Camden and Tower Hamlets Strike Against Cuts

NUT members in Camden and Tower Hamlets took borough-wide strike action today to oppose education cuts.  Congratulations to everyone who organised and took part in this solid action.

Alongside national action on pensions, these borough-wide strikes have to be built on and developed across the country. Instead of leaving schools and central services to fight cuts and attacks in isolation, today's actions show that we can take united action across Local Authorities.

Schools were closed across the two boroughs and students and parents came out to join teachers and support staff on the two local demonstrations.

Alex Kenny speaks to strikers gathering to start the Tower Hamlets march

In Tower Hamlets, where UNISON members also took strike action, over 1500 members marched through the borough to a rally addressed by Mark Serwotka of the PCS.

In Camden, a demonstration of over 500 marched to Hamilton House, the NUT's National Headquarters.

The march finished with a rally including speeches from two General Secretaries: Christine Blower of the  NUT and Sally Hunt of the UCU.

Christine Blower welcomes the Camden marchers

The Camden Rally fills the Mander Hall at Hamilton House

I had the opportunity to speak to both marchers on behalf of the National Executive. I asked members at the Mander Hall rally to look around them and feel their strength, and to remember that inspiring feeling of power from the mass march on Saturday as well. As the cheers rang out and flags waved at the end of the rally, the growing confidence and enthusiasm to stand up to the Con-Dem cuts was there for everyone to see.

It's clear that, when a lead is given, trade union members are ready to respond. Both Camden and Tower Hamlets achieved 85% YES votes for action - Lewisham NUT has just achieved an even larger majority in a similar indicative ballot.

This Government may have thought that they were going to get away with their attacks, but now the unions are on the move. We have to use our strength to build united action - and press on until these cuts are defeated.

Half a million - and more - march against the cuts

What a demonstration! The hundreds of thousands of protesters that flooded onto the Embankment came from right across Britain to show their anger against the cuts.

The demonstration was massive - estimates are of between half and three-quarters of a million. It certainly took Lewisham NUT five and a half hours to finally reach Hyde Park. We saw Birmingham NUT finally make it at 5pm - six hours after the start.

Up to 200 Lewisham NUT members followed the banner as we started out from the South Bank to cross Blackfriars Bridge and join the back of the demonstration. By 2pm we weren't much further than Embankment tube station - where the march had set out three hours earlier - and there were still many, many more marchers waiting behind us!

Text messages and calls from teachers who hadn't made it to the South Bank and chance meetings along the route shows that we may well have had as many as 300 Lewisham NUT members on the march altogether.

 The last march of this size was the mass demonstration against the Iraq war - but this demo was different. It was a trade-union called event packed with thousands of trade union banners and flags.

 Now the urgent task is to harness the power of the movement - into co-ordinated strike action against the cuts to pensions, jobs and services!

Videos: 
Mark Serwotka at the Hyde Park Rally - "Imagine what it would be like if we didn't only march together, we took strike action together" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ns_aksx1Cc
Christine Blower at Hyde Park: "We're going to stand together, march together - and, if necessary, strike together until we turn round these cuts"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9cCkz5GU74 
Socialist Party - fantastic pictures showing the size of the demo - and a call for a public sector general strike to follow March 26 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn4bOtDkW_0
There's even me being interviewed by Flemish TV about how a 'decent middle-class family' is being hit by the cuts!! Thanks to the local mums who backed me up on fighting library closures! http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/mediatheek/programmas/journaal/2.14943/2.14944/1.989876
 

A Socialist challenge to our Labour Council to fight the cuts

The 12% vote for Ian Page in the Bellingham council by-election is a warning to Labour Councils making cuts that working people are growing tired of their excuses.

Labour 1100 51%
Tory  340 16%
Lib Dem 334 16%
Ian Page SP/LPBP 264 12%
Greens 100 5%
Turnout 22%

Lewisham Council is making £88 million of cuts over the next four years, slashing jobs and services. Labour councillors want to put all the blame on the Con-Dems. For now at least, that anger against this government of millionaires still guarantees a Labour victory – but for how much longer?

Lewisham Socialist Party – standing on a joint ticket with Lewisham People Before Profit – understood that most voters would want to punish the Tories and Lib Dems. But our message was clear – that you couldn’t trust Labour to resist their attacks. Voting for Ian Page, our anti-cuts candidate, was the best way to send a message to all the parties that a working-class area like Bellingham needed councillors who would fight for their community and against all cuts.

