This letter sent into Workers showed somebody has gumption, Dec 2011 Dear Comrades, Inspired by the recent direct action of an electrician mate of mine, fighting to defend their national wages, terms and conditions with lightning demonstrations in London, I decided to take the fight for public pensions into the wider world. Non-league football being one of the last bastions of the working class (a premiership match is like the cinema – sit down, shut up, put that fag out) got me thinking. Me and a workmate went to the Dartford v Bromley FA Cup game, two thousand fans. We mustered at Dartford with rucksacks of Unison pension placards, flyers and blow-up clappers. The clappers would guarantee “buy in” from the kids. We gathered in the Bromley end, blew up the inflatables, which all the kids wanted, and scattered hundreds of pensions flyers in the air, which got everyone reading them. Then the pension placards came out. Union members around us joined in, declaring their Unison branches and volunteering to chip in and get the placards aloft. The message was out, the whole ground took notice; Dartford fans on either side of the ground clapped and showed their support. It might only have been a small stunt but the dividends that were gained from this one action meant the two of us met union members from local Unison branches and from as far afield as Sunderland. Members who saw themselves from inactive branches now had a focal point: fight for pensions at the football ground, be active, reclaim our own turf! At the next cup round on 15 November we launched 2,000 pensions’ balloons into the Bromley v Charlton spectators with dozens of kids blowing union horns around the ground. We might have to go through hoops to have a legal strike ballot but they cannot stop us having guerrilla events across wherever workers gather. Yours Fraternally, Bromley Fan
That is good to read. Glad that someone has some guts; we are becoming too passive in the UK. Incidentally, I am not much of a football man really but I do have an affection for non-league football.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxHLCexTKaQ Schools - Whistleblower reinstated WORKERS, JUNE 2009 ISSUE Three teacher union reps at Copland Community College in Brent, north London, who had been suspended when they revealed that huge bonuses had been paid out to the head, Sir Alan Davies, and senior managers, have now been reinstated. The head, on a salary of £103,000, had allegedly pocketed another £300,000 in bonuses. The chair of governors said he was “worth every penny”. Other members of Davies’ family employed at the school also raked in bonuses. A number of classes are being taught in leaking huts. ******* The importance of union organisation, even where schools become academies, was underlined by the successful resistance at Crest Girls Academy in Brent, north London this summer. In February the academy announced that 22 jobs would be cut at the school, due to a drop in student numbers and lower funding. Unions tried to negotiate with management, but to no avail – when schools become academies managements often assume they can do whatever they want. Not in this case however, as the teaching unions NUT, ATL and NASUWT got together and voted overwhelmingly for strike action on 11 May. E-ACT, the charity which runs the school, called off the compulsory redundancies just before the strike day, and has returned to negotiations. At Tile Hill Wood school in Coventry, resistance to plans for an academy continues. NUT members have staged three strike days against the plans, with local people expressing their anger that the project is to be pushed through without consultation or discussion. ■ But ATL rep Hank Roberts had compiled his facts carefully, and sent a dossier to government auditors. Now it is the head’s turn to be suspended, along with deputy Dr Richard Evans and bursar Columbus Udokoro. Brent Council has taken over the school finances, and Roberts and his colleagues are back in the school. Political greed and corruption are mirrored in many workplaces and need to be exposed.
