Dear comrades, I bring solidarity and greetings from the Workers Party of Ireland and from Irish workers and militant trade unionists to this important Seminar. We wish to thank PAME for the invitation and opportunity to attend the PAME Congress and the International Seminar. We believe that it is only by sharing our experiences, knowledge and solidarity at an international level, can we learn and more effectively organise against the real enemy of Labour, the capitalist system.

We also take this opportunity to extend our solidarity to the LARCO workers who are fighting to prevent the sell-off of this major enterprise and for the protection of their jobs and rights. We know that it is socialism which provides an alternative, a new social order which will bring about the emancipation of the working class and the peoples of the world. However, comrades, that does not mean that we can afford to, or indeed should, wait until the overthrow of this corrupt system, before we demand meaningful rights and social progress in the workplace and in wider society.

We must champion the cause of workers, women, the young, the old, the vulnerable and all those who are excluded and marginalised under capitalism if we expect them to fully engage in the class struggle. We must place their demands at the centre of our industrial and political actions.

Comrades, we know that in the medium to long term, only by militant actions and organisation can we hope to achieve and consolidate any real gains and rights for those who most need them. We must organise in each of our countries, in our trade unions, in women’s organisations and at all levels of civil society. We must engage with those workers and professions that are populated by lone workers, such as those who deliver care at home to the elderly, the sick and disabled. This work, and these jobs and skills, are predominantly jobs carried out by women, and are all too often unremunerated, underpaid and undervalued or involve precarious employment with zero-hour contracts and usually with no employment rights. My own work as a trade unionist involved representing workers in the provision of health and social care where increasingly the public sector is under attack.

Comrades, the working class are still suffering as a result of the harsh austerity measures demanded by the European Union, and administered without restraint or regard for the impact on the working class, by national governments, whether right-wing, social democratic or composed of the new social-democrats.

It is the role of class-conscious militants in the trade union movement to politicise and raise the class consciousness of all workers in preparation for the struggles ahead. In Ireland we have so called “left wing” parties, trade unions and others, lamenting the decision of the UK to leave the European Union, claiming it is a major blow to workers’ economic and human rights. We, comrades, must challenge the myth that the European Union or indeed the ruling class conferred workers rights on us from any sense of decency, morality, or out of any consideration for social justice. Every gain and achievement, every piece of legislation that granted even limited or modest forms of progress, social or economic rights, was fought for
and won by workers themselves through vigorous struggle.

Comrades, in Northern Ireland the Regional Executive failed to function for three years (and it is still failing to function). During that time, elected representatives continued to be paid, while public sector workers suffered a pay freeze for over a decade. Health service workers took strike action. Workers in public utilities, education, transport have taken industrial action. Workers are exposed to the so-called “fire and rehire” practice, which became widespread during the pandemic and through which companies dismiss staff only to reemploy them on inferior terms and conditions. The British Government has stated that it is considering using agency workers to break strikes.

Capital has used the pandemic to generate massive profits for share holders and others, whilst at the same time inflicting serious damage to the living and working conditions of the working class. The governments and employers claim that this is on the grounds of flexibility, affordability and to save jobs. In fact, these developments are about maximizing profit and trying to break the strength of militant trade unionists.

Public health, education and social security systems have been under attack and the erosion and elimination of hard-won workers’ rights, social gains and achievements have all formed part of this agenda. Poverty and destitution are rife across the world and multi-national corporations and monopolies exploit unemployment levels to sweat an already over stretched work force and weaken terms and conditions of employment. They create divisions amongst workers and stir up racial tensions.

The growth of nationalism, racism, fascism and xenophobia are a constant reality, as is virulent anti-communism and state repression of trade unionists, all of which represent a threat to workers and the unity of workers. We support the demand of trade unions and mass organizations in Kazakhstan and all over the world for the immediate release of political prisoner Yerzhan Yelshibayev, a leader of the unemployed movement.

Comrades, the war in Ukraine has provided capital with another pretext to attack the working class. Energy and food prices have risen so much that workers are having to choose between heating and eating, they are unable to pay for petrol to take them to and from work, many cannot afford to turn on their cookers to prepare hot meals, whilst energy companies are making billions in increased profits. Meanwhile, the natural resources and infrastructure which supply the energy and other utilities are in the hands of private companies and individuals and price increases are driven by profiteering and delivering dividends to shareholders.

During the worst days of the pandemic workers kept society going at great risk to themselves and their families. They were temporarily and disingenuously hailed as heroes by employers and governments. Now they are again treated with contempt by those same governments and employers. Companies refuse to honour collective bargaining agreements, governments do nothing to support the workers, and in many cases threaten anti-trade union legislation to support the monopolies. In the past number of months, we have seen P&O Ferries sack 800 workers without warning by Zoom, and employ agency staff at £1.80 an hour to replace them.

