Lambeth council workers prepare for strikes

Council workers are ramping up the action to stop cuts to jobs and services. Jeremy Drinkall, a Lambeth Unison shop steward reports

• Unison branch meeting largest for a decade
• Indicative ballot for strikes called
• Branch unanimously calls for general strike

 

Lambeth’s Labour council is threatening to cut 500 jobs, leaving hundreds of local families wondering where their next rent or mortgage cheque will come from. Inevitably, this will also destroy family services, too, such as parents and toddlers’ One O’Clock Clubs, Adventure Playgrounds and school services, like Ethnic Minorities Achievement and Special Educational Needs Literacy teams. Housing, adult and community services will also be decimated.

 

 

 The feeling among the workforce is a mixture of shock and boiling anger. So it is no wonder that about 250 Unison members attended the branch’s biggest meeting for a decade to discuss how to fight the cuts. They overwhelmingly agreed to move quickly to a consultative ballot for “industrial action up to and including strike action in defence of jobs and services".

 

  

Branch Secretary Jon Rogers drew gasps when he told union members that, although some of the “deleted posts” had been vacant, management had now produced new figures, which deepened the cuts and added even more to the number of workers whose jobs are threatened. For example, Children’s and Young People’s Services would now cut – not 215 posts, but – 285 posts! As Jon told the audience, “One thing is certain about budget crises: never believe a word management has to say.”

 

  

Moving the amendment to organise the indicative strike ballot, I added a further warning: if the workforce do not resist in a united way, then management will come back for more and more cuts, because they will see the unions as easy meat; but if we unite and fight together, we can reduce the cuts and dissuade them from returning to the offensive and start building the movement necessary to beat the cuts altogether.

 

The general meeting also agreed to lobby the council from 6pm on 19 and 26 July, as well as leafleting the Lambeth Country Fair on 17-18 July, where branch officers and activists will also staff a stall in the “Union Village” tent. Now is the time for all union members to up their game and join in the battle to stop the cuts by:

• recruiting their workmates to the union
• volunteering to become a shop steward
• attending lobbies, meetings and protests called by the unions
• encouraging friends, families and their communities to get involved in the campaign to stop the Tory cuts which will effect us all.

 

Lambeth Unison recognises that these cuts actually predate the budget and will therefore be followed by more redundancies and privatisation. We unanimously passed motions rejecting the two-year pay freeze (in reality a pay cut, since inflation is currently running at 5.1%), denouncing the attacks on the state pension and public sector pensions and supporting the setting up of a local all-union anti-cuts committee. A 20-strong planning meeting has already set the ball rolling with such a committee; now we need to spread it beyond the NUT, GMB, Unison, Unite, the pensioners action group, housing activists and benefit claimants, who have so far shown interest.

 

As further evidence of the branch’s determination to take the fight to the cuts coalition government, we unanimously agreed to call on the TUC to organise a one-day general strike on the European Day of Action against austerity measures on 29 September, and to protest at the Tory party conference in Birmingham on 5 October.

 

A new, newspaper-style bulletin is now being produced, ready to give away at the Country Fair (despite its name, a very good reggae festival!). We are planning meetings and more leaflets to make sure we win a big “yes” vote in the consultative ballot – so that if, as seems inevitable, we need to take official strike action in early August, we will be ready. Indeed, even since the branch meeting, management has conceded that they have not sufficiently informed the unions about the cuts and therefore the 90-day “consultation” period has not yet begun. This only shows that we can shake their cocky confidence. Let’s continue to pile on the pressure – we have nothing to lose, and our jobs and services to save!