A letter from some comrades

The timely open letter from the Communist Party of Britain concerning the crisis of political representation of our movement (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114897) echoes views quite widely expressed on the Labour Left - indeed it expresses the reasons why we launched the Labour Representation Committee (http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/about).

It is now vital that the trade unions try to shift the Labour leadership into a position of opposition to the deficit reduction plans of the Coalition Government, which are plans to dismantle the Welfare State and achieve a once in a generation shift in the balance of wealth and power (even further) away from working people.

The absence of opposition from "Her Majesty's Opposition" reduces the political space within which we can mobilise to defend the NHS, state education or council housing. The stifling neoliberal consensus ensures that voices raised in defence of the interests of the majority of the population are marginalised.

For trade unionists trying to fight pay freezes, job losses, pension cuts and attacks on terms and conditions, the absence of a clear alternative in public debate makes it harder to mobilise our members and therefore harder to defend our interests.

The Communist Party are therefore right to propose that the affiliated trade unions should act together to shift the Labour Party leftwards.

However, comrades, you need to consider therefore how we achieve change within our trade unions also. The record of recent years does not suggest that such effective action will easily be achieved.

When (New) Labour was in Government we needed - and tried - to mobilise labour movement opposition to its policies of privatisation and war. The affiliated trade unions - and indeed the TUC - generally adopted sound policies and, on occasion fought and won policy positions on the floor of Labour Party Conference. Modest constitutional gains were achieved - increasing the number of contemporary resolutions for example.

However, when real power has been at stake, those who direct the activities of the affiliated trade unions within the Labour Party have failed to assert the interests of our members. Crucially, the trade union leaders made the foolish error of acquiescing in the coronation of Gordon Brown as Leader, with predictably catastrophic results.

Brown's office leant heavily on MPs to nominate him, ensuring that socialist challenger, John McDonnell, was unable to secure sufficient nominations to force a ballot. The only people within the Party who could possibly have applied sufficient countervailing pressure to have ensured a contest were the General Secretaries of the affiliated unions, acting in concert.

Not only did the trade unions fail collectively to support McDonnell, they split five ways in the sideshow election for Deputy Leader, with the consequence that the candidate elected was the only one who secured no union nominations whatsoever.

When, after the General Election, another leadership election came along, the unions did manage to coalesce around a candidate they thought better than the perceived front runner - but the political composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party was such that there was no serious socialist challenger, the candidate of the left having made it on to the ballot paper only with borrowed support.

The trade unions are of course culpable for the political composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party - we could have run a series of campaigns to select socialist trade unionists across a number of constituencies but no such effort was made (indeed the trade unionist's route to Parliament is more commonly a career move and reward for loyalty in a union context than any part of a political struggle to reshape the Party in the interests of the movement).

We are now reaping the bitter fruits of the lamentable inadequacy of the intervention in the Labour Party by the trade unions over the past twenty years. The approach of "quietly influencing" the Labour leadership, of which Dave Prentis gave a spirited and successful defence to UNISON Conference in 2004 when defeating a call from the Lambeth Branch for the resignation of Tony Blair, has until now precluded the involvement of the trade unions in mobilising rank and file opposition to the Party leadership.

Through TULO and at Warwick, the union leaders got the best policies they could when we were in Government- but on the basis that they did not mount an organised challenge to the leadership.

An earlier Miliband would have recognised this feature of Labourism - the division of labour between the industrial and political wings of the movement - and its chilling effect on the prospects of the Party, in Government or Opposition, ever adopting socialist policies.

I hope that those who engineered the coordinated media response of the "Big Three" to the recent pronouncements of the "Two Eds" will pay heed to the call made today by the Communist Party - but that will require a break from the trade union approach to the Labour Party (and leadership) which has generally been taken over the past twenty years.
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Danny Alexander was born yesterday!

Newsnight's expose of the tax affairs of the boss of the Student Loans Company is fun (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16709780).

Most enjoyable is Danny Alexander not having realised the "tax benefits to the individual" of paying someone through their own private company.

Danny boy! Don't you know how widespread this dodgy practice is?

Every public sector trade union activist should tomorrow ask their employer how many senior "consultants" are being paid in a way which facilitates their dodging the taxes which pay for our public services.

