Solidarity vital to defend trade union rights

Editorial from the Socialist issue 834

Solidarity vital to defend trade union rights

Thirty years after the Miners’ Strike, the government has launched the biggest single attack on a trade union since Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set her sights on the NUM. That is what the leaked HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC) document about ‘lessening the influence’ of the PCS union amounts to.

Talk of scab unions and measures like stopping check-off subscription collection, which is an attempt to bankrupt the union, are very reminiscent of the Tories’ effort to smash the miners’ union.

The reasons are the same. Like the NUM then, the PCS is seen as the most militant public sector union. Despite being less than a quarter of the size of Unison, PCS has played a leading role in fighting austerity – from the giant N30 2011 pensions strike to this year’s pay dispute.

PCS has consciously acted as a lever on bigger unions by popularising the idea of mass coordinated strike action to resist austerity. With the government announcing another £35 billion-plus worth of cuts, it is no coincidence that this attack is being lined up now.

Of course, PCS is not the only union that has seen its rights targeted. Many shop stewards and reps have seen their facility time reduced or even scrapped altogether. Scandalously, this has been in Labour councils as well as Tory and Lib Dem (see page 4).

Unite convenors, some of them Socialist Party members, have been on the receiving end of this in Labour councils from Liverpool to Greenwich despite the millions given by the union to Labour.

Union funding

Yet there has been not one threat from Unite to Labour leader Ed Miliband that this funding could be under threat if his cutting councillors don’t back off. No wonder Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Osborne and Cabinet Office minister Maude feel emboldened to move further.

On cue are the front pages of the red-baiting Tory press. The Telegraph fulminated as NUT members went on strike in Haringey to defend their rep Julie Davies, who was victimised after the removal of her facility time. All this in a Labour borough!

The danger, however, is that these attacks are seen as ‘normal’ and don’t get the necessary response from the trade union movement. Union facility time, for reps to represent their members, is a democratic right won by workers from employers. This isn’t about cost cutting, but a further attack on unions and their ability to defend members and, in a wider sense, resist austerity.

A 2007 study by the then Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR, now BIS) found that union reps saved employers up to £621 million in reducing the number of employment tribunals, days lost to workplace injuries and work-related injuries. In addition, it is estimated that reps already carry out over 100,000 hours of unpaid union work every week.

Not just PCS

The lessons must be learned from the Miners’ Strike, when Labour and right-wing trade union leaders left the NUM isolated.

PCS is correct to call out to the wider movement and connect the attack with the continuing austerity offensive. If HMRC management doesn’t repudiate the leaked document or retreat from its implications, the whole trade union movement must rally to any call PCS makes for solidarity.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady should make an immediate complaint to the government. But the ground should also be prepared for solidarity meetings, rallies and protests. Demands must be put on Labour that all Con-Dem attacks on the unions – facility-time, check-off, scab unions etc – be revoked and reversed should Labour take office.

The Socialist Party and the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) stands alongside the PCS in fighting these attacks.

In January 2012, the NSSN put its full resources behind the conference organised by PCS Left Unity to unite left trade unionists to try to retrieve the public sector pensions struggle after the post-N30 ‘deal’ by right-wing trade union leaders. It led directly to the 10 May strike that year when 400,000 workers took action.

Solidarity is now vital across the trade union and anti-cuts movement to defend union rights.