March 28 in Britain saw more than one million public sector workers striking to defend their pension rights. In a show of defiance against Blair’s latest attack on their conditions, pickets were mounted and rallies were held up and down the country.

This was the biggest day’s strike action for many long years.

For all the eleven unions involved in the dispute, but particularly for the biggest – UNISON – this is a crucial battle.

But while the leadership seem to think that this means they have to keep tight hands on the reins and dictate tactics from the top, there is a real danger that this could lead to a further defeat for the already weakened trade unions.

Despite union leaders’ conviction that they will be able to force ministers back from a policy that would single out local government staff for the worst and meanest pensions in the public sector, the New Labour government showed its determination to dig in its heels.

The very next day after the strike they laid the regulations before parliament to change the pension scheme.

The trade union leaders will need to show equal resolve if this fight is to result in a victory for rights at work: so far there is little to show that their heart is really in it.

Although the timing of the dispute has meant that UNISON’s Dave Prentis has been obliged to withhold the union’s considerable financial support and its usual army of full-time officials who would normally be central to Labour’s election effort in the run up to May’s council elections, the country’s biggest union has played down this significant political rift with New Labour.

And rather than outlining any escalating programme of action, it is clear that union chiefs hope that the threat to disrupt polling stations on May 4 and other guerrilla-style actions will be enough to force Deputy PM John Prescott back to the negotiating table.

The fact is that the union leaders themselves were taken aback by the scale of the response on March 28, which reached into places where organisation has previously been weak or non-existent.

People signed up to join a union for the first time when they saw organisations beginning to gear up to defend their rights at work – rather than concentrate on selling them cheaper car insurance…

Thatcher

Thousands of workers who took action on March 28 were not of working age before Margaret Thatcher’s imposition of the anti-union laws and the defeat of the Miners’ strike. They have no memory of unions actually winning victories through collective action.

New workplace and branch needs to be built out of this dispute. But while this has some chance if the government are forced to back down and at least concede what the other public sector unions got in the autumn, if the dispute is defeated then many will have less confidence to fight on other questions.

In a happy coincidence, March 28 also saw three million demonstrating on the streets of France – in the biggest mobilisation in recent French history, bigger even than 1968.

But it is not only in its proportions that the French mobilisation differs from those in Britain. The benchmark for the local government pension scheme strikes were set in October when other unions in Britain settled for a two-tier workforce, with those coming into the scheme after the dispute – the youngest section of the future public sector workforce – gaining nothing from it.

Solidarity

In contrast, French workers have taken strike action time and again over the last two months to defend the rights of young workers.

Workers, students and school students in France are building a powerful alliance to demand the withdrawal of a measure that would allow employers to sack those under 26 in the first two years in a job with no reason at all.

This unity between different sectors has been stronger from the beginning than in other previous struggle.

In Britain, the bosses in practice have sweeping rights to dismiss all workers, whatever their age and however long they have been working there. That is the legacy of the continual erosion of trade union strength and organisation since the Thatcher era.

In France, where there has been no Thatcher-style defeats for union action, the confidence of today’s movement does not come from trade union organisation as such. In fact only a very small percentage of workers in France belong to a trade union – and many of those striking over recent weeks still do not.

Instead the movement’s strength comes from the victory won in defeating the European constitution last year – another attempt by the neo-liberals to peg back workers’ rights – as well as from the experience of the revolt in the big housing estates last autumn.

In Britain the pensions dispute continues as we approach the local elections in May. Regional days of action are taking place on April 25, 26 and 27.

Respect activists need to make sure that the lessons of the French struggles – and the message that there is a political organisation here in Britain that will stand shoulder to shoulder with those fighting to defend their rights at work – echoes loud and clear amongst those workers.

This will be one of the most effective ways to give Blair a bloody nose on May 4.

Photograph from the UNISON website