Alex Miller
Low-paid childcare workers in Scotland have been striking since March 1 for better pay and conditions. A Nursery Nurses' Voice bulletin issued by the Scottish Socialist Party on April 29 described as "shameful" the decision by the leaders of the childcare workers' union UNISON to give up the fight for a national settlement. The SSP offered continued support for those workers holding out for the best possible local deals.
Prior to the UNISON decision, the April 29 Scottish Socialist Voice quoted SSP leader Tommy Sheridan as saying, "I'd like to differentiate between the rank-and-file leadership, who led from the front, and the full-time officials who are about to try to betray their members and withdraw support for national action".
The May 7 Voice reported that in Glasgow, childcare workers had voted by 687 votes to 19 to reject the Labour-controlled city council's latest offer, and that Renfrewshire childcare workers had also voted overwhelmingly against the latest offer from the local council.
The SSP's bulletin reported that in 2003, UNISON donated over £1.5 million in political funds to the Labour party. Striking workers visiting the Scottish Parliament as guests of Socialist MSP Carolyn Leckie got a taste of what they get in return for their union's donations. An SSP press release on April 29 revealed that, at the parliament's upmarket "canteen", Labour MSP for Midlothian Rhona Brankin demanded that Leckie "throw out her striking nursery-nurses guests".
Leckie responded: "I am horrified that a Labour MSP would attempt to deny food to workers who have been on strike for nine weeks with the claim that rules bar them from the restaurant. Ms Brankin, like all other MSPs, has guests join her at her table in the restaurant for lunch. The real reason is that she is ashamed of New Labour's backstairs manoeuvres to starve the nursery nurses back to work. I find her attitude quite despicable and wonder what the many former miners in her coalfield constituency who received this kind of treatment from Margaret Thatcher think of their MSP."
Behaviour like this from Labour, and the SSP's high profile campaign against transport privatisation, and support for striking workers such as the nursery nurses, is leading to more unions switching allegiance from Labour to the SSP. The April 30 Voice reported that the Railway, Maritime, and Transport Workers Union (RMT) and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) are both donating to the SSP's European election campaign. The Scottish region and seven local branches of the RMT have already switched their affiliation to the SSP. The SSP's message to those unions still affiliated with Labour is clear: "Don't feed the hand that bites you!"
From Green Left Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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