Workers Revolutionary Party - Coordinated strike action motion for TUC

The News Line: News Friday, 10 September 2010 Coordinated strike action motion for TUC

Trade union banners on the march to Defend the Welfare State last April in London

TRANSPORT union RMT has tabled a motion for the TUC Congress in Manchester next week which sets out a blueprint for a coordinated trade union and community fight-back against the cuts programme and the ‘class warfare’ of the Cameron government.

The RMT motion calls on the trade union movement to;

• Call an immediate summit of affiliates to discuss the sole issue of how we can best coordinate industrial action to defend jobs, pensions and conditions.

• Consider convening an urgent conference of affiliates and representatives of users of publicly funded services and the welfare state to establish a broad alliance against the cuts.

• Organise an urgent national demonstration, lobby of Parliament and national days of protest against the cuts and fully involve trades councils in moblising for these events.

• Present a clear alternative to the cuts including public ownership, higher rates of tax for the rich, closing corporate tax loopholes and scrapping the Trident replacement.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: ‘The TUC has to be the launch-pad for the fight-back against the coalition government’s decision to unleash all-out class warfare through their unprecedented attack on our communities, public services, welfare state and transport system.

‘Our defence must be built on generalised strike action and community resistance in the biggest public mobilisation since the anti-poll tax movement.

‘RMT is in no doubt that the government is using the deficit as a thinly veiled cover to engage in an ideological dismantling of the state and an attack on workers, and the most vulnerable in our society, which goes far further than even the dark days of Thatcher. The true scale of that attack will become clear this autumn.

‘As well as setting out plans for our own coordinated industrial and community action we also send a message of solidarity to our comrades in France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and elsewhere who are fighting similar cuts to jobs, standards of living and public services.’