On the 30^th of November at least 3 million workers will be striking across the country in the biggest industrial action since 1979.

It will also be the first national strike within Scottish schools in 25 years, as members of the country’s biggest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), have voted more than four to one in favour of industrial action.

While if the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) votes in favour when the ballot results are announced on 9^th of November, it will be the first strike in its 114-year history.

 Predictably, the government waited until the ballot results were out before making an ‘improved’ offer – actually just a craven attempt to split workers down the middle, by offering to ‘let’ those within 10 years of retirement keep their pension (which they’ve paid for anyway), and let the rest be damned.

The Labour government pulled off the same trick in 2007 in the Civil Service, succeeding (with the able assistance of the PCS Union bureaucrats) in shafting new (younger) workers, and allowing existing workers to keep their pension deal. This was also the pension reform which was heralded as ensuring that public-sector pensions remained viable and properly financed for decades to come.

Nevertheless, Union leaders say the strikes are still going ahead. It would be pretty hard for them to say otherwise considering the huge majorities in favour of action. It’s clearly a result of the pressure building up from millions of disaffected members who have waited since 2008 for their union leaders to do something, while they have seen hundreds of thousands of colleagues sacked, their wages frozen and eaten up by inflation, and made to work harder, and longer. Yet wage freezes, VAT hikes and mass layoffs were just the opening skirmishes in the ruling class’s battle to make working people, youth and the unemployed pay for a crisis we didn’t create.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

The government continues to feed the right-wing media with statistics about how ‘unaffordable’ public-sector pensions are. The reality is that each year, pension payments amount to just 2% of GDP – much less than is spent on the Army, nuclear weapons, or bailing out banks.

The majority of public-sector workers have a pension of less than £5000 a year – hardly “gold-plated”. The average pension for Local Government is around £4000 a year, and just £2000 for women. Half of women NHS workers currently claim a pension of less than £3,500 a year.

So despite what millionaire government ministers (who wouldn’t know a PAYE form if it strung them up from a lamp-post) would have you think, public sector workers are simply fighting to keep the pensions which they’ve paid for, not the £trillion subsidies which a few thousand City bankers are busily investing in luxury yachts and £1000 cocktails.

The government wants to increase the contributions that teachers, lecturers, nurses and other public sector workers have to make to their pensions, while simultaneously reducing the amount they receive on retirement. This is not amount ‘everyone contributing their bit’, but is just another way for the millionaire coalition to rob ordinary working people of their wages, which will be streamed directly into the banks’ coffers to be gambled away on the London Stock Exchange.

The government justifies its attack on the public sector by saying that we need to reduce the national debt – however it wasn’t public sector workers that got us into this mess. It was the capitalist system and the bankers. Yet the rich have seen their wealth increase by 50% in the last year alone.

These super-rich capitalists are the ones with the real gold-plated pensions. The TUC’s 2008 Pension Watch study found that 346 directors from the UK’s top 102 businesses are set to rake in a yearly pension of more than £200,000. The most senior executives at these firms are sitting on pension funds worth £5.2million – giving them a yearly pension of £333,400. This is where the discrepancy between public and private sector pensions actually comes from. The bosses are robbing their own workers to feather their pension nests, while the government wants to convince us that the solution is to drag public-sector workers’ pensions down to the disgraceful level of the private sector!

Beyond the hype

The attacks on pensions have been accompanied by a vicious media campaign condemning public-sector workers as a lazy, incompetent burden on our society – try telling that to the millions of nurses, street cleaners and teachers who are determined to defend their rights, and fight back against the destruction of the welfare state.

The Tories dream of a society where public services are provided by private owners. There are countless examples of the shit services provided by Serco, Capitas and others as to why putting profit before people can only benefit the tiny minority of bosses and bankers who can grease palms in high places.

The strikes on 30 November have been a long time coming. It’s now crucial to organise ordinary trade union members to ensure that their leaders don’t cut a last-minute deal with the government – after all it won’t be £100k/year Union leaders who suffer as a result of the Con-Dems’ pension robbery.

And, if the leaders of Unite and Unison manage to come to an agreement with the government – as they are desperate to do – then those unions (RMT, FBU, CWU) not striking on November 30 will be next. These are some of the strongest, most militant bastions of trade unionism in the country. But if we are divided and they are left to fight alone, then they will certainly not be able to hold out indefinitely.

If they are beaten, then the 70% of non-unionised workers will face a savage onslaught from bosses who are determined to reverse decades of progress in workplace rights, pay and conditions. The attack on pensions is just the beginning. Trade Unions have accommodated to the bosses in the past, and their leaders will try to do so in the future.

It is up to us to ensure that November 30 marks the start of a radical change. The start of a genuine national movement of resistance, co-ordinated at every level – from the classroom to county, from young agency temps to trade union militants.

REVOLUTION calls on young students, workers and unemployed to take a stand and hit the streets on November 30. Whatever the next few weeks hold, the momentum of resistance must be consolidated into a national resistance that can bring down the Con-Dem government and set out the route to a radical alternative based on common ownership, democracy and the collective strength of the 99% united against exploitation, war and capitalism.

• Education strike: school, college and university students to join picket lines and mass demonstrations on November 30^th. For a united campaign to fight education cuts.

• We won’t pay for their crisis! Renounce the debt – for a 99% tax on the 1% to make the bankers pay for their own crisis, and fund jobs, education and public services.

Read more:

Call for a General Strike

Students build resistance in run-up to strikes

Largest public-sector union votes overwhelmingly for strike action

Lobby your Student Union to support strike on N30