PCS: time to move beyond one-day strikes

The Public and Commercial Services Union has played a leading role in calling for the co-ordinated public sector strike on 30 June, writes Rebecca Allan, PCS rep

PCS conference will vote on 18 May to ballot 250,000 members in the civil service for action alongside teachers.
If all public sector unions balloted, then millions of workers could strike as one to stop the Coalition Government from taking their axe to our jobs, pay and pensions.
Across the board we are facing billions in cuts, an increase in the pension age, a pay freeze, cuts to redundancy pay, workplace closures and thousands of job losses. The government is attacking us all at once; to defeat them we need to stand together and fight back.
Co-ordinated strike action is a great start, but if we’re going to win then we have to go beyond the established PCS strategy of one-day strikes. Public sector one-day general strikes in France and Greece failed to stop cuts and pension reform there. We need to walk out together and stay out together – until we win.
Under Blair and Brown, PCS held a series of one-day strikes and won very little, even at a time of high investment in the public sector. The Tories want to break apart our services and are determined to achieve this in their five-year term in power. They are openly discussing strike-breaking and new anti-union laws. All the more reason for us to start fighting now.
Half a million people marched through London on 26 March, demonstrating the power of the unions. Mass strike action has to be the next step – it’s where the real power of the unions lies. Rank and file union activists and reps must demand that we are balloted for effective action that can stop the cuts, not just one-day strikes.
One motion to PCS conference, A3, calls on the TUC to organise a general strike. We should join the NUJ and NUT in supporting this call. But this is the last thing the TUC leaders want. So we need to organise across the unions to deliver one ourselves.