We are active in supporting affiliated unions in disputes and campaigns.
We send delegates to the Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils. GLATUC in turn sends delegates to the Southern & Eastern Region of the TUC.
We campaign for equalities; against racism and fascism; for rights for all workers.
Our banner says UNITY IS STRENGTH.
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for ANNUAL REPORT SUMMARY
OCTOBER 2009 OPEN MEETING WITH
Clive Bryant the PCS London and South East
Region Chair
The latest in our series of open meetings had Clive Bryant setting out the PCS view of fighting the cuts in public services and attacks on public servants pay and conditions; PCS supporting the TU Co-ordinating Group of public sector unions to plan a fight back; the challemges presented by the General Election in 2010; fighting the BNP' the PCS Make your voye count cam[paign and the need for united action to defend workers rights.
With an audience including PCS National Executive members and an input from CWU rep from he big sorting office at Rathbone Place off Oxford Street it proved a highly succesful meeting building on the meeting with NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear in June 2009.
OPEN MEETING
TUESDAY 2 JUNE 2009 18.00
Venue -
CIVIL SERVICE CLUB
13-15 Great Scotland Yard London SW1A 2HJ SPECIAL OPEN MEETING - GUEST SPEAKER - JEREMY DEAR GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS & CHAIR OF TUCJCC 
Main item was address by Jeremy Dear – who covered the following Important and timely meeting coming as it does just a few days after the trades councils conference which over two days this weekend set out an ambitious but crucial programme of work for us all for the next twelve months. But it also comes at a crucial time economically and politically when the political crisis engulfing Westminster threatens to open the door to the extremists of the far right and in the midst of a recession that is having devastating consequences in communities and workplaces our members live and work. Last year when Lakshmi Mittal paid himself a record £1.1bn dividend it was at the time the highest private dividend on record. But that record did not last for long as high street retailer Philip Green topped it with a dividend of £1.2bn from his Arcadia Group – the equivalent of the annual pay of 54,000 people on average earnings. When it comes to top salaries, dividends and bonuses, the last decade has seen one record after another tumble. Take boardroom pay. The total average earnings of the chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies have doubled over the last five years – rising five times as fast as average pay. In the last financial year UK corporate bonuses topped £30bn. It is little wonder that amidst such corporate greed, amidst a system bedevilled by failed light-touch regulation, short-term profiteering, we are in the midst of a devastating recession – a recession laid bare in grim statistics and fancy graphs in newspapers and on TV but which spells human misery for millions of working people. It is the backdrop which dominated the trades councils conference. But what was also clear is just like with MPs expenses this is not the result of individual greed, although many individuals have been greedy, but is result of the very system they administer. That's why when Alastair Darling appeared on TV to deliver budget and he reassured us that things would be returning to normal I was angry. Trades Councils conference made it clear we don't want a return to the past – where workers are forced to opt out of the working time directive on pain of losing their job, where anti-union laws shackle our rights, where asylum seekers are scape-goated for society's ills and the BNP fill the political vacuum in too many of our communities, where short-term profiteering undermines our industry and we pay the price in lost jobs, low pay, long hours, stress, where health and safety is compromised in return for a quick profit. The most recent government survey shows that the country's wealthiest 1% own 34% of the wealth and the top half own 93%. The least wealthy 50% owned just 1% of the wealth. 50p top rate of tax for those earnings over £150,000 whilst welcome and long overdue will not fundamentally alter balance of power and wealth. There will still be upwards of 2.3m on dole, youth unemployment will still be over 15%. One in four workers will still earn less than £12,000 a year, three-quarters less than £30,000. Due to a lack of resources 85% of the under-thirties have no pension. Nine million under-50s are not saving in a pension. Eleven and a half million people between 16 and 65 have no private or company pension. Yet those who helped bring about this crisis will not be made to pay. Whilst the crisis has hastened the end of final salary pension schemes, the former head of RBS, rescued by the taxpayer will enjoy a pension of £579,000 a year. And as people struggle to avoid repossessions, to hang on to their jobs the government response of bailing out the banks with workers taxes – means working people will pay with their jobs, their homes, their wages as redundancies sweep every sector and every region, as house prices collapse, as public finances are squeezed and public services face new cuts, as