Wednesday 12 December 2012

PCS calls for co-ordinated strike action


The national executive committee (NEC) has agreed plans for a campaign for fair pay and working conditions. The union will be writing to employers setting out our demands and calling for immediate formal negotiations.
The NEC will meet in January to assess the government’s response. If employers do not respond satisfactorily then it was agreed to move to a national ballot for a programme of industrial action - possibly in February 2013.

Strike action is the last resort of any trade union and should be taken to protect and promote their members interests.

4TM is completely opposed to austerity and the continuing idealogical attacks on civil servants and supports membership endorsed strike action; however, we have to ask who is really calling for a general strike and what are their motives?


Fight in British unions for solidarity, not boycotts - Eric Lee


In the course of just a few days, three news stories came across my desk that highlighted one of the problems we face in the British trade union movement.

As I write these words, the Israeli nurses’ union is engaged in a major fight with the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu is the health minister (as well as prime minister) and his government stands accused of starving public hospitals, while coming up with millions to construct new illegal settlement housing. The nurses strike deserves the support of unions everywhere, in particular unions which organise nurses.

Israel’s public sector unions solidified a major victory early this month. An agreement that ended February’s general strike has now been translated into results on the ground. The general strike had been fought over the question of precarious employment and the Histadrut won a substantial victory. This week, contract workers in the public sector will get huge wage gains and back pay thanks to the solidarity of unionised workers who shut the country down and compelled the government to make concessions.

Both examples show an independent, and sometimes militant, Israeli trade union movement that deserves the solidarity of trade unionists in Britain. Indeed, the Israel public sector unions may even have a thing or two to teach their British counterparts about how to win on issues like contract labour.

But unfortunately Unison and the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), unions which should, in theory, be promoting solidarity with the Israeli nurses and indeed with all the Israeli public sector unions, have played a rather different role recently.

Unison and PCS were among the leading unions which actively pushed the recent congress of Public Services International (PSI) to adopt a new policy supporting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targetting Israel. PSI is also now on record supporting the slander that Israel is an “apartheid state”.

It is unusual for a global union federation like PSI to take such a strong position in opposition to Israel, even if its BDS call was limited to “firms complicit with the occupation”.
The pro-Hamas Palestine Solidarity Campaign hailed the decision as a breakthrough. I want to step back here and try to understand what is going on.

Israel is the only country in the region with a strong, independent trade union movement. It is not a perfect movement and there is much to criticise about it. But when Unison sent a delegation over to meet with Israelis and Palestinians, everyone they spoke to — including the Palestinians — encouraged the British union to keep up its relationship with the Histadrut.

No one, not even the far-left critics of the Histadrut, suggested to Unison that it disengage.
But when the report of the Unison delegation was put to the national executive, it was rejected and Unison carried on with a policy supporting boycotts of the Jewish state and its trade union movement as well.

This makes absolutely no sense.

If you oppose the right-wing, neoliberal policies of the Netanyahu government, shouldn’ t you support the struggle of the Israeli nurses? Shouldn’t you support the Histadrut’s general strike which resulted in such an important victory?

Instead of engaging with the Israeli labour movement, unions like Unison and PCS are moving away from it.

There was a time not long ago when British unions played a more constructive role. They would bring over representatives of the Histadrut and the Palestinian unions to Britain where they could meet British trade unionists — and each other. British unions saw their role as bridge-builders, taking no sides in a tragic conflict between two nations.

One doesn’t want to get all nostalgic about this — instead, I suggest we try to find ways restore some sanity and balance into the British labour movement’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Above all this means educating activists and members, whose only source of information seems to be the pro-Hamas camp, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Unfortunately, there is no effective alternative voice in the British labour movement today.
If members of Unison, PCS and other unions were to be made aware of the reality of the Israeli trade union movement, its struggles and its victories, I think it might be possible to have a more interesting and productive debate.

At the moment, the agenda in those unions is being dictated by supporters of Hamas, and that, comrades, is not a good thing.

Go to: http://www.tuliponline.org/ for further information

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Is the BNP Back? No!


Hope Not Hate Reports:

The British National Party declared it a “great result!” and announced to its supporters that they were again on the road to winning major breakthroughs.”

You would have thought that the BNP had just pulled off an historic victory but instead it was celebrating its third place in the Rotherham by-election. But, given the recent problems of the BNP, it was perhaps something to cheer.

