#Labour councillors crossed a #picket line they should have been joining. Here’s the shameful reason [VIDEO]
The Labour Party is supposed to represent workers and working-class people, especially if they are struggling for decent pay, in-work benefits and pensions, as part of its reason for existing – wouldn’t you agree?
Members of the University and College Union have been striking in a dispute that is partly over the management and financing of the University Superannuation Scheme (USS), which provides pensions to the UK’s older universities as well as research institutes and academic thinktanks, and partly over low pay and issues including insecure fixed-term contracts used to employ an increasing number of teaching staff.
So why did Labour councillors in Sheffield not only cross a picket line but, in one case, apparently assault a picketer?
The Labour Chief Whip of Sheffield City Council Tony Damms assaulting a picket.
This after some Labour crossed a picket line to discuss whether they would support the @ucu strike.
My Solidarity with Labour Councillors who stood on the Picket.
Share. #OneOfUsAllOfUs pic.twitter.com/ZHKtx4UnNF
— Tom Raeside 🇵🇸 (@Raeside_Tom) December 1, 2021
It seems a meeting of Labour-led Sheffield City Council had been scheduled to take place in a university building – during the strike, which seems extremely insensitive of a Labour-run organisation.
These councillors were attending a pre-meeting, and it seems they crossed the picket line to do so, attracting cries of “Scab!” from some of the picketers. That’s how the incident came to take place.
Sheffield UCU subsequently released a statement:
Today, a group of Labour councillors from Sheffield City Council made a decision to use a university building, walking past a group of striking Sheffield UCU members to do so. Our statement on this is below. pic.twitter.com/BhDl2lOlne
— Sheffield UCU (@sheffielducu) December 1, 2021
For those who can’t read images, it says:
“Today, the majority of Labour councillors entered a University of Sheffield building for a pre-meeting, and in doing so, walked past striking members of Sheffield UCU. Along with UCU members from 57 other HE institutions across the UK, today is our first day of strike action in our dispute over rampant precarity, unhealthy workloads, equal pay, and substantial cuts to our pay and pensions. These are issues that we trust would be of particular importance to the Labour party.
“We do not condone the use of university buildings during strike action, and when we learned of this meeting, had worked with the Sheffield Students Union to find an alternative location in the Students Union next door, which is treated as neutral ground during industrial action.
“We are extremely disappointed that any member of the Labour party would choose to cross past striking union members, despite being given an opportunity to support our action by simply relocating their pre-meeting to a nearby building. We understand that at this pre-meeting, the Labour members took a vote and were determined to not attend the later, full council meeting. This decision does not negate their previous choice to do so, but we are pleased they made the correct choice in the end.
“We appreciate the solidarity of those Labour, Green, and Lib Dem council members who chose to not enter the building.”
Yes indeed. Apparently the alternative, Student Union, building was turned down by councillors because they thought it was too small for social distancing.
That doesn’t excuse the Labour Party from having scheduled a meeting to take place at the university during strike action, though.
What were they thinking?
And isn’t this typical of Labour Party policy at the moment – that the challenges faced by workers and working-class people are increasingly overlooked by career politicians who are more concerned with keeping their positions as members of the Establishment?
If that’s the political position occupied by Keir Starmer’s Labour, then it is worse than useless to the people for whom that party was originally formed.
Labour Exploitation Party. They climb to the heights by walking all over us.
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Ever since Blair. Brown have said paid jobs had to be better for these people who take up council jobs ops 40000 to 60000 went West of it so now we have a very greedie lot who will not change better we went back to the old system has they normally had a job for life