The day after the J10 strike

On the face of it, the public sector strikes yesterday were very well supported.  Although most government buildings remained open to the public, by ministerial diktat, many were unable to offer any kind of service apart from 'come back tomorrow.'  So well done to everyone involved.

But what's next?

It strikes me that yesterday's strike was the culmination of a campaign rather than the beginning of one.  It will have taken a great deal of organisation and planning to coordinate different unions who were all striking over the same sort of issues but not exactly the same issues.  In general, I felt the unions did a good job of presenting a united front.

My old union, the PCS, has now commenced an overtime ban which will last for the rest of the month.  In reality, that's nothing more than a holding strategy whilst the Executive decides how to move forward.  In itself, with the huge cuts in departmental spending, an overtime ban will have a negligible effect in some areas but none at all in others.

 

They have a few options but all of them have their limitations.  Here are some of them:

1. Call another one day strike along with the other unions.  This will not take place until at least September so momentum, such as there is, will be lost
2. Hold a Civil Service-wide one day strike which will surely have less effect than yesterday's multi-union strike and will be a step backwards for the union.
3. Call for selective action in different departments to hurt government revenue, fund it by a levy of members (PCS is skint and wouldn't be able to pay members much by way of strike pay)
4. Ballot members for all out indefinite unpaid strike action

There may be other options, different types of strike action, but to my mind these are the main options open to the union.

The only honest option is the fourth one and it's the least palatable one for the union and members.

The first three options are more likely because whilst union members may take a hit in their already declining wages they have the advantage of being short, sharp and a reminder that the dispute is not settled.  And how could it be if the government will not negotiate?

All out action is the nuclear option.  If successful, it would have enormous consequences for the country.  It would cause chaos across all government departments and chaos to the wider public.  But it is fraught with risks.

The ultra left who run PCS know this too.  And they know that they also have to deal with very high levels of non-membership in many areas of departments.  Almost all the organising would need to be done by lay officials, in their own time and probably at their own expense.  And in a branch like my old one, which couldn't even tell members about all member meetings, this would require a dramatic improvement to their game.

We don't know if all out strike action would succeed either.  Cameron, with Clegg's useful idiots standing alongside, with a favourable media (to him) might even gain strength from a fight with Civil Servants if the unions were unable to demonstrate the value of the services they provide for such low returns.  Even now, large sections of the public regard Civil Servants as bean-counting tea-drinking bureaucrats, not benefit fraud investigators, immigration staff and coast guards.

Those of us who have been there and done that in previous years know that, whatever happened, the union could not deliver, never mind sustain, all out strike action because if the PCS leadership thought they could, they'd have balloted before now.

Yesterday's strike made a point but now it's yesterday's news.  At the end of the month, union members will lose a day's pay and many will reflect on whether it was worth it, especially if the union has not come up with a way of building on it.

I feel the unions would do better to direct their resources to campaign far more effectively and publicly about the work their members do, essentially to continue the campaign peacefully and without the threat, as the media see it, of more strikes.

That probably won't work either because we have a government no one voted for carrying out policies that no one voted for and they do not negotiate full stop.

I understand why the unions called the strike, although there was a great deal of far left politics involved in the decisions of some unions, but in calling it just before the holiday season means everything could go quiet now and by the autumn it will all be over.

The lesson is always have an exit strategy.  I'm not sure PCS and the other unions have one.