Low pay

Continued…

Wages are another issue on which explosive struggles are likely in the near future: driven by both the huge gap between rich and poor, and the holding down of wages, while costs, particularly fuel, transport and housing, rocket. Low pay affects broad sections of workers, but particularly the young, immigrant workers and women. It is perhaps on this issue, which most deeply affects the day-to-day lives of workers, on which the trade union leaders are most likely to be forced to act. In Germany, for example, where profits are soaring while workers’ wages have fallen in absolute terms over the last two years, the trade unions have had to respond to enormous pressure from below and demand significant wage increases in the current round of negotiations. Even the right-wing coalition government has been forced to make statements about how workers’ wages need to start to reflect the growth in the economy.

A key task of the trade union movement in the coming period will be to begin to reach and organise those sections of workers who are currently unorganised – but are potentially the most likely to lead major struggles in the coming years – the young, migrant workers and so on. However, if this is done simply as an exercise in increasing trade union membership, not linked to struggle, it will only result in a revolving door as members leave as fast as they are recruited. Nonetheless, where the unions are prepared to fight for their members there is no question that it is possible to dramatically increase membership in non-organised sectors. For example, the PCS was able to win an overwhelming ballot for union recognition among teenage agency workers in Carlisle. 65% of the 500 members voted and every single one voted in favour of union recognition! The Justice for Cleaners campaign and the recent struggle of the JJB Sports warehouse workers, which resulted in a victory followed by a second struggle against the victimisation of the steward, give an indication of the kind of determined, and very bitter, strikes that will take place once these previously unorganised sections of workers begin to take action. Another feature of the JJB strike was the openness of the young workers involved to socialist ideas. At the first mass meeting Socialist Party members in Manchester attended and sold out of The Socialist, selling 30 copies within twenty minutes.

While there will be many differences, the struggles of the newly-organised we will see in the coming period will have some comparisons with ‘New Unionism’ – the explosive mass struggles at the end of the 19th century which led to the formation of the general unions. The brutality of modern capitalism has far more in common with this period than with the post-war upswing which, far from being the norm for capitalism, was an exceptional period. One of the consequences of the brutality and casualisation that exists in the workplace today is that levels of trade union density will not return to the high levels that were won in the post-war upswing. Instead, we will be more likely to see sporadic but intense battles in the workplaces with mass movements springing up as if from nowhere.

Engels described how consciousness developed out of the struggles of new unionism as workers learnt on the basis of their own experience of struggle: “The new unions [in contradistinction to the old craft unions] were founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either consciously or by feeling; the masses whose adhesion gave them strength, were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working class aristocracy; but they had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the bitter situated ‘old’ unionists…

“Undoubtedly, the East Enders have committed colossal blunders; so have their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh them. A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker than by undergoing the consequence of its own mistakes.”

Fundamentally, it was out of the New Unionism upsurge that the question of political representation of the working class came to the fore at the start of the 20th century. Events in the 21st century will not be an exact repeat. However, we will see similar explosive struggles of the most unskilled and downtrodden sections of the working class who, once they enter battle, will be open to socialist ideas. The acceptance of the market which exists at the top of most trade unions will be utterly repugnant to the new generation. By contrast, the fact that it is socialists in general, and members of our party in particular, who are the most determined fighters for the working class, will not be lost on the new layers. The important national profile we have built up in a number of trade unions and, even more importantly, the base we have built on the ground, puts us in an extremely advantageous position in coming struggles.

Consciousness is not, of course, identical to the period of New Unionism. The experiences of the 20th century have not been wiped from the collective memory of the working class, and consciousness is higher than was the case 100 years ago. On the other hand, socialism was then a ‘new idea’. Today it has been sullied by the experience of Stalinism and the wave of capitalist triumphalism that followed it. In consequence there still a certain scepticism towards socialism even among some who are attracted to it – however, this will be overcome on the basis of events.

Unlike in the period of New Unionism, the existence of general unions, no matter how bureaucratised, will mean that in most cases these workers will initially come into the existing trade unions and attempt to transform them. It is true that one of the results of the 1990s has been that the right-wing trade union bureaucracies have been able to distance themselves from their membership to a greater degree than in the past. However, their reliance on members’ subs means that, ultimately, the membership can exert pressure on them. However, the relative emptiness of the trade unions at this stage means that trade union leaders are able to avoid being held to account to a large degree. One of the differences between even the best of the union leaders now and the likes of Jack Jones in the 1970s, is the lack of an organised rank and file behind them. However, the predecessor to the PCS, the CPSA, which was previously one of the most right-wing led trade unions in Europe, is an example of how even the most right-wing trade unions can be transformed even in a less favourable political period. It was our role, and the role of the United Left, in organising and channelling members’ anger that made this possible.

In general, we are at an early stage of a struggle to transform the trade unions. As yet the working class in Britain has not yet decisively put its mark on events. The level of struggle is still quite low, and the structures of the trade unions are therefore still relatively empty. It is those trade unions with fighting leaderships that have had the most success in rebuilding the shopfloor structures of the trade unions – the PCS, for example, has increased its number of workplace reps by more than 3,000. However, even in unions like the PCS, the rebuilding of the structures is at an early stage and will accelerate dramatically on the basis of struggle.

We welcome the RMT’s initiative to call a national shop stewards conference in the first half of this year and believe the conference, combined with the activity building up to it, could play a very important role in raising the consciousness of, and bringing together, groups of new activists from different workplaces – as part of a process of rebuilding the shop stewards movement. Nonetheless at this stage there are objective limitations to the possibilities of building a mass national shop stewards movement. It will take experience of struggle, and the rebuilding of the structures on a sectional basis before it is possible for such a movement to fill out. The struggle for political representation will not, as unfortunately Bob Crow seems to envisage, be something left until after a shop stewards movement develops, but will be part of the same process. There is a danger that this incorrect approach can reflect an element of a syndicalist tendency amongst a section of trade unionists. A delay in the development of a new workers’ party could lead to a growth in this tendency. However, in general, as the JJB Sports workers demonstrate, once new layers enter struggle, the need for a political alternative will very quickly come to the fore in their minds. In addition, there is no doubt that the existence of a workers’ party would enormously increase the confidence of workers to fight in the workplaces.

Continued…