14.12.1995

Spread the French disease: Fight benefit cuts

Pilot schemes for Job Seekers Allowance begin in January. Job centre workers are linking their fight against attacks on pay to a fight against JSA. The Labour Party promises worse cuts and workfare to boot. So how can the mounting attack on pay and services be resisted?

ON THE same day as mass mobilisations in France there was a national strike in the employment service in Britain, followed by all-out strikes in 40 offices.

This is the first serious action in the civil service since 1993. Whilst these strikes are formally over pay, there is far more at stake. This dispute comes at a crucial time for the Tory agenda to smash state welfare with the Job Seekers Allowance. Although the strikes so far are small in comparison to France, social security cuts can be just as explosive an issue this side of the channel tunnel.

The Labour Party's programme for full-scale workfare as an alternative to the JSA has made Tory plans seem liberal in comparison. This move by Blair has strengthened the implementation of JSA, which is due to be up and running by October 1996. This is well before a general election, undermining the arguments of the TUC and the Broad Left of the civil service union, CPSA that JSA could be stopped by a general election. The Tories now have nothing to stop them other than their own crisis and workers’ resistance.

The management in the employment service and benefits agency have re-organised their implementation plans due to fully kick off in January. The current strikes have raised the stakes. They are not only causing disruption to JSA plans, but - far more worrying by their very existence - they have brought back to life industrial action as a means of fighting back.

Benefits workers have for years witnessed defeats, attacks on jobs, pay and conditions. The corrupt leadership of the rightist Moderate Group within the CPSA has made the union appear impotent to most workers. In some areas CPSA organisation has become a shell.

The current strikes offer the possibility of rebuilding workers’ confidence in their own ability to resist. Now that the government is on a collision course with the unions in order to implement JSA, there is no better time to build a generalised fightback, not only in the employment service but in the closely related DSS/benefits agency.

This week it looked like the CPSA leadership was set to break the momentum that had been building in the Employment Service strikes by failing to bring out another 40 offices and suspending all action until the new year.

Back in May the Militant/Broad Left benefits agency leadership was instructed by the conference to wage a campaign of industrial action against JSA. So far only local action has been built against trials and pilots. What should have been a joint pay campaign with the employment service was sabotaged by the right wing in the summer.

Now a fresh and more important opportunity has arisen with these strikes. If action is to be spread into the benefits agency and become the launch for a wider fight, it will have to come from the rank and file. Branches will now have to build a campaign for industrial action.

In Nottingham benefits agency a five-day strike is underway. In Tottenham a strike is being called against JSA trials and the unemployed have occupied the job centre. In Uxbridge DSS/BA workers are demanding action alongside the striking ES office.

The Socialist Caucus is mounting a campaign for national action in the benefits agency. These are small beginnings, but there is every opportunity that the employment service strike may help spread the French ‘disease’.