gathering strength in the civil servants union PCS. The Independent Left is standing in the national executive and Department for Work and Pensions group executive elections.
It argues that the union must organise much more civil service wide action on pay, jobs, pensions and privatisation.
Union Over 200,000 bers showed their
took muscle in a wellsupported strike industrial on January. action against Over 200,000 took industrial action privatisation, against privatisa- pay cuts and tion, pay cuts and
compulsory compulsory redundancies. redundancies
Yet the fear in union ranks is that this success is not being built on -that members in different government departments will largely be left to fight their own battles.
It is clear New Labour wants confrontation with the PCS by its recent decision to make 35 staff compulsory redundant in small departThe union argued that in a civil service 500,000 strong there must be alternative employment for them. However ministers pressed the larger departments.
Unfortunately the PCS has done too little in the last few years to oppose the 100,000 civil service job cuts proposed by the government. Already 20,000 posts have gone in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Actions by members in different civil service departments against poor pay and
privatisation have not been coordinated. As a result, the government recently announced a 2% limit on pay rises for civil servants and the service's largest privatisation ever -of over 10,000 jobs in the Ministry of Defence.
In the new pay round there is little sign of the PCS bringing members together around a single national claim.
And the union, by signing up to a new two tier pension scheme, has also allowed the government to get away with divide and rule tactics on that front.
There is now a race against time in union ranks to force the PCS leaders to unite members and link their struggles right across the civil service. Last month we reported on the attacks by UNISON's bureaucracy in the South West on left activist Tony Staunton. His suspension continues and he still needs support.
At the other end of the country, fellow SWP member Yunus Bakhsh is under a twopronged attack from both management and his own union - including some who have had pretensions to be on the left.
Last August, Bakhsh was involved in a major campaign against cuts in services by the Tyne and Wear NHS trust that employs him. In September, following anonymous allegations against him, he was suspended from his job as a nurse.
His union branch, North of Tyne UNISON voted to ballot for industrial action in October to defend him - and are still waiting to this day for this to take place. Instead the branch, which is facing an imposed merger with two other branches, has been put into administration with a full time officer acting as branch secretary.
In the meantime Yunus himself has been removed from all elected positions in the union. The Northern Regional council meeting the following day on January 17 was prevented from discussing the issue and observers from the branch were asked to leave the meeting.
On January 29 a lively picket of more than 50 supporters took place at St Nicholas' hospital where Yunus appeared before an investigatory hearing. This was despite a campaign from management to make it as difficult as possible for people to attend.
Intimidation from within the union continued with full time officers taking photographs of those on the protest - action which has resulted in robust criticism from the Newcastle engineering Amicus branch. Yunus Baksh - caught in a pincer movement between Trust bosses and to silence Yunus by collaboration between management and trade union officials is allowed to succeed, this will undermine every other battle to defend our jobs and services. succeed in defeating the candidates of the bureaucracy for the main regional council officers. the incumbents and their supporters have again managed to hang on to the positions with a similarly small margin.
However that didn't mean the top table
service. UNISON bureaucrats and pseudo-leftists
Activists within UNISON and on the left in the North East understand that if the attempt
In the meantime, the left in London did not
The left had been defeated in 2006 and
07958 171 205, as when it came to policy questions the meeting voted left.
It decided to send a motion to national conference calling for a national demonstration in defence of the NHS
It was also highly critical of the fact that all we were being offered in London on March 3 was two-hour rally in Friends Meeting House. Instead its want to supplement the NHS Together event with a march making visible the support of London's trade unionists for our health
After the platform supporting the motion with qualifications nine days ago, not a finger has been lifted to tell anyone anything.
Instead the emphasis has rather been on lambasting the four branches that organised a meeting on the afternoon of regional council to discuss strategy in the Local Government Pension Scheme dispute.
They did so in the wake of the service group executive deciding on January 10 to delay any ballot for industrial action for four weeks. Subsequent events - i.e. the decision to further delay action proved the branches were absolutely right to want to discuss strategy in the run up to the special conference on March 6.
But the bureaucracy got its knuckles rapped when the meeting referred back the section of the regional secretary's report that dealt with the pensions dispute, and supported the branches calling the meeting. Contact: The Defend Yunus Bakhsh Campaign, c/o 46c Lawe Road, South Shields, Tyne and Wear NE33 2EN. Phone [email protected]