Growing class struggles will increase tensions

Trade unions in Labour’s third term:

Growing class struggles will increase tensions

DURING THE recent general election, the leaders of some of Britain’s
biggest trade unions desperately tried to mobilise their members to back
Labour. But as Derek Simpson, leader of Britain’s biggest union Amicus,
told his conference after the election, it was increasingly difficult to
get them "to keep faith with the Labour government." Many Amicus
members, he added, voted Labour against their better judgement.

Ken Smith

The union leaders had little positive on offer to convince their
members to vote Labour. Instead they tried to frighten their members
with the prospect of ‘Hatchet Howard’ as the sole reason to vote Labour.

Simpson also argued at the Amicus conference that it was "a mighty
relief having a Labour government" and that union members could now see
the delivery of Warwick "because Warwick delivered a Labour government".
This referred to last year’s agreement on 57 issues between the
government and the unions, made at Warwick university.

However, the union leaders have had no post-election euphoria about
Labour’s "historic third term". Instead, they raised concerns about New
Labour needing to listen to its supporters rather than saying it will
pursue an "unremittingly New Labour agenda".

But, the union leaders are like a gullible friend who gives a thief
one last chance without feeling the hand in their inside pocket.

Naively, the union leaders believe that – with Blair’s reduced
majority and their ‘negotiating’ skills – they can force a third-term
Labour government to drop its neo-liberal privatisation mania. Instead
they hope they’ll adopt a more traditional social democratic programme.

Their additional hope that Brown will soon replace Blair reinforces a
state of denial about the major struggles likely between the Labour
government and the unions in the years ahead.

Intensified exploitation

GORDON BROWN’S recent speech to the CBI showed what direction this
third-term Labour government is heading, whoever’s at the helm. Every
significant post-election statement from Labour ministers shows they
intend to continue with a neo-liberal programme of privatisation and
attacks on working-class living standards.

They aim for further privatisation of the NHS and education;
privatisation of the post office and they are battling to keep the
‘opt-out’ that makes many workers work over 48 hours a week.

Last year the government spent £1.4 billion on consultants for
‘advice’ on these projects – 42% more than the year before.

On pensions, the unions forced a temporary retreat on the government
with the threat of co-ordinated strike action this March. But the new
minister responsible, David Blunkett, says nothing is ruled out after
the Turner Commission reports this autumn.

Brown’s speech to the CBI, echoing one at the Amicus union conference
days earlier, was the clearest sign yet that the government intends to
let labour flexibility and deregulation rip. The consequence of this
agenda is that big business will massively increase working people’s
exploitation and aim to massively boost their already bloated profits.

Big business and the government are not just laying down a gauntlet
for the unions to pick up, they have laid down the whole suit of armour
and slapped them in the face at the same time.

Anger at fat cat bosses

THE UNION leaders face a huge challenge under a third-term Labour
government. Any notion that they can rely on Labour’s reduced majority
to force government ministers to honour the Warwick agreements, without
mobilising the latent strength of the organised working class, is the
most negligent short-sightedness.

The potential for massive, explosive struggles between capital and
labour, with the government taking the bosses’ side, is there in the
immediate years ahead. Although the Labour government took fright at the
prospect of co-ordinated action over pensions, they have, as the
socialist warned at the time, retreated, taken stock of the situation
and prepared for a new offensive against the working class.

By contrast, the trade union leaders, with some notable exceptions,
have learned nothing and naively believe they can change the direction
of government policy through ‘influence’.

Both industrially and politically, the union leaders are leaving
themselves in a very vulnerable position. Most union leaders lack
confidence that they can win any struggle with the bosses or the
government. Equally importantly, as the Rover debacle showed, their lack
of an industrial strategy is combined with having no ideological
alternative to free market capitalism’s destruction.

The exceptions have been unions like the PCS civil servants union and
RMT railworkers union – both led by militant left-wing leaders – who
have conducted successful strikes and consequently increased their
membership by tens of thousands.

The unions involved in the BBC strikes also saw a big upsurge in new
members after they took the first steps to defending their members’ jobs
and conditions.

