SIXTEEN years of retreats and betrayals by top union leaders have decimated the strength of organised labour in Britain, and rendered this year's TUC Brighton Congress the most irelevant vet On none of the key issues affecting working people -unemployment. low pay.cuts in public services, rampant privatisation, or even trade union rights at work - has the TUC run any serious campaigns or had anything of significance to say.
Figures from industrial tribunals give a glimpse of the reign of terror in many workplaces where stall of unor ganised derecognised: successful unmore than doubled in number since 1989, while days of 00013C Taco dr all-time record tow Anti-union laws have intimidated activists at local and nationaleel And w enied by her retake strainca by their reluctance to cross swords with Tony Blair's increasingly ants- un ion team, who are strategi. cally distancing themselves from the Labour Party's hisshift. Left stranded by TGWU Inaction: strikers at Mainland Car Deliveries in Oxfordshire voted narrowly to accept a £3, 000 pay-off after 14 weeks in dispute toric roots in the run-up to the next election.
Small wonder the levels of unionisation have fallen to the lowest levels in Britain for over 50 years.
Just 6.9 million workersless than a third of the workforce - are now in TUC• alfiliated unions - of whom only a minority are manual governic workers. Even this figure is likely to be an exaggeration. based on notoriously inflated totals for unions like the TGWU and UNISON.
Despite the evidence of the dire consequences of end. lessly retreating before the government and employers. and welcome signs of new resistance from rail workers. fire fighters and sections of health workers among others. there is mue sigo that cric Headed up by Blairite specifying any figure at all. John Monks, it has grovelled The reality is that the unto the bosses of the CBI and ions will only regain influsat quietly back and watched ence based 'New Labour' stick the boot willingness to Icad struggles into the unions, tamely ac- and confront employers and cepting the pitiful offerings the government of the day. of Labour's employment pol- The only way the echoing icy, while pleading for an ex- emptiness of Congress panded 'role' under a Labour House can again become the corridors of power is by unAccording to Monks, this ions taking a radical stand in means having "an influence defence of their members. on those aspects of economic and working people. policy relevant to unemploy- Nothing could be further ment, pay, competitiveness from the minds of the main and the labour market." union leaders as their reBut already the TGWU and searchers draft empty cubGMB - fearful of conflict with thumping speeches for Tony Blair's front bench -have broken the unity around The more feeble the genuthe £4.15 figure as the basis for fections of do-nothing bu. a new minimum wage, engag- reaucrats to Blair and the ing in a cynical dutch auction capitalist market, the more in the countdown to this the TUC presents itself to workers as an expensive.
In fact Blair is opposed to anachronistic irrelevance.