George Binette, Camden UNISON Branch Secretary (personal capacity), examines the build-up to a possible general strike across the public sector.

Little more than three months after the TUC’s mammoth “march for the alternative”, up to 30,000 civil servants, lecturers and teachers took to the capital’s streets on a Thursday afternoon. It was the culmination of one day of co-ordinated strike action across four unions involving hundreds of thousands nationally.

The immediate trigger for the action on 30th June was the Government’s assault on public service workers’ pension schemes in the wake of the 2010 report authored by the New Labour peer Lord Hutton. For many of those marching, however, the pensions issue was the lightning rod, conducting much deeper anger about cuts to jobs and services and the threat to the very future of social welfare provision.

Crucially, though, one very large union – UNISON, with its membership heavily concentrated among public sector workers who are bearing the brunt of the current government attacks – was absent from the action on 30th June. While Camden branch’s UNISON banner appeared on the 30th June demonstration, I could count only four others on the day in a city where UNISON, a union claiming more than 1.3 million members nationally, has over 120 branches.

In the run up to 30th June, many ordinary members of my branch asked their branch committee members if UNISON would be striking and when told “no” asked “why not?”. Since then, concern has been growing about the absence of any date for the start of ballots over the critical issue of pensions. On this, unified action across many unions and component parts of the public sector is still possible – even within the narrow confines of the Tory anti-union laws, left intact after 13 years of New Labour in Downing Street.

The announcement emerging out of the first meeting of UNISON’s newly elected National Executive in early July heightened anxiety among activists. It became clear that General Secretary Dave Prentis was preparing to move to negotiations with the Government about the individual schemes without any concessions from them around crucial issues such as the increase in the retirement age, the move to a career average scheme with a much worse accrual rate, the switch to the less favourable Consumer Price Index for annual uprating and the abolition of the fair deal for pensions policy, which is undoubtedly designed to accelerate the privatisation of public services.

After sabre-rattling rhetoric from Dave Prentis before UNISON’s 2011 conference, some members became cynical and dispirited after a summer of inertia. Then, word suddenly emerged on 8th September of emergency meetings of the union’s service group executives for health (21st September) and local government (16th September). Indications are that both executives will be asked to authorise national ballots for strike action, though there is as yet no clarity about the likely timetable or the wording of ballot questions.

In the wake of this news, word spread rapidly by text, Twitter and Facebook of the renewed possibility of cross-union co-ordination that might deliver something approximating a public sector general strike. Experience, however, should teach activists at the base of UNISON (or any other union) that they cannot afford to sit idly by and expect national leaderships to translate the promising words of press releases into effective action.

Following a very well-attended fringe meeting on the pensions dispute at this June’s UNISON national conference, which attracted support from more than 30 branches, Camden, Kirklees and Tower Hamlets local government branches agreed to issue a call for another branch-based meeting on 24th September. The meeting has no official standing and could not involve the expenditure of UNISON branch funds, but it offered branch level activists the opportunity to discuss boosting union density and building for the largest possible Yes votes in forthcoming ballots. It also looked at requisitioning a special local government service group conference in order to have the widest possible democratic debate about the conduct of the pensions dispute and the outline of any eventual settlement.

George Binette, Branch Secretary, Camden UNISON, reports in a personal capacity on an inspiring victory by London cleaners.

Cleaners at Senate House, University of London – who are employed by the contractors, construction giant Balfour Beatty – mounted an unofficial strike on 1st September to protest against the employer’s failure to pay dozens of workers overtime owed for several months. And they won!

The cleaners, mainly migrant workers from Latin America and dozens of them UNISON members, had complained of a systematic failure to honour overtime payments. Chronically low pay of just £6.15 an hour has fuelled their anger. The university Administration is publicly committed to introducing the London Living Wage (LLW) of £8.30 on all outsourced contracts. UNISON had already launched a campaign for the LLW on 9th July at Senate House after workers and supporters had secured victories at neighbouring campuses.

Balfour Beatty management tried to intimidate workers with threats of dismissal if they walked out, but in the event the cleaners stood firm. From 7.45am, more than 50 walked off the job and a protest outside the building featured drums and makeshift percussion instruments. The constant din was only interrupted by the occasional speech being interpreted into Spanish or English.

Local UNISON activists from the Bloomsbury Fightback! group, along with staff and students from several University of London colleges, joined the protest at very short notice.

Max Watson, who works at London Metropolitan University and now sits on UNISON’s national executive, also stood with the workers outside Senate House. He told the strikers: “Too often in the union movement we are frightened away from taking unofficial action against an employer by the threat of Thatcher’s anti-union laws. Yet employers like Balfour Beatty are quite willing to break the law themselves by failing to pay wages or meet other contractual obligations. Your action is inspirational, and deserves our full support. I pledge to promote your struggle, to call on the union to back you, and to do everything in my power to ensure you win.”

By 5th September virtually all the workers had received their back pay and to date not a single striker has faced disciplinary action. The fight for the LLW at Senate House continues, however. Workers held a rally on 14th September to advance the fight for both the living wage and proper sick pay.

With other cleaners, currently organised in the Industrial Workers of the World, protesting over conditions and battling for recognition at the historic Guildhall site in the City of London, now managed by the French-based multinational Sodexo, this could prove a hot autumn for some very big cleaning contractors. The British labour movement could undoubtedly learn some important lessons from the courageous and determined fights being waged by overwhelmingly migrant workforces.