Defence of members at the workplace remains central to the unions. However, given the broader political context at the present time, such defence cannot be effectively carried out if unions restrict their activities to the workplace. Broad alliances must be built. At the same time it is necessary to take political campaigns into the trade union movement, and to push the unions to support campaigns. Trades Councils can play an important role in this. Here we look at three major areas of activity.
Defence of the Welfare State The government attack on the welfare state is a central issue for the trade union movement, and could well be a principal arena for a fight back. Dismantling the welfare state is in part a response to the problems of the British economy: However, the issue goes much further than this. Most British employers are committed to the process of European integration. The Maastricht Treaty, which remains the main framework for such integration, lays the foundation for cutbacks in welfare across Europe. In order to join the single European currency provided for in the treaty, countries have to limit their annual government budget deficit to no more than 3% of gross domestic product (GDP). The accumulated stock of government debt has to be no more than 60% of GDP. Such figures imply massive cutbacks in welfare. To take just iwo examples, the current stocks of Belgian and Italian government debt are both in excess of 100% of output in those countries!
Whoever wins the next election in Britain will have to launch a massive attack on the welfare state if they are to go for a single European currency, first or second wave if it happens in two stages. Billions of pounds of cuts will be necessary for this country to meet the criteria. For public sector unions, many of whose members work in this area, the implications are obvious. However, it applies just as much to unions in general. Current attacks on pension rights, care for children and the elderly and health have implications for all workers.
Most directly for the unions, the attack on the rights and benefits of the unemployed goes hand in hand with the use of the lear of unemployment to limit and discourage union activity:
The Maastricht Treaty does not exist in isolation from the general crisis of the European economies. Slow growth and continuing high unemployment in Europe, competitive challenges from the USA and Japan, and the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe have combined to produce considerable pressure from European businesses and governments for labour market deregulation and decreases in the social costs levied on employers. This in turn reinforces the deflationary impact of the Treaty.
This presents massive challenges for trade unions across Europe but also great opportunities. In many European countries the attack on welfare rights as a result of the Maastricht process has stimulated magnificent struggles led by trade unions. We have seen a general strike in Spain against cuts in payments to young workers, and in Italy against the Berlusconi government's plans to cut pensions in November 1994. Most dramatically we have seen the strikes in France in December 1995 against the Juppé plan for weakening the welfare state. These strikes helped to stimulate a general strike in Belgium. This is only a selection of the struggles that have taken place in continental Europe since the Maastricht Treaty in defence of the welfare state. In each case the struggle was led by the trade unions. Nothing could show more clearly the falsity of the view that the working class and the union movement are dead. In the British unions we need to develop as many links as possible with European trade unionists fighting the attack on welfare rights.
It is important for the unions to link up with the users and the local communities affected by cuts and closures. This is necessary both to build effective campaigns and to counter the idea increasingly being put forward by employers and by the government that unions are simply a sectional interest to be counterposed to the wider concerns of the community. We reject this division between community interests and workers' interests and argue instead that good services for the community and good conditions at work are inextricably linked. Following from this, there is a common bond between users of welfare services and trade unionists in that botn the welfare state and trade unions depend on a collective view, rather than one which stresses individual sell-reliance as the only virtue. The current plans to reshape the welfare state as a means of controlling people's lives, be it single parents through the Child Support Agency, or the unemployed through the Job Seekers Allowance and workfare schemes, go hand in hand with the control exerted by new management techniques in the workplace. It should also be emphasised that the cutbacks in welfare are not simply being carried out to save money. The areas of work covered by the welfare state represent major opportunities for profitable activity
in the future, perhaps the most attractive such opportunities currently available for companies. One only has to think of things like the provision of private medicine, care for the elderly and private pensions. An obvious enticing prospect for the insurance companies is the possible provision of unemployment insurance, in a world where benefit provision for the unemployed has been cut back drastically, or abolished. However, exploiting these opportunities depends both on pricing these areas out of the public sector and on preventing the workforce from defending their interests within these 'industries' '. The importance of defence of the welfare state for the unions, then, is not just a question of supporting public services. It is also about defending union organisation in what are the most rapidly expanding areas of the economy. This is a precondition for defending the union movement itself.
Anti-Racism and Immigration Racism remains a major factor dividing the working class and thus potentially weakening the trade unions. Racist attacks and fascist activity continue to be a problem, particularly in certain areas. However, an even more direct issue with regard to trade unions is the growing spectre of state racism. This has expressed itself especially in the movement to tighten immigration controls and limit asylum applications.
One immediate consequence of this is that union members in the public sector may be asked to report on those suspected of being 'illegal' immigrants. It will be a priority for the trade unions to defend workers who refuse to do this or otherwise to implement racist controls. However, the impact of these measures goes much wider. Government regulations to fine employers who employ unauthorised immigrants are likely to lead to an explosion of racism in recruitment, as black people are refused jobs unless they can prove unambiguously that they are not subject to the new legislation. Even more seriously for the unions, the more restrictions are placed on immigrant workers the harder it will be to organise such workers. Government controls on immigration then become an issue for the whole union movement, since they aid the growth of a 'sweatshop' sector in the economy where workers are frightened to join unions for fear of deportation or detention. For example, it will surely be impossible for the unions to ensure the enforcement of any minimum wage set by Labour, however limited this might be, while such workers are forced to accept jobs at any price to avoid being thrown out of the country. The struggles against low pay, for the recruitment of unorganised sectors into the unions, and against the laws on immigration and asylum are inextricably linked.
Democratic Rights The anti-union laws are not the only example of cutbacks in democratic rights in the last fifteen years. Many of the other attacks on such rights have implications for unions as well. The most important of these is the Criminal Justice Act of 1994. Much of the opposition to this was centred on young people, organisers of raves, travellers, hunt saboteurs and environmental protesters. However, the provisions in the act apply just as much to trade unions, for example in the area of picketing. Indeed, they mirror the action that was taken against pickets in the 1984-5 miners strike, when roadblocks were erected and anyone thought to be entering an area to picket was summarily sent back. This also raises the question of the role of the police. The miners' strike, and the following dispute at Wapping, saw an increasingly organised use of a centralised police force as an arm of the state and employers in industrial disputes. This was then carried over 1o criminalise other forms of protest, notably the anti-Poll Tax campaign of 1990 and the anti-roads protests of the early to mid-1990s. Any comparable industrial dispute arising now would face the same kind of police action. Consequently the struggle against police restrictions on democratic rights to protest is an important one for the trade unions. The links between the criminalisation of industrial struggles and other forms of protest run both ways: while the CJA poses a threat to picketing and trade union activity, anti-road protesters at Newbury have been arrested on charges of preventing contractors from working, under the anti-union laws! Wherever the state has felt threatened by industrial or other forms of action it has resorted to the use of the police, the army (and even the navy) to intimidate and repress. As well as campaigning against restrictions on the right to protest, picket and organise, trade unionists need to resist this with mass mobilisations and defence against the forces of the state.
The role of the trade unions in campaigning against arbitrary police powers extends also to the cases of black workers and Irish workers. The need to see police harassment of black people as an issue for the trade unions is closely linked to the question of union campaigns against racism and immigration controls detailed above. Similarly, police activity against Irish people, creating fear of participation in political or trade union activity, backed up by the Prevention of Terrorism Act, is an important trade union issue.