reflections on june 30th strike day: less work for all!

Steve Ryan struck along with PCS civil servants’ union colleagues in Wrexham.

30th June went as well as was expected , Schools and offices closed, hundreds of thousands walked out and there was massive publicity.

The left are now getting ready for the next phase, a general or at least mass co-ordinated strike in the autumn. Clearly communists welcome the increasing militancy of the fight back, and the prospect of mass action.

reflections on june 30th strike day: tense debates over camping plan

Activist solidarity initiatives for last month’s J30 national strike day had rather mixed results. Daniel Harvey stresses the need to centre our activity around the workplace.

We sat around in a circle in room 3C of the University of London Union (ULU) building on Malet Street. The rain pounded down outside the window, as the residue of J30 activists discussed how the day had gone. In my short experience of the left it was probably the meeting least worth the train ticket, but it was in fact a microcosm of what the build-up to J30 had been from the start: a lot of open chat without much substantial organising focus.

Spanish protesters set up camps in public squares: was J30 time for us to do the same?

On the one hand was the activist side of the debate from the people’s assembly, who wanted to duplicate the events in Madrid and Cairo, and continue the revolution based the occupation of public squares.  On the other, some striking teachers, who said they would have liked the organisation of more pickets, and a more down to earth and local approach.

reflections on june 30th strike day: a movement taking its first steps

For Izzy Parrott, the J30 day of action was about more than pensions: but it didn’t have the feel of a wide, grassroots movement. 

I went to the strike with Hackney Welfare Action, a benefit claimant and unemployed workers’ group in Hackney, where members support each other with problems at the Job Centre, take action collectively and campaign against ‘work for your benefits’. This is sister group to the Hackney Housing Group, which I’m personally involved in.

Hackney Welfare Action members first went to the picket line at Hackney Benefits Centre, which was a useful show of support for the three workers on the picket line, including one trade union representative. Only fifteen out of three hundred workers crossed the picket that was made up of three workers and roughly thirty supporters. The workers were pleased to have the support and the dialogue we had reminded me that the picket line is still a great place to have conversations!

civil servants on strike: we can’t let the floodgates open

Ahead of civil servants’ walkouts this week and the June 30th strike day, Steve Ryan writes on the Con-Dem offensive against the whole working class

Members of the PCS civil servants’ union throughout a number of departments are taking industrial action over a range of issues, all of which have one theme, and that is government cuts. Department for Work and Pensions and Equality and Human Rights Commission workers are to walk out over office closures, and HMRC tax workers over attacks on sick leave.

con-dems want to crush the possibility of resistance

Also of course it is PCS that has been instrumental in pushing for co-ordinated action on June 30th.

Many on the left see this as something to be fully supported, and of course it is,. However the issues at stake are more complex and even more important than may at first appear.