communities suffer and workers are asked to take pay cuts and pay freezes and new welfare reforms target the most vulnerable in society. Mass unemployment was not a price worth paying under the Tories. It is not a price worth paying under New Labour as predictions are that up to 3 million could be out of work by the end of the year. That's why the trades councils conference said the same zeal that has been shown in saving the banks should be applied to saving jobs and halting repossessions and supporting ordinary working people. The objective cannot be simply to recapture the economy and society we had pre-crash. It must be about creating a Britain – and a global system - where the long-term needs of people are put before the short-term gains of financiers. This is an opportunity to bring about a fundamental transformation in our economy and society. What comes across in every trades council meeting, every union meeting is a realisation that just as many of our financial institutions are bankrupt so too is new labour, so too is their neo-liberal model. Because as conference recognised this is not a question of resources it is a question of political will. Britain's billionaires - boasting a combined wealth of £126bn - pay themselves in artworks, gold and fine wines to avoid tax, They pay a smaller proportion of their income in direct and indirect taxes than the poorest 20% of the population. Whilst job centre staff are laid off £33bn annually is lost to tax avoidance. The actual rate of tax paid by the fifty largest companies has fallen over the past seven years. Just that lost tax could pay for a 10% increase in the state pension or could build an extra 60 hospitals. Yet the government has failed to act. It stands steadfastly by the now discredited light touch, hands-off regulation. Trades Councils conference clear it wants hands on. Hands on the wealth, the unpaid taxes, the profits made from the exploitation of labour and for that wealth to be used to fund education, health, pensions, public services, jobs and for the colossal resources available to us to deliver our social policies. Not a question of resources but a question of will. Cdes, In past years we've met – and been looked on as slightly quaint and old-fashioned with our ideas of regulation, public ownership and yes, socialism. No longer. Our ideas today have more relevance than ever. And that's why the programme of work so important. It is a programme that puts the defence of public services at its heart, that puts the right to a home and quality education as central to our campaigning. It supports the fights against privatisation or marketisation of our public services and opposes the privatisation of Royal Mail and postal services. It is a programme too that recognises the contribution made by migrant workers and their families to the economy and the pressure that the exploitation of those workers places on jobs, housing and pay. Conference rejected arbitrary targets or points systems, rejected the policies of division or petty nationalism enshrined in British Jobs for British Workers and instead called for action to end the pay and employment discrimination faced by migrant and other workers, for full employment rights for all from day one, for strict enforcement of the national minimum wage and for tougher penalties for those who breach it. And if we are to achieve such vital goals our trades councils and our unions need to turn out to migrant workers and launch a mass recruitment drive, to help provide advice on health and safety and rights at work, to work with community groups and organise advice surgeries. TUC will compile a best practice guide to help develop that work. And we should heed the warning that unless we do, those who seek to sow division, to make political capital out of the pressures brought about by migration, those Nazis who dress themselves today in suits but remain Nazis start to crawl from out of the woodwork to spew their racist poison. Trades Councils have a vital role to play in uniting all those who stand for equal rights and against racism and fascism, bringing together not just the activists of the anti-racist, anti-fascist campaigns but building links with the trade union branches, with the community groups and with all those who stand for unity not division and of mobilising both at the ballot box but also beyond 4 June in the protests, demonstrations and campaigns – using music, culture and sporting events to get our message across and undermine the BNP and other Nazis. But the conference will also look beyond our own workplaces, our own unions, our own communities and even our own borders. Environmental concerns will take centre stage engaging on climate change and recycling issues Local action, global impact… Of course all that sounds well and good but how are the ______ of us in this room or the 70 or so at the trades councils conference to begin to build that movement for change. Let us be clear – it will not be easy. It will take hard work, energy, commitment and organisation. But if we don't have that, who does? We start in our workplaces helping build a unionisation drive – winning migrant workers to our banner., working alongside local unions supporting disputes, helping to spread the trade union message in to schools, colleges