TRADE unionists and pensioners will mobilise on Monday to demand the government reverse its axing of the winter fuel allowance.
Unite, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) and the Scottish Pensioners’ Forum will head a mass demonstration outside Parliament calling for the allowance to be restored to all pensioners.
During Labour’s annual conference last month, Unite defeated the party leadership when it won support for a motion demanding the restoration of the allowance and the introduction of a wealth tax to fund it.
The union is campaigning under the slogan “Defend the Winter Fuel Payment.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The government’s winter fuel policy needs to be reversed. Picking the pockets of pensioners is not a tough choice — it is a mistake
Across Tamil Nadu, workers and cadre of CITU and CPI (M) staged road blockades in support of the Samsung workers’ strike and the demand for recognition of their union. Photo: CPI(M) TN
Major left parties have called for a joint protest against the state government’s failure to recognize the SIWU and management’s anti-workers attitude on October 5.
Hundreds of workers at the Samsung electronics factory in India’s Tamil Nadu state staged roadblocks and a sit-in on Monday, September 30 as their strike entered its fourth week. Thousands of cadres of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from across Tamil Nadu also joined the call of the Samsung workers and risked arrest and police repression.
According to the news reports, over 900 striking workers were detained by the police in the Kanchipuram district. The police also detained the state president of the Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU), A Soundararajan. They were released later that evening.
Over 1,300 workers of Samsung electronics factory in Sriperumbudur, part of the Kanchipuram district near Chennai have been on strike since September 9 under the leadership of newly formed Samsung India Workers’ Union (SIWU) demanding recognition of their union, a salary increase, an end of discrimination, and better working conditions at the factory.
Samsung has only two factories in India. Its Chennai factory has been operating since 2007 without any union. The SIWU was formed in July 2023. According to its president E Muthukumar, over 90% of workers at the Chennai factory have already joined the union.
The call for roadblocks was given following the failure of five rounds of talks between the management and the SIWU under the mediation of the Tamil Nadu Ministry of Labor. The last talks on September 24 were held by the state government after it faced strong reactions from the unions and left parties following the police action on the striking workers earlier.
The state government intervened after the management refused to have direct talks with the SIWU calling it illegitimate. The management has maintained that it does not recognize the newly formed union and instead constituted a “workers committee” and arbitrarily appointed workers to it. The management has even lodged objections to SIWU’s registration claiming its use of the company’s name is illegal.
Monday’s sit-ins and roadblocks also targeted the state government’s delaying the registration of the union in violation of legal procedures and using its security forces to unleash repression on striking workers.
SIWU is affiliated to CITU, one of India’s largest trade unions, affiliated to the left party CPI(M). As per labor law, the registration application must be processed within 45 days of filling of such an application. The SIWU claims it has been more than three months since it filed for registration.
When SIWU tried to call a rally in support of its demands on September 16 the police attacked the workers and arrested its leadership even trying to dismantle the protest site erected almost a kilometer away from the factory.
State units of all left parties in Tamilnadu, including the Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI (M) and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation on Wednesday launched the call for a statewide protest on Saturday, October 5 in support of the SIWU workers. They issued a joint statement asking the state government to immediately recognize SIWU. They blamed that the strike is continuing because of the “anti-worker attitude” of the management of Samsung electronics.
Kannan, a state committee member of CITU, told Peoples Dispatch that the management is adamant but the workers are ready to fight till their demands are met.
Kannan also informed that workers are observing a day of hunger strike on October 2 on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi to press the point that they will continue to protest peacefully in support of their demands.
Delegates defy Starmer by voting to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance after Unite chief’s barn-storming speech
LABOUR conference defied Sir Keir Starmer today and voted to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.
Delegates backed a motion from Unite the union demanding that the government “reverse the introduction of means-testing for the winter fuel allowance.”
It also urged Labour to scrap the “fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest” and introduce a wealth tax on the top 1 per cent and an excess profits tax.
