Growing unemployment along with privatisation and the decline of public services will increasingly dominate the headlines and grind on the nerves of the working class.
136,000 jobs have been lost in manufacturing alone in the three months up till the middle of January. New Labour try to cover this up by pointing to the number of people at work “growing to” 28.2 million.
Picture: Bill Mullins, Socialist Party
Executive Committee, Industrial Organiser.
(Picture: Paul Mattsson)
But this disguises the fact that there are now only 3.7 million workers, (13.2%) in the manufacturing sector, the lowest since the 19th century.
The world recession is bound to add tens of thousands more workers to the total unemployed. New Labour pretend that this will not affect the outlook for the economy. The decline in manufacturing, they claim, will be painlessly replaced by the advent of new high-tech industries and services but this is completely utopian.
The chickens have really come home to roost with the collapse of Marconi, which in the last few weeks has declared even more redundancies and closures on top of the ones it made last year. This was once one of the mightiest companies in Britain trading under the name of GEC. It had a cash mountain in the 1980s, which was the envy of other companies. Now the whole company is on the point of collapse with the bursting of the dotcom bubble.
For British workers, the decline in manufacturing has meant the replacement of skilled and semi-skilled jobs, which had some trade union protection, for low-paid unorganised jobs in the service industries.
The top 20 companies lining up to take over the contracts of the public sector in health, education and local government employ 600,000, mainly low-paid, part-time and temporary contract workers. They are being used by the bosses as a battering ram to drive down the conditions of the working class as a whole as well as those in the public sector.
Despite the hopes of the TUC that new laws on trade union recognition would help stop the decline in trade union membership there has been little sign of this. Whilst there has been some growth in the RMT, the CWU, the PCS and the NUT, the overall figures for trade union membership are static.
The TUC claims in recent press reports that the unions have signed 440 recognition agreements in the past period, but the key question remains how will the trade unions retain those new members if they are not delivering an improved situation for them in work. It takes more than even the most pro-trade union laws to win workers to the unions. It will require a combination of leadership and a willingness to use the collective strength of the unions to gain real concessions for TU members from the bosses.
There are for example half a million workers in call centres, “the modern version of dark satanic mills”.
To win and keep these workers in the unions would require a mass campaign of strikes, demos and other activities – leading to a real improvement in their working conditions. This is far beyond the interests of most of the present generation of trade union leaders, who are more concerned to preserve the present level of union membership and their cosseted position.
It will be one of the responsibilities of our party in the future to participate in organising these workers into the unions and into mass struggle for decent wages and working conditions.
The break up of national pay agreements and the strikes on the railways.
The rail strikes and the shortage of drivers on most of the rail operating companies was caused by the greediness of the owners in the privatisation process. They thought they could run the companies in a “lean and mean way” by cutting back on the number of drivers.
This resulted in a shortage of 3,000 drivers. The train drivers correctly exploited this weakness of the bosses, a shortage of labour, to extract significant concessions particularly in wage increases. The companies then complained about being held to ransom by those drivers who held out for higher pay. The result was an increase in differentials between the drivers and the rest of the rail staff.
Unfortunately, other unions, largely because of the complacency and ineptitude of right-wing union leaders, in a similar situation as the drivers did not exploit their strength. For instance, there has been for some time a considerable shortage of teachers. But the NUT leadership, in particular, as well as the NAS/UWT have not sought to use this situation to press for both significant increases in wages and, at the same time, an improvement of the deteriorating working conditions of teachers. The same situation holds for local government workers, particularly in London, in which there are significant shortages at the present time. The press said that the break-up of British Rail had given drivers’ union ASLEF an “unfair advantage” because it enabled the union to play off one train company against another, who were busily poaching drivers from each other.
The proponents of privatisation and their supporters in the press now complain that the old right-wing ASLEF leadership knew what was going to happen when rail privatisation was carried through. The implication is that they were not really against privatisation. It is problematical as to whether this was true or not, but the net result of privatisation, on the railways at least, has been, temporarily, to strengthen the position of some rail workers particularly the drivers. Others, including station staff and ancilliary staff, have suffered a deterioration in pay and conditions. We are of course wholly opposed to privatisation but what has happened with the ASLEF drivers is a point that Marxists have made many times, that the class struggle, like water, will always find its own level. Privatisation on the national railways has failed in one of its key objectives, to weaken union organisation and reduce union densities. Now the collapse of Railtrack has provided a major challenge to the whole ideology of privatisation. Unfortunately, the idea that the union leaders were not really opposed to privatisation has been, if anything, underlined by the recent stance of Mick Rix, elected as a left general secretary of ASLEF.
According to a report in The Observer, he was prepared to trade off the union’s demand for the renationalisation of the railways in exchange for a commitment from the government to return to a national pay structure. Such an approach would be extremely short-sighted and would be, in effect, a betrayal of the long-standing commitment of railway workers to the idea that only state ownership would guarantee a future for the railways.
The same commentators had approvingly reported at the time of privatisation in 1995 that one of its aims was to break up national pay bargaining because it curtails the rail unions ability to call national strikes.
The break up of the national pay agreements forced the RMT in particular to conduct a strategy of co-ordinating their pay claims company by company within the limits imposed by the anti-union laws.
To some extent the rail unions have clawed back some of the things they lost with the end of national pay negotiations.
The break up of national bargaining was a key element in the weakening of the trades unions over the last period but not the only one by a long way.