If this issue has public attention for a few moments, let's use this to root out as many consultants as possible.
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7 March - an appointment to keep for the sake of your health

Put the evening of 7 March in your diary - and come to the rally in defence of the NHS (http://www.unison.org.uk/healthcare/pages_view.asp?did=13974).

The privatisation and break up of our National Health Service is in front of us, and we need to step up our opposition in the interests of patients, carers, health workers and every one of us.

While you've got your diary out, remember that 21 February is the launch date (http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/dch/resources/HELeaflet-21stFeb_A4_2pp_print.pdf) for the open statement from Defend Council Housing and Housing Emergency (http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/dch/resources/HEStatement_TimeforAlternative290112.pdf). Tenants, the homeless and construction workers all need investment in Council housing - and we need to fight for this.

These are just two of the fronts opened up in the Coalition Government's assault upon our Welfare state. Whilst valuable campaigns are being fought, sector by sector and issue by issue, we also need to recapture the power of a unified response to the overarching attacks.

The TUC put half a million of us on the streets last spring. We need a larger national demonstration - but even a smaller one would be better than leaving each struggle to be waged alone.
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Thirty years of theft

I've been meaning to blog a link to this excellent post on the Touchstone blog - http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2012/01/introducing-the-touchstone-incomes-tracker/. It really bring's home the extent of the "wage squeeze" that has happened over the past generation.

In 1978, 58% of the wealth we created went on wages. Today it's just 53.8%. This reverses the "profit squeeze" of the previous generation, in which the unique social and economic circumstances of the postwar "long boom" had led to increasing material wellbeing for working people associated with the growth of trade union membership, density and power.

In the postwar decades "A low level of unemployment (with the virtual disappearence of the reserve army of labour for a period) strengthened the bargaining power of the working class. There was a general strengthening of trade union organisation, the development of national pay bargaining, and the spread of shop-floor trade union organisation. Workers' real wages (deflated against consumer prices) rose at an historically high rate." (http://www.marxist.net/economic/crisis2.htm)

In the past three decades we have seen the reverse happening. Declining union organisation at a rank and file level has been accompanied by various assaults upon national pay bargaining, and increasing real wages have fallen short of increases in labour productivity, which is reflected in the declining share of national income paid in wages.

What this all means is that working people are worse off because our movement has been in decline. Now we face a period of falling real wages and renewed assaults upon both national pay bargaining (witness the electricians dispute and the Government's drive to regionalise pay bargaining) and upon shop floor organisation (courtesy of the Tory right's drive to "expose" negotiated facility time). These assaults are not ends in themselves but means to the end of further weakening workers' bargaining power and, therefore, income.

The "Touchstone Income Tracker" gives you some idea what you would be earning today if we hadn't faced thirty years of declining union power.

Now all we need is an online tool which tells us how to go about rebuilding that power...
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Divided we stand?

The third largest teachers' union, ATL, has voted to accept the Government's "final offer" on the Teachers' Pension Scheme (http://www.atl.org.uk/pensions/pensions-consultation/pensions-poll.asp), placing themselves at odds not only with the NUT, but also NAS/UWT, whose General Secretary is now forthright in criticising the Government (http://union-news.co.uk/2012/01/nasuwt-refuses-to-sign-scandalous-pensions-deal/).

Meanwhile, construction union UCATT, has agreed to endorse the "Heads of Agreement" with the Government (http://union-news.co.uk/2012/01/ucatt-suspends-strike-action-and-signs-heads-of-agreement-document/) even though this is no longer a precondition for participation in negotiations (so that craft workers in UNITE, for example, will still be represented in the negotiations without having conceded in advance to whole swathes of the Government's position.)

This fracturing of the impressive trade union unity that we saw on 30 November is a direct consequence of the withdrawal of UNISON from the decisive leading role which we played from mid September until mid December. in that period - which also witnessed the most impressive recruitment to UNISON in the union's history - UNISON used the unique authority of the largest public sector union to marshal and sustain the unity of the movement in a common cause to defend common interests.

Such unity could serve equally well to confront pay freezes and job losses as it did, however briefly, the campaign to protect our pensions.

The visible quest for trade union unity from the top of the union also helped to forge intra-union unity, an equally precious and perishable commodity.

UNISON members are the largest group of organised workers set to be attacked by the Government over the remainder of this Parliament. We need to rebuild unity within our union and with other unions if we are to resist.

