Another
trade union conference season, one year into a Labour government, opens
with little sign of progress on union rights. Here JOHN MCILROY explores
the issues at stake, and argues for a concerted campaign
British trade unions are at a historic turning
point. Nobody should underestimate the dangers or the opportunities the
present situation holds. The chips are down, what happens next could
determine our future for decades to come.
Are we going to seize the time, exploit the new mood
the change of government has engendered and use the power we still possess
to reverse 20 years of sustained decline? Or are we going to follow the
present route of retreat and end up with fewer members than we had at the
start of the twentieth century?
A new report from the International Labour
Organisation should strengthen the optimism of those willing to look
beyond this small island. It argues that across the world:"There is
every sign that a whole new social movement is developing. Both in word
and in deed trade unions are looking more and more like genuine social
movements with a clear vision of how to defend and promote the interests
of their members."
Membership grew in the decade to 1995 in countries
as diverse as South Korea by 61 per cent, Chile 90 per cent, Spain 92 per
cent and South Africa, where membership increased by 127 per cent. Even in
some West European countries, the major site of retreat, decline in
countries such as Italy has been marginal at around 7 per cent, whilst in
Sweden membership grew by 10 per cent, to embrace 91 per cent of workers.
There is encouragement here, for we are
internationalists, citizens of the world. But we fight in Britain and we
have had a beating in Britain - although our comrades in Australia, New
Zealand, the USA and France have had it worse and, particularly in France,
have shown there is always room for resurgence. Nevertheless the fabric
and confidence of British labour has been severely dented. The membership
of TUC unions declined every year since 1980, plummeting from 12.2 million
members to 6.7 million to-day.
This is unparalleled. it means less than a third of
workers are trade unionists, less than half are covered by collective
agreements and today there are shop stewards in fewer than 40 per cent of
workplaces. In 1989 1 in 7 union members were under 25. By 1996 it was 1
in 14.
We need a new
charter for union rights! Click here for more details!
We have experienced historic defeats in the 1984-85
miners strike, at Wapping, in the hot summer of 1989. We have seen the
successful imposition of a battery of anti-union laws, the dwindling of
strikes to the lowest numbers since statistics began and the qualitative
erosion of our role in the Labour Party. This has laid the basis for a
significant increase right across industry of employer hostility to trade
unionism. Derecognition spread from publishing and printing to the docks,
the oil industry and the privatised utilities. Its incidence has trebled
in the 1990s.
ACAS reports demonstrate the decreasing success of
recognition drives even where ballots record high levels of support and in
an increase in victimisation.
In the private sector less than 20 per cent of the
workers in enterprises opened over the last decade are members. The
current dispute at Critchley Labels evokes the period we are living
through. BT sells off the business to a thrusting, profit hungry,
anti-union employer. A weakened, insecure workforce accept a freeze on
wages, the sacking of half the membership, the removal of an established
bonus scheme, a reduction in holiday entitlement. It is not enough.
The bosses increasingly ignore stewards and when
members are successfully balloted over strike action they derecognise the
union and sack 300 of the strikers, replacing them with agency labour on
lower wages.
The very resilience of trade unionists like the
Critchley workers demonstrates that the game is not up. We can still come
again. But with present policies? With current leaders?
As new challenges and possibilities presented
themselves, as we entered a new period in the run-up to the general
election with the installation of Blair as Labour leader and the relaunch
of the TUC in 1994, we have witnessed crucial failures of policy and
leadership. At the centre of this has been renewed emphasis on partnership
with employers, embrace of Human Resource Management (HRM) and new
production techniques - at the very time employers rejection of any role
for unions was in the ascendant.
The TUC put the case against the new techniques
incisively:"In the experience of many trade unionists, HRM is about
nothing more than implementing redundancies, casualisation the workforce,
reducing wages and reasserting management's right to manage. It is often
associated with intensification of work and a deliberate strategy to
derecognise or limit the influence of trade unions." They then
advised trade unionists to accept HRM, even to urge its introduction!
This new collaboration was accompanied by moves on
the part of key leaders with some left reputation to follow the TUC in
accommodating emerging Blairism as New Labour repositioned itself as the
open party of global capitalism. From 1994, the UNISON leadership sought
to remove power from the branches and lay activists and increasingly
policed action likely to embarrass Blair. In the TGWU, Bill Morris was
converted to social partnership, HRM and hostility to strikes.
