24th April - Pay, pensions and 'public services, not private profit'

This Thursday, thousands of teachers, further education lecturers, Department of Work and Pensions (Jobcentre Plus) staff and council workers in Birmingham are going on coordinated strike action. The action will take place on the same day not just to maximise the impact and pressure on the Government and other public sector unions, but to reflect the fact that the issues all these workers face are similar and linked.

Teachers are striking about the insulting pay offer, but are also angry about high and increasing workload, the privatisation of education and performance related pay. As the strike bulletin of the grassroots campaigning organisation 'Classroom Teacher' points out, "The Government wants us to carry on working ourselves into the ground meeting their targets when the best they can offer in return is year after year of below-inflation pay awards."

Further education lecturers have their own problems with pay. It seems likely that the Communication Workers' Union will ballot for strike action soon over Royal Mail pensions.

Staff in the Department of Work and Pensions are staging action on a number of issues, including pay, privatisation and brutal job cuts.

What links all 4 actions is a generalised assault on public services and the workers who day after day keep them running, despite the dead-hand of Government bureaucracy and targets, and crass and exploitative management. The New Labour government is trying to privatise and marketise public services, just as the neo-liberal faith it slavishly follows is crashing and burning in the wake of the global credit crisis and economic slowdown.

We support the strike action. With real inflation running at well over the official inflation (a ludicrous 2.5%) the Government dishonestly peddles, the pay offers to public sector workers means a decline in standard of living, and more and more workers struggling to make ends meet. In addition to this, the Government continues to claim that public sector pay rises are inflationary, a flat out lie, as admitted by most economists, many of them no friend to workers.

It is critical that this Thursday is not the end, but a stepping stone to future action involving all public sector unions. United action around the banner of 'public services not private profit', but encompassing other issues common to most public sector workers such as pay, pensions, workload and bullying management would be the best way to fight back against the Government, who won't rest until every public sector worker has their pay, pension and morale crushed, and every avenue of opportunity for private sector vultures to make as much money out of public services has been explored and exploited.

Join us on the picket lines and at the rally at St James Park, Exeter at noon!