The decline of the unions - the TUC has lost a third of its members - has largely been the result of massive job losses in manufacturing and traditional industries. The cutbacks on the railways have been part of this process. The scope of these job losses was the result of some major defeats for the unions. The key one was the miners' strike. The rail union leaders, as the others, have their share of the responsibility for allowing the miners to be isolated and forced back to work During the miners' strike, British 198 were temp owe er predictivity measures to the management withdrew the productivity strings. They wanted at all costs to avoiding the opening of a 'second front'. If the railways had been on strike at the same time as the mines, the economy would have been brought to a grinding halt.
The decision of the RMT leadership to accept the miserable 4% offer was nothing other than a stab in the back for the miners, and ensured their struggle would be a protracted one.
Since their defeat, and others since, so-called "new realism" has come to dominate virtually the entire trade union movement. The union bureaucracy refused to challenge the anti-union laws. When the BRB sought to introduce Driver Only Operation there was a spontaneous walk out by guards over the sacking of 250 of their number. Instead of building on this strike movement and bringing, all guards out, the union leadership instructed them to go back to work pending a ballot. This gave the management a month to intimidate the guards, threatening them with the sack if they came out on strike. As a result the ballot was narrowly lost. It seems amazing to recall that when the Pentonville 5 (London dockers) were imprisoned in 1972, the TUC actually threatened a General Strike. Today they do not even organise demonstrations against the introduction of anti-union legislation.
The overwhelming majority of the union movement is dominated by a self-seeking bureaucracy, by which we mean a social layer with its own interests, separate from, and opposed to those of the working class. The financial stability of the full-time apparatus is for them their overiding concern. They are separated from the members by a huge gulf: by their bloated wage packets and the privileges that accrue from their position. They treat the unions 715 businesses, whose stability is threatened by costly strikes. The politics of the majority of this bureaucracy is one of compromise with the employers, of promoting the common interests' of workers and employers. Hence they accept that the interests of workers are subordinate to the profitability of the companies they work for. They accept in the European framework the idea summed up by the TUC logo, "social partnership in action" (a partnership between employers, unions and governments in the "national interest").
As jimmy Knapp said at the recent AGM "our (full time officials') main purpose in life is to negotiate". However, eril yers ho the doerment have launched consensains the unions and the social gains of working people. Instead of fighting that war, the response of the TUC and most trade union leaders, has been lo appeal for a return to the consensus!
The Tories and employers have launched a new round of
attacks since the General Election, and yet the unions for the most part are refusing to organise resistance. This is between those way want o resist these allacks by apresens unions at present, possible, and those who in effect meekly accept the 'democratic right" of the re-elected government to carry on their offensive.
The unions cannot be defended under such circumstances by 'business management' nor by mergers. Their strength, or weakness rests on the level of organisation consciousness at the shop floor/office level. Unless they resist the latest attacks their decline will continue.