When will the phoney war end?
Speaking at this year’s TUC Congress in September, Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke declared in ringing tones: ‘There is no room for bystanders in the coming battle. It is not about a winter of discontent. It is about a winter, spring, summer and autumn of struggle.’ Back in March this year, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber spoke of an end to the ‘phoney war’. Union leaders promised a summer of discontent. Summer came and went: all we had was a single day’s strike on 30 June by a number of unions against the attack on public sector pensions. Next we were told of an autumn of discontent. Apart from the TUC Congress nothing has happened. Now apparently the gloves are off: a one-day strike on 30 November to inaugurate a winter of discontent, ten unions balloting for strike action, rolling three-day strikes, campaigns of civil disobedience. Left trade union leader Mark Serwotka says ‘We will be striking to defend our pensions, jobs, welfare system, NHS and communities.
Let’s fight like never before.’
Yes, we have to fight like never before. But the campaign promised so far by the trade union leaders is not about jobs, the welfare system, the NHS or indeed our communities. It is only about public sector pensions. In the year from June 2010, 240,000 public sector jobs disappeared. Desperately-needed council services were axed. There was scarcely a murmur from the trade unions.
The strike figures prove this: excluding the 30 June, a total of 137,000 days were lost through industrial action in the 12 months to July 2011. Only where councils have torn up contracts, sacked their workforces and re-employed them on worse conditions has there been any trade union response – Southampton, Birmingham and Shropshire being the main examples; Doncaster, which has threatened 1,000 jobs losses, is another.
However, even in these cases the action has been limited: in Birmingham, there have been just two one-day strikes, the second on 21 September, although workers are facing pay cuts of up to 25%. One-day strikes, work-to-rules, ‘smart strikes’ bringing out small, selected groups of workers are not going to force councils to back down: they are gestures of resistance.
Trade union leaders want to focus on the struggle against public sector pension cuts for two reasons: first, the struggle is time-limited – the changes will be introduced by 31 March 2012. Second, it will involve only trade unionists – it will not include workers in the private sector or those outside trade unions altogether. It will therefore be easier to control.
An effective fight against council service cuts would require much broader forces. It would involve a challenge against Labour as much as Tory or LibDem councils – and trade union leaders will want to avoid this. It will also be open-ended: we are moving into a period when councils will be preparing for a second year of cuts. Although the money involved will be less than last year, the impact this round will be far more severe. Working class people will take a hammering. A sectional struggle over pensions, much as socialists should support it, is not a launching pad for a class-wide struggle against council service cuts.
We will see a resurrection of arguments that were rehearsed earlier this year by the ‘left’ chair of the PCS Derek Thompson in Scotland, when he opposed inviting representatives of anti-cuts campaigns onto a PCS platform on 30 June: ‘The focus of our dispute cannot be diluted’ he said.
However, trade union leaders are sensing that they may not get away with this strategy, which is in part why they are now talking a tougher game. The TUC Congress heard speeches about the need to break the anti-trade union laws – GMB general secretary Paul Kenny, for instance, saying that ‘If going to prison is the price to pay for standing up to bad laws, then so be it.’ We heard the same sort of fighting talk when these laws were first introduced nearly 30 years ago. Defiance turned out to be very rare, the most significant example being the NUM during the 1984/85 miners’ strike. Conditions where trade union leaders will be forced to confront these laws – mass independent working class action – do not exist yet, and so, for the present, this will remain just hot air.
The main force in the TUC, Unite’s general secretary Len McCluskey, was more careful than Kenny. He did not propose challenging anti-trade union laws directly, but said that ‘if tax avoidance is lawful and unpunished, let’s plan for anti-union law avoidance in the same spirit’. He added that if further anti-trade union legislation were introduced ‘we will bring Wisconsin [in the US, where there was a mass campaign to defend trade union rights earlier this year] to Westminster.’
He is aware that working class forces outside the trade unions will soon have no choice but to act independently as they face the second round of council cuts, and he talks of ‘reconnecting’ with them. This is behind his proposal for community membership of Unite for those out of work and for students: he does not want trade unions to be outflanked. Commenting on the August riots, he said ‘the really frightening thing is that the real cuts in the community haven’t hit that deep yet, and so we may well be looking at worse violence next summer, when the cuts start to dig deep’ (New Statesman, 12 September 2011). He knows the unions will have to respond to this, and with his talk of campaigns of civil disobedience and his involvement in the Coalition of Resistance, he is positioning Unite to control any movement that emerges.
The next few weeks will see trade union ballots organised, results announced, and many resonant declarations on the need for action. However, while trade unions focus on defending public sector pensions, there are many working class people who will be aware of what the next round of council cuts hold in store for them. These are forces that socialists must organise since they will be the core of working class resistance to the ruling class onslaught.
Robert Clough
Electricians resist cuts to pay and conditions:
Unite officials delay and sabotage
At the end of July the ‘Big Eight’ electrical employers wrote to electricians announcing plans to withdraw from the National Working Agreements in order to drive down conditions and pay. The worst-hit face a 35% pay cut, while the chief executive of Balfour Beatty gave himself an 8% pay rise last year. Balfour Beatty has already issued notices to 890 staff threatening redundancy if they do not sign a new contract with reduced pay and conditions by 7 December.
The proposals will effectively de-skill electricians who have worked to gain recognised skills and corresponding pay grades. Redundancy provision, the guaranteed working week, mileage allowances, double time and apprenticeships will all be negotiated locally within each site rather than be subject to national agreement. The employers’ proposals also include a no-strike clause.
Electricians, mostly agency workers, have responded with a wave of protests across Britain organised around the Site Worker magazine and social networking sites. FRFI supporters took part in Newcastle and London demonstrations. Most of these actions were unofficial, and quite a number of those taking part were not members of a union. In London, Unite withheld official support until the fifth demonstration, while in Newcastle, regional Unite officials failed to back the first protest on 7 September. Following an open meeting of over 50 electricians hosted by Unite Newcastle Central branch on 16 September, Unite’s National Officer for Construction, Bernard McAuley, circulated an email calling the Branch a ‘cancerous group’. A protest organised by the branch in North Tyneside on 21 September was attended by 150 people. Meanwhile, the only person at an ‘official’ Unite protest organised for the same time eight miles away was Regional Secretary Billy Green.
Because employers are using low-paid migrant labour to undermine wages, the electricians can only win by building links with migrant workers wherever possible and insist that their wages are brought up to the same level as British workers, as workers did in 2009 at Lindsey Oil Refinery. At Lindsey, a battle was needed against chauvinist elements who called for ‘British jobs for British workers’. This will be necessary again. At the Newcastle meeting on 16 September two supporters of the English Defence League got short shrift when they tried to blame Portuguese workers for undercutting wages.
The only adequate response to attacks on this scale is a sustained campaign of civil disobedience – all-out opposition to the anti-trade union laws. Where the Unite leadership fails to sabotage grassroots action, it will attempt to take the lead in order to keep the electricians’ actions within ‘respectable’ limits. The electricians are quite right to demand that Unite backs their actions. But the decisive question is whether rank and file workers are prepared to fight to win with or without the union bureaucrats.
Thomas Vincent and Sam McGill
FRFI 223 October/November 2011
