‘new’ tactics versus rubbish bosses

by Adam Ford

With the economic collapse and inevitable banker bailouts hitting national and local government budgets, politicians from all parties are determined to make working class people pay for the crisis of their system. While national Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems are courting big business support by swaggering into TV studios, boasting of how tough they will be next year, local officials are wasting no time in going on the attack.

Under these conditions, the recent and ongoing struggles against refuse worker wage cuts are serving as a taster for the far bigger fights will soon be upon us. So yes, refuse collectors and street cleaners in Liverpool, Leeds and Edinburgh have withdrawn their labour in union-led campaigns. But perhaps more significantly, they have had active support from various groups, which has gone far beyond the passive routine of letter-writing and appeals to politicians. Desperate times clearly call for more militant measures, and though these isolated events have not tipped the balance in the strikers’ favour, they point towards new workerist strategies in the months and years ahead.