BRISTOL BIN workers, members of the Unite union, after taking five days of discontinuous strike action, and after planning an all-out strike over pay and conditions, have now accepted a last-minute offer.

Mark Baker, Bristol PCS member

The refuse collectors were due a pay rise in November and claimed a 5% increase in line with inflation at that time. Their employers, Sita, deliberately delayed negotiations and offered 2.75%, exploiting the recession to hit the workers’ terms and conditions.

Pam Jennings, Unite negotiator, explained that Suez group, of which Sita are a part, made £16.5 million profit in 2007 and get any costs plus 16% on top paid to them as part of their contract with the council. The madness of privatisation means council tax payers have to pay more to have their bins collected by a private company, who then don’t pay their workforce a living wage to collect them.

The company claims it can’t afford to pay the workforce what they should have. These workers have received no pay rise since 2007 and have many members such as road sweepers on, or just above, the minimum wage.

Sita UK’s website boasts: “We treat waste materials as a resource” - it’s a pity they haven’t treated their workforce as a valuable resource too.

The work was privatised in 1994 and although employees who transferred had their terms and conditions protected by TUPE legislation at the time, Sita have driven down pay and conditions for those starting since that time - for example new staff get no sick pay for the first three days of sickness. This is accompanied by an increasingly bullying management style towards the workforce.

A support group was set up including trade unionists and Socialist Party members. The anger and the organisation obviously worried the council, who have not so far even invoked penalties on the errant company. As one bin worker said: “Our pay rise is four or five months late every year. They’re not so slow to impose penalties on me if I don’t pay my council tax for a few months”.

Now the workers have accepted a 2.75% pay rise with the promise that future pay negotiations would be held at the Acas arbitration service, which workers will see as preferable to relying on Sita. But they will expect real improvements on issues such as pay and bullying management.

New Labour showed a timid approached to the reform of anti-gay legislation…
…as proven by the length of time that passed between Labour coming to power in 1997 and the enactment of the following acts/laws.

• Equalisation of age of consent for homosexuals - August 2001
• Anti-discrimination in employment legislation - May 2003
• Anti-discrimination in the provision of goods and services - April 2004
• Civil partnership legislation - December 2005
• Hate crime legislation - March 2007

 
If the government had been totally committed to equality from the start then it would not have taken them so long to bring these protections and laws into being and would not have allowed unelected peers to scupper bill after bill promoting equality.

Over 11 years in government New Labour has felt the need to follow trends, opinion polls and to keep tabloid journalists on side and sweet. No serious attempt was made to pose a radical alternative ideology or ‘morality’ to that offered by the Tories and conservative opinion.

In the run up to the equalisation of the age of consent, members of the government proposed appeasing the bigots with two-tier age of consent laws to ‘protect’ 16- and 17- year olds from predatory older men, completely mixing up discussions on the the issues of paedophilia and homosexuality and giving credence to the views of the likes of Norman Tebbit and the conservative right.

Civil Partnerships and Marriage - equal yet different -
Again out of fear from the right and perhaps from the religious beliefs of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the legal union of homosexual couples has been instituted by New Labour in a form of marriage apartheid, where straight couples may may, but not enter into civil unions and where same-sex couples cannot marry, but may enter into civil union.
In order to counter claims from the right that civil partnerships were a means of instituting same-sex marriage, the government felt the need to wheel out spokespersons to clearly emphasise that civil partnerships are quite different and separate from marriage.
Legally the difference is minimal, but it could be argued that the mere difference in the name of the institution implies a second class status, equivalent to marriage, but just not as good as.

Education - failing gay youth
Thatcher’s Section 28 of the Local Government Act prohibited the intentional promotion of homosexuality by local authorities (and therefore the schools and services within those authorities). Although this did not specifically prevent schools from tackling homophobic bullies, many schools resisted positive discussion of sexuality and turned (as many continue to do so) a blind eye to homophobia in the classroom in general - out of fear from the authorities and perhaps outside bigotry.

Section 28 may be gone, but it took New Labour years to remove it and still today the vast majority of schools have no specific policies regarding homophobic bullying. Whereas racist bullying is logged and trends managed, the same cannot be said of homophobic bullying.
New Labour and Tony Blair’s obsession with allowing more faith schools to open and the private control of acadamies to fall into conservative evangelical christian hands has only impeded progress in the prevention of homophobia in schools.

People expected New Labour to blaze a trail in promoting equal rights…
…rather the dragging of feet to the current position of legal equality that we ar at today has shown just how New Labour attempts at all times to face in all directions at once. Attempting to appease the little Englander, the tabloid press and moral groups rather than promoting radical change.

As the prospect of elections becomes ever more likely, we are seeing New Labour and the Tories veering ever further to right, by emphasising and promoting the place of the traditional family as the bedrock of British society and marriage with children as the ideal family situation. By implication all other personal arrangements could be taken to be abnormal or undesirable.

In the 1980s the Labour Part had enabled significant headway to be made by gay activists in influencing the Greater London Council and other left-wing councils/local authorities by promoting more enlightened attitudes within local authorities and schools and support the development of gay community services.

Thatcher’s governments and her idolisation of so-called ‘Victorian’ social values, the scaremongering and blame laid at the door of the gay community for the AIDS/HIV epidemic and Labour’s relentless drive to right-wing appeasement, set gay rights back by decades.

New Labour shares in the shame of the Tories for having taken such a softly, softly approach to homosexual liberation in it’s 11-year term.

Gay Neo-Liberalisation - the Capitalists cashing in
The capitalists have definitely capitalised on this gay liberation. The business community spotted the profit possibilities that could flow from this more self-confident, increasingly out, gay population.

Moving in to develop the gay club scene, gay glossy magazines and gay lifestyle fashion and to mov in and take over what was once a demonstration of political solidarity - the Pride demonstrations. Gay liberation has become more like gay neo-liberalisation.

Gay liberation is being sold as something that can now be achieved by spending the pink pound in the ways advised by the pink pound profit mongers.

This commercialisation can appear to be an escape from the bigoted world, but it is as hollow as the words and actions of the capitalist politicians of the past.

Class divisions exist as they do between all groups and without the pink pound to spend the gay poor or working class are left excluded from this holy grail of liberation.

Gay struggles must be viewed as part of the large class struggle between capitalist and proletariat. The next steps towards liberation can only be achieved by working together, not just as part of the gay community, but also with other groups, promoting ideas through unions and workplaces.

There is no pink pound to be found in the classroom, therefore the capitalists have seen no reason why they should help to liberate gay youth from the horrors of homophobic classroom culture.

Only a socialist society, with democratic working class control and management ofindustry and society’s resources, would promote unity and cooperation. Under these conditions, prejudice would begin to evaporate and personal relationships would be free from the restrictions imposed by capitalism.