In 1994 both Bickerstaffe and Morris albeit with
limited conviction voted against the removal of Clause Four. In 1997, like
the turkeys voting for Christmas they had earlier used to ridicule the
idea they would support their own eviction from the Labour Party, both
voted for the `Party Into Power' proposals. By the election they were
firmly if critically in the Blair camp. In the Hillingdon Hospital
dispute, the UNISON leaders went beyond compliance with the anti-union
legislation, suppressing discussion of the dispute, terminating support
without a ballot, refusing to allow the strikers full membership rights.
Morris's behaviour over the dockers needs little emphasis.
A small number of small unions, the RMT, FBU, NUM
remained isolated on the left. Despite positive initiatives, such as the
Trade Union Left Alliance, the serious left remained weak, divided, unable
to influence the rightward trajectory of union leaders. In some quarters
illusions in Bickerstaffe and Morris were painfully slow to dissolve.
To-day, with only minor contradictions, the TGWU
Broad Left is the General Secretary's organising arm in the union. Its
supporters on Labour's NEC have accepted every single Blairite innovation.
The existence of three competing lefts in UNISON and the confident
initiatives of the leadership to suppress opposition affirm our current
weaknesses.
What remains encouraging is the increase in the
strike figures in 1996-97 and the underlying power and vitality
demonstrated by the strikes in the Royal Mail and the long running
disputes among groups of low paid workers outside the sectors of
traditional militancy. Here we have the makings of a fightback.
As these disputes demonstrate (see Box) the issue of
the anti-union legislation is absolutely central to any reversal of the
retreat. Yet here again there has been timidity at the top, intended to
obfuscate dispassionate consideration of the vast complex of Tory
legislation, the problems it offers the day-to-day practice of trade
unionism, the necessities for its repeal and the possibilities for
confronting it in practice.
The TUC has sought to seal off the questions of
repeal and defiance. At the 1996 pre-election congress, Morris acting as
the General Council's frontman, called successfully for rejection of
motions from the Communication Workers, NUM and RMT for repeal of the
legislation and its replacement with a new framework of rights.
In language impregnated with Blairism, he pronounced
these motions as dangerously seeking "to put unions above the law.
Our call, as it is now and always has been, is for fair laws, not for
special treatment." With little regard for history Bill maintained:"This
Congress has long supported the principle of ballots ...... it secures the
moral high ground".
Why are new laws
important? Click here for more details!
Condemning the NUM's call for defiance, the future
governor of the Bank of England preached, " laws are like morality
you cannot pick and choose which one you support or which you obey."
Congress firmly turned its face against a new framework of union laws in
favour of a moderate shopping list of demands to be introduced in Labour's
first year of office."
Affirmed at the 1997 TUC, this list covered
A National Minimum Wage
Adhesion to the Social Chapter
Restoration of rights to trade unionists at GCHQ
and to Prison officers
Union recognition
Secondary and solidarity action
Rights to legal protection from day one of
employment
Reinstatement of those sacked in lawful disputes
Removal of restrictions on deduction of union
dues from pay packets
Most of these demands figured, albeit vaguely and
inconsistently in New Labour policy documents - with the vital exception
of solidarity action. And always with the vital qualification:
restrictions on strikes and picketing and requirements for ballots would
continue.
However as the election loomed Blair back-pedalled
furiously. New Labour's manifesto distanced the Party from the TUC with
commitments restricted to the minimum wage recognition and the Social
Chapter.
The commitment to recognition was vaguely worded.
The Financial Times pointed out on April 7 1997 what the slow thinking
Monks and Morris only realised months later: it was unclear whether
recognition would depend upon support from a majority of workers to be
represented by a union or alternatively only by a majority of those
voting. No figure was set for the minimum wage. And Blair personally
assured employers he would renege on earlier promises to introduce a Bill
in his first year of office and legislate for employment protection rights
from day one!
The argument over recognition rights - Click here for more details!
In the Sun he fulminated:"We will not be held
to ransom by the unions. We will stand up to strikes. We will not cave
into unrealistic pay demands." This was followed by his now infamous
assurance that Britain would continue to have the worst labour laws in the
western world.
