US-backed Sharon for justice and for world opinion. It exposes the policy of Bush towards a Palestinian state as a manoeuvre which is based on denying to the Palestinian people their national rights, and maintaining US imperialism's global strategy in the Middle East.

No howls of protest have come from the British government, which is only too ready to condemn the suicide attacks by the desperate Palestinian people. In this, the government seems to find it impossible to make a statement distinguishing what is just from what is unjust, and is being abetted by the press which is condemning any sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people as support for "terrorism".

A statement released on Wednesday by the office of Ariel Sharon said that Israel would respond to future "terror" by "capturing Palestinian Authority territory", and these areas would be held by Israel as long as terror continued. "Additional acts of terror will lead to the taking of additional areas," the statement said. During previous offensives against the Palestinians, Israel had repeatedly said it has no intention of re-occupying Palestinian territories.

"The Israeli decision to reoccupy Palestinian territories and settle inside them represents an open invitation to the Palestinian people and to all Palestinian factions to practise all sorts of resistance against the occupation," Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to President Yasser Arafat, said.

"Any resistance to this occupation now will be legitimate and accepted by all Palestinians against the occupiers and the invaders of Palestinian sovereign areas," he told Reuters.

He added: "Security for the Israelis will not come while Israeli army occupation forces occupy Palestinian land and deprive Palestinians of their own security."

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said Sharon wanted to "end the peace process, destroy the Palestinian Authority, replace it with the (Israeli) civil administration and to press ahead with the occupation".

"This was what Sharon promised his electorate he was going to achieve, and he is doing it with security fences, intensifying settlement activity and imposing facts on the ground in Jerusalem," he said. "Sharon is trying to foil any international effort aimed at reviving the peace process before such an effort begins. Sharon is trying to abort every effort, even if it comes from US President George W. Bush."

On June 16, the Israelis also began work on the first 110-kilometre stretch of a fence that will eventually run more than 350 km from Salem to the Palestinian town of Umm Al Fahm. It is intended to separate Israeli towns to the west of the former "green line" – the pre-1967 border between Israel and the then Jordanian-controlled West Bank – from Israeli-occupied Palestinian areas. The whole fence will include tracking strips, roadblocks for cars, electronic identification equipment and fences, trenches and watchtowers.

Running from the northern tip of the West Bank to Megiddo, the fencing work is expected to last a full year. The overall plan is to separate the West Bank from Arab East Jerusalem, blocking East Jerusalem as capital of an independent Palestinian state. Israel maintains that the aim is one of preventing suicide and other attacks.

It is already being called a sign of "apartheid of the 21st century". The move effectively nullifies all the peace deals signed with the Israeli state. The fence will continue the encroachment of Israel into the occupied territories of the West Bank, where 42 percent of the land has already been effectively annexed by Israeli settlements.

Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Mussa has compared the fence to "a new Berlin Wall". The Syrian government daily newspaper Tishrin condemned the barrier as a "racist separation and an expression of the Zionist racism that governs Israeli policy". Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Israel of dividing Palestinian areas into boroughs and starting "a new apartheid system" worse than that in South Africa. "This will add fuel to fire," Erekat told Qatar-based Al Jazeera television on Monday. Palestinians have also complained that ancestral land has been usurped to accommodate the fence.

During a tour in the Ramallah schools on Monday to inspect the course of the final exams, President Yasser Arafat said: "This is a bold arrogant assault against the Palestinian People; we consider it as Zionist racist apartheid behaviour and we completely reject it and condemn it".