“Not only did we beat both the government parties, achieving a total number of votes which surpassed theirs put together, but we beat the widely-predicted winner Respect in a heavily Islamised constituency,” the BNP crowed on its website and in a fundraising email to supporters.

So, is the BNP back? No, and we will explain why.

The BNP certainly did perform well in the Rotherham by-election and if UKIP hadn’t grabbed the headlines over the removal of children from a foster family because of their membership of the party then it is likely that the BNP would have done better. They might even have been battling for second place and their vote would have certainly have been well above 10%. As it was they came third with 8.5% of the vote.

But let’s not read too much into this. After Barking & Dagenham, Rotherham gave the BNP its highest vote in the 2010 General Election. It has had two councillors in the constituency in recent years and the council has been beset by an awful cover-up which allowed a grooming gang to operate for ten years without hindrance. The by-election was caused by a resignation of an MP for fiddling his expenses and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were always going to struggle. It was a perfect opportunity for the BNP but their vote, respectable as it was, was the consequence of other factors rather than anything the BNP did.

There were two other parliamentary by-elections last Thursday but only one was contested by the BNP. Perhaps they should not have bothered. The party polled just 1.9% of the vote, well down on the 5.8% the BNP received in the 2010 General Election.

Two weeks earlier the BNP contested two other parliamentary by-elections. The party received 3.0% in Manchester Central, down from 4.1% in 2010, and just 1.7% in Corby, well down on the 4.7% it polled in the last General Election.

The BNP have, if anything, done even worse in other elections held over the last month. Of the dozens of council by-elections held over the last few weeks the BNP contested just two. In Ardwick ward, Manchester, the BNP polled 1.7%, while in Branksome East ward, Poole, the BNP's William Kimmet was last with a laughable 28 votes.

The BNP did not even bother to contest the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections. They claimed it was a moral stance against the politicisation of the police service but of course it was because the party did not have the money to stand.

Seen in the wider context the BNP result in Rotherham was an anomaly rather than a sign of an upward trend. If anything, the BNP is in a weaker position now than it was two months ago. The English Democrats did surprisingly well in the PCC elections, saving its deposit in five contests and coming second in South Yorkshire. UKIP, on the other hand, end the month with 13% in the latest national opinion poll and, for the moment at least, it is basking in the limelight of being a respectable right wing alternative.

Also, it should be pointed out that while 8.5% was OK for the BNP it was nowhere near their best parliamentary result. In fact, a quick look back at the records shows the BNP candidates have gained a higher share of the vote than that received in Rotherham on 17 occasions since 2001. Even in 2010 the BNP gained a bigger share of the vote in eight constituencies so let's put Rotherham into perspective.

So while Nick Griffin crows about the Rotherham result the reality, as always, is quite different. The BNP has been on a downward spiral since its European Election triumph in 2009 and nothing in the last few weeks demonstrate that this is going to change in the very near future.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

From the River to the Sea


At first glance, who could oppose the Palestine Solidarity Campaign?

The very name implies one of the most noble human aspirations – solidarity with a people. And in particular a people like the Palestinians, whose suffering is genuine. No doubt many people who join the PSC, attend its demonstrations, donate money to it or encourage their unions to back it are expressing their support for the idea of solidarity with the Palestinians.

But there’s a difference — a huge one — between showing solidarity with the Palestinians and supporting the PSC. Despite the PSC’s best efforts to convince everyone that these are one and the same thing, they aren’t.

And this becomes obvious whenever things heat up in Israel and Palestine, and when war is in the air.

Last week, I found myself at the demonstration of the PSC opposite the Israeli embassy in Kensington.

The call for the demonstration focussed on the Israeli air offensive against Gaza and was issued at a time when the only casualties seemed to be Hamas fighters, in particular Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Still, by the time demonstrators began to arrive at the embassy, things had gotten worse and a number of civilians — on both sides – had been killed.

The demonstration would have focussed on those killings, right? It would have called for a cease-fire or something like that, wouldn’t it?

But the very first thing I heard was not a call for an end to the violence — which would have been understandable and would have gotten sympathy from anyone — but instead was the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free“.

From the river to the sea?

Sorry, but there’s no way to be polite about this. That chant, and the PSC’s own logo of a map of Palestine from the river to the sea, and the subsequent chanting of “Israel out of Palestine” really could mean only one thing.