Once in Downing Street Blair's back-pedalling
continued. There has been a dripfeed of small changes mixed with promises.
The introduction of a Bill in New Labour's first Parliament was replaced
by the promise of a White Paper 'in early 1998' and then 'in the first
half 1998.
Blair's strategy of rigorously limiting the scope of
the debate about change and cutting down the area of what union leaders
conceive as politically possible has been dramatically successful.
After 12 months of New Labour we have seen adhesion
to the Social Chapter - but the Prime Minister encouraging the CBI to
refuse to support EU directives on workers consultation. There has been
restoration of limited rights for GCHQ workers but refusal to lift the ban
on union membership for union officers.
A minimum wage bill has been introduced but the
government instructing the Low Pay Commission to consider exemption of
young people and supporting a figure under <156>4 (see Box) Then
there is the `promise' of a White Paper on recognition and employment
protection rights due anytime now.
Fight for a decent
minimum wage! Click here for more details!
In recent months the government's approach has
ensured that attention has focused almost completely on recognition - a
key, but minimal demand. John Smith's famous promise of an extended
programme of employment rights from 'day one' has fallen by the wayside.
Leaks suggest that all the White Paper will propose is cutting the
qualification period for rights such as unfair dismissal from two years to
twelve months. Workers will be worse off in 1999 than they were in 1979
when the qualification was only 6 months.
The handling of recognition affirms New Labour's
organic support for global capital, whatever was agreed between Blair and
Rupert Murdoch, and the hardening of capital against state regulation,
however limited. Whilst the Financial Times calls for the CBI to
calm down - there are recognition laws in numerous havens of
neo-liberalism such as the USA - the CBI includes on its committee
reviewing the issue anti-union warriors such as News International,
Associated British Ports, BT and the Midland Bank. In the face of employer
intransigence the CBI's formal position remains one of opposition to any
legislation on recognition - Blair at the 1997 TUC urged union leaders to
negotiate a framework for legislation with the CBI. This has now failed
(see Box) and the final decision on the form the legislation takes lies
with Blair.
Amongst all the fury over recognition the massive
edifice of anti-union legislation, unremarked by the TUC, continues to
impede union resurgence. We still have the restrictions on political
action and unofficial strikes, we still have the bans on solidarity
strikes. The 1997 Congress passed a resolution calling for a campaign to
remove the law on solidarity action. Not a peep out of Monksy about this.
Bill Morris has devoted his time to telling us how
the current laws on strikes impede his freedom of action. Not a word about
getting rid of them. The misnamed Tory Commission for the Right of Trade
Union Members continues to disfigure the industrial landscape undisturbed
by the union leaders.
A strong law on recognition is important. If the CBI
persuade Blair to support their position it will be a blow for trade
unionists. But the fact remains inescapable: a myopic focus on recognition
functions to leave discussion of the rest of the Tory laws and their
repeal and replacement in limbo. It reinforces the position of Blair: they
are sacred and untouchable.
The TUC's convening of a special conference of union
executives on May 6 to discus the White Paper is welcome. So too is
Edmond's call for demonstration if Blair does not come through. And
Morris's call for a special TUC. The TUC's lobbying has been useful in
ensuring the issue of recognition is taken up in the ranks of New Labour.
But, as with Edmonds trailing in the wake of the Countryside demonstration
and Morris's assertion that if there is not a strong law on recognition
stewards will call strikes ( and Bill will support them?) - there is a lot
of rhetoric.
Fundamentally, we have to separate ourselves from
the content of the union leaders pitch:"we want recognition to
improve competitivity and profitability".
We have to take up and argue the issue of
recognition as a means of disrupting not extending partnership with the
bosses. We have to support and extend the TUC campaign and build a lobby
of the May 6 conference on this clear basis. We want a good law, a strong
law, pro-union law. Statutory rights are fundamental human rights.
But they are the beginning not the end of it. We
must use the legislation on recognition and the minimum wage to launch a
crusade to build union membership and combat low pay and insecurity.
Recognition and the minimum wage are fundamental
rights recognised across the world. We need a right to organise. But we
need the right to strike and take solidarity action every bit as much. We
need a new charter of workers' rights to replace the Tory laws and create
a new vibrant democratic unionism for the 21st century.
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