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| Eleanor Bullen, FE Support Worker, Manchester |
This Thursday, July 10th, nearly a million public sector workers will go on strike in defence of their pay and conditions. This could make it the biggest single day of industrial action since the General Strike in 1926. Members of the Fire Brigades Union, GMB, the National Union of Teachers, the Public and Commercial Services Union, Unison, and Unite will be taking coordinated industrial action against government policies which have over five years drastically reduced the living standards of the whole working class. This is an important day.
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| James Thorne, Teacher, Liverpool |
Neither of us are in workplaces which are on strike on Thursday. Nonetheless, we want to play our part on so important an occasion, and are going to, using the most powerful weapon of the working class: solidarity. Each and every one of the million workers striking will be sacrificing a day’s pay, therefore we have decided on Thursday that we will donate our day’s pay to labour-movement causes. Good though they are, true solidarity has to move beyond words and ‘likes’ on Facebook.
We hope you will join in our act of solidarity with a donation of your own. If you think you can’t well afford it, please remember that those who will strike on Thursday have already decided to make the same sacrifice. Their action is out there for all of us: those of us not on strike need to put our shoulders to the wheel as well.
What you can do:
· Donate what you will earn on Thursday to a labour-movement cause of your choice.
· Post a comment below to say who you are, and what the cause was (add a link, or a little bit about it if you like).
· Share widely!
About our cause:
We have decided to donate to the strike fund of workers
at Lambeth College, where management, in a classic attempt to divide and rule,
are attempting to impose longer hours and less pay on all staff recruited in future. In an exemplary response, the existing workforce has
been on an indefinite strike since 3rd June. If the workers at Lambeth College win, it
will send a powerful message to managers everywhere, and make safer the pay and
conditions of workers everywhere. The
Lambeth strike is a great cause to donate to, but of course there are many
others. The point is to have the
maximum solidarity across the whole class on July 10th.
Eleanor Bullen and James Thorne