In the workplace, both in the private and public sector, there is
growing anger at everything from fat-cat pay to pensions through changes
in working practises, lengthening working hours and worsening working
conditions.

One amazing example of Britain’s growing wealth gap is that nurses,
teachers and other key workers cannot afford housing in 93% of towns,
that’s up from 5% in 2001. In 1999, the average property price was three
times a nurse’s average annual salary. Last year it was 4.9 times the
annual pay.

Union leaders are aware of this incredible anger and feel under
pressure from the shopfloor to do something about these attacks. But,
most union leaders are like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. So
far there appears little, if any movement, to build and prepare their
membership for action.

Some significant strikes are taking place. HSBC workers’ strike for
better pay highlighted the increasing pay gulf between management and
workers and the super-profits – £9.6 billion in HSBC’s case – that some
private-sector corporations are raking in.

Tesco’s decision to offer its workers a bonus of over £4,000 comes
complete with many strings attached. Nevertheless it shows that Tesco
bosses feel they have to offer their workers something from their
company’s super-profits to hold off a revolt from below.

Unfortunately, the Tesco workers’ union, Usdaw, is a very right-wing
union advocating partnership with the bosses and meekly accepts their
handouts. A union leadership worth its salt would be demanding that –
rather than bonuses with strings – Tesco workers should have an annual
pay increase of at least £4,000 a year consolidated into their pay
packets, along with the introduction of at least a 35-hour working week
for Tesco staff.

Mergers alone not the answer

TRADE UNION leaders have woken up to the weakness of union
organisation in the private sector after three decades of Thatcherite
attacks under both Tory and Labour governments. But, at this stage,
their answer to the relative weakness is to argue for mergers into
super-unions of two million or more members and to take on teams of
union organisers – many on temporary contracts with little say in how
the union develops – to sign up more members.

In principle, socialists would not oppose such measures – although we
would argue for democratic safeguards to be maintained in any union
merger and for better contracts with more democratic involvement for new
union organisers.

However, they are not in themselves sufficient to rebuild the trade
unions in the private sector, or strengthen them in the public sector.

For the unions to take strides forward and re-establish their
authority in the eyes of working-class people they will have to do two
fundamental things simultaneously. They have to conduct struggles which
win improvements for their members in the concrete terms of pay,
conditions and reducing their members’ working hours.

To achieve and consolidate this they need to build a widespread,
cohesive, democratic and powerful shop stewards or reps movement as the
backbone of the unions which can challenge the bosses and government at
every turn.

An ideological alternative

THERE ARE other crucial issues that union leaders and activists will
have to address under this third-term Labour government. In particular,
many of the social gains – known as the social wage – won by
working-class struggle in the past, such as health, education, pensions
and the welfare state, have been or are being dismantled by New Labour.

Blair, Brown and every cabinet minister chant the mantra that we live
in a ‘new era’ where the market must provide in every sphere of life. No
matter how much they repeat this, however, most workers’ experience is
that the market doesn’t provide the quality services, free at the point
of use, they need in health, education and welfare.

Also, the services privatised under Labour and Tories such as rail
and the utilities are clearly expensive, inefficient and out of control
of either the government or users of the services.

The private sector has also shown in the cases of Rover and Marconi
that it can ruthlessly shut factories and industries at will – despite
the effects of large job losses and the loss of vitally useful skills
which could be utilised in other fields – without an alternative being
put by government or union leaders.

Ideologically, trade union leaders need to develop and argue a
programme that does not accept the market’s dictates on workers’ lives.
Instead it should argue the case for public ownership and working-class
control of industry and services.

But so far the main union leaders’ horizons are heavily blinkered
against arguing for such an alternative. TGWU union leader Tony Woodley
argued in The Guardian, two weeks after Longbridge’s closure, that a
case should have been made for partial nationalisation of Rover and
other industries. But, shamefully neither Woodley nor any other major
union leader argued for this during the election so as not to embarrass
the Labour leadership.

It was only Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist who managed to
get on national media to argue for public ownership and workers’ control
of the Longbridge plant.