Civil servants from Manchester and Salford heard reps from their union PCS totally slate the Government, the Labour Party and useless trade union officials yesterday.
The lunchtime rally, outside the Manchester Civil Justice Centre complete with Samba drummers, followed protests by anti Bedroom Tax groups (see here), anti blacklisting campaigners (see here) and the huge teachers strike march that snaked through Manchester city centre (see here).
Indeed, striking teachers from the NUT joined the rally to hear PCS rep Dave Vincent call the Labour Party "a shower" for not providing any proper opposition to ConDem cuts across the public sector, as he called for huge strike action.
"We need to do what the PCS and the NUT are doing and unite all the unions, like on 3rd November 2011 when 2.6million workers came out on strike, the biggest turnout since 1926" he said "The unions should have gone on to call four million out – well the policy is still there for united strike action to fight back. We know we're on the right side."
The union's Pete Middleman reiterated the call for more strikes as the only action the ConDem Government understand…
"We can have all the rational arguments with the press but it's not working because at the end of the day it's having no affect on this Government" he insisted "It's twelve months since they spoke to us on the eve of the Olympics strike, because brute force is the only language that this government understands."
Calling for `guerrilla strike action' he labelled the Government `liars' for pushing the line that civil servants are getting big pay rises…
"They're saying that there are 7%-8% pay increases for civil servants – that's an absolute lie" he said "A handful of senior managers and flight lieutenants in the RAF are the only ones who get anything near that. Our living standards have reduced between 15-20% since this Government came to power. And no, we're not going to go away. We're not going to shy away from the fight. We're only custodians of these jobs, these services and term and conditions. Our absolute duty is to hand them on to the next generation of civil servants in the same state that we inherited them."
Earlier, Alex Davidson, Vice Chair of the PCS North West, told the Salford Star why the PCS had organised another rally, following a series of strikes recently across Manchester and Salford…
"We are here today because the Comprehensive Spending Review announced that there would be at least another 140,000 jobs to go across the public sector, and we're going to be seeing more horrific cuts across the civil service" he said "There's already been huge amounts of people made redundant and a severe cut back in services we provide to the public. So we're making the point again that CPS members are prepared to fight against the destruction of the services they work in.
"They're trying to strip away civil service pay and conditions, and basically level them down to the worst settlements of the private sector" he added "The Tories say it's about making things fair but what it's really about is enabling privatisation and making it easier for the services we work in to be privatised."
He reiterated the call for mass strike action to defend jobs, conditions and services that civil servants provide to the public…
"This is an assault on the entire public sector and the entire working class" he said "There needs to be a combined trade union response and that's why PCS are in favour of building the biggest possible combined strike action across the public and private sector we can."
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