In Caerphilly, Penyrheol ward, vote Jaime Davies, Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition Today

It has been revealed that Caerphilly Council spent £156,000 in the last 3 years on spying on its own staff.

One firm has been awarded the contract for most of this spying on council workers and it was revealed in the press earlier this year how the senior council officer responsible for awarding them the contract, was appointed chief executive of the company on leaving his job with the Council.

This is a council rapidly acquiring a dirty reputation. It is the Welsh Labour Council being investigated by police over the 'secret' awarding of huge pay rises to senior council officers. Such was the outcry when that story broke that UNISON members working for the Council, suffering a 3-year pay freeze, held a walk out and lobby of the Labour Party Group meeting. They protested that Labour councillors had voted these awards through at the same time as carrying out cuts to services and to the terms and conditions of their workforce.

Some of the council workers who were spied upon are challenging, with the support of their trade union, whether the Council followed correct procedures designed to prevent unwarranted surveillance from their employer.

Council officers in Caerphilly need to be accountable to the community and today, in one ward ar least, people will have the opportunity to vote for a candidate with clear policies on putting the interests of this working class community before all else. In the Penyrheol ward they can vote for Jaime Davies, standing for the Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) on a platform of voting against all cuts to services and to the terms and conditions of council workers.

Enthusiastic Launch of TUSC Wales Committee

Ronnie Job, Swansea trades council secretary

As the RMT was the first, of hopefully many, trade unions to officially back the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), it was fitting that the opening remarks at a meeting on Saturday to launch a TUSC Wales steering committee went to an RMT representative.

Steve Skelly from the RMT Council of Executives explained that the government's attacks on his industry, the rail industry, contained in the McNulty report, threaten the loss of 20,000 jobs.

Attacks on this scale demand a political response and a commitment to nationalisation of the transport industry, as well as a trade union fight. As Steve said: "The Labour Party is no longer a viable option".

Support

Leading Welsh members and workplace representatives from other trade unions including Unison, Unite, PCS, CWU, GMB, NUJ and NUM, gave greetings and their support in a personal capacity to the launch of the Wales steering committee.

They explained how their members all need a political alternative that challenges the mainstream parties' acceptance, including by Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, of capitalism, the market and flowing from that, the need for cuts.

A number of leading PCS Wales members said that their union had recently committed to supporting candidates in elections who support the same policies as PCS. As far as they are concerned the political platform that matches the PCS position of opposing all cuts is that of TUSC.

Others in attendance represented important campaigns in our communities, in defence of NHS services, against the bedroom tax and against cuts in council services.

Labour imposing austerity

Delegate after delegate reported on how a Labour Welsh government and Welsh Labour councils are failing to protect working class communities in Wales from Con-Dem cuts.

Labour is carrying through deep cuts in the NHS in Wales, its proposed Bill for Further and Higher Education opens up the entire further education sector to the threat of privatisation and Labour councils are passing on Con-Dem cuts while refusing to provide any guarantees that poor households that can't pay the bedroom tax won't be evicted.

The launch was enthusiastically embraced by members of the Socialist Party Wales, one of the constituent parts of the coalition that is TUSC.

Socialist Party Wales secretary Dave Reid appealed to other socialist groups, including the Communist Party, to stand in elections with TUSC.

He pointed out that they could keep their own identities, even standing under their own names, but coming together under the umbrella of TUSC will ensure the maximum impact of socialist ideas and the maximum representation of trade union interests in elections.

There may not be any planned council, Welsh government or parliamentary elections in Wales until 2015 but all those at the meeting pledged to be ready as and when byelections arise and to continue to build the reputation of TUSC Wales in preparation for future battles.

Chair of the meeting, Phil Jones of the RMT, summed up the enthusiasm by putting himself forward for consideration for selection as a future candidate.

For more information, please see:

TUSC Website

Wales NHS cuts - fight or download a phone app?

Your local Accident and Emergency Unit being shut down? Don’t worry – your Welsh Labour Government has got an app for that!

As queues of ambulances were building outside Welsh Hospitals this week and non-emergency operations were being cancelled as staff were diverted elsewhere, did the Welsh Government pause to re-consider their plans to shut and downgrade Accident & Emergency services across Wales? No. Instead they’ve told us not to worry because they’ve got a free phone app for us to download!

On the Welsh Government’s website it says: “The free to download Choose Well application provides advice on which service to use when ill or injured and details of how to find them.” http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/healthandsocialcare/2013/130313ae/?lang=en

Great but if the Welsh Government’s plans go through, finding the service you need will be difficult; they intend to close all specialist neo-natal care in North Wales, forcing people to travel to the Wirral and to have only 4, or 5 at most, A&E units for the whole of South Wales.

The people of Wales do need to choose well on the NHS. We need to choose never to trust Labour on our health services again. Instead we need to unite our different campaigns and fight all NHS cuts in Wales and build a political alternative, TUSC.

