AS THE TUC opens in Blackpool, it has been announced that John Monks, TUC general secretary, is to speak at a fringe meeting at this year's Conservative Party conference. That says everything about the "new thinking" at the TUC This year's Congress seems destined to be becalmed. The only potential threat to the tranquillity of the graveyard comes from the NUM, which at the time of writing has refused to remit a resolution calling for the abolition of all Tory trade union laws.
The centrepiece of the Blackpool gathering is the TUC's "relaunch", presented in a 164page document "Campaigning for Change".
This expensive process, carried out through a long series of seminars and documents, 'facilitated" by a firm of management consultants, spent hours and hours coming up with a definition of the TUC's "mission".
This is it: "The new TUC's mission is to become 'a high profile organisation which campaigns successfully for trade union values and aims, assists trade unions to increase membership and effectiveness, cuts out wasteful rivalry and promotes trade union solidarity. " So now you know.
How much in management consultants' fees it cost to come up with this piece of flummery has not been revealed. It contains important untruths. Hor example, the TUC set itself, as one of its key targets since it 0) reinvented itself as the "new" TUC, to "hold a high level conference on full employment". It had a special working group on that, with a host of general council members in attendance.
This conference, held on June 5, was that notorious oc casion when Tory employment minister David Hunt and CBI director general Howard Davies were given a platform. It was "high profile" only in attracting the hostility of tens of thousands of trade unionists.
An insight into TUC thinking is given by the section on industrial disputes in the "Campaigning for Change" document.
Strike two
The TUC "supported" precisely two industrial disputes in the last year - the NUJ/BECTU dispute with the BBC and the railworkers' dispute.
That's it. This section is two paragraphs in 164 pages!
Further clues to the "new" Pickets challenge the presence of Tory and CBI platform speakers at TUC Full Employment conference TUC thinking are given in the Congress document entitled 'human resource management". Human resource management is the bosses' term for the new management techniques.
The TUC comes to the conclusion that they're not all good, and must be further studied! But remember: Britain has to build a "world class workplace": the theorists of the new managemenl techniques couldn't have put it better.
In fact the "new" TUC itself is the product of the application of the new management techniques to its own structures -mission statements, task groups, compulsory redundancies, the lot.
The bizarre thing about the "new" TUC antics is that John Monks' attempt to theorise the organisation as a low key research and back-up centre for the trade union bureaucracy, rather than an organisation which actually fights to organise and co-ordinate workers Leaning towards collaboration: TUC chief John Monks struggle, comes amidst growing evidence of the resilience and popularity of the unions.
For example, the abolition of the check-off system of dues conecion nas nor reutes inne expected collapse of union membership. Most unions are reporting an 80-90 per cent sign-up rate; USDAW has actually increased its membership by 20 per cent through having to go out and talk to people, rather than relying on the check-off.
As the RMT is locked in a crucial battle with Railtrack, one which could have enormous implications for the continued existence of unions on the railway, you would have thought that this was the moment for the TUC to take the But all such thoughts are a million miles away from the becalmed, seminar-ridden world of the "new" TUC. And anyway, the management consultants would have advised against it.
By Fred Leplat (Islington UNISON) PAY TALKS for the 1.5 million local authority white collar and manual workers broke down in July, with the employers offering a two year deal of 1.7 per cent this year plus 275, and 1.4 per cent next year from July *95.
All the unions have reJected this offer, With Inflafion running at 2.5 per cent, average earnings risIng by 3.5 per cent (not to mention 4.7 per cent for MPs!), and with taxes risIng, the employers offer is a kick in the teeth. It means a pay cut this year, followed by a pay cut next year!
UNISON Is urging members to reject the ofter, through a branch consultation which ends on September 21.
Branches should call for a national conference of tocal government workers in pursuit of a flat rate claim for all council workers. Now is the time to join with other workers, in particular RMT members for action in defence of pay.