23.09.2009

Leeds workers on the front line

If the City Council gets away with impoverishing this group of workers, it will be encouraged to take the hatchet to others, writes Jim Moody

David Cameron’s Tories have been the most upfront in promising savage cuts should they form the next government. These are portrayed as being in the national interest, an antidote to Brown’s profligate borrowing and necessary to balance the books. It is the Tories who are at the moment winning the battle of ideas - people have been fooled into genuinely worrying about the ballooning national debt - and they will almost certainly win next year’s general election.

Earlier in the month shadow chancellor George Osborne made a point of praising those Conservative local authorities such as Hammersmith & Fulham, Barnet and Devon which, in his words, “are dealing with the constraints” a Conservative government “may face very soon” by cutting costs and rooting out waste. A Tory Whitehall “would have much to learn from Tory town halls”, he said in his speech to Conservative councillors.

We should see the city of Leeds as a test-run - not only for what a Tory government would look like in the ‘age of austerity’, but a Labour or Liberal Democratic government too. All three mainstream parties are now proclaiming the need for urgent and deep cuts.

The Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition controlling Leeds council announced late last year that it would be slashing the basic wage by up to a third for those working in refuse collection, street cleansing and waste management. For the 600 workers within the council’s Streetscene services, this means knocking as much as £6,000 off their current wage of around £18,000.

Liberal Democrat council leader Richard Brett, who received £45,800 in allowances and expenses last year, claims that refuse staff are well paid. Obviously too well paid, as far as he is concerned. Cynically, Brett and his allies have been blaming equality legislation dating back to 1975 for their decision to enforce pay cuts. With the enthusiastic agreement of trade unions, including Unison, TGWU and GMB, a regrading scheme was put in motion in April 2007. But what this meant in practice was not the levelling up of wages, but their levelling down.

Unison knew there would be losers, but hoped to minimise their numbers to a tiny handful. The council, however, deviously set out with a formula that would involve no additional costs and - as should have been expected - one that has resulted in not just a few losers, but thousands of them. Council bosses put workers’ jobs through the assessment process four times without getting the outcome they wanted. Each time the result was ‘no pay cut’. Incredibly, they got away with a fifth bite of the cherry. Only this time did a so-called independent panel produce the ‘correct’ outcome: an enormous reduction. Out of the 22,000 council workers evaluated so far, around 10% are being told they face a cut in pay. Unison has reported that some of its members have put their houses up for sale in anticipation.

Not surprisingly, the whole episode has provoked widespread anger, especially among the Streetscene service workers, who are by far the biggest losers. Under pressure, thankfully, trade union officials speedily backtracked. Negotiations with the council broke down in acrimony and in July a joint mass meeting of Streetscene workers, called by Unison, the GMB and Unite at Leeds Civic Hall, voted unanimously to hold a ballot for strike action. A clear majority followed and since September 7 the strike has been solid, with very few scabs crossing picket lines. The workers are determined to stay out until their demands are met, which basically boil down to scrapping the massive pay cuts.

Without doubt, if Leeds gets away with impoverishing this group of workers, it will be encouraged to take the hatchet to others. There are still another 11,000 to be ‘evaluated’.

The council is bringing in private refuse collection companies in an attempt to break the strike. Despite this, they only expect to empty bins on alternate weeks. Moreover, according to Unison, the council is considering privatising the whole service. As the union says, “The reality is that Leeds city council taxpayers would be left with a substandard service, with the emphasis being on profit rather than service delivery to the citizens of Leeds” (www.leedsunisonlg.org.uk/news.html).

Needless to say, privatisation is premised on driving down workers’ wages. The council is now preparing the groundwork for whichever company they happen to favour. So far, council representatives are refusing to negotiate while the strike continues, but their intransigence can be broken if picket lines are respected and other workers show solidarity.

On Tuesday September 22, as the strike entered its third week, the GMB executive put up £10,000 for a hardship fund for Leeds workers, as well as launching a nationwide appeal to all 3,000 GMB branches across the UK for financial and other support.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said the council was not doing its job properly: “The Lib Dem-Tory administration has failed the people of Leeds. Their negligence in not collecting nearly £17 million in unpaid council and non-domestic rates heaps financial misery on the rest of the taxpayers of Leeds. This is in stark contrast to their attacks on their own workers in the cleaning departments, on whom they seek to impose huge wage cuts. It is not only rubbish which is not being collected in Leeds.”

So Kenny presumably wants more threatening letters, bailiffs and court orders to squeeze those who in general find it the hardest to pay - the poorest citizens of Leeds. Equally to the point, Kenny and the GMB want to see the re-election of Gordon Brown in 2010, which they know will mean a budget-cutting New Labour government.

Perhaps a charge of hypocrisy can also be levelled at Leeds council opposition leader, Keith Wakefield. Addressing a rally of strikers and their supporters on September 10 outside Leeds town hall, he offered the support of the Labour group and condemned the pay cuts as a vicious attack on some of the council’s lowest-paid workers, saying: “I believe you have 100% support from the people of Leeds. We will do everything we can to help you win this dispute” (Yorkshire Evening Post September 11).

Would he promise to “do everything” if workers were resisting New Labour cuts?