Royal Auxiliary Fleet (RFA) personnel are striking this week over low pay and high workloads.
Members of the Nautilus union, representing RFA officers, are taking action today, while RMT seafarers are striking tomorrow, demanding pay justice.
According to Nautilus: “This is the first time in the history of the RFA that officers will carry out strike action. Vessels impacted will be in the Far East, the Mediterranean, as well as those in and around the UK.”
The RFA plays a vital role in supporting the Royal Navy, in particular by supplying food, fuel, and equipment to the main fleet. Despite this, the RFA sailors – who are civilians under the employ of the Ministry of Defence – have taken a real-terms pay cut of 30 percent since 2010.
@RMTunion Royal Fleet Auxiliary members will be on the picket lines this Friday 16 August in our fight for Fair Pay For RFA. Please show your support. pic.twitter.com/0UiaCTmgzX— RMT (@RMTunion) August 14, 2024
This pay cut has been made worse by ballooning workloads, causing many to leave the job. This means that many ships run on the bare minimum number of crewmates, leading to ships being seriously short-handed.
Only two of its seven vessels are currently active, with multiple being currently unusable. This problem is not limited to the RFA, but is typical of the whole UK military.
The British army is “unprepared for a conflict of any scale” says one senior official. It is a “shopfront military” with “precious little on the shelves” says another. This decline in military power represents the sorry state of British imperialism.
The British state will give arms monopolies cash hand-over-fist to develop weapons – but the staffing and support needed to actually use these weapons is left to rot. The result is embarrassment after embarrassment for the ruling class.
In another farcical turn of events, plans to increase military spending won’t be able to stop the cuts. A recent report found a £16.9bn void in the military’s budget.
The Ministry of Defence has even been asking its contractors to find more areas where the budget can be slashed. Any increased spending will only reduce the extent of these inevitable cuts.
Like the Border Force strikes before them, this RFA strike shows how decrepit the British state has become. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is now the norm, provoking unrest in these key arms of the capitalist state.
Far from ruling the waves, it’s clear that British imperialism is becoming ripe for overthrow!
Nautilus GS Mark Dickinson at the RFA demonstration in Birkenhead. The public are showing their support! #FairPayRFA pic.twitter.com/nbLC5IAowa— Nautilus International (@nautilusint) August 15, 2024
Counting the loot of imperialism
An angry worker in a finance house
Following big corporate reporting scandals like Carillion in 2018, the ‘Big Four’ accounting and professional services firms have been at pains to clean up their image and present themselves as a force for good.
“Our values are the foundation of everything we do and every action that we take,” says KPMG – fined £21m by the Financial Reporting Council for their mismanagement of the Carillion audit.
These firms harp on about serving people and communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, assisting companies in the green transition, and all sorts of nice-sounding objectives.
The reality is that they act as nothing less than handmaidens to the rogues’ gallery that makes up the FTSE index, advising companies responsible for the worst human rights abuses and environmental destruction.
The ‘Big Four’ also generate millions in revenue from auditing the financial statements of large listed businesses. To be audited is a legal requirement for these companies, and is therefore hypocritically couched under the pretence of independent third-party verification of data.
Deloitte, for example, is the auditor for BAE Systems, the British weapons manufacturer – 16th on the FTSE by market capitalisation. They have made record profits as a result of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, famously providing key components for Israeli fighter jets, along with IT infrastructure that is integrated into the Israeli war machine.
“At Deloitte, we believe all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The £17m BAE paid Deloitte in 2023 must make up for the children in Gaza being murdered every day by their client’s weapons.
This industry greases the wheels of all the aerospace, defence, oil and gas, and mining giants that destroy people’s lives and the planet in the name of profit. The higher the revenue and profits of these companies, the more demand they generate for services in the realm of tax & legal, restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, etc.
To satisfy this demand, the ‘Big Four’ exploit their employees, most of whom are young graduates seeking to avoid precarity; often forced to work 70-hour weeks, with no trade union protection or representation. So much for dignity!
These firms are part and parcel of the financial infrastructure of British imperialism. They advise large multinationals on how to maximise their profits by cutting costs, expanding their business (however murderous or morally bankrupt), laying off their staff, and further exploiting natural resources.
To get rid of their chokehold on the economy, we have to get rid of imperialism itself.