Friday, 3 February 2023

Enough is enough

Speech from Dod Ross, CWU for Protect the Right to Strike Rally

Good evening and I bring solidarity from the Communication Workers Union, a Union that has already taken 18 days Industrial Action and is in the process of re-balloting our members due to anti-trade union laws.

This is a campaign that shouldn’t be needed.

This is a campaign that shouldn’t need to exist.

However, we are now part of a working world where suppression of pay, terms & conditions seem to be requirements we all must be expected to adhere and surrender to by business & government alike.

Food poverty, child poverty, in-work poverty in the 5th richest country in the world is abhorrent.

We are in a real time crisis, not only working people but for all people, families & communities across the country.

We aren’t looking for huge sums of money, we aren’t looking for massive dividend payments to stick away in the Cayman Islands accounts, we aren’t looking for employers to break the bank to pay us.

What we are looking for is fairness, equality, a share in the billions and billions of pounds of profits & dividends paid to the nameless few who control the wealth in this country.

We want a decent lifestyle where eat or heat isn’t a question we need to ask ourselves but is an expectancy for all.

We’re looking to the government to acknowledge the crisis not only working people are facing but all of us.

Instead of condemning us, instead of blaming us for all the problems we face, they continue bolstering the anti-trade union laws so we can’t take lawful industrial action without jumping through a million hoops.

They are a government who have dealt us a national financial disaster and want us to bail them out.

They need to take responsibility for the mistakes they have made and do the right thing.

Suppressing our legal rights to take lawful, industrial action is just wrong & Mick Lynch of RMT is right, if this was China, Afghanistan, North Korea and workers were being conscripted to work due to anti-trade union laws, attacking workers’ rights, the Tories would be up in arms.

Why aren’t they up in arms, because it’s what they as a government are doing.

The issue that’s alarming the Government, the billionaires, the shareholders of theses huge companies is, we’re not for backing down and we’re not going away.

Nurses can’t be wrong, civil servants can’t be wrong, teachers can’t wrong, university workers can’t be wrong, rail workers can’t be wrong, bus drivers can’t be wrong, posties can’t be wrong & to be perfectly honest, all workers who feel they have no choice in withdrawing their labour can’t be wrong.

We are at a pivotal point in the country, we are at a point where workplace unrest is on the rise, there is discontent on mass and we are at a point where we all here can say,

Enough is Enough!