University Staff are currently taking industrial action against cuts to staff, pay and pensions. Many public sector workers are taking industrial action because pay increases are not keeping pace with unprecedented levels of inflation.

The capitalist class and their allies in government seek to lay blame on the pandemic and the war in Ukraine for high prices and low pay. They claim they cannot afford to put in place systems to deal with persistent and rising levels of poverty but are quite happy to spend billions of pounds to provide weapons and other forms of lethal destruction that kill and injure men, women and children and lay waste to infrastructure, ecosystems and environments in proxy wars across the world.

The devastating war in Ukraine is the result of increasing inter-imperialist rivalries. The victims are the Ukrainian and Russian working class. The US, the EU and NATO serve to escalate international tension, imperialist aggression and war. Comrades, we know that imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism, is the enemy of peace and social progress. Peace requires social, economic and human rights for all and these conditions can only be met through the construction of a socialist society. We demand an end to all wars and oppression. We demand that utilities, transport and other essential services be taken in to public ownership. We demand a comprehensive programme to deliver well paid sustainable employment with full
employment rights, which should include affordable child care, equal pay and an end to the gender pay gap, and allows women who sadly still bear the responsibility for looking after children to return to the workplace.

We demand an anti-poverty strategy and an end to health inequalities, a strategy for a comprehensive programme to deliver public housing to deal with the waiting list for homes and the immense homeless problem across the countries. We demand quality health, education, social care and social security systems that serve the working people.

Comrades, only a socialist society can deliver real change for working people and we must fight together to secure that change. The class-conscious labour and trade union movement across the world must work together, through collective organisation of the workers and coordinated action, to achieve those goals.
Thank you, comrades.

When the pandemic hit the UK, our union was already in 2 disputes with the Higher Education (HE) employers: one over attacks on our pension scheme, and one over pay and working conditions (pay equality, casualised contracts and workload). Ironically, the UCU leadership called off the last week of that strike, that was over workload among other things, at the same time that the employers demanded that we switch to online teaching practically overnight and carry the whole sector over during the challenging times of lockdowns and the peak of the pandemic, assuming we’ll just accept the huge cost of workload. To keep the marketised HE sector, that was losing the revenue of international students, afloat during the pandemic, thousands of the most vulnerable and precarious employees lost their jobs across the UK.

Researchers had their work put on hold without their grants being extended, with the most junior leaving completely the sector as a consequence. In the midst of all this, restructurings and redundancies of core support personnel were announced in various universities. Inequality and excessive workload run – and are still running – rampant, as people with caring responsibilities, in sub-par housing, were asked to work from home without any consideration for their wellbeing, sometimes while caring for the sick or being sick themselves.

When it was time to bring the “students-customers” (as the marketisation mantra lingo of british – and not only – HE sector dictates) back on campus with questionable health and safety protocols, in order not to lose them (or their student housing rent income), we were brought back as well, lecturers, support staff, without consideration for the health and safety of the workplace, during a pandemic that was still going strong. The employers were not interested in their students; their only aim was to continue profit as a money making business entity, and they exploited and continue to exploit our genuine care and interest for our students to serve their spurious purpose. The workload of the ones that were fired initially was now being shared between the ones that remained, with the larger of the universities actually accepting record
numbers of domestic students in order to compensate for the loss of the international ones.

It should be noted that the precarious working conditions and the intensification of work is a result of the marketisation of HE. The pandemic was the pretext “at the right time” for the university bosses, with the help of the government and “yellow” trade union leaderships in some cases, to intensify their efforts of attacking the working conditions and employment rights of all the university staff, starting, of course, with the ones who were already in precarious working conditions before the pandemic. The attack on our rights and working conditions was and continues to be intense. Universities were threatened to close because they were in debt. For example, Goldsmiths College of the University of London is functioning under the administration of its creditor banks which is dictating the dismissal of staff.

The response of the UCU leadership to all this was one of inaction. Lots of lip service was paid to the sacrifice of the workers of the HE sector, but no central campaign or dispute was built in order to protect us. On the contrary, the disputes and the struggle that was organised before the pandemic were put in halt because, as the UCU leadership claimed, it was impossible to continue them during the pandemic. Local branches were left to their own devices to start their disputes to protect people from redundancies, or negotiate for better H&S measures on campus or contract extensions for the most vulnerable. And many of them did, dealing with all the challenges of organising a completely remote workforce. The University of Brighton UCU stopped redundancies in IT by threatening to strike and using a lot of social media to publicise their struggle and cause reputational damage to the employer. The University of Liverpool and University of Leicester UCU also stopped redundancies by running long and well organised marking boycotts. In these strange times, online activity and solidarity between branches has become paramount for the success of struggles. Grassroots initiatives for organisation and solidarity sprung up, that formulated demands, lobbied the UCU and coordinated actions (CoronaContract, UCU Solidarity Movement, PandemicPGRs). In a country where going on the streets to protest or on campus to picket was out of the question for a long while for health reasons, we had to be creative about how to protest in order to have an impact. Nonetheless, the lack of leadership from the UCU officials was sorely felt during the early times of the pandemic, creating a void in the response of the union, as well as the expectations that the workers as well as the employers had for such a response.

