June 30th Strikes.

On June 30th 2011 750,000 British teachers and other public sector workers held a one day strike to protest against the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat (ConDem) coalition government. The strike was smaller then expected with only the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), University College Union (UCU) and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union taking part. The two big unions, Unite and the GMB, who are linked to the Labour Party declined to take part due to those links while the health care workers union, Unison don't really consider themselves a trade union and will always roll over rather then take strike action rolled over. Also the threat of a day of mass strike action caused London Underground to give into the demands of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union averting their separate strike action.

Although the pension scheme for teachers is different from the pension scheme for a front line civil servant which is in turn different from a university lecturer's there are three common changes that link together all the schemes. These are;

1. An eight year increase in the pension age. At present public sector workers are allowed to retire and claim their pension at 60 years of age but the changes will increase this to 68. For public sector workers in hard, physical jobs and teachers in high stress jobs this could mean the difference between retiring and claiming a small percentage of their pension or simply working until they die.

2. An increase in the amount of their salary that these workers will have to contribute to their pensions schemes each month. In many cases this means that people will not only have to pay more for their pensions and wait longer before they can claim them they'll receive a lower pension when they do. What's more rather then going into the workers pension funds this increase in contributions will go straight to the government to pay off the national debt and pay for public services like the war in Libya. So rather then tackling the national debt by increasing income tax across the board including higher earners the government is trying to tackle it by imposing a second income tax on public sector workers who tend to be middle and lower earners.

3. Changing the measure by which pensions are adjusted against inflation every year (index linking) from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Although the ConDem government claims to be in talks with the unions over pension changes not one of these three key issues is up for negotiation and the change in the index link has already taken place. So it appears that rather then being a serious attempt to reach agreement with the unions the government is simply going through the charade of negotiations in order to avert strikes until it is too late and all the changes are in place.

This does rather highlight the difference between the current Conservative dominated government and the previous Labour government. For all their Stalinist pretensions the Labour government saw themselves as a government of the people - there to run the country in accordance with the wishes of the population. As a result they would frequently suggest policy ideas only for them to be quickly changed if they met with any level of public protest, either vocal or physical. This could even be seen in core issues of principle such as the ban on fox hunting. After a campaign of protest and a riot by the Countryside Alliance an out and out ban was replaced with watered down legislation that more or less allowed fox hunting to continue. By contrast the Conservatives see themselves as a government of the elite - there to impose their ideas of how to run the country onto the population. So rather then seeing protest or strike action as an essential part of the dialogue between the government and the public in a democratic society they see it as a challenge to their authority that must be defeated at all costs. The current crop of Conservatives are probably the worst because they still fetishise Thatcher and dream of the moment they will be able to smash a strike like Thatcher did with the miners.

Obviously this puts the unions and the wider British public in a difficult position because the government won't negotiate and direct confrontation will only encourage them to be less likely to negotiate. However I think the teaching unions have more or less the right tactic. A series of mass, one day strikes over a long period will do little to damage the economy or cause disruption to the public. They will though provide a polite but unavoidable reminder of the important role that public sector workers, especially teachers, play in our society.