UCU general secretary Jo Grady moving resolution 37
Delegates to the TUC’s annual conference have voted in favour of a resolution to reaffirm that the trade union movement’s priority must be welfare and wages, not weapons and war.
Stop the War Coalition convenor Lindsey German described the vote as “wiping away the stain on the movement” which the TUC’s 2022 decision to campaign for an increase in military spending represented.
The decision by the majority of unions to back the UCU resolution Wages not Weapons reverses policy set in 2022 in favour of increasing military spending. It commits the TUC to prioritising campaigning for public investment in Britain’s public realm, which has been devastated by austerity, and to committing to a safe and liveable planet. It states that the movement should “stand, in our best traditions, for peace and against militarisation”.
The vote came after a powerful debate in which only three unions – Prospect, the GMB and Unite spoke against.
Moving the motion, Jo Grady, general secretary of the UCU, said that public service workers were sick of being told there was no money left while defence sector funding increased.
“Crumbling classrooms, patients abandoned in hospital corridors, thousands sleeping on the streets, yet we can still afford the world’s fifth biggest military budget – £59.8 billion. Cash found for weapons. No cash found for wages.
“Make no bones about it, this is an anti-worker agenda. It’s a direct attack on our interests. It’s an attack on our class, our movement, our communities. When the entire political establishment is singing from the same hymn-sheet that should tell us all we need to know.”
Grady described the narrow vote in 2022 to campaign in support of increased military spending as having put the labour movement on the “wrong side of history”, and was clear that in spite of the claims of those unions opposing the motion, it did not call for the closure of the defence industry.
“It says that our priority should be on investment in our wages, our public services, our communities. That means voting today to overturn our support for increased defence spending. Voting to put all of our interests first.
“And it is not good enough for us to say jobs first when the result of those jobs is being used to reign down hell on earth, murder children and target innocent people. We must have better ambitions than that.”
Alex Gordon, Stop the War officer and former RMT president, who spoke on his union’s behalf in support of the motion, said the UCU resolution “encapsulates exactly the dangerous crossroads facing our members and all of humanity” and pointed to US president Donald Trump’s demands that NATO members spend five percent of GDP on “so-called” defence spending, while also renaming the US Department of Defense the “War Department”.
He attacked the British government for using the language of “hard choices” to explain cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people, pensioners, WASPI women and working families, while lavishing eye-watering sums of public money on arms spending with a false promise of reviving Britain’s manufacturing industries and most deprived regions through arms manufacturing.
“Congress, don’t believe the hype! Far from being a boost to jobs and skills here in Britain, ramping up military spending is a smash and grab raid on our public services, public service workers’ jobs and wages. As Trump has made abundantly clear, jobs and profits from military spending will flow across the Atlantic into the US-dominated supply chain.
In pointing to this week’s announcement by defence secretary John Healey of £250 million in “Defence Growth Deals” as part of Britain’s Defence Industrial Strategy, Gordon said communities would only be pushed into further deprivation, with critical funds funnelled away from jobs-rich sectors of our economy such as health, transport, housing and infrastructure renewal, and greater international instability created.
“The government is using ‘Team Barrow’ as its role model for local economic growth. Barrow-in-Furness, a town whose economy is dominated by the BAE shipyard, where the next generation of Britain’s nuclear submarines are being built, ranks within 10 percent of the most deprived areas in England. The wealth of BAE Systems doesn’t flow to the people of Barrow.
“And obviously, higher military spending isn’t going to wages. Billions of pounds of our public money goes directly into the profits of arms companies and their shareholders. If we want to kick start the economy and create hundreds of thousands of good union jobs, we need defence diversification, we need welfare not warfare, we need wages not weapons.”
Responding to the vote Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition said:
“It is brilliant news that the UCU motion on defence spending has been carried. The vote wipes away the stain on the movement which the TUC’s 2022 decision to campaign for an increase in military spending represented.
“It was a really powerful debate that exposed the lie being peddled by the government that growth in communities can be built on increased militarism and laid bare the real impact that hiking spending on arms to record levels of GDP has on working people, as public services and the welfare system are cut to the bone. Thanks to everyone who campaigned so hard for the resolution and who spoke on it.
“Now let the trade union movement unite in fighting for Welfare, not Warfare.”