No Leaders

I should say that I a a member of Unison - currently undergoing a General Secretary election. Now, first, some points. Unison's rulebook explicitly states that it is a member lead organisation, there is no reference in the rulebook to a leader, or a leadership, so in essence, the General Secretary is a secretary, not a general.

In reality, the public image is that he is the leader. Currently, the post is held by a member of a bizarre entryist cult called the Labour Party, that puts their organisation first and foremost while pretending to put members first. They are being challenged by Militant. Dave Prentice is being challenged by Paul Holmes, and Roger Bannister. Now, the only issue at hand should be experience of the union, and capacity to carry out conference instructions, but they are all vying to be a leader.

I think, on due reflection, I'm going to wipe my arse on my ballot paper when it arrive. We have no leader, we are all leaders.

Striking works

See, told you so!.

Let's hope that the kids in Scotland get the same result.[*]

We have an obligation to each other to push wages up, and to exhert our strength where we can.

A victory for one is a victory for all.

[*] Note the appalling BBC photo of some bins bags on a street, as if this is the winter of discontent again, FFS, it's only a 1 day stoppage. Right into the employers myth of chaos and inconvenience.

New Tories, new nickname...

From the Beeb.

Conservative leader David Cameron warned the government it was going to have to be "extremely tough" on unions to avert a wave of strikes.

He said Labour was "so reliant" on unions for funding they felt they had a "stranglehold" over the party and could "dictate terms".

And he backed tough action on strikes as they "rarely achieve their goal", he said.

Ah, so that's it, then. Wavey Davey* Cameron wants to stop us striking, for our own good. Don't you see, striking doesn't work, you're just hurting yourself and others (never mind that when we in Higher Ed. struck for higher London weighting, we won the principle that it too goes up with inflation annually - albeit we didn't get the maximum demand of £4K).

Of course, I've said it before, we only strike when we're losing, usually, it's no coincidence that strikes only happen when the employers aren't just backing down and paying out to avoid trouble - the best strikes never happen.

As it is, price are going beserk (note, this is not necessarily inflation, the media confuse this fact, prices rises due to real demand increases or natural rises in the cost of producing a good are not inflation, inflation is a monetary phenomena when money falls in real and thus relative value). The price of our labour should rise to cover that cost, else we're giving money to the capitalists. It's as simple as that.

The principle is clear, if you went into a shop and said "Can I have that oil please, I need it to make my car go" they'd ask for the folding stuff - no amount of pleading how necessary your job is, how that vehicle is needed for some essential public service, would shift the hardware store to give up their goods for free.

So long as the market system exists, we need to play by its rules - even if sometimes the rules of the system Wavey Davey supports leads to outcomes he doesn't like. Watch out for him and Wavey Davey Davis (if, chortle, he gets re-elected) and their cuddley libertarian Tories engaging in massive state intervention in the Labour market.

*As Reeves and Mortimer revealed to us in the early nineties, Wavey Davey is the devil.

Everybody out...

OK, UNISON's industrial action committee has backed a ballot of local government staff over strike action against the government imposed paycuts (news via Marsha Jane).

Obviously, this, after the POA strike, is clearly a strike that effects everyone - not just public sector workers, but all workers because of the massive effect that government spending has on the jobs market.

It seems clear, that paycuts are not acceptable without some sort of fight, ever - we need desperately to make that clear to the government and all employers - not a penny from the pay.

That the PCS are looking to ballot for the same day is good news, and as Marsha and others are saying, if the teachers could be brought out, we'd be close to a general strike magnitude event.