and non-unionised workplaces. We take those workplace experiences to the wider movement through meetings such as this – building solidarity between workers, generalising our actions, building links from the workplace to the community, making sure we are at the forefront of local campaigns to defend council housing, to stop the privatisation of health or education facilities, to opposing job cuts in the civil service and defending public services. In short we make the trades council THE leading campaigning body locally able to add value to local campaigns. And we should look at the lessons from other countries – in particular the experience of the Australian unions in their recent Your Rights at Work campaign, which not only helped to get rid of a vicious right wing government (no comment!) but rooted the campaign for rights firmly in the local communities – using imaginative ways to secure support for such rights. And so sporting and cultural events were used to highlight the unions' message, non-union workplaces were targeted as a movement, not individual unions, high profile campaigning and stunts were used to highlight the importance of trade union rights and freedoms. Such campaigns help to raise the profile of unions in general but more particularly the trades councils. We must try to secure support within our unions to enhance the role of trades councils in the TUC. We have an opportunity to do that this year – the RMT secured right to a motion. Unemployed Workers Centres Programme….. We have a key task. We must help arm our movement with a fighting programme – the right to a job, the right to a home, to bring in to public ownership the finance and building industry to ensure we can plan and build the affordable housing needed. Trades Councils conference joined a growing number of unions throwing their weight behind People's Charter as one means to help build such a programme.
OCTOBER 08 MEETING WITH JOHN McDONNELL MP 
The October meeting at the Civil Service Club was devoted to guest speaker JOHN McDONNELL MP. It could not have been at a more opportune time with the financial crisis hitting the headlines daily and the big bail-out of the banks underway. John had his own clear view on what needed to be done whilst there was an opportunity to bring the finance sector under control and in Government hands and have a re-assessment of where resources should be directed He detailed all the policies about banking, finance, credit and the role of government that had come tumbling down as the world finance system went into meltdown and even the Bush administration was carrying out nationalization of banks. He put forward a detailed set of proposals that would re-estasblish control over the finance fat cats who had been skimming billions out of the system. Some of his points were – called for action at the early stage of the crisis to halt repossessions and to protect people in their homes by converting mortgages to social rents. I listened to assurances from both Gordon Brown and Yvette Cooper that action would be taken. Nothing appears to have happened and repossessions are rapidly rising. There is a real sense of tragic irony that taxpayers have bailed out the banks only to be evicted from their homes by the very banks that they now own!
Given the significant increase in unemployment I am calling on the Government to bring forward urgently a recession proofing programme to protect people's homes, jobs and pensions. Today's unemployment figures are bad but it should be remembered that each recent set of unemployment figures has had to be revised upwards because the staff cuts imposed by the Government on job centres means that there aren't enough staff left to keep up with the number of unemployed claiming …. the banks which the government has taken into part-nationalisation would have collapsed entirely where it not for government intervention. The billions invested today surpass even the most generous estimates of the banks' worth.
The chancellor seems oblivious to the unprecedented potential the government now has to lay the foundations for transforming our economy. To give the taxpayers a return for their investment, the government should insist on an entirely restructured banking system and a new set of economic priorities for our financial institutions.e taxpayer, through the government, should now be forcing through an agenda with control of the board: offering full transparency and stakeholder democracy for customers and the workforce. There should also be a no-redundancies guarantee for bank workers to match the no-loss guarantee to depositors.
A new lending strategy of these nationalised banks must prioritise tackling the worst effects of the recession. We need to promote employment through investment in major public works schemes to meet the UK's needs. We urgently need a major programme of investment in renewable energy generation to tackle climate change. Likewise we need a national programme of council house building to tackle existing housing need, and to provide a safety net for those struggling to pay rent and mortgage costs as the recession deepens. In a packed meeting John answered questions and took part in a discussion of next steps for a policy geared towards the interests of the majority of the population.