In a few weeks, our campaign secured a real base of support in a ward where we had never done any previous campaigning. We could point to Ian’s campaigning record as a socialist councillor in Telegraph Hill but Bellingham is at the other end of the borough. After this result, the other parties will have to recognise that we are force to be reckoned with right across Lewisham.

On the doors and the street stalls, there was growing support from local people to our anti-cuts message. Hatred for the Government was also mixed with anger for Labour councillors who were carrying out the Tories’ dirty work – slashing jobs, closing libraries and privatising children’s centres. The low turnout reflected a mood amongst many that they couldn’t trust anyone to defend them. But our 12% vote – close behind both Tories and LibDems - shows that we persuaded many others not to stay angrily indoors on election day but to vote for a real alternative.

While both the LibDems and Labour tried to present Ian as an ‘outsider’, it was the Labour canvassers in suits that looked most out of place in Bellingham. One Labour councillor was so lost that she had to come up to our stall for directions. ‘I’m meant to be meeting the Labour team outside the Housing Office’ she explained. ‘Yes, but you closed it’, came our reply – pointing to the boarded up office behind us!

When Ian finally finished on the doors, he realised he’d dropped the keys to his scooter. A group of lads came out of one of the houses to say they’d found them and taken them safely indoors. When they realised it was Ian, they explained their family had voted for him too! That’s working-class solidarity!

At the Town hall election count, Labour looked relieved but we were smiling. Lewisham’s Labour councillors know that trade unions and the community are already organising against their cuts. Now they will have to start looking over their left shoulders for a socialist challenge at the ballot box as well.

Join the March 26 demonstration! - A Report from the NUT National Executive

The NUT National Executive met a day after the Budget – but two days before it will be answered by a massive demonstration on Saturday. Executive members reported that coaches and trains were fully booked from all parts of the country – with trade unions having to turn people away because there is no more transport available! It will be a tremendous show of opposition to cuts – and boost confidence for the battles to come over pensions, jobs and public services. London teachers need to be there in their thousands!

A Budget for the wealthy – at our expense

Osborne is claiming that he presented a ‘budget for ‘growth’ – but the only ‘growth’ will be in the size of private sector bank accounts as the Government helps their friends by cutting corporation tax.

Teachers will see their income squeezed – with inflation rising, national insurance increasing, a two-year pay freeze, cuts to child tax credits and the higher rate tax threshold kicking in at a level that will hit many London teachers. That’s before they try to steal another £100 a month or so for increased pension contributions (the pensions loss calculator on the national NUT website will give you a personalised figure for this pensions robbery).

With less money in people’s pockets, fewer in work, less tax income and less being spent on public services, the Government’s policies will CUT growth, not promote it. Small wonder that, behind the rhetoric, the Treasury had to reduce their growth forecast for the British economy.

Work until you’re 70?!

The Budget also confirmed that the Government were accepting Hutton’s recommendations to make us pay more to retire older for less pension. In fact, they’ve gone further. They propose that retirement ages might be increased even quicker and higher than Hutton suggested – do they expect us still to be working at 70?!

Knowing that their proposals have no financial justification, they are also planning to fiddle the figures by altering the ‘discount rate’ used to work out the costs of the pension scheme. That could mean even more pension contribution increases – unless we defeat these attacks through united action.

UCU lecturers took strike action in defence of pensions this week. If – as I am sure it will – NUT Conference gives the go-ahead for our own national ballot after Easter, then we can join with them – and other unions – in united action to oppose Hutton’s attacks in June. Let’s get a huge majority in that ballot and follow the massive demonstration on March 26 with a massive show of strength in June.

Teachers who want to join the NUT to make sure they are included in the pensions ballot can join for no charge from April 2011 as long as they make a commitment to pay the 2012 subscription.

Support Tower Hamlets and Camden NUT Action

NUT members in Tower Hamlets and Camden will be making their response before Easter – with one-day strike action against cuts to education services in their boroughs on Wednesday March 30.  Both Associations won good majorities in favour of strike action. After all, ‘Unity is Strength’. Instead of leaving colleagues to fight cuts and job losses alone, Authority-wide action like this means we can stand together to oppose the damage these cuts will inflict on schools, teachers and our students. In Tower Hamlets, UNISON will also be taking action alongside the NUT. Do send in messages of support to Camden NUT: andrew.baisley@gmail.com and Tower Hamlets NUT: alex@elta.demon.co.uk

Teachers strike over workload and bullying

NUT members at Whitmore School in Hackney started a two-day strike today to oppose unacceptable workload.

