Right to Strike rally held at Harlow Town Centre
General / Thu 2nd Feb 2023 at 07:25am
ON WEDNESDAY, a Right to Strike Rally was held in Harlow Town Centre. This was part of the TUC day of strikes and actions.
Other events were held in Southend Chelmsford, Colchester and Stevanage.
At the rally, they heard from many unions as well has health workers, rail workers and post workers.
As well as activists from Unite, Unison Harlow and District Trades Union Council.
A spokesperson said: “They were all united in the same message of years of austerity to our public services. Year on year worsening work conditions and pay”
Mick Patrick, secretary of HTUC opened the rally speaking of “40 years of loss of accountability to national and international company’s and financial institutions evading taxes but still making more profits that could to pay for a crises we did not make”.
Kay Morrison of HTUC spoke about Tory Legislation that could make striking very difficult or even stop the right to stroke or even protest.
She added: “We have fought for the right to strike we are going to have that taken away”.
It was a really good event and while, of course, it was nowhere near the 50,000 who marched in London & the thousands who marched in bigger cities it was a building block in Harlow for the similar, bigger, events that are bound to come as this tax dodging, contracts-for-their-pals, government continues to try and make working people pay for the crisis. Harlow TUC should be particularly congratulated for including an excellent speaker from Stand up to Racism. Solidarity also means standing up to this government’s toxic racism and bigotry, which they try continually to use to try and divide us. As we chanted yesterday ‘The workers united will never be defeated!’.
Well done everyone. I hope Kay mentioned the Tories desire for a 28 day notice period after a successful ballot, which is designed to give the bosses all the time in the world to organise strike breaking agency workers.
What a rabble I bet not one of them is a net tax payer.
all working hard paying tax. Or retired. Paying tax to fund low wages, extortionat private rent to fund landlords the list goes on.
You carnt shut the whole country down, by trying to take this freedom away, the people won't expect it, and nor should they. It's our right to protest. It's our right to be heard. The trouble is this hasn't happened over night, this is a build up of cuts to pay, cuts to people s jobs, working conditions, ect,ect, the list goes on. We have a right to peaceful protesting. Steve theses people are not just stop oil, there methods I disapprove of,and have said, it's the likes of them and there methods that will put a stop to peaceful protest, and this has come true. Theses people work, or are retired, the facts are clearly plan to see.
Risible, isn't it? All these public sector employees are on very good salaries along with their Union paymasters and are asking the private sector employees who are generally on much inferior terms and conditions to award a massive pay increase to them whilst being prevented from going to work by strikes which are costing the economy hundreds of millions a day. People in the private sector are suffering exactly the same hardships but are having to get by and aren't being awarded double-digit pay rises which further fuel inflationary pressure.
It's not just about pay. It's about teachers doing the work of two or three people, retired people being called back in because of lack of staff. Funding for schools, the list goes on, and this is happening in every sector, through years of cuts. The teacher s job doesn't end when the bell goes, no this work goes on through wk, school holidays, one person is overloaded with work through cuts, teacher and most key workers worked through the pandemic, on computer s, morning and right through the evening s. This is much more than just pay, all thou they deserve the pay rise.
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