Workers are being bled dry: expected to work longer and pay more into their pensions only to receive less on retirement.
The implications for today’s youth, many already struggling to find decent jobs are terrifying.
Every time workers go on strike to defend their jobs and pay the government and the bosses’ media whips up a divide-and-rule frenzy around ‘selfish teachers wrecking the kids’ education’ or public servants trying to maintain their ‘gold-plated’ pensions at the expense of everyone else.
But while the threat to pensions is very real, the strikes are about much more than this. The action on June 30th reflects the massive opposition to the Coalition’s austerity drive which claims to put the ‘national interest’ above all other concerns.
As Vince Cable revealed when he threatened to punish workers if they took strike action, this ‘national interest’ in reality is nothing more than a euphemism for promoting the interests of profiteering bosses who demand the wholesale privatisation of our universities, our schools and our NHS.
What we say
The government want to destroy our welfare state and make millions of ordinary people pay for the bankers’ crisis.
These strikes represent the start of industrial resistance to the devastating consequences of the economic crisis.
Since the financial crash in 2008, the bosses have taken advantage of the unions’ silence to destroy a million jobs and dump the cost of their crisis onto the young, the disabled and the poor.
The attempted pension reforms are part of the government’s strategy to reduce workers’ pay and conditions in order to make these services cheaper and more attractive to millionaire investors.
As students and young people we are tomorrow’s workers and pensioners. Strikes against pension reforms are as relevant to us as campaigns to save the NHS and opposition to cuts and fees in education.
To win, the strike action must be generalised: – by spreading solidarity action across all sections of society- non unionised, precarious and unemployed workers, and school, college and university students.
This unity will allow us to face down the government and build support for a general strike which can bring down the government and stop the cuts.
REVOLUTION will be on the pickets on the morning of June 30th and joining demonstrations around the country later in the day.
We call on students in schools and colleges to walk out in solidarity on June 30th and join their teachers on the picket lines.
Young people need to invest the energies of last winter into a wider anti cuts movement.
June 30th is the chance to do this; to strike, picket, march, and organise in our communities, anti-cuts groups and trade unions to bring down this millionaire coalition.
