The Collapse of the Nurses’ Strike – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/04/the-collapse-of-the-nurses-strike/

As far as the revisionist CPB is concerned, trade unions are beyond reproach. Workers should join a union, take the free life insurance and the will-writing service and no more.

We respectfully disagree. We support the trade union movement, but will criticise it when criticism is due, we will point out its limitations and we will actively encourage workers not just to join a trade union, but to become active within its democratic structures, to challenge its bureaucracy and to be part of a cycle of members from the grassroots of the union, to its executive levels and, vitally, back to its grassroots again.

For workers to be better equipped to fight and defeat the exploitative system we exist within, we have to do much more than just #joinaunion

" Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system."

Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit

When history comes to judge the failures of the trade union movement, and there are many, this will rank as amongst its biggest.

Remaining in fealty to a party which despises the trade union movement and everything it stands for.

Statement On The Unite Policy Conference – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/10/statement-on-the-unite-policy-conference-2/

We know that people are leaving Unite. We urge you to reconsider and to leave the Political Fund instead. It’s important that the bureaucrats who run Unite are given a clear message that their continued and servile relationship with Labour has to end, either their way or yours.

A potted history of the Royal Mail dispute:

- CWU members strike in 2022, losing £1,400 each

- CWU leaders accept crappy deal in 2023

- CWU members realise their leaders have abandoned them and so accept crappy deal

- CWU leaders wonder why CWU members are leaving in droves

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/04/26/the-inexplicable-capitulation-of-the-cwu/

In this podcast, we looked at the capitulation of the CWU and gained valuable insight from people who had actually worked for Royal Mail.

We speculated that CWU’s bureaucracy had been spooked into thinking that Royal Mail may go bust if the strike action continued. It looks like we were right.

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/05/08/podcast-debut/

The Communication Workers Union and their total capitulation in the Royal Mail dispute is examined in this latest article from the Class Consciousness Project.

https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/07/13/the-failure-of-the-royal-mail-dispute/

The literal trickle we were promised.

Our comrade Alex will be speaking here.

I'll be speaking at this online event on Sunday.

https://icssmarx.org/putin-and-nato-a-marxist-leninist-perspective-alexander-mckay-sunday-june-16-2023-1030-am-pacific-time/

Thames Water scandal – is the party drawing to a close? | The Communists
https://thecommunists.org/2023/07/12/news/thames-water-scandal-privatisation-party-drawing-to-close/

Our project is completely non-profit. There are no pay walls and there never will be.
We do incur some expenses though which members of the Project pay out of their own pockets.

We have set up a PayPal account for anyone who'd like to help us out here and there with donations. Anything you can donate will be gratefully received.
http://paypal.me/classCproject

If you want a good benchmark for thinking about the proposed wage rises of 6-8 percent being forced on various striking workforces right now, consider this:

Increase in the price of staples from May 2019 to May 2023 in Britain:

30% increase in the price of butter
25% increase in the price of bread
37% increase in the price of chicken
55% increase in the price of milk
70% increase in the price of baked beans

Average rent in London in 2019 was £1,425 (all types and sizes of housing)
The figure for March 2023 was £2,193.

That's an increase of more than 50%.

Now tell me those wage increases -- which are not to address just this last year's extreme inflation or even the four years detailed above, but FIFTEEN YEARS of pay freezes and below-inflation rises that have been compounded by the last year's runaway price hikes -- are 'generous'.