Their stand against an aggressive management that seems to expect teachers to work themselves into the ground to keep up with their demands deserves the support of every teacher.

Whitmore's story is just one example of the pressures facing teachers and school across the country. Targeted by Hackney's Learning Trust for making insufficient 'progress', the acting Head has left and a new Executive Headteacher put in charge, extending his federation.

Instead of working together as a respected team, teachers are being weighed down by excessive marking demands, observations and meetings - without any clear limits.

Negotiations to try and resolve the dispute stalled with the management effectively suggesting that a 'reasonable work-life balance' was out of the question in a school like Whitmore. Yet this is a right for teachers, as is the directed hours breakdown and observation protocols that we are seeking.

I fear that management don't want to agree clear policies that limit the demands on teachers. Do they hope that overworked teachers will simply leave to be replaced by young staff that will be burnt out and replaced in turn in a year or so? That's a recipe for constant turnover and low morale, not for good education.

Parents speaking to staff on the picket line understood our concerns. One was appalled by the aggressive attitude of one of the senior managers stood behind the gates who told me that these were staff that would be struck off by the GTC for not doing their job! As one teacher explained - they just want 'more for less' - or another parent responded astutely ' it sounds like what happens under privatisation'.

Yes, like today's UCU strike against pensions (see Goldsmiths lunchtime rally below), these battles to defend our working conditions are also about defending public services against the managerial outlook of the private sector - and the actual privatisation of the public services as companies look to run services at the cheapest cost to themselves.

Many staff face similar problems as at Whitmore. It is to their immense credit that the NUT members there have not just walked away but stood up for themselves and taken strike action. They need to know that teachers admire their determination and courage.

Please send messages of support to robbunt@blueyonder.co.uk

There were also UCU picket lines at many colleges today - including at Goldsmiths University in New Cross. A lunchtime rally got good support from students and lecturers:

This is a nuclear disaster

UPDATE 16/3 22:30:  The chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned this afternoon that all of the water is gone from the spent fuel pool at reactor four of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing “extremely high” radiation levels.

There have also been the first reports of radioactive iodine and caesium traces in drinking water supplies in Fukushima.

LATEST 16/3 15:30: The EU's energy chief Guenther Oettinger has said that in the coming hours "there could be further catastrophic events, which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island". He told the European Parliament the Fukushima nuclear site was "effectively out of control". "The cooling systems did not work, and as a result we are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster." The French Government was one of several to advise their citizens to leave Tokyo as soon as possible.

Oettinger's office later isued a 'clarification' saying that 'he just wanted to share his concern' because his comments caused panic in the financial markets. 

Profits before safety once again.

***

News overnight from Japan must surely now shake even the firmest 'accident-deniers' from the nuclear industry into recognising that Fukushima is now the world's second worst nuclear disaster - with long-term consequences.

It seems that last night's blast at reactor no.2 was NOT another hydrogen explosion but a possible breach of the suppression chamber wall INSIDE the containment vessel. This is potentially a far more serious situation. Pressure has reportedly dropped in the suppression chamber - suggesting a crack in the containment vessel. If so, highly radioactive materials (in air or possibly in liquid) will be able to leak out.

Radioactivity levels have now risen significantly - numbers are no longer in MICROsieverts but in MILLIsieverts - a thousand times greater. Recommended maximum annual doses are around 10mSv a year - measurements of 400mSv per hour have been reported near the reactors.

Some operators have been evacuated, others are bravely staying on site to try and maintain water injection. However, there are too many different emergencies for the staff to deal with at once with the limited resources that they have at their disposal.

As a consequence, temperatures in the spent fuel pools have also risen as cooling has not been in place. A further hydrogen-ignited fire therefore broke out in the pool belonging to Reactor 4. Although this reactor is shutdown, the used rods can still generate sufficient heat to cause such an incident if cooling is ceased. These pools are outside the core containment and so radioactive material released by the fire will have risen into the atmosphere.

The previous hydrogen blast at Reactor 3 has left its spent pool uncovered. A fire here could release toxic plutonium into the environment if MOX fuel rods are involved.