As to how we go about this, well, the comments box is open...
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Stop the attacks on welfare

The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) website hosts a useful reminder of the importance of lobbying MPs ahead of Wednesday's Commons vote on welfare "reform" (http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/urgent-action-stop-the-welfare-bill/).

The timetabling of the vote on the day after the final debate in the Lords is an attempt to insulate MPs from pressure, such as that exerted by civil disobedience by the Disabled People's Direct Action network on Saturday (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114770).

Resources to lobby MPs are also available on the website of Disabled People Against the Cuts with a good report of Saturday's action (http://www.dpac.uk.net/2012/01/disabled-activists-block-regent-street/).
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OneBarnet - one fight against privatisation

UNISON members in Barnet, as part of their exemplary struggle against the madcap privatisation plans of the Thatcherite faction of their local Tory Party (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2012/01/barnet-fair.html), will be taking strike action on 9 February (http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/756). More power to their elbows!

This is very much the same fight which PCS members in HMRC have been waging recently (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/6DEA4154-0A65-45CD-9EACDB423509ADCD) - against privatisation driven by dogma.

Public service workers need trade union unity in the fight to defend our public services. How we build, rebuild and sustain that unity may be the most important question with which union activists need to grapple.
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Virtually building a real trade union

This week's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee received a presentation on the Web Access RMS (WARMS) which will be provided to branches later this year (RMS - the "Replacement Membership System" - is UNISON's membership system).

WARMS will enable access to the RMS over t'intraweb with what looks like a more user friendly interface and greater speed and ease of use. I hope this will be an asset to branches, particularly since it will make selecting members for bulk email distribution very easy (subject of course to the accuracy of the information on the system...)

I've been blogging now for more than five years (though I appreciate that for those of you who have been reading it has seemed longer). It's startling to reflect how far the Union has come online in that brief period. Back in 2006 we saw the internet as a noticeboard on which to paste information, not as a tool for recruitment and organisation.

Since the facility to join UNISON online was introduced more than 120,000 members have applied for membership in this way, with the proportion of all new members joining online shooting up from 14% in 2009 to 25% in 2010 and almost 35% last year. Whilst this still means that almost two thirds of new members are recruited "offline" it nevertheless represents a massive shift, indicative of the impact of technologically facilitated social change upon our movement.

We need to understand far more about how we move more of our activity online, overcoming the prejudice of those who counterpose "clicktivism" to "real life" - who fail to understand how social media can be used to facilitate activities which are far from merely "virtual."

Since the average age of a UNISON member is 48 (and although 48 is a very fine and youthful age at which many are considered to be in their prime...) we need very much to embrace an approach to trade union activism which will appeal to the Facebook and Twitter Generation.

This won't, I suggest, be done in an abstract way, but by applying the tools of social media to concrete circumstances of particular struggles and disputes. These tools may prove to be of particular value for rank and file organising given their utility in facilitating "horizontal" communication outwith official heirarchical structures.

Mind you, we need to tackle the problem that some of our most radical activists are some of the most conservative souls when it comes to dealing with the virtual phenomena of the developing online world...
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The challenge of solidarity

UNITE members employed as petrol tanker drivers by Wincanton are extending their strike action into a second week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-16760835).

This is a defensive struggle against a threat to conditions (http://union-news.co.uk/2012/01/wincanton-drivers-determined-spirits-fuel-jet-strike/) much as has been the fight by the electricians to defend their national agreement (http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/electricians-protest-action-employers?cat=commentisfree&type=article) and the fight by Unilever workers to defend their pensions (http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/other_news/more_unilever_pension_strikes.aspx).

It's clear that in the private sector as much as in parts of the public sector some employers see the economic crisis as an opportunity to reduce the living standards of their workforce. Where there is union organisation there is the possibility to resist these attacks, and it is clear that pockets of resistance are emerging in the private as well as the public sector.

The first, faltering steps in the direction of rank and file communication between activists in different unions are only the beginning of a long journey, but if the destination is one in which we coordinate solidarity for each struggle as it emerges then swift progress would be in all our interests.
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Recruitment success and how to sustain it

Yesterday's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee heard that 2011 had seen UNISON recruit more than 175,000 new members - the best annual figure since UNISON was created in 1993.