In a barn-storming speech, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham recalled how the 1945 Labour government had rebuilt the country despite debt ratios three times the level of today.
She said: “People simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.
“This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.
“We are the sixth-richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.
“These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is like hanging a noose around our necks.
Left MPs and trade unionists accuse Sir Keir of choosing austerity, pain and poverty instead of taxing the super-rich
LEFT MPs warned today that pain and poverty are on the way after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the country that “things will get worse.”
Responding to a keynote speech by the PM warning of a “tough” Budget coming in October, the group of five independent left MPs warned that “politics is about choices — and the government is choosing to inflict pain and poverty across the country.”
And Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said “a bleak vision of Britain is not what we need now. It is time to see the change that Labour promised.”
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The left MPs, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, ridiculed this stance, pointing out that when “the government said it would lower energy bills, it cut winter fuel allowances for pensioners instead.
“The government said it wanted to reboot our economy, it wants to cut public investment instead.
“The government said it would put an end to 14 years of Tory failure, it voted to keep the two child benefits cap instead.”
Returning to the racist riots, Starmer said that these were unmistakably inspired by the far right (but no words on those who fanned the flames), but there was an element of opportunism at work – an opportunism born of the Tories’ dereliction of duty. Those who rioted knew the criminal justice system was teetering on the brink and prison places were at a premium, and acted as though there wouldn’t be any arrests, let alone jail terms. Thanks to Tory recklessness. And, to a degree, Starmer corrected his reluctant earlier response by condemning efforts at trying to burn down hotels full of human beings (a rare moment of humanising asylum seekers in British politics) and praising communities who came together in the riots’ aftermath to rebuild. Note he didn’t go as far as the King, but again thanked the police and first responders for their service. Starmer therefore condemns the riots as a failure of Tory statecraft, passes over the role of communities and anti-fascists in defending themselves, praises the spirit of resilience, and then returns to the agents of the state as the legitimate saviours of the situation.
The second part was focused on the state itself. Starmer talked a lot about the £22bn “black hole” in state finances which, in reality, only exists because of how the Chancellor has chosen to frame public spending. Hence the tough decision of scrapping the Winter Fuel Allowance for all pensioners not in receipt of pension credits. This is being taken away so the NHS can be fixed. Likewise, when challenged on above inflation pay rises for public sector workers and railway workers, Starmer’s defence owed nothing to the injustices these deals partly correct and everything to economic efficiency, getting the health service working, and so on. It was the right decision not by the workers, but by the state.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite trade union, leads steel workers down Whitehall last year to demand more support for the industry. She says the British economy is broken. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
The demand from Britain’s second biggest union will test truce with Labour at next month’s TUC conference
Britain’s second biggest trade union is calling on the new Labour government to introduce an emergency 1% wealth tax on the assets of the super-rich to pay for 10% pay rises for public sector workers and fill more than 100,000 NHS vacancies.
The demand from Unite is in one of several motions to the Trades Union Congress, which meets in Brighton next month, that will expose tensions between Keir Starmer’s government and sections of the union movement. It comes as Rachel Reeves is preparing for her first budget as chancellor, on 30 October.
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Other key trade unions are preparing to press for further policy changes from Labour, including abandoning the two-child benefit cap, which Starmer has so far resisted, and the reversal of the recent decision to end winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, which has been causing a serious backlash among Labour backbenchers.
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Unite’s plan is for a tax of 1% to be applied on the assets of those worth more than £4m, which it says would raise £25bn a year to fund investment in public services and avoid a return to austerity. Under the plan, someone with assets worth £6m would face a 1% tax on the £2m above the £4m threshold. These assets would include property, shares and bank accounts but would not include mortgaged property.
Unite points to research showing that the richest 50 families in the UK now have assets worth nearly £500bn.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said: “Unite’s resolution to the TUC on the economy calls things by their real name. The British economy is broken.