A FEW LINKS THAT WILL LEAD TO OTHERS. Guerrilla struggle is clever struggle. Just look how everyone is talking and thinking. It is protracted struggle. It puts you in the driving seat. YOU say when to advance, as important, when to retreat. Barefaced cheek, even a Tory MP nailed his colours to the mast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDvyT...eature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxE75...eature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atv0QRIRlEQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBo0w...eature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuBGR...eature=related
A brief look at guerilla struggle in Britain, from Workers magazine. Guerilla struggle, irregular warfare, or as the US now calls it “asymmetrical warfare”, was developed as a successful strategy to win power, by Chinese communists, Cuban revolutionaries and Vietnamese national liberation fighters. In 1973, a time of intense working class action in Britain, our Party wrote a pamphlet that sought to apply the tactics of guerrilla war to civil political action, civil strife and industrial action in Britain. Classic tactics include “hit and run”, avoiding full frontal warfare, maximising your strengths and knowing your enemy’s weakness; maximising the damage to your enemy whilst minimising your losses. “When the enemy attacks, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we harry them; lure the enemy in deep so we can surround them or attack their supply lines,” were all famous tactical quotes from the Chinese revolution. Guerrilla struggle is a strategy developed by Communists and successfully used by resistance and liberation movements. A well-known use of guerrilla struggle applied to industrial struggle in Britain was the flying pickets of the striking miners in 1972 and 1974 that closed other strategic sites such as the Saltley coke works in the West Midlands when engineers joined the miners. The remainder of the seventies saw guerrilla action by engineers playing off one employer against another, with rail workers, teachers and white collar workers joining the fray, and concluded with the Winter of Discontent that brought down the Callaghan government. The key was to hit the powerful employer where he was weakest and where workers were strongest, to take the employer by surprise but not to be adventurous, to avoid all-out confrontations that might lead to casualties, to know when to withdraw and strike the employer somewhere else, to spread solidarity, but most importantly to ensure control of the struggle was in the hands of local organised workers. The Governments of the seventies could not control these struggles and consequently organised workers brought down two governments. This is why Thatcher, after her election in 1979, made her priority destroying trade unions and outlawing anything that smelt of guerrilla struggle such as solidarity action, local strikes based on a show of hands or instantaneous walkouts. In the eighties, workers had to use their heads to avoid the Government stealing their unions’ assets. Today, with those laws still in place, guerrilla struggle is even more the key to victory. The construction workers at Lindsey Oil Refinery who walked out this year over the use of foreign labour and who organised phenomenal solidarity strikes across the country are a good example. It’s time to use our heads again because only workers who know their employer well can determine these tactics.
More than just a game WORKERS, MAR 2012 ISSUE Maybe it’s an older generational thing, but the British video games industry has never been taken as seriously as it should be by those outside the industry. As the industry’s trade association, TIGA, points out, the global market for video games will grow from $52 billion in 2009 to $86 billion in 2014. Britain’s video games industry is the largest in Europe. It boasts highly skilled workers and some of the most advanced studios globally that have developed some of the fastest selling entertainment products of all time. The industry employs 9,000 skilled development staff, including software developers, game developers, designers, artists, programmers, testers and producers, 85 per cent of whom are employed outside of London. Photo: Patricia Malina/Shutterstock.com Graduates predominate: 80 per cent of the workforce in game studios such as Blitz, Climax, Exient, Jagex, Kuju Entertainment, Rebellion and Ubisoft Reflections are qualified to degree level or above. British game developers spend an average of 20 per cent of turnover on research and development. Modern personal computers owe many advances to the industry, including sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CD ROM, and DVD ROM drives. Development Although the hardware such as consoles and the DVDs are mainly produced in Japan or China, it’s the games development side that features in Britain and employs the most highly skilled and talented workers. The British games industry grew by 23 per cent during the last 3 years and is expected to grow by 8.2 per cent each year to 2015. There is a more serious side to games technology. Studios such as Blitz also use the technology to produce training “games” such as Patient Rescue, Triage Trainer and Interactive Trauma Trainer. The technology can be adapted to produce anything from logistics “games” to military war games options. So with this business success story, what’s the problem? Firstly the British government fails to support the industry in the same way that competitor countries do. For example, a games development studio in Canada will receive the equivalent of 23 per cent of its turnover in the form of tax relief, and a similar situation exists in the USA. As a consequence, US and Canadian studios pay higher wages and poach highly skilled and sought-after British workers. Abroad for work Between 2008 and 2011, the British workforce shrank by 10 per cent, of whom 41 per cent went abroad to work including many senior and uniquely skilled workers. Many of these are difficult to replace. The second issue is that the industry is simply not unionised; there is nobody to speak for workers in the industry. No British union has even attempted to organise this workforce and consequently many of them are on individually agreed contracts. In contrast film industry unions in the USA have broken into the games development industry. The issue of pay and conditions is two-edged. On the one hand the industry through TIGA lobbies the government for tax relief so they can retain staff. They argue that this is potentially a growth area and just the sort of industry that the government should be supporting in a recession. On the other hand, because nobody in the industry is a trade union member, there is no organisation to press the employers to increase salaries at the expense of profit. Britain needs this industry for the skills and innovation it creates if we are to lead a high-tech industrial revolution. For that reason we want to see the government support it. But we also need this industry to be unionised. Most non-union workers when asked why they are not in a trade union, respond that nobody ever asked them. That’s standard business for union recruiters; entertainment union BECTU needs to plan a recruitment campaign for this industry. ■
