defeat the pay freeze would be also improved by moves to synchronise pay claims from different sections of public sector workers - health workers, local government, civil service, teachers, fire fighters and so on. This is already being proposed by the left within UNISON UNISON LOSE DOWN improved by moves to synchronise pay claims from different sections of public sector workers - health workers, local government, civil service, teachers, fire fighters and so on. This is already being proposed by the left within UNISON.
Unions must also reject cynical Tory efforts to split the opposition to the pay freeze through making selective concessions to nurses and other high profile sections covered by Pay Review Bodies. The old slogan 'We're all a special case' should be used to exploit the gains of any section breaking through the freeze.
But public sector unions must also combat the damaging economic consensus view, according to which public spending must be restrained or cut, and therefore services can only be provided at the expense of the jobs and conditions The full-scale Tory offensive against the welfare state, targeting the sick, single mothers, the unemployed, the homeless, pensioners, students and the poor in general, also raises the need for union action to defend hard-won rights and services. Unions have done little to alert members to the scale of the Tory onslaught, while Labour's mealy-mouthed opposition has been constrained by the morbid fear of an alternative approach centred on economic expansion, full employment, and increased spending on welfare and public services, financed by a system of progessive taxation. A programme of useful public works, including housing, transport and infrastructure renewal should be the means to create tens of thousands of new These popular demands fall short of a socialist programme, but run flatly counter to the baretoothed market forces of capitalism which dictate Tory policy and have intimidated Labour's leaders into total incoherence. They also link in to the need to fight a new wave of privatisation, which is now threatening British Rail, Royal Mail, British Coal, civil servants ('market testing'), health and local government staff.
Again Labour, hung up on its concessions to the ideology of the free market, has been shown incapable of categorically defending the principle of a nationalised railway system. In building mass campaigns and industrial action to beat back privatisation, public sector workers need to combat consensus politics.
The stakes are high. The Tories have responded to their crisis by forging ahead with a brutally reactionary offensive against welfare and public services, while employers continue their war of attrition against union strength from behind barricades of repressive legislation.
But this also forces the unions to some form of self-defence. The latest anti-union laws contain a deadly attack on the soft underbelly of the unions: the checkoff system of collecting union dues.
The TUC calculates that this could result in a membership loss of 20% from affiliated unions when it takes effect in October. UNISON has warned that even a 5 per cent loss of membership would cut its income by £5 million a year.
To retain the members, unions have to contact them and persuade them to 'sign up' by September.
Those unions which can be seen to be acting most energetically to defend their members, and those which are most successful in mobilising them will be the best at retaining them.
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