Austerity Isn't Working

With Members of Parliament having recently heard that they will be awarded a 10% pay rise next year, the rest of the workers in the public sector will reflect on their own lot. Having just come out of a three-year pay freeze, this year's and next year's 1% rises look positively generous by Gideon Osborne's earlier standards. But compared to MPs, it really isn't funny that workers in the NHS, education and public services have experienced a pay cut of up to 20%, in real terms, during the life of this government.

It is mostly women, in part-time work in the child and adult care sectors and administrative jobs in vital local services, who are disproportionately affected by government pay policy. The Child Poverty Action Group recently reported that 60% of children living in poverty in Britain today have at least one parent in work. Maintaining - and effectively reducing - low levels of pay does nothing to restore a healthy economy. The government's mantra of getting the deficit down rings hollow when Osborne is missing both his deficit reduction and borrowing targets this year - austerity isn't working.

With none of the various Tory parties prepared to stand up for the low-paid, it falls to workers and their unions to stand up for themselves. As next month promises industrial action by Unison and the PCS public sector unions, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has announced a mass march and rally in central London on Saturday 18th October as part of its Britain Needs a Pay Rise campaign. Eastbourne Trades Council is arranging free train travel from East Sussex to London; local trade unionists and their families can book their places here and make their voices heard in the capital on the day.

We Wunt Be Druv

Today, Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne will all host demonstrations by thousands of public sector workers who are refusing to buckle to the will of a Tory government. If the government's determination to carry out a money-grab under the guise of pension reform - and toss it into the bottomless deficit pit caused by bailing out the banks to the tune of £124 billion - has not persuaded every public sector worker that they are being picked on, then Osborne's autumn statement yesterday must have. On the eve of the biggest strike in a generation, the announcement that public sector pay rises will be capped to 1% for two years, after the current two-year pay freeze ends, is tantamount to a government goading the very people who form the backbone of the country: the nurses, teachers and council workers who provide the services that define a civilised nation. Coupled with the announcement, in the same statement, that public sector job losses over the next five years are to increase from 400,000 to 710,000, public sector workers can be in no doubt how valued they are by the current government.

Three-quarters of public sector workers are women and they also form the majority of low paid workers - in any sector – entitled to tax credits. Yesterday’s announcement that the planned increase in child tax credits is to be cut is further proof that the lowest paid and most vulnerable in society are under attack. A bunch of smirking, public school-educated men are taking a sledgehammer to the country on the basis of the votes of 22% of the electorate; and they are being supported by treacherous Liberal Democrats who should hang their heads in shame at being complicit in this Vichy government. Like dogs allowed on the sofa, Clegg and Alexander sat smugly on the front bench yesterday, nodding their heads as the heir to a baronetcy and the Osborne & Little wallpaper fortune declared class war. It's like Thatcher's 'enemy within' all over again...they are spoiling for a fight. So, let's give them one; let's stand up for ourselves and each other by getting out onto the streets of Sussex today - we wunt be druv!