The demonstrators, or at least the people leading the chanting and making up the slogans, were supporting a one-state agenda, a solution to the century-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians by demanding that one side pack up and leave.

As it’s unlikely the Israelis are going to do this voluntarily, realistically what the demonstrators were calling for was the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine.
Not from the illegal settlements in the West Bank — no one mentioned those.
The Jews are to leave “Palestine” — from the river to the sea.

This is an exterminationist agenda. I don’t think that’s too strong a term.

These are not people who dislike Israelis or Jews, or who want to discriminate against them, or put them in their place, or treat them as second class citizens. That would be ordinary anti-Semitism.

This is a different kind of anti-Semitism, the kind that imagines a Palestine without its six million Jews, from the river to the sea.

An exterminationist anti-Semitism whose solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be another Holocaust.

Of course one expects to see radical Islamists at a demonstration like this — after all, that’s been their agenda for decades.

But it’s not the agenda of the mainstream Palestinian national movement, not anymore. It’s been nearly a quarter of century now since Arafat and the leadership of the PLO embraced the two-state solution, which paved the way to the Oslo accords.

Palestinian President Abbas isn’t calling for driving the Jews into the sea. The Palestinian trade unions aren’t calling for that.

But that’s what the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was doing in Kensington — that’s their agenda.

So what was the Socialist Party doing there — a party which historically opposes the boycott of Israel and which supports a two-state solution? On their website, they write that “The Palestinians and the Israeli Jews have a right to their own separate states.” They don’t say that one of those states will be in Palestine, and the other — in the sea?

And what was the SWP doing there, for that matter? Do they too support the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine?

It is fitting and proper for people who are shocked by the violence, and angry at the decision of the Israeli government, to protest and to show their solidarity with Palestine.

But to do so by chanting for the destruction of the Jewish state is to do the Palestinians no service.

For socialists to participate in such a demonstration is a disgrace.


Howard Fuller (4TM) adds:

For some time PCS has had “Palestinian Solidarity” at the “centre” of its “International work as the website blurb states. Some of us have always objected to the one sided view that the union takes as the result of the activities of the PCS Deputy General Secretary Hugh Lanning who is Chair of the so-called “Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

I wrote to PCS Reps earlier this year pointing out the uncomfortable fact (for Mr Lanning) that the former Chair of the PSC was expelled from their organisation as he was a promoter of Holocaust Denial (and said he was proud of it). In other words he promotes the disgusting view that there were no mass murders of six million Jews under the Nazis during the Second World War.

Disturbingly one fifth of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign voted against his expulsion. To me that says a lot about some of the members of this pernicious organisation and would call on PCS to disaffiliate and support instead a genuine peace orientated organisation Trade Unions Linking Israel & Palestine.

Trade unionists should be trying to bring working people together, not perpetuating sectarian conflict.

Go to: http://www.tuliponline.org/  for further information.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

More employers must sign up to the Living Wage

The living wage is a voluntary rate of pay designed to help low-paid workers to afford a basic standard of living. The new rate is £8.55 an hour in London and £7.45 elsewhere. The adult minimum wage rate is £6.19 an hour.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the UK's biggest companies increased their cash reserves by over £80bn between 2007 and 2011. There is no excuse for cash-rich employers to deny low-paid staff a decent wage.

