John Moloney

Danny Kruger says 'It means stopping public sector unions sabotaging the reforms the public rightly demands...the trades unions – they are not there to second-guess the government'. Reform will attack unions. We have been warned. A key task of the unions therefore is to stop Reform.

and the overall wage bill of the civil service didn’t come down at all'. So Reform will not only cut jobs but clamp down on promotions (?) and maybe reshape the civil service so its grade structure is pyramid like (this is referred to in the Reform document).

After promising cuts of over 164,000 civil servants, Mr Kruger goes on to say 'we will be alert to the tricks that were pulled while the Coalition government was cutting Whitehall and freezing pay. What happened was that all the officials who were left just promoted themselves...

... Given the increases in headcount since 2016, overall a 30% cut in the civil service should be easily achievable'. Reducing head count to the 2016 fig was proposed by Johnson and Badenoch, so nothing new there. Yet this would mean over 164,000 people losing their jobs!

Danny Kruger of the Reform Party has set out proposals as to how the country should be run. Over the next few days I will go over some of those. First though, the civil service. He writes 'We want to significantly reduce the headcount of the civil service...

If you can make it to this event please do so. PCS is supporting this demo.

It also drives evictions as private landlords kick out those on housing benefits, to replace them with those who can pay more.

Solidarity with BMA Resident Doctors. A wholly justifiable strike.

Why? Don't workers in MyCSP deserve union recognition? Why should members have to take strike action to gain a basic right.

So whilst Labour is now saying in the clean energy sector 'we are committed to promoting union recognition and collective bargaining across the sector' it refuses to intervene in the MyCSP dispute.

So AP reports, with 350 of the bills being anti-vaccine. Could such things happen in the UK? Probably not in the extreme forms we see in the US, but Reform will have many anti-vaxer activists and the party is a transmission belt for MAGA/Project 2025 ideas.

'More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized...campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law'.

One of the actions in the Green Jobs Plan is 'The government wants to see more trade union recognition and promote collective bargaining across the clean
energy sector...' This is good. But Labour should be encouraging collective bargaining across the entire economy.

From Ed Miliband: '....trade unions are an essential part of a modern workplace. For too long, parts of the clean energy sector have been a union-free zone... we are committed to promoting union recognition and collective bargaining across the sector'.

The Plan includes promoting union recognition, introducing a Fair Work Charter, closing legislative loopholes to extend employment protections (the National Minimum Wage) to offshore clean energy workers. Major unions have endorsed the Plan so this looks like a good step forward.

The UK's new Clean Energy Jobs Plan emphasises strong trade union involvement as "essential" for the sector's growth. The government commits to working in partnership with unions to deliver the projected 400,000 extra jobs by 2030, aiming for high-quality, well-paid work.

The assault extends to the Environmental Protection Agency where budgets are cut, enforcement powers stripped and crucial programs like Environmental Justice grants are defunded, effectively sidelining science-based climate action and protection for vulnerable communities.

The Trump administration censors climate science. Reports from the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) document the swift "erasure" of key federal web pages and data, deliberately limiting public access to vital climate change information.

PCS is supporting this.

Profiting from cutting people's vital healthcare Sometimes we publish pieces submitted by KONP members or supporters on topics that we think are important to draw to the attention of campaigners. This one is by Emet Sachin, who has investigated the ...

A new piece on our site, by Emet Sachin, exposes how
NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) is being undermined by ‘gainshare’ contracts, where private firms profit by cutting care for the most vulnerable.

This is not efficiency. It’s exploitation.

Read here 👇
keepournhspublic.com/profiting-fr...

In Make Work Pay, you find 'Labour believes strong collective bargaining rights and institutions are key to tackling problems of insecurity..'. Yet they have not sat down with PCS and thrashed out a job security agreement! We want to bargain. So Labour, join us.

Of course Labour is planning to cut UK civil service numbers - in fact that is happening now. Though we don't know as yet how big the staff cuts will be. Estimates range up 50,000.

Reform also wants to attack Public Sector Pensions, taking of ending defined benefit schemes and replacing them with defined contributions ones. They hint that staff remaining in DB schemes should have their pay cut! Another reason for unions to campaign against Reform.

Then we turn to Reform. Mr Farage has recently been quoted as saying “The 2024 document (their manifesto) proposed ­reductions in civil service spending, but we will increase those cuts". No doubt they will vie with the Tories as to who can cut most.

Cuts on this scale will devastate public services, hollow out regional economies, and erase institutional memory. But fantasy figures go unchallenged by the BBC and cheered on by right-wing papers. It’s time to call this out — loudly and collectively.

The dust has settled on party conference season. What did we learn? The Tories want to sack over 120,000 civil servants. Kemi Badenoch says “if a job shouldn’t exist, there’s no point keeping it.” That’s not reform — it’s economic vandalism dressed up as fiscal realism.

Starting in 1944 there was the Emergency Factory Made Housing Programme. This showed how centralised planning, standardisation, and industrial capacity could be harnessed to solve a national crisis. We need its like again. Labour should build, not hope that others will do so.

Labour claim that it wants greater use of Modern Methods of Construction e..g. pre-fabrication, modular construction etc to solve the housing crisis. They say money for this will be provided via the Home Building Fund. Yet that fund is mainly aimed at smaller builders.

The government must respond with a serious plan—invest in construction skills and stabilise supply chains. Without action, these shortages will keep driving up costs and slowing the delivery of homes. Only the UK Government can solve these problems. The 'market' will not.

UK house building is being squeezed by supply-side pressures: there's a shortfall of up to 500,000 construction workers, and prices for key materials like bricks and cement have risen over 37% since 2020.