Rhondda Cynon Taff marches against the cuts

This article was orginally posted on the Socialist Party Wales website.

Over 400 trade unionists, community campaigners and young people marched against cutbacks in a demonstration organised by UNISON. Also in attendance was a sizeable contingent from GMB, PCS NASUWT and other trade unionists. The demonstration was loud and angry as we marched through the town centre with the Youth Fight For Jobs contingent especially loud.

Many council workers are angry at the labour run Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) council for the blackmailing of staff, threatening them with the sack unless they except worse pay and conditions, which will affect their pay home pay for most workers of between £2-£4000, and in some cases even more!

The anger of the workforce was noticeable at the rally in the Muni at the end of the march, which was reflected in the speeches UNISON leaders in Wales were made even if up until now this has not been matched by their actions. It is clear that the weight of their members’ anger is pressing up against them.

Hundreds of RCT Against The Cuts leaflets were distributed on the day, both to those on the demonstration and passers-by. After the rally Socialist Party Wales held a very successful public meeting with about 50 in attendance. At the meeting several council workers expressed their anger towards the trade union branch leaderships, who they say had not really gone out of their way to inform the workforce that the demonstration had taken place, one worker went on to add “I only found out about the demo today, but most of the people I work with probably still don’t know after it has happened”.

In reply one of the organisers of RCT Against The Cuts said that this shows the importance of building this anti-cuts alliance which can communicate to all trade unionists and other campaigners in the area about the events coming up and to build a network of activists throughout all trade unions in the area to act as a lever on the leaderships to make sure they are doing what we elected them to do as represent their members interests.

On the day dozens of people said they would come to the next meeting of RCT Against The Cuts on February 24th in Pontypridd Museum and are going to help build the campaign. Two people joined the Socialist Party and many more expressed an interest in finding out more and joining as well.

Fighting against job cuts at Uni Glam!

This tuesday saw a demonstration of about 200 people at the Main campus of the University of Glamorgan with smaler demonstrations held at another two campus'. The demostration was called by the Unison trade union in response to a proposed 40 compulsory redundancies amongst its members.


It wasn't just unison members in attendence but members of UCU, GMB and plenty of students as well. The turn out of students was particuarly impressive as it was not annouced publicly on the Student Union website until the afternoon before (though I may be mistaken) I certainly didn't find out until the afternoon and that was by chance from a brief discussion with a unison member.


The 40 jobs cuts which have been mentioned is just those threatened amongst unison members but there will also be job cuts coming in other areas of university staff as well and these are just the cuts which have already been announced. The fact that at short notice over 200 attended a demonstration during the exam period shows not only a definate need to fight back against the cuts but also that there are alot of people willing to be a part of such a campaign. There needs to be a co-ordinated campaign from all four unions on campus. Unison, UCU, GMB and the SU.


A united struggle of all staff unions and students is the only way in which we will be able to stop the cuts at uni glam and demand that management open up the books and show us where the money is going.

More to come shortly at the moment I am having difficulties uploading pictures of the demonstration