Unions join forces to build two million-strong alliance against coalition savagery

20 May 2011

Two million workers in the UK joining together can fend off savage attacks on working people and their families.

That will be the message from Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, the country's biggest union when he addresses the conference of the Public and Commercial Services Union, one of the country's largest public sector unions and whose workers are at the front line of government cuts today (Friday May 20th).

Both unions will today sign a historic accord committing to coordinated action in workplaces up and down the country, in the first instance to defend support services in Ministry of Defence bases and prisons, areas already in the frontline of coalition cuts.

Unite says that as part of the strategy to stop the cuts it is prepared to ballot its members for coordinated industrial action.

Len McCluskey will warn that government's ideological mania for outsourcing puts services at risk while pensions' proposals could impoverish hundreds of thousands as the government raids workers' retirement pots.

Such is the severity of the coalition assault on jobs, wages and the welfare state, prodded on by an ascendant business lobby, workers must become similarly organised if they are to save jobs, communities and services - and coordinated industrial action to make the government see sense cannot be ruled out.

Among the first areas earmarked for possible common action by Unite and the PCS are the Ministry of Defence, the prison services and government drivers. The accord will begin to take effect next month when Unite's members at key MoD bases respond to strike action by PCS members on June 30th, including a show of support expected by hundreds of workers at one base, Donnington.

Ahead of this, Unite will assemble representatives from around 100 key MoD bases to discuss strategic responses to threats to the support both unions' members provide to the army, navy and Royal Air Force with industrial and direct action by workers both a possibility.

Len McCluskey will also urge the union movement to redouble its efforts, following on from the massive march against the cuts in spring this year, to communicate the alternative to the coalition's deception that horrific attacks on public spending are the only response to the global economic downturn.

Addressing the PCS conference, Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary will say: "The alliance – the unity – between Unite and PCS can and must be a major force for progress. We face challenges greater than for a generation.

"This Con-Dem coalition has thrown down the gauntlet to the entire working class and to everyone who believes in a civilised society. Its aim is to dismantle everything and anything of our social gains which Thatcher may have not got round to in the 1980s.

"Working people – our families, our communities – did not create this crisis. Our public sector, supporting the most vulnerable in our society, did not create this crisis. Nor did our pay, our pensions, our services.

"We did not create it. And we are not going to pay for it.

"This agreement between PCS and Unite starts to spell out the basic elements of a progressive and socially just economic alternative to the government's plans. And it commits our two unions to dispel the myth that there is no alternative to the Cameron-Osborne strategy.

"We will build up to still broader action, if needs be, later in the year. To be absolutely clear, we will be balloting our members, coordinating our actions with yours and with other unions and building broad and effective community support to stop this government's agenda in its tracks."

Some 28,000 Unite workers are employed at MoD bases around the UK, including those at Plymouth, Bristol, Lossiemouth and Kinloss. The workers provide a range of support services to the armed forces, from vehicle maintenance to guards for the bases. They also represent the MoD firefighters who are threatened with the possibility of being outsourced to a private sector provider. Without these workers, many bases will be non-operational.

A similar situation exists within the prison service where Unite represents some 3,000 ancillary workers essential to the safe running of the prisons.

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