Unions warn of coordinated action over cuts

[cory777]

Source: ITN

Unions have warned of coordinated strikes and campaigns of civil disobedience to fight the Government's spending cuts amid revelations that more than 200,000 public sector jobs have already been axed or are at risk of being lost.

Councils, health authorities, police forces, Government departments and other public sector bodies across the country have all taken an axe to jobs in recent months after having their budgets slashed.

One leader warned that co-ordinated industrial action was "inevitable" as the TUC prepared to draw up a campaign of protests against the Government as its annual congress opens in Manchester.

Delegates will be asked to support joint union industrial action as well as other forms of protest, with a national demonstration being planned for next March which could attract hundreds of thousands of people in the biggest show of public anger in a generation.

Read more: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100912/tuk-unions-warn-of-coordinated-action-ov-dba1618.html

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News that Matters http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[Turborama]

1. British Union leaders warn of strikes to oppose cuts (Mainstream Labour Party Feeling "Militant")

Source: The Guardian

The government will face co-ordinated industrial action and civil disobedience once the true scale of its budget cuts becomes clear, union leaders warned today as they claimed 150,000 public sector job losses are already in the pipeline.

Police forces, councils, courts and hospital trusts are laying off workers even before the bulk of the spending cuts are announced in October's comprehensive spending review, research by the GMB union suggests.

And in a sign that mainstream Labour's attitude towards the cuts is hardening, Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, said the party felt "militant" against extreme cuts. She defended unions' right to strike, though she insisted that nobody wanted to see people's lives disrupted.

Union leaders at the TUC conference, which opens tomorrow, were tonight talking about the inevitability of industrial action after next month's spending review, when the scale of the coalition's cuts will become clear. The unions will debate plans that would see them mandated to "support and co-ordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action" to fight the cuts, under pressure from the more radical unions to demonstrate that they will stand up to the government.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/12/union-strikes-industrial-action-cuts

[FunkyLeprechaun]

2. I'm wondering if that's the best action

they are doing within this recession? I have to agree with the cuts... we need to claw back our deficit.

What about people who have jobs but depend on public transport? I think if they do a coordinated strike, it will look very bad for them.

[fasttense]

4. Yeah, it would be so much better if Unions and American citizens did absolutely NOTHING.

When we all started to lose our jobs in 2007 and we did absolutely NOTHING about it. Well, you can see the results for yourself. It kept going up and up and we ended with losing 800,000 jobs a month.

Ronnie Raygun proved deficits don't matter. We DO NOT NEED to claw back any deficit. Running deficits never seemed to hurt Raygun or prevented the bushes from having fake wars and getting re-elected.

The big scary deficit is nothing more than a scare tactic used by the RepubliCONS to kill the American middle class.

The Unions and normal people (not tea baggers) need to take action immediately or even more jobs will be lost for good.

Doing Nothing because doing something might look bad is just more RepubliCON crazy talk.

If you want to continue this 2nd RepubliCON Great Depression, just continue to push fake concern over deficits and continue to do nothing.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

8. Didn't Clinton do spending cuts?

Just wondering...

[depakid]

5. Massive cuts to the public service in the middle of a recession?

:crazy:

[Wednesdays]

6. There's always selling pencils or apples as an option...

:shrug:

[FunkyLeprechaun]

7. Labour spent and spent

Yet it's one of the causes of the recession. We could continue to spend but the UK would become another Greece (bailed out by the EU).

[depakid]

9. Labour's "spending" had nothing to do with the downturn!

and Greece is a completely different situation involving issues of accounting fraud and the inflexibility of monetary policy with a unified regional currency.

(Technically, of course, the UK isn't in a recession- though people we know in England and Wales certainly say it feels like it and employment prospects are dim with the official rate hovering around 8%).

About the dumbest thing a government can do in a downturn with employment numbers like these is to engage in massive spending and service cuts- with attendant layoffs as it looks like you're about to find out the hard way.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

10. It did!

Didn't Clinton enact spending cuts as well?

I know personally of three museums, publicly funded, who closed because of the recession during Labour. Labour's spending didn't help the economy at all.

[xchrom]

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