Unity! TUC 2006 Monday

unity

TUC daily from the Communist Party

2006

‘We urge you above all to place no credence in any assurances that a Brown regime will be significantly different from that of his predecessor.’

Open Letter page 2

Warwick: con trick or contract?

Graham Stevenson The government’s commitment to extend protection to the lowertier public sector workforce has stalled and the promise to consult on PFI didn’t amount to any real re-evaluation.

Steps were promised on occupational health and safety but legislation on corporate manslaughter failed, regulatory agencies are to be cut and ministers can now change regulatory laws without consulting Parliament.

The commitment to treat public holidays as an addition to the Working Time Directive’s

requirement for 20 days should never have been a problem but will now take up to three years to implement, and entitlement will be offset against increases in the national minimum wage.

Warwick asked for us to wait on the Women at Work Commission, which failed on mandatory equal pay audits because of costs to employers.

The DTI’s budget is to rise in real terms by 3 per cent, after cutting its staff by 1,500.Treasury orthodoxy limits public investment in the private sector to small and medium enterprises.

Meanwhile, much of

British industry is being bought by transnational corporations based in other nation states, while the government is fixed on the EU Lisbon Agenda of unregulated free markets. Britain still doesn’t support the Temporary Agency Workers’ Directive, although we offer some of the lowest levels of protection in Europe.

The government’s response to its employment status review was appalling. It preferred the views of employers, ignoring evidence that the present legal framework is so vague that atypical workers are highly

disadvantaged. On TUPE regulations, it aims for exemptions for economic and technical reasons.The failure to oblige employers to consult unions where there are less than 20 redundancies is ludicrously inadequate.

Warwick was a ruse to keep the unions quiet until polling day and the results have been modest.

The next step must be to force a shift towards enabling true Labour to win for pensioners, trade unionists, working people and their families.

Graham Stevenson is a member of the Communist Party executive committee and writes in this capacity.

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unity TUC Communist Party daily

2006 TUC unity Less than equal at the TUC Mary Davis Unions have submitted fewer motions on equality to TUC 2006 than in 2005. This is a very bad sign, given that the Equal Rights section of the agenda covers the e n t i re panoply of inequality and discrimination at work and in society. If the Black Workers’ Conference motion 17 on ‘Valuing trade union race equality committees’, p e rhaps more interest will be generated in subsequent years.

The issue of the right of equality conferences to submit two motions and to have direct representation on the General Council has been the subject of debate at congress for five years running. Some headway has been made – the equality conference can now submit ONE motion, but there has been no pro g ress on dire c t re p resentation. Last year when congress debated and voted down the motion submitted by the TUC Black Workers’, Billy Hayes (CWU) said in support of the motion ‘A famous Irish Socialist said: “There are none so fit to break the chains as those who wear them”. You may oppose this motion today and vote it down, but this is a Movement whose time has come. If we do not get to grips…..with this issue and make sure that those who wear the chains, those who face the discrimination and inequality, are allowed to speak, this Movement will t ruly die.’

The equality conferences, the voice of over half of Britain’s trade unionists will not permit the issue or the Movement to die. The LGBT Conference has submitted a better worded motion, 82 (having listened to last y e a r’s critics). The opposition to the underlying issue is always weak; but given that it is the only motion that the General Council at all times opposes, the motion is defeated at congress even though it is the policy of all the equality Conferences. Perhaps this year will be d i ff e rent and we will win. After all unions can’t come up with the lame excuse that they haven’t considered it!

They must have done since they have made their submissions to the re - s t ructuring proposals. Let’s see what they come up with this time.

Mary Davis is editor of Communist Review

TUC social

8pm-1am Tuesday 12 September Midnight Blues Club, Grand Hotel Late bar Special Guests DJ Tickets £3 from Morning Star sellers or on the door

An open letter to trade union leaders and Labour MPs

5 September 2006 Dear Comrade, I am writing to you on behalf of the Communist Party of Britain to raise matters of mutual interest and concern on the eve of the TUC and Labour Party confere n c e s .

As you may know, our party called throughout the 1980s and 1990s for the election of a Labour government when others w e re splitting away to the right and the left. We said they were dividing the movement and showing a lack of confidence in the ability of working people to get rid of the Tories.

