Attacks on Public Sector Workers on Both Sides of the Atlantic

On June 14th the bourgeois celebrated a major victory with the Wisconsin state Supreme Court clearing an anti-union law stripping most public employees of collective bargaining rights. The law also requires public employees pay more for their healthcare and pensions.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, on behalf of the ruling class, stated: „The Supreme Court’s ruling provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and focus on getting Wisconsin working again”.

The bill, which will devastate many workers and their families, was heavily promoted by Walker and his fellow Republicans to cover the state’s 3.6 billion dollar deficit (of course, the proletariat must suffer and pay). The measure was passed by the state legislature and signed by Walker in March; however, in May a circuit court judge voided it, saying Republican lawmakers violated the state’s open meetings law. The Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision overturned the action, saying the circuit court judge overstepped her authority.

But the matter is unlikely to end there. In the period leading up this decision thousand’s of workers had stormed the State Capitol „to attend the debate” in what some commentators remarked was the biggest demonstration in Madison since the Vietnam War. Their exclusion would in fact form the basis of the unsuccessful legal arguments which the public sector workers’ lawyers used to undermine the anti-union ruling, relying on some technicality about the rights of all to attend debates.

In any case, as every militant and worker aware of the court sanctioned murder of the Haymarket Martyrs back in 1886 will be only too aware, legal processes are very malleable indeed, and only reflect the battle between the classes that is going on outside the court rooms. At the moment the bourgeoisie is digging in its heels, although the close vote shows that 3 of the 7 Supreme Court judges were obviously thinking that a tactical retreat of the bourgeoisie might be advisable at this point.

The key thing is that workers don’t get too bound up in the legal battle per se, and concentrate their efforts on building on the militant organisation they have obviously already achieved, as witnessed by their storming of the Capitol.

And of course the Democratic Party political machine, needless to say, will now really kick into action, posing as valiant defenders of the workers and undermining the separate, self-organisation which will be crucial to the public Sector Workers at this stage.

We don’t know enough about the public sector union in the US to pronounce on their tactics, but we suspect that they might aim to keep the struggle within the narrow bounds of the Public Sector when in fact the successful outcome of the struggle will depend on the struggle being broadened to include workers in the private sector as well; many of whom probably work for companies in direct competition with public sector, who the government either is, or will, hive off work to in its cost-cutting drive.

In England the public sector is also under attack. Two teachers’ unions, the NUT (National Union of Teachers) and the ATL (the Association of Teachers and Lecturers) have overwhelmingly voted for strike action if the Government doesn’t shelve its proposals for „pension reforms”; i.e., that they pay more into their pension pots, get less, and work longer – not an attractive proposition. With other public sector workers under attack, the PCS, the Civil Service union, and UNISON, which represents many workers in local government, are also now talking of taking co-ordinated strike action.

If in the USA the Democratic Party will try and capitalise on the workers’ struggle and lead it down some innocuous route that causes as little damage to the bosses and the national economy as possible, the Labour Party in England, and its associated Trade Union officials, will attempt do the same thing. We’ve seen it all before: big processions which end up in some park where all the forces of the capitalist left are lined up on the platform to offer the alluring prospect of… another procession; or the promise that the Labour Party will „see to whatever-it-is when it next gets in”, as though it didn’t have a chance to introduce legislation of benefit to the workers (overturning Thatchers’ anti-union legislation would have been a start!) during its recently completed, seemingly interminable, three terms in office.

The current crisis is not just to do with a speculative bubble bursting, but is the result of the fatal flaw of capitalism – the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It now appears to be reaching a critical point and is affecting workers throughout the world at the same time and more or less with the same relative degree of severity. Class consciousness is necessarily something which crosses national frontiers, and it is based on the knowledge of a common economic situation: in the case of proletarians, that of having to sell one’s labour power to the capitalists of whatever nation. Indeed, the big capitalists are already thoroughly International, and laugh at the nationalistic petty bourgeoisie, with their narrow patriotic horizons, as their capital meanwhile effortlessly crosses borders, in search of tax exiles, cheap labour and new investment opportunities.

The attack on public sector pensions on both side of the Atlantic is one more example of the common problems faced by workers of al nations, and is one more example of why these common battles are international, not national issues.

In pursuit of international solidarity, which will necessarily be political as well as economic, we continue to organise as the political party of the working class, transcending national boundaries, and jealously guarding the lessons derived from an intense study of the capitalist economy and of its inevitable decline, and from the balance sheet of the battles fought in the past by the proletariat, workers and unemployed, as summed up in our theses and texts.