Socialist Party members in Usdaw
Retail and distribution union Usdaw’s 77th annual delegate meeting (ADM) takes place against the background of the first strike action in UK retail stores in decades.
GMB members working for Asda are striking at two stores in the South East, and a further store has voted for action. Unite has moved to ballot its workers in two Morrisons warehouses over attacks on pensions.
Over the last 18 months, a strike wave has swept many unions and workplaces, taking action over the cost of living. It was notable that there wasn’t any strike action by Usdaw members, even though our members struggle on low pay and are just as angry as other workers.
This isn’t to say that big pay rises weren’t won in some Usdaw workplaces, both with and without the threat of possible strike action. But it is clear that many retail and distribution workers have been left behind. With a bold, fighting national leadership, our members could have been out on the picket lines with hundreds of thousands of other workers and won much more.
Morrisons pensions
Like workers in Unite and GMB over previous years, Usdaw members have now taken strike action over pay this year at the GXO distribution centre in Swindon, which supplies B&Q stores. There have been preparations made for a potential strike ballot of Usdaw Morrisons workers over the pensions issue.
Strike action by Morrisons workers would potentially be on a much wider basis than anything in the retail and distribution sector in recent times, and it will be necessary to mobilise the whole of Usdaw’s membership and the wider trade union movement in support.
Should both Usdaw and Unite in Morrisons be successful in balloting for strike action, then urgent meetings should take place between lay representatives of both unions to discuss coordinating action and any other campaigning on this issue.
Also looming over this year’s conference is the fact that there will be a general election before the next conference. This is reflected in the conference agenda, with a number of propositions from branches placing demands on the likely incoming Labour government.
These demands include a number of issues on which Keir Starmer has retreated – including investment in green technology and free school meals for primary school children.
Usdaw members may be hopeful that some of the demands the union have raised will be a carried out by a Starmer-led government – including repeal of the Tories’ minimum service levels legislation, and measures to tackle attacks and abuse of retail workers.
But in recent years, Usdaw ADMs have passed a series of policies which Keir Starmer’s Labour have dropped. These include renationalising energy, water, railways and Royal Mail, scrapping university tuition fees and more. Some members may be hoping against hope that, once elected, a Labour government might deliver, but given Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ constant talk of “maintaining fiscal discipline” members would be right to be sceptical.
This is reflected in the fact that strike action is taking place in the retail sector. Workers rightly lack confidence that a Labour government will intervene to bring the ruthless profiteering of the bosses, especially in private equity-owned Asda and Morrisons, to heel. Instead, they are correctly seeking to use their own industrial might to challenge them. We have to put pressure on Usdaw leaders to build that fightback, otherwise the Starmer-supporting leadership of our union will try to hold members back so as to not ‘rock the boat’ for a Labour government.
A working-class alternative
But imagine what would be possible if we had political representatives who were prepared to stand up to the Asda and Morrisons bosses, and others? If we had candidates that were prepared to campaign to bring dominant retail companies into public ownership to save jobs, rather than allowing private equity to smash and grab profits and leave workers on the scrapheap?
We have to be prepared to fight no matter who is in government, and that fight would be greatly strengthened if our union backed general election candidates that back our members, instead of sacrificing our members’ interests in craven support of the pro-business Labour leadership. Usdaw members could stand as candidates themselves, alongside other trade unionists and socialists, to help in that fight.
