S the TUC heads for A what seemed certain to be another soporific and largely irrelevant conference, two issues seem likely to break the consensus of bureaucrats seeking to coexist with the New Labour government. The first is a straightforward trade union issue: the aggressive drive by the Engineers and Electricians union AEEU to squeeze out rival unions and establish reactionary single-union deals in industries outside their usual influence.
The most notorious case in point so far is at the Western Mail newspaper in south Wales, where the AEEU, representing a tiny handful of members, are seeking a single-union deal that would exclude any representation for over 100 NUJ journalists and large numbers of print workers.
This has been widely recognised as a grotesque attempt to re-run the union-busting collaboration between what was then the electricians' 117101 EEPTU and Rupert Murdoch's News International, which led to the prolonged Wapping dispute.
For its scandalous role the EETPU was expelled from the TUC, and the electricians only managed to get back in through reincarnation in their merger with the AEU, which has now taken its place as the most craven advocate of "partnership" with the bosses and right wing policies in the trade union movement.
With engineering and manufacturing industries in continued decline, AEEU efforts to muscle in on new sectors at the expense of other TUC unions have not stopped at the print industry, but apparently also include recruitment of shop workers, treading on the toes of the impeccably new realist USDAW.
Despite the apparent willingness of the main print .... Throwing his weight behind euro and AEEU: GMB boss Edmonds GPMU to disregard the AEEU's scandalous activities, the NUJ leadership has taken a hard line, and it seems that sufficient other unions, including the TGWU, of early British entry to European Monetary Union, despite the fact that two of the TUC's largest affiliates, and the TGWU, along with several smaller unions hold the opposite view, and opinion polls show a clear majority of union members are against. Many unions have yet to discuss or vote on the issue.
While Monks sees W the acceptance of increased control over the British and European economy by a cabal of unelected bankers on the board of the European Central Bank (ECB) as a logical extension of his commitment to "partnership" with the CBI and British bankers, union members are more wary about the potential cost of EMU in jobs and conditions.
Levels of unemployment are much higher in Germany and other Euroland countries than in Britain, not least as a result of austerity measures designed to shoehorn eleven countries into compliance with the rigid Maastricht convergence criteria for EMU. Meanwhile the efforts of the ECB to keep the value of the fledgling currency above that of the dollar add another obstacle to any serious effort to boost economic activity.
Privatisation and PFI are also endemic in Euroland, with the hollv Cooper