The Socialist (Mar 07) - North - Industrial News: Public Sector pay / Sacked airport workers

North - Industrial News
Public Sector pay - Reject Brown's pay insult

Hazel Devine, Community mental health nurse & UNISON member

1.5 MILLION public service workers have received another kick in the teeth from Gordon Brown. They have been offered a pay rise that averages less than 2%.

The increases are the lowest in ten years. Also by bringing in the miserly recommendations of the Pay Review Body in stages, part in April and a second payment in November, the government is saving itself around £200 million.

The government argue that inflation has fallen to 2.7% but this figure, which is still more than the pay offer, is based on the rigged Consumer Price Index which excludes housing costs. The old Retail Price Index currently stands at 4.2%. Whatever way you look at it, health and other public service workers are being offered a pay cut, especially so in Northern Ireland where house prices are rising fastest.

In order to disguise this, government ministers are using the argument that has been used by Peter Hain and co. to justify the pathetic rises offered to civil servants here over recent years. They are adding the value of annual increments onto the pay award to make it look more substantial.
Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, used this method to claim that the rise for nurses would be 4.4%, not the actual figure of 1.9%. Civil servants here were not taken in by this New Labour spin. Nor will nurses or other public sector workers.

All public sector unions should come together to prepare for a united campaign of industrial action against Brown’s pay cut. If the Northern Ireland Assembly is up and running, pressure must be put on MLAs, who do not hesitate to pay their own inflated salaries, to award a decent increase to nurses and other public sector workers here.

North - Industrial News
Build for national day of action

The Socialist

ON 3 March, public sector unions held a "Positively Public" rally in Belfast in response to the current round of attacks on the public services by the government.

What could have been the largest illustration of anger and disaffection of public service workers, turned out to be a small and low-key affair.

The hundred or so activists who attended reflected the lack of work done by the union leaderships to build for this event.

All the union leaderships were present at the rally, while the members were conspicuous by their absence as it was poorly advertised throughout the public service sector.

This could have been a major demonstration if the union leadership had a serious approach to opposing the privatisation of our most valuable service, the NHS. We ask the membership of all public service unions to pressure the leadership and build a truly dynamic campaign against this assault on the public sector.

We need to link with activists across the water and build for a national day of action against cuts and privatisation.

North - Industrial News
Sacked airport workers say they were fired "for trade union opinion and socialist beliefs"

Peter Hadden

Come May it will be five years since 24 security workers at Belfast International Airport were sacked for striking against the poverty wages paid by their employer, ICTS.

The company were encouraged to sack these workers, including all the shop stewards, when union officials of the T&GWU repudiated the strike, despite the fact that it was an official dispute that had been legally balloted for.

Over the last five years the workers, especially the three shop stewards, Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Boyer, have fought a long and gruelling campaign for justice.

This has involved pickets at the airport, protests and demonstrations as well as legal action. The workers have been demanding justice, not only from ICTS, but also from the union. They have had to resort to a number of hunger strikes and occupations of Transport House to try to get answers from the union leadership as to why T&GWU officials repudiated the action.

In July 2003 the workers were advised by T&GWU General Secretary, Tony Woodley, to accept a paltry out of court settlement and drop their legal case against ICTS.

The workers rejected this and decided to continue the fight on their own, without union backing. In a groundbreaking legal decision, they have won their case that the strike was lawful and official, despite an unsuccessful appeal of this decision by ICTS to the Court of Appeal.

In April their substantive case for unfair dismissal on the grounds that they were discriminated against "on grounds of political opinion because of their trade union opinion and socialist beliefs" is being heard.

Gordon McNeill told The Socialist: "Our case is going to make new law that will strengthen the hand of shop stewards both in dealing with their employers and within their unions. Five years on we have a message for Bill Morris (T&GWU General Secretary at the time of the sackings) and Tony Woodley. It is this –

"We chose to fight.
You chose to run.
You deserted us,
But we still won.
It’s now your trial
It has begun!"

"We are not out to attack trade unions but to change them and build unions that are democratically run by the members and look after the interests of members."