of St.Helens TUC (personal capacity) St HELENS TUC and its Resource Centre have been building a local campaign to resist the Job Seekers Allowance and Project Work.
Our organisations were key to the successful campaign around the European Marches against Unemployment, Job insecurity and Social Exclusion in Britain.
In October we held a successful public meeting on "Stuff the JSA and Smash Project Work" This was followed by a protest inside the local job centre by 15 activists.
3 goats accompanied us, giving a novel twist to the action and underlining our argument. "You must be kidding if you think we're going to take these jods that are on oner . Some of these pay less than €1.50 per hour.
The peaceful protest surprised staff who were stunned by our presence We explained to them why we were protesting and made a special effort not to alienate them.
We know we need to unite the trade unions and the unemployed on these issues. Management were extremely agitated, especially as some of the staff were fraternising with the protestors - and even stroking the goats!
Both the local newspapers were present and took photographs and did interviews which were printed the next week. We gained a lot of good publicity and ww we navezin active unemployed action group.
The Regional secretary of the civil service union PTC wrote to me a week later and viciously attacked our actions. The letter started with, "direct action- invasion of the job centre" and was later followed with, "all you achieved was to alienated my members from your espoused cause by the intimidatory nature of your presence".
He was obviously worried by our successful action and was trying to police the trade union movement.
Rather than cower to his intimidation I took the liberty of photocopying his letter and together with photocopies of the press cuttings handed them out at the next meeting of the NWTUC Regional council.
I raised the debate on the issue and there was a sharp discussion. On the horns of a dilemma? Campaigners demand no ifs and no butts - an end to JSA! The chair ended by saying that in future their should be greater communication with the unions when we take these sort of actions. Basically, the argument had been won.
Since then Jason Sloss, a leading Euro communist and the NW Regional officer of the CPSA has also written a hysterical letter on the same subject.
He ended by saying "perhaps you should think on before launching any more puerile gestures". He attended the NWTUC meeting but left during the debate as he didn't have the bottle to argue his corner.
Sloss is the Assistant Secretary of the second biggest CPSA branch in the country, and has also sent a similar letter to a delegate to the Merseyside Association of TUC's who defended me at the meetThese attacks were raised at the next meeting of the Merseyside Association in November.
The Association agreed to write to Jason Sloss telling him to stop this witchunting.
This saga is obviously set to continue with further letters and debates on the North West TUC. We need to keep plugging away and trying to force the bureaucracy to take up a serious fight against mass unemployment.
The bosses are happy to use the fear of job losses to divide those in work from those on benefit and to help prevent strike action.
The St. Helens Unemployed Action Group has stepped up its campaign and is planning a protest inside the local Project Work office with the support of local TUC, Liverpool Dockers and local pensioners group.
Our message to Blair and the TUC bureaucrats is that this situation is unacceptable. We demand a total re-distribution of wealth to create to full employment in socially useful work.
These demands should begin with the implementation of a 35 hour working week with no loss of pay with TUC minimum wage rates and an end to slave labour schemes.