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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Council at War with Workers

by New Worker correspondent

While the eyes of the world were focused on the Holborn & St Pancras byelection, the Labour-run north London borough of Camden has been the scene of three industrial battles involving traffic wardens, teaching assistants and victimised teachers.

While traffic wardens are not always the most popular members of the working class, they deserve decent pay. Over 100 NSL parking wardens have been on strike for a £2 per hour pay rise. NSL has a 10-year contract worth £100 million. Parking fines are a booming business that increased by 22 per cent last year to £28.2 million.

This can be an effective action. Last time they went on strike, in 2023, they cost the council over £1.5 million due to thousands of tickets not being issued and fines not being processed.

Liz Wheatley, secretary of the borough’s Unison branch, said: “The council lose money because tickets aren’t issued. And all the tickets that come about through CCTV have to be manually checked within a certain time period to make sure they are accurate. If our members are on strike hardly any tickets are issued, and hardly any tickets are checked.” She added that: “Something that is worth highlighting with this is that it is the council that still has to pay NSL. That’s the shocking thing about privatised services, the only people who don’t lose out are the private company.” That is the whole point of privatisation.

Meanwhile, striking teaching assistants at two local primary schools in Camden are demanding that they be regraded from pay scale 3 to scale 4. They are also fighting to secure a modest pay rise that will bring them in line with other Camden schools’ pay scales, a matter the council could easily resolve by having a word in the ear of the school governors.

A recent rally at the Town Hall also made calls for the reinstatement of Kate Williams, a union rep and teacher of long-term sick children at Great Ormond Street and University College Hospitals (run by the council) who was vindicated in a court case after being suspended two years ago for daring to question the management of the school.

Her union, the National Education Union (NEU), says she was acting well within her role in pointing out shortcomings. “The whole thing has definitely been a waste of public money, intended for sick children’s education – that alone is scandalous,” she told the Camden New Journal, “the utter lack of urgency is appalling.”

She is one of a group now known as the “Great Ormond Street 4”. Camden NEU secretary Megan Quinn said: “They are 52 days into strike action. I have been involved in Camden NEU for a decade. The level of victimisation the hospital schoolteachers have experienced is unprecedented.” She added that the school is still dragging its feet and ignoring the order to reinstate her.

Jeremy Corbyn, the independent MP for neighbouring Islington North, said that “all the inner-London councils are suffering from something called the Fair Funding Formula”. He said there was nothing fair about it, instead it is “a government policy to remove funding for inner-London schools that get extra for wages due to higher costs of living”. He added that: “Private sector rents were out of control and that low-paid workers were suffering on many fronts.”

Further north in Oldham 80 workers belonging to Unison are in dispute with the council-owned company MioCare over wages and sick pay. They took strike action for two days early this month after an earlier one-day protest stoppage. Mio Care predictably say the union claim is “not affordable and could not be sustained in the long term without placing additional pressure on the future delivery of care”.

MioCare was established by the council in 2013 and was in good financial health earlier this year, but the council told it to make £1.4 million of cuts to balance the council’s books.

Its workers are involved in providing extra care support for those needing assistance to live more independently. This keeps people in their homes longer, thus keeping them out of more expensive care homes and hospitals. Apart from ending the scandal of them earning £2.10 hourly less than their colleagues, they are demanding the same sick pay scheme as other MioCare staff.