It comes as little surprise then that since the disputes were brought back to life last Autumn we’ve had problems mobilising our members adequately. We took close to 3 weeks of strike throughout this academic year, during which people enthusiastically took to the picket lines, showing the determination, spirit and creativity that is customary to university union members, this time also combining virtual pickets, activities and protests with the in-person ones. But with much of the teaching and other activity happening remotely, it has been hard to gauge how many people were actually participating and how much impact we had on the employers’ functions. The draconian anti-workers, anti-union laws of the UK makes it extra hard to take
action, especially strike, since it requires at least 50% of the union membership to participate in a paper ballot sent by post, for the strike to be legal. Such laws also make solidarity strike by other unions illegal, put stringent rules on notification of action to the employer, and strictly regulate picketing in numbers and scope, further weakening any potential action. Therefore only a fraction of our branches has been able to strike, even though the vast majority of them have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike and Action Short Of Strike (ASOS). Finally, a lack of militancy and class-oriented strategy from the UCU leadership, in combination with employers that are pushed by uncertainty to secure and increase their profit margins and emboldened by our inaction the 1.5 year before, have caused the strikes and marking boycotts of this academic year to end with only a handful of local not-so-satisfactory settlements to show.

None of the issues that we’re in dispute about have been resolved. Our pension benefits have been cut by an average of 35%, while the private pension scheme is making good profit and has been throughout the whole pandemic. Our effective pay over the last decade or so has declined by close to 20%, without even taking into account the current cost of living crisis. The gender, race, and disability pay inequality is ranging in the mid-teen percent. The majority of the teaching and research staff that carry on the core functions of the university are on fixed-term, insecure, precarious contracts, with the younger ones taking the largest hit – a triple hit of low pay, pension insecurity, and employment insecurity. And our workloads are spiraling even more out of control, with serious health and safety effects by impacting staffs’ mental and physical health . At the same time, our employers are financially as healthy as ever, and students are called to pay eye-watering fees for the “privilege” of being taught by under-paid, over-exploited teachers. In the universities that are getting the short end of the marketisation stick, like the debt-ridden Goldsmiths College, the employees, as well as the students of more disadvantaged backgrounds, are again the ones that are getting to bear the weight, with redundancies, fire-and-rehire practices, department closures and the like.

We are not willing to give up. People in our union, in the HE sector, might be exhausted and fed up, but emotions are running high. Now more than ever we are in need of a militant and working class orientated labour movement that can see our perfectly reasonable demands to success.

We’ve learned a lot the past 2 years of the pandemic, and the past 4 years of industrial disputes. We can organise and win.
We express our solidarity to PAME and its congress!

For the PAME Congress June 2022 – International Seminar June 17
Ilektra Christidi, member of the Executive Committee of the University College London (UCL)
branch of the University and College Union (UCU) and co-Vice President elect of the branch.
Member of the UCU London Regional committee.

Compañeras y compañeros del PAME

Desde Alternativa Sindical de Clase, sindicato afiliado a la Federación Sindical Mundial, queremos transmitir nuestro saludo solidario y de clase al congreso del PAME.

Estamos convencidas y convencidos que la clase obrera solo avanza cuando se lucha, si no es el capital el que avanza. Y este principio es el que nos une con las hermanas y hermanos del PAME.

Por eso es tan importante que de vuestro Congreso surjan propuestas y decisiones que vayan en el camino de la emancipación de la clase obrera, porque será un ejemplo para todos aquellos sindicatos de clase que luchan en la línea de avanzar en derechos laborales.

Sirva también este saludo para estrechar vínculos entre sindicatos hermanos. El Fondo Monetario Internacional, el Banco Central Europeo y la Unión Europea ya hace tiempo que se posicionaron a favor de la burguesía internacional y el mantenimiento del sistema capitalista para seguir explotando a la clase trabajadora. Sindicatos como PAME y ASC están llamados para enfrentar estas políticas criminales para con los de nuestra clase destruyendo todo vestigio de un sistema depredador, asesino y suicida.

Un sistema que usa sus guerras imperialistas, como la actual entre Rusia y la OTAN, para seguir traspasando rentas del trabajo a rentas del capital con medidas como el encarecimiento de las materias primas o de los alimentos.

Somos conscientes de que todos estos temas serán debatidos en tan importante Congreso y que de él surgirán propuestas que serán un faro para los sindicatos de clase y para la clase trabajadora internacional.

Recibir este saludo solidario, internacionalista y de clase

Viva el PAME

Viva la clase trabajadora de Grecia

Viva la solidaridad y la lucha de la clase obrera