Where's your famous 'clear red water'?

The Labour Party in Wales often claims to be different; they talk about "clear red water" not just between the Welsh Government and Westminster but also between Welsh Labour and the parliamentary party. Yesterday Welsh Labour MPs got the chance to prove just how different they are with the vote on the second reading of the Public Sector Pensions Bill, which proposes, amongst other things, to make public sector workers, like me, work to 68 and beyond before we get our pensions.

They failed miserably; just 1 Welsh Labour MP voted against Tory attacks on our pensions. All those MPs who visited picket lines and demanded to speak at strike rallies on N30 sat on their hands while the Con-Dems stole £millions from our pensions.

Never mind 'clear red water', just like their colleagues in Westminster, Welsh Labour are swimming in a sea of muddy-coloured brown fluid. Wales needs a new mass workers' party to fight for working class people because we won't get any fight from Labour. Yesterday's vote should be a wake up call to trade unionists in Wales to stop funding Labour and instead support only candidates and parties that pledge to fight all cuts, like TUSC.

Ronnie Job, Swansea
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Labour Raises Red Flag of Revolution... but only in commemoration of past

According to some historians the use of the red flag as a symbol of revolution and working class revolt dates from the 1831 Merthyr Rising. Armed workers and the unemployed seized the town, after sacking the debtors' court, and held it for a number of days against troops sent to put down the spreading revolt and associated strike action.

Trade unionists in Wales continue to commemorate the revolt and remember the unjust execution of Dic Penderyn. On August 12 there is a memorial walk organised by NUT and supported by PCS and others, on which participants will be encouraged to carry red flags in memory of the raising of the red flag of revolution in 1831.

At this event they will be joined by Wales' First Minister, Carwyn Jones. The Labour Party, which he leads in Wales, is happy to celebrate revolutionary acts at a distance of 180 years but the current Labour Party spits on trade unionists fighting to defend their terms and conditions. Leader Milliband's demands that PCS members in UKBA not be allowed to disrupt the corporate shop window that the Olympics has become, through strike action after a democratic vote, is consistent with his refusal to back public sector workers striking to defend pensions.

Welsh Labour often claims to be different from their big brothers and sisters in Westminster but the Welsh Labour Government is presiding over cuts that threaten the Labour Party's greatest achievement, the NHS in Wales.

Trade unionists should remember the struggles and martyrs of our movement. The Labour Party has abandoned the symbol of the red flag along with support for workers in struggle. Socialists celebrate working class fighters of the past by dedicating ourselves to supporting struggles today and by struggling for a fairer society, a socialist society.


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Remploy workers have jobs and are fighting to defend them

The Welsh Government has announced with much fanfare, a scheme to support Remploy workers made redundant by the Con-Dem's factory closure programme. Private firms and, possibly, local authorities, will receive subsidies to take on former Remploy workers.

Swansea Socialist Party members will get the views of Remploy workers at the local plant on the scheme tomorrow when we support them on their picket line. Labour-supporting Welsh trade union leaders have hailed this as evidence of the Welsh Government's support for Remploy but it seems a long way short of their earlier promises to back Remploy workers in every way possible to keep their jobs and factories open.

Remploy workers have jobs. Skilled, productive, socially useful jobs in which they are trained and experienced. The vote by a huge majority, to take strike action to defend Remploy is evidence that Remploy workers haven't accepted the proposed closures. Neither have their supporters in Swansea; the Trades Council, anti-cuts campaigners and Swansea Socialist Party members will all be on the picket lines tomorrow to show their support. Come and join us and bring your banners and placards - Bruce Road, Swansea Industrial Park, Fforestfach.

Save Remploy!


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Welsh NHS Services Under Threat

It's a much repeated mantra amongst the leaders of Labour-affiliated trade unions in Wales "The NHS is under attack... in England" But, as was explained at the Wales Shop Stewards Network Conference at the weekend, Wales faces cuts in health spending as bad as or worse than any area of England.

It seems that immediate confirmation of this fact has arrived today with the news of the closure of Afallon Ward at Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth. Shortages of qualified staff threaten, according to a statement made by the Health Board to BBC Wales, the ability to provide "appropriate and safe care for patients on that ward".

Earlier this year concerned Aberystwyth residents travelled to Cardiff to lobby the Welsh Government over fears that services would be lost from the hospital. Bronglais is part of the same local health board, Hywel Dda, as Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli where residents are fighting to retain their accident and emergency unit and last month held their own lobby of the Assembly.

It is vital that NHS campaigners link up, first on a health board basis and then across the whole of Wales, to take their fight to the Labour Welsh Government and demand they stop passing on Tory cuts. Trade unionists in Wales need to demand that leaders stop trying to hide the scale of cuts taking place to Welsh health services.
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