The worker’s power: Strike!

November the 30th will see the largest, coordinated industrial action in Britain for decades. 26 Unions have balloted for strike action and up to 3 million workers could be on strike . This day could become a major stepping stone for organising the resistance against the savage cuts the ConDem Government is pushing through. But this immediately depends on the workers being able to take the fight back into their own hands.

This summer on the 30th of June around 750 000 public sector workers went on strike and showed the workers’ determination to take action against the ConDem government’s cuts. The main demand of the strike was that the government would take back their planned pension cuts, which would lower pensions as much as 25% for public sector workers. Pensions are still the main issue over which the unions take up the fight on November the 30th.    

Since the strikes were called there has been a continuing campaign against them in the bourgeois media. Due to the fact that over 90% of the schools are expected to be closed on November the 30th, a lot of propaganda has been directed at dividing public and private sector workers by blaming “greedy teachers” for inconveniences due to school closings on the day. The government has even promoted the idea of working parents  bringing their children to work. That is a more than a silly idea for employers wouldn’t be too happy about the extra distraction caused by “running children” in the workplaces. The question could easily be solved if private sector workers also decided to go on strike  and took their children with them on pickets and demos, where of course they would be more than welcome.

The media create horror scenarios about the massive losses for the British economy due to the strike day. This is interesting because the same media weren’t concerned at all when British workers got a day off for the Royal Wedding in April. Some papers even campaigned to make it a proper holiday. Seems like the issue isn’t as much the economic damage workers might cause on a day off, but rather the political damage that concerns the right wing media. And rightly so, once the workers take collective action together they might (or better, will) discover that they are strong together and that they can bring the system to a standstill and so the workers  have the bosses and capitalists and all those siding with them by the balls.

Another issue is statistics showing up saying that a lot of people in Britain do not support the strikes. The question is what is it that people are unhappy with? Is it not in most cases simply the fact that the strike will cause certain inconveniences (as those in childcare mentioned above?) And aren’t most people much more upset with the current economic climate, where they are threatened with losing their jobs, having less and less money and having to work harder and longer? The problem with opinion polls like these is that people will answer them differently when not taking into consideration all the other factors and circumstances influencing the matter. It is quite sure, that if people were asked “Do you think something has to be done against the policies of this government?” most of them would answer, “yes”.

And it is time that something is done. The livelihood of most working class people in Britain is decreasing. Inflation is eating away more than pay rises are making up for. In many industries there are even pay freezes. Unemployment has reached record highs, the public sector has been cut back massively and those people suffering most are, of course, members of the working class. Those people who have nothing to live off, except for selling their own labour power on the market for a meagre wage. And while the living standards of the working class worsen day by day, on the other side the wage cuts help the bosses, the bankers and the capitalists to increase their profits many fold. These groups live a parasitic live scrounging of the working people who produce the wealth. And this system of exploitation is guarded by the capitalist state, controlled by parties who all have only one goal, to guarantee the profits of the capitalists and help them to squeeze the workers more and more.

So what is the answer to this problem of those who claim themselves to be on the side of the workers, the trade union bureaucrats? Wasn’t it the TUC that called for coordinated strike action? Aren’t they starting to fight back? It seems so but that is not actually what is on their agenda. What the union bureaucrats are concerned with the most is getting the Labour party back into government. Already the last Labour government was pushing through massive cuts, and the trade union bureaucrats simply let them pass. It is now, under a Tory government, where the union’s bureaucrats are less directly involved that they “start to resist”.

So for example, why is this strike only one day long? The capitalists won’t be very impressed by that. And why are the union bureaucrats themselves dividing public and private sector workers and not calling on them to take on the fight as a united class? And why is the issue of the strikes simply pensions, probably the least mobilising factor, far less dangerous to the workers then pay freezes and job cuts? Is it, in fact, that the trade union bureaucracy  is not really interested in fighting back? Do they just want to flex their muscles a little to improve their position in the green room? Do they just want to mobilize their basis to get them to vote labour in the next election? Facts suggest very much so.

But there are massive issues at stake. The working class is facing a direct attack. The capitalist crisis is threatening the very existence of many working class people and capitalist madness is literally killing thousands of people every day. This whole capitalist system, the bosses and the bankers and their corrupt politicians have nothing what so ever to offer the working class except for more and more misery. The working class has all the strength to defeat the capitalists and to establish a new, socialist, order that will guarantee everybody a decent life and be based on human needs instead of the need of the capitalists to produce more and more profits. November the 30th is the first step in the right direction, collective action by the workers. But the workers must free themselves of those who pretend to be on their side only to sell them out time and time again. The ideas of Marxism provide the tools the working class needs to understand its historic course and follow it to its culmination, and the complete emancipation of humankind.