UMSU Activist

This Thursday 400,000 workers from three Trade Unions’ will go on strike in Britain. Teachers, lecturers and civil servants will all be on picket lines fighting for decent pay. Gordon Brown is trying to freeze the pay of public sector workers at 2% for three years in an attempt to hold down all our wages. This is at a time when the official inflation rate is about 5% while we all know that prices of food, petrol, electricity and gas have rocketed. The prices of cheese, eggs and milk rose by 17.6% last month! It has been estimated that the average working family needs an extra £1500 a year just to stand still and cover their living costs. So Brown’s pay freeze is a pay cut for millions of workers. New Labour want to make us pay for their economic crisis, while at the same time cutting taxes on the profits of the rich by reducing corporation tax still further. But Thursday’s strikes will also be about New Labour’s privatisation agenda. Labour’s attacks on our education are also being carried out on our schools, hospitals, local government and public services.

‘Fightback Thursday’ is about workers standing up to the Government and saying that we don’t want the market in the public sector: we want public services for people not profit. This week is Another Education Is Possible Week at UMSU. People ask how we are going to make a free and socialised education a reality: on Thursday those with the social and economic power to transform our world, the workers, will show just how we can win a Free Education – by standing up against war and privatisation and fighting together for another world.

Andy Cunningham

UMSU Campaigns Officer