Defending Public Services

Les Bayliss Progressive Left Candidate For Unite General Secretary

The recent Con-Dem Budget provides Unite with a major challenge. We must campaign to protect public sector pay and pensions and the public services our members provide. That's a given. The challenge is to win the fight rather than pull off a glorious defeat that alienates the union movement from our members and the general public.

The Con-Dem budget is an ideologically driven attack on the welfare state. It goes much further than Thatcher ever did. It will lock inequality into our society for generations to come. It's not just income inequality but also gender inequality. As my colleague, AGS Gail Cartmail has rightly pointed out in a recent press statement, "The Tory cuts will hit the purse even harder than the wallet".

The Con-Dem coalition statement that "We are all in this together", is a fallacy. It will be our members and their families, pensioners and the sick that will suffer from this budget. Asking public sector workers to take part in an X-Factor style competition to decide on what services get the chop and which survive, is just a smokescreen. The argument that the private sector will provide jobs for displaced public servants will be shown to be cruelly misleading. The Tories are using this competition to provide a cover for their cuts. When the axe falls they'll blame the choices on us.

It's a big lie that many people believe over 60% of voters support the cuts. They have been fooled into believing the cuts are necessary and more importantly, that they will not affect them as individuals but someone else less worthy of protection.

In order to fight to defend public services and our members' jobs, we will need to educate and politicise our members to provide a solid basis for the campaign and the battles to come. Sabre-rattling and knee jerk reactions from armchair revolutionaries will not substitute for a strategic campaign based on the three pillars of Unite's philosophy.

We must involve our activists and officers on the front-line of all our industrial struggles, to inform our campaign and help move all our forces as one, into the fray. We must ally with other public sector unions and the TUC and, most importantly, we need to foster public and community support for our campaign using the media and direct contact with our members.

Building this support and consensus for the battle ahead has to be a major priority for our Political and Communications Departments.

Work has already begun to widen the campaign internationally. Most notably with the involvement of Workers Uniting, our global union. Capitalism is global and the attack on public services will take place in every part of the industrialised world.

Workers Uniting has explained in detail the experience of Canadian members of the United Steelworkers, who have bitter experience of identical right-wing assaults on the public sector.

In leading up to the Budget, the Con-Dem coalition sought advice from Canada's former finance minister Paul Martin, who wielded the axe on his country's public spending in the 1990's. Women, the unemployed, the sick and frail were the biggest losers from Canada's slash-and-burn budget. We have to take note that the Con-Dem government proposals are twice as tough as those made in Canada. We have to argue this case in the UK.

As General Secretary, I will introduce a Strategic Campaigns Unit that will have the authority to call on all the resources of our organisation. The Unit will plan and execute disciplined and effective political and industrial campaigns. The sooner this happens the better. We need to be the best - second best is not good enough.

If you agree with this vision, you can nominate Les for GS. As a Workplace Rep you will need to get a nomination form from your Regional Secretary. You can also nominate at your branch meeting.

Yours fraternally

Les4gs.org