Hope Not Hate


A new fascist party is being born in Britain. Called True Brits (TB), it is made up of current and former members of the British National Party (BNP) and it will seek to attract the hundreds of activists who have left the BNP in recent years.
But it will also bring together some of the more extreme elements of the British far right, including antisemities and holocaust deniers.
Last month, Yorkshire and Humber MEP Andrew Brons resigned from the BNP claiming mistreatment from Nick Griffin and the party hierarchy. This was the green light the rebels had been waiting for.
The fall-out between Brons and Griffin are organisational disputes rather than political differences and, if anything, the new party will be even more extreme than the BNP. It will remain embedded to racial nationalism and total opposition to a multiracial society. Only last year, in a radio interview, Brons described the English Democrats’ “courting of multiracialism” as the primary reason he opposed their party.
The new party will include some of Britain’s most hardline racists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers. It will be BNP mark II but even more toxic. It will be TB in name and equally dangerous.
The new party will be led by Peter Phillips, a former BNP member who in 2006 stood for election as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Andrew Brons will become its President. Newcastle-based Kevin Scott is acting as the Secretary of the Steering Group and Andrew Moffat and Ken Booth its deputy chairmen.
Around them will be former BNP organisers and activists, people drawn from small and hardline groups such as England First and the Democratic Nationalists and a number of former National Front activists who were prominent in the 1970s and 1980s.
The new party will include some of Britain’s most hardline racists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers. It will be BNP mark II but even more toxic. It will be TB in name and in nature.
Its strength will initially be in the North East, Yorkshire, East Midlands and London, though it is likely to quickly attract other disillusioned BNP members from across the country.
Britain’s most hardline antisemites and Holocaust Deniers will be joining True Brits. These include Peter Rushton and Bob Gertner. It was Gertner, together with Phillips, who registered the party with the electoral commission.
Another person who has been involved in the discussions over the formation of the new party is Richard Edmonds, John Tyndall’s former deputy and now a leading figure in the National Front. Edmonds is a hardcore nazi and Holocaust Denier, so any involvement from him will clearly demonstrate the true nature of Brons’ new party.
Brons’ group will be expected to contest some of the forthcoming parliamentary by-elections, including Middlesbrough and Croydon, both to be held on 29 November. However, the new party will really look towards next year’s county council elections to stamp their mark on the British far right.
The next few months will decide whether Brons’ new far right outfit replace Griffin’s BNP as the dominant force on the British far right or whether Griffin will weather the storm and remain in control. True Brits will have the activists and the enthusiasm but Griffin is a political street fighter and his party has the recognised brand name.
However, let us not think that there is anything moderate in this new party. It is simply BNP Mark II but even more toxic.
And whoever emerges dominant, HOPE not hate we will be there to oppose them at the ballot box and in the community.

Thursday 1 November 2012

William Hague's antique anaconda cost £10,000 to re-stuff

The Foreign Office has spent £10,000 on the "essential maintenance" of a stuffed anaconda called Albert.

The story was uncovered through a Freedom of Information request by political gossip website Guido Fawkes.

We wonder what the civil servants who are losing their jobs feel about £10,000 being spent on Albert.

The Tory Argument Against Regional Pay

It’s not common for a Government to conclusively lose the argument about one of its own policies purely on the basis of the evidence.  Ministers are usually able to construct something resembling an intellectual fig-leaf which maintains their dignity and allows them to press ahead with their project.  Not so with regional pay in the public sector.  Ever since George Osborne announced his grand plan to introduce “market-facing pay” in his 2011 Autumn Statement, it has increasingly looked like a policy in search of a justification.

http://labourlist.org/2012/11/the-tory-argument-against-regional-pay/

NEC meeting to agree campaign activity in November

The Executive Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) called for a Day of Action and Solidarity, across Europe on 14 November in order to mobilise the European trade union movement behind the ETUC policies set out in the ‘Social compact for Europe’.


The NEC of PCS will consider campaign activities for the day.
The government continues to attack the civil service and we all face a bonfire of our terms and conditions of service as the Cabinet Office demand every department reviews all terms, conditions, policies and practices - the things civil servants rely on to manage their working lives. Included are:
  • Hours
  • Leave
  • Parental and special leave
  • Childcare
  • Job sharing
  • Volunteering
  • Vacancy filling
  • Promotions
  • Attendance management.
The NEC will be considering a campaign plan involving a day of protest at the end of November against the coalition government's proposed review of civil service terms and conditions.
Members in PCS must fight to protect our terms and conditions of employment otherwise they will be driven down to the barest legal minimum by the current government.
Our NEC need to listen to ordinary members and understand the leadership role model they want. They want a leadership that fights for our members rights and not one that fights personal political gain.

Wednesday 31 October 2012

Who are 4 the members

4 the members is a grouping of trade union members and activists within the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).

As trade unionists, our touch stones are the principles of liberty, equality, solidarity, human rights, social justice, the provision of welfare and free & fair elections.

We believe in membership led democratic decisions to ensure the issues facing our members in their working lives form our union's bargaining agenda.

PCS must represent the views of its members. It is not a political party and does not exist to further the personal political views of individual representatives.

Want to know more?

Please visit our website at: http://www.4themembers.org.uk