Hastings Says “Enough is Enough!”
Simon Hester, Chair of Hastings & District Trades Union Council sums up what’s happening in Hastings and nationally.
When multi-millionaire Nadhim Zahawi, Tory Party national chair, attacks striking nurses for being dupes of Putin, you know he’s desperate. The Conservative Party have accepted millions in donations from Russian oligarchs. Zahawi, who claimed parliamentary expenses to heat his horses’ stables, is the last person to be lecturing anyone about “responsibility”.
Retail Price Index inflation has jumped from 4% to over 14% in a single year – heating and food increases are even higher. Since the banking crash of 2008, workers have faced the longest sustained squeeze on living standards for 200 years. Average real wages have fallen by 7%, and in the public sector real wages have fallen by about 20%. Food banks, which hardly existed before 2008, are now more common than McDonalds.
Workers in Hastings have had enough. Rail workers have taken 19 days of strike action, and low-paid train cleaners have been part of the first national cleaners’ strike. Postal workers at the Hastings delivery offices are locked in a war to save jobs and their service. BT engineers based at Sedlescombe Rd North won a £1,500 pay rise after strikes. The crisis in the NHS has reached a new low, with services crumbling. Ambulance workers based at Bohemia Road went on strike on December 21 and January 11, with emergency cover provided direct from the picket line. For the first time ever, nurses in the RCN will strike on January 18 at the Conquest and elsewhere.
Billionaire Profiteers
Britain is in the grip of a profiteering crisis. There are now a record 177 billionaires worth a combined £567 billion. Research by Unite has shown that profit margins for the top 350 FTSE companies rose by 73% during the pandemic years of 2019-2021. Tory peer Lady Michelle Mone’s company, awarded ‘VIP’ status, made a cool £100 million in profit from PPE contracts during the pandemic, of which £70 million has been taken off-shore and at least £29 million stashed in private family trusts. The rich are getting richer at our expense.
The big surprise is not that strikes are happening now – it’s that a fightback has been so long coming. So, what has changed?
The cost-of-living-emergency has created a common experience across the whole working class; everyone knows that we are all in it together. This helps to explain why nearly two million workers have voted for strike action and why the strikes are so popular.
Heroes or Zeroes?
This is the revolt of essential workers. During the Covid lockdowns, ‘key workers’ continued to work despite the risks, with utterly inadequate PPE. They accepted pay freezes. Covid fatalities were disproportionately high (which also explains why BAME workers were hit harder). Clapped as heroes but now treated as zeros – insulted and vilified by Tory politicians and their craven media. “But now we know what we are worth,” said the GMB union representative of Hastings refuse collectors at a trade union rally earlier this year.
The revolt is about more than pay. “We cannot do our jobs properly” is a common refrain, the public sector has been cut to the bone, ‘line managed’ with ridiculous targets and subject to unsustainable ‘efficiency measures’. The recent King’s Fund report confirms that the NHS is close to collapse because of years of cuts and marketisation.
To deflect blame, the Tories want us to join in the scapegoating of refugees. But the crises in health and housing are not caused by an “invasion” of people arriving in small boats. It’s the Etonians and the people using executive jets and limousines we should worry about.
Paying for Pay Rises
It would cost £1.6 billion for an above-inflation pay rise for nurses. But the cost of Rishi Sunak’s tax handouts was £7.3 billion. Last year the government removed the cap on bankers’ bonuses and loosened the banking regulations brought in after the 2008 crash. These are the conditions for more speculative bubbles and another crash. Guess who will be expected to pick up the pieces?
Instead of stuffing the pockets of the super-rich, the government could be investing in green jobs – a massive programme of housing insulation; rapid expansion in renewable energy sources like wind, tidal and solar; cheap, or even free, public transport.
‘Enough is enough’ is the slogan of the day. Strikes are escalating, with many workers discovering their collective power for the first time.
Where Are We?
At the time of writing, none of the disputes have been resolved. The government are not even prepared to negotiate with RCN nurses’ union leaders. Their pay claim of RPI inflation plus 5% is utterly reasonable if the historic pay squeeze is to be reversed and the chronic understaffing addressed. Physiotherapists and midwives also voted for strike action. Junior doctors are balloting. Ambulance workers took national strike action for the first time in over 30 years. It is shocking that Labour’s shadow health spokesperson, Wes Streeting, has sabotaged the nurses’ claim by saying that it is unaffordable and that a future Labour government would not pay up.
In exchange for a paltry pay offer the government expects the rail workers to accept thousands of job losses, the closure of all ticket offices, driver only trains and a 50% cut in track maintenance inspections. The RMT are fighting for a safe railway, for secure jobs and a pay rise after three years of pay cuts. Train cleaners on the minimum wage and outsourced to cost-cutting contractors are fighting for £15 an hour and to be treated like all other rail workers. Renationalisation without compensation cannot come soon enough.
Postal workers are up against a Royal Mail management who want to create gig-economy jobs – they want to rip up terms and conditions using only owner/drivers and new starters on 20% less. This is an existential crisis for the Communication Workers Union and they have the full support the entire trade union movement.
With civil servants, teachers and firefighters balloting for national strike action a showdown is looming.
Government on the Attack
The government is threatening new anti-strike legislation, the use of troops and emergency powers. These threats are real, but the Tories are chronically divided and widely despised. Their political base is fragile and disintegrating, which is why they are so vicious.
Our power is in our strikes and in our numbers. Now is the time to unify the strikes so that everyone is out together. A national coordinated strike would create a political crisis for the government.
Hastings & District Trades Union Council will do everything we can to build solidarity for the strikes. At last there is light at the end of the long dark tunnel of austerity and Tory rule. Together we can win!
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