So much for a localised 'Level 4' incident. The situation is dire.

For a socialist perspective from the region, read http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4929 'Earthquake could leave “tens of thousands” dead and nuclear threat'
and http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4931 'Disaster hits workers hardest' 

UPDATE: While news reports state that 'radiation levels are falling', the readings are still in millisieverts rather than at the lower microsievert levels previously being recorded. Kyodo News reports the following grim overview:
-- Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.
-- Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, vapor vented, damage to containment system, potential meltdown feared.
-- Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby.
-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused possibly by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water level feared receding.

FURTHER UPDATE 22.45: A second (or continuing?) fire broke out at reactor No.4 - presumably again from the spent fuel pool. Unlike reactors 5 and 6, where some rods are still stored more safely in the reactor vessel, reports say that ALL of the rods from reactor 4 had been placed in the spent fuel pool - this unfortunately increases the amount of radioactive material that could be released as a result of the fire.

Chernobyl veteran Iouli Andreev has suggested that the storage of so many rods so close to the reactor pointed to the Japanese nuclear industry putting profits before saefty. He also accused the IAEA's emergency team as being "a fake organisation because every organisation which depends on the nuclear industry - and the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry - cannot perform properly. It always will try to hide the reality". http://bit.ly/h7uZ71

UPDATE: 16/3 07:00: After latest fire, radiation levels spiked above 1,000 millisieverts - i.e not micro Sv or milli Sv but 1 Sv. Workers (now facing very serious health risks) also investigating cause of smoke seen above Reactor No.3.

Pensions - we can defeat this Con-Dem robbery

The second Hutton Pensions Commission report has confirmed plans to make public sector workers PAY MORE to RETIRE OLDER and to GET LESS PENSION when they do.

Ex-Labour Minister John Hutton, now advising the Con-Dem Government, had already recommended a massive hike in pension contributions. This is on top of the Government’s decision to rip off millions of workers and pensioners by switching from RPI to the lower CPI indexation for pensions and benefits from April.

For example, they want teachers’ monthly payments to go up by 50% - that’s around a £100 per month pay cut. With a public sector pay freeze and rising inflation , this would be another huge squeeze on incomes.

Hutton claims that the increases are inevitable to account for rising life expectancy. It’s not true. No actuarial analysis has been provided to justify them. In fact Hutton’s own figures show that public sector pension scheme costs are already set to fall. So this extra money isn’t to help pay for retiring colleagues. No, the Government just wants to impose an extra tax on public sector workers to plug the hole in their finances. But why should we foot the bill for the bankers’ gambling debts?

These attacks are part and parcel of the Government’s privatisation agenda. In order to privatise schools and other public services, businesses don’t want to have to pay the costs of decent pensions. Reports suggest states that a public sector pension of £20,000 might be cut to just £6,000 in a private scheme.

Hutton’s new proposal is that the ‘normal pension age’ would rise first to 65 for all but then increase further to 68 to track the rising state pension age. Do they seriously expect a 68 year-old to have to struggle around a classroom? Or for older workers to be forced to work on while the younger generation is unable to find employment?

He has also proposed that existing ‘final-salary’ schemes should be replaced by ‘career-average’ pensions. Hutton wants to divide opposition by claiming that this would be ‘fairer’ to those lower down the pay-scale. But what Hutton intends will be unfair to all of us.

In principle, a career-average scheme can be constructed in a way that maintains pension levels – but their intention is to cut pension costs. These schemes will be calculated to give us LESS pension even though we'll be paying in MORE.

Hutton also wants to divide the public sector from private sector colleagues by saying that we can’t expect to carry on with final salary pensions when most private-sector workers aren’t getting them. But why should we allow ourselves to be ripped-off in the same way as private companies have ripped-off their employees? The best way to defend all workers is for someone to put up a fight – and we are going to!

Hutton’s report must be met with a quick response – a co-ordinated ballot across the public sector for united strike action to defeat the pensions robbery. It’s also yet another reason to be out on the streets of London on 26 March!

The UCU have already balloted lecturers for action over pensions (and secured a 72% majority for strike action from those in the Teachers Pension Scheme). The PCS, NUT and other teaching unions are discussing balloting for co-ordinated action starting in June. But this mustn’t just be a token protest; it must be the start of an escalating program of strike action to defeat these attacks. A famous victory over pensions would then raise workers’ confidence to fight all of the Con-Dem’s cuts.