We welcomed the historic victory in 1997 and subsequent gains such as the national minimum wage, the Employment Relations Act, the Good Friday Agreement and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

However, like many in the labour movement we have also been sharply critical of New Labour government policies of privatisation, the military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the refusal to renationalise the railway industry and repeal the anti-union laws.

Recently, it has become even more evident that the whole New Labour approach re p resents a fundamental break fro m the social-democratic as well as the socialist traditions in Britain’s labour movement, including in the Labour Part y.

Proposals to expand private-sector provision in our health and education services represent a grave threat to jobs, morale, quality and the whole public sector ethos which the labour movement has always sought to promote. Handing over NHS p u rchasing and distribution functions to a US-based transnational corporation will produce the same greed and chaos which characterises other privatised services.

The govern m e n t ’s intention to promote faith schools threatens to deepen divisions in our society when we urg e n t l y need to foster tolerance and mutual understanding. The

TUC Communist Party daily unity

Communist Party believes that secular education – while allowing religious observance and the study of diff e rent beliefs – is the best basis on which to foster unity while also enjoying the benefits of diversity.

The govern m e n t ’s refusal to take decisive, interventionist m e a s u res to protect manufacturing and services and to promote re s e a rch & development is allowing unemployment to rise above two million.

This climate of job insecurity creates more fertile ground for those racist and fascist elements who seek to blame immigrants and black workers for the lack of jobs and housing. Community relations are being poisoned by the combination of these local social and economic problems with the climate created by the New Labour govern m e n t ’s disastrous foreign policy.

As you may know, the Communist Party has never allowed its opposition to British military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq to weaken our condemnation of terrorist attacks on civilians whether in Britain, the US or the Middle East.

Indeed, it is our consistent opposition to terrorism which leads us to campaign against the state terrorism of the British, US and Israeli governments as well as the terrorism of religious fundamentalists in Britain, the US, Iraq and Israel.

It is, at least in part, because this view is shared by many millions of people in Britain that so many of them are repudiating their past loyalty to the Labour Part y. Other traditional Labour supporters are repelled by the govern m e n t ’s u n p recedented attacks on fundamental civil and democratic l i b e rties in Britain in the name of the ‘war on terro r’ .

Nevertheless, the Communist Part y ’s view remains that those on the left who advocate trade unions disaffiliating from the Labour Party would leave unions without a political base.

Following that path would replicate the US model in Britain, with the two main parties based mainly on big business i n t e rests while the unions languish on the political sidelines.

But the revival of the To ry Part y ’s credibility only incre a s e s

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the likelihood that Labour will suffer heavy defeats in the English local authority, Scottish and Welsh elections next May. It is because the Communist Party sees nothing pro g re s s i v e in such developments that I am writing to you at this cru c i a l j u n c t u re. You have the responsibility and the power to act now to change the disastrous course of this Labour govern m e n t .

We urge you to speak out clearly and fearlessly against the Blair govern m e n t ’s most re a c t i o n a ry policies, foreign as much as domestic.

We urge you to reject the private pleas you may have received for a ‘smooth and orderly transition’ to the succession of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.

We urge you above all to place no credence in any assurances that a Brown regime will be significantly diff e rent from that of his predecessor.

The Chancellor’s enthusiastic advocacy of the market forces which export jobs and capital overseas, of privatisation and civil s e rvice cuts, together with his silent complicity in the atro c i t i e s perpetrated in Iraq and Lebanon, can provide no confidence that he will change course. His precipitate announcements in favour of expanding nuclear energy and commissioning a new generation of post-Trident nuclear weapons only confirm the need for the utmost caution.

At the same time, we trust that you will place greater emphasis on policies than on personalities.

In our view, the whole labour movement re q u i res a pro f o u n d discussion about what a real Labour government can and should do urgently across a wide range of vital issues.

These include the funding of public services from pro g re s s i v e taxation, renewing Britain’s industrial base including through m e a s u res of public ownership, reversing the gro w i n g inequalities of wealth and opport u n i t y, securing future energy supplies for Britain and the planet, ending support for US policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, developing an independent and progressive foreign policy for Britain, maintaining military forces for defence and genuinely humanitarian purposes without fuelling the nuclear arms race, and restoring civil liberties while safeguarding our citizens against violence.

The Communist Party has produced the Left Wing Programme as our contribution to this process.