Inherent in national pay bargaining is the idea of national action. The mobilisation of thousands of workers behind a common claim played a large role in raising trade union consciousness.
It was national pay strikes in the mining industry in the 1970s that welded together the NUM into the fighting force it was to become. But it was also the defeat of the miners in 1984/85 that has played a role in the lowering of confidence amongst the working class as a whole.
The rise in strikes has been much commented on in the last period, with claims that they foreshadow “a return to the bad old days of the 1970s”. This is unfortunately not yet the case.
It is true that strikes have broken out on South West Rail, Arriva Trains, together with the work-to-rule of Scot-Rail workers. In addition to this, a bitter strike in the benefit and job centre offices, over the issue of safety, is an indication of a change in mood.
On the other hand, as a critic of current union action, Polly Toynbee, in an article in The Guardian, commented, that the number of days lost in strikes last year amounted to no more than “15 minutes per worker per year compared to one day per worker per year in 1979”. (11 January)
Why then the hue and cry over a “return of the bad old 1970s”? It is because even the most biased capitalist commentator sees in the current industrial mood the potential for a 1970s-type movement to take place at a certain stage. On the one side, they dismiss the possibilities of a return to this period, with references to the so-called ‘extremists’ (read 350,000 shop stewards), who allegedly manipulated the working class during that decade. On the other hand, they refer to union leaders today who are more ‘imaginative’ in negotiating deals and ‘promoting training’ together with other goodies. The truth is that the idea of trade unionism is enormously popular today. This is indicated by the fact that in 1979 a Gallup poll showed that 50% of people thought that “unions were bad”, while in a recent survey 75% thought that unions were good.
Yet despite this, in an astounding twist of logic, these commentators ascribe the fall in union membership partly to the outlawing of the closed shop. At the same time, they said workers who “were corralled” against their will into trade union membership then took the opportunity to leave the unions “without fear of retribution”.
The drop in union membership was due to a number of factors, not least of which was the drop in manufacturing industry, in which union density was at its highest. At the same time, the shift towards the right of an ineffective trade union leadership, which was not prepared to defy the Tories’ anti-union laws, was a factor in this process. This in turn undermined the ability of union members to defend themselves against the effects of recession and the employers’ attacks. The desire to be in a union is not based on abstract principles. It arises from a deep-seated feeling that working people need defence organisations against the bosses’ attacks. At the same time, in Britain now with the scandalously low level of wages, there is a feeling of the need to fight back to improve workers’ living standards, and the union is the instrument through which this can be accomplished.
However, to maximise the potential for union membership, the unions must show in action what they are capable of doing. There is still enormous scepticism amongst significant groups of workers as to whether they should be members of the unions. This is indicated by a recent poll that showed that while 40% of workers not in unions would like to join one if given a chance, another 50 % did not see the point of joining.
You can have the most effective recognition laws in the world but if the trade union leaders are unwilling to mobilise their members for even minor concessions on pay and hours then workers will leave the unions. This revolving door means that the unions have to recruit at least 500,000 new members every year just to stand still.
This is particularly the case in the private sector (of which only 19% are in unions) and amongst youth. It is still the case that 60% of workers in the public sector are in unions but the privatisation of many services is undermining this figure as well.
The election of new left union leaders in the PCS, FBU, CWU, NUJ and ASLEF has given new hope to TU activists and caused not a little consternation in the pages of the capitalist press.
The right-wing press see conspiracy everywhere. But the real reason for the rejection of the establishment’s candidates is precisely the same as the rejection of the sort of “do-nothing” trade unionism that Polly Toynbee promotes.
It remains to be seen what the new left leaders actually do. But it is the case that their election has boosted the confidence of the membership, which in turn guarantees to keep these same leaders under pressure to deliver the goods.
One of the roles of our party in the unions is to promote the maximum unity of the left against the right so as to be more able to defeat the bosses’ attacks.
But equally we also have to ensure that where possible we assist those workers who are prepared to act from below both at a local and national level. We cannot let the privileged trade union officialdom hold back initiatives when it is clear that the mood amongst the members is to take action.
Broad left work
Our work in the broad lefts has always been a critical feature of our trade union work. As in all fields, we are in favour of the united-front tactic.
This is particularly important in the trade unions, the basic organisation of the working class in the workplaces, at the point of production, etc. However, given the weakness of the left within the unions at the present time, the present broad lefts are largely shadow organisations, involving a minority of left activists and with a higher than usual participation of left ‘revolutionary’ groups. This means that the broad lefts, at this stage, really contain an element of united-front work. However, once the unions fill out as they will do, similar to the situation in the unions in the past, the broad lefts will assume more and more importance and become focal points for rank-and-file resistance, both to the employers and the ineffectiveness of right-wing trade union leaders. It is, therefore, crucial that we participate in, sometimes initiating, even weak broad lefts within the unions at this stage.
Free the funds campaign
Though this campaign was launched some time ago, the congress agrees that there has never been a better time to approach the trade union branches and shop stewards committees with our explanation of the need to free up the political funds of the trade unions.
Every party branch should take the letters and petitions of the “Free the Funds” campaign into local workplaces and trade union branches. We should explain to those we meet that it was our comrades in union conferences who were more successful that anyone else in winning the delegates over.
This was done in the teeth of massive opposition from the trade union leaders and despite the crude tactics of the various sectarian groups. Only our comrades have proved in practice how to win over the rank and file to the idea of breaking the historic link between the trade unions and the Labour Party.