Key to many of the advances which need to be made is the question of the powers and sovereignty of Parliament. Although seemingly stalled at the moment, the threat posed to our democracy by the drive to a United States of Europe based on an EU Constitution which enshrines pro-big business policies has not gone away. The Bolkestein Services Dire c t i v e promoting further privatisation has been revived and so resistance must be maintained.

The most powerful force for advance remains the labour movement. We know that you take your leading role and responsibilites in that movement very seriously. That is why I hope and believe you will act with urgency to help put the movement and the next Labour government on course for v i c t o ry instead of defeat.

Yours will be the gratitude of millions of people in Britain who yearn for a real Labour administration and whose patience is fast running out with To ry-style policies.

Yours in comradeship R o b e rt Griffiths general secretary C o m munist Party

T

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unity TUC Communist Party daily

China’s Line of March The 2006 Communist Party delegation to China reports at the TUC Sussex Arts Club 7 Ship Street Brighton Monday 11 September12.45-2pm

Groucho

chair Anita Halpin C o m munist Party national chair

Is the mega-composite a thing of the past?

Over the years a number of unions have been arguing that t h e re is no harm in having genuine debate and open differences of opinion and that consensus composites won't change the world. So, coming to Brighton some of us are expecting fewer(!) composites; well, as they say, ‘the proof of the pudding ...’

Hope springs eternal!

The General Council agre e d in July that eff o rts should be made at this Congress to e n s u re a better balance between presentations and debates; indeed that there should be debates rather than a string of set speeches.

Glasnost The columns of Unity! are open to delegates wanting to comment on how Congress is run and in what ways – if any – this Congress is different.

Insider tip Readers wishing to catch up on the outcome of the latest consultation on TUC s t ru c t u res and services should read paragraph 10.4 of the Annual Report which comes up on Thursday’s agenda along with motion 82 on the i m p o rtance of equality.

Stop the War Fringe Monday 11 September 6pm Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton Hear: John McDonnell MP Tony Woodley TGWU, Lindsey German STWC

Hear the delegation Rob Griffiths general secretary John Haylett Morning Star editor Emily Mann women’s organiser Kevin Halpin indusrial organiser

State pensions – the missing link ANN GREEN The main concern for millions of pensioners is the amount they receive in their state pension.

In 1980, the Conservative g o v e rnment removed the link with earnings and since then the level of the state pension has plummeted from being 25 per cent of average earn i n g s in 1980 to approximately 16 per cent of average earn i n g s .

At the current rate, by 2035 it could be down to 9 per cent. Even the g o v e rnment's own figures say that 2.2 million pensioners live below the poverty line and need £123 a week, yet they only pay £84.35 a week to a single pensioner. Many of today’s pensioners fought fascism and then worked to rebuild Britain’s economy, making Britain the 4th richest c o u n t ry in the world. Yet while this government spends 5.5 per cent of the country's G ross Domestic Product on

pensioners, some other EU countries spend 10.4 per cent – twice as much.

Today £114 is much quoted as the figure pensioners should be aiming for and of course any incre a s e is good, but many pensioners g roups say this isn’t enough – they need a ‘living wage’.

Deaths of pensioners fro m the cold is increasing. Over the winter of 2003/4, 22,000 people over 65 in England and Wales died from living in a cold home. In 2004/5 that f i g u re rose to 31,600. This is what we mean by the need for a ‘living wage’.

If the link had been maintained a single pensioner would now be receiving £118.44 a week and a couple £189.04. The Family Budget Unit at Kings College London say this would ‘still be modest but adequate’, although ‘a single pensioner needs £220 a week’.

Can the govern m e n t

aff o rd it? – they say they can’t, yet their own actuary says the National Insurance Fund is £35 billion in surplus and by 2010 it will be £60 billion.

To m o rrow’s pensioners – who are today’s workers – will be even worse off unless we re s t o re the link with earn i n g s in full and soon.

Trade unions and the pensioners movement must increase their work together as a matter of urgency. Two years ago this joint campaign made a start with the national m a rch and rally in London. It was great to see trade union banners and pensioners banners together.

Since then there has been a lull. Now is the time to renew the fight, beginning with regular joint meetings to plan the action needed.

Former Unison shop steward Ann Green was a delegate to this year’s Pensioners Parliament and convenes the Communist Party pensions advisory.