Since it is estimated that we need to recruit about 145,000 members a year just to stand still (because of the turnover rate as members retire, become unemployed or move jobs) our net growth is a lot lower, but still impressive given that this is taking place whilst the number of jobs in the areas in which we are most organised are certainly not increasing.

The boost to recruitment which took us above our turnover rate and into net growth took place pretty much entirely in the period after our General Secretary's TUC speech calling for strike action over pensions. Indeed 30% of all the members who joined UNISON last year did so in the two months of October and November.

For once in life, cause and effect really are as simple as they appear to be. The last time we had such a "spike" in recruitment was around the national strike action over local government pensions in the spring of 2006.

Indeed, each and every significant boost to our recruitment figures at a national level has been associated with national industrial action.

I have spent almost nine years on the D&O Committee, and before that had served for seven years on the equivalent body at Regional level. In all the untold hours of discussion about how to improve recruitment, through periods of both growing and declining employment, under different Governments and through good times and bad, the only measure which I have learned is proven to significantly increase our membership nationally is to call upon our members to take national action in a cause in which they believe and for which a sufficient number are prepared to fight.

I'm not suggesting that we call strikes simply to recruit more members. Recruitment to our union (like industrial action) is not an end in itself but a means to the end of protecting and promoting the interests of our members and potential members. That objective has to guide us.

I am however suggesting that we need to change our thinking. Rather than see strikes as occasional exceptions to the "normal business" of the trade union (requiring such exceptional temporary exertion that we all take to our beds with "strike fatigue") we need to see conflict and industrial action as integral to our "normal business."

We must replace the bureaucratic timidity which sees strike action as a dangerous threat to be avoided, with an appreciation that, when conflict is necessary, it provides us with our best opportunity to build our numbers and our strength.

The evidence in support of this contention stares out at us from our own recruitment statistics.
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UNISON opposes benefit cuts - so should Labour

Smiths at the Station having sold it's Morning Stars, I thought I would buy a copy of the daily paper most widely read by UNISON members. There are some very angry people out there on the right wing (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090750/Welfare-reform-Labour-bishops-Lib-Dem-peers-derail-benefits-cap-plan.html).

Apparently the sensible decision of the House of Lords to exclude child benefit from the overall cap on benefits is an "insult to every working family" - the worst of it being that, in the debate a bishop referred to the Bible (!)

The Tories are however doing well in securing popular support for a policy calculated to create misery for some amongst a demonised and unpopular minority (benefit claimants). 76% - including 69% of Labour voters - back a policy which sets out to drive thousands more children into poverty and force families from their homes.

With Labour falling behind in the opinion polls, the timidity on the part of the Opposition Front Bench that has given the Tories a free hand to take on the supposedly "workshy" will probably only get worse.

Dave Osler makes the case simply, that there is no justification for a benefit cap set at any level (http://www.davidosler.com/2012/01/welfare-reform-bill-why-wont-anybody-say-its-wrong-it-principle/#more-4000). The Labour leadership's capitulation to right wing populism on this issue is symptomatic of the weakness which could doom us to years of Tory Government.

UNISON members whose work brings them into contact with those who will be hammered by these vicious benefit cuts can see through the lies - and UNISON Conference had the clear-headedness to adopt a policy position which would serve Her Majesty's Opposition far better than their current equivocation (http://cms.unison.co.uk/MotionText.asp?DocumentID=1002157).

The following text from last year's Conference motion, highlighting areas of particular concern to Conference in relation to benefit cuts, provides some of the information which we need to use to shift public opinion;

1) Women - The Fawcett Society figures show that benefits typically make up 1/5th of a woman's income compared to 1/10th for men. This would make benefit cuts particularly pertinent for many UNISON members - two thirds of whom are women, many have caring responsibilities and almost half of whom work part-time. The majority are low-paid. Taking the cap on housing benefit alone makes the effect on women clear as more than 1 million women currently claim this benefit;

2) Carers - Carers save the UK £87bn every year in services that otherwise would have to be picked up by the state - a cut in benefits for people who have often given up or reduced their paid work to care for others is counterproductive in both social and economic terms. Currently 3 in 5 people will end up caring for someone at some point in their working lives, with 2 million people moving in and out of caring every year. In a recent survey it was found that 1 in 3 carers do not want to wake up in the morning because of "dire financial circumstances";

3) Children - A cap on total benefits package will almost certainly add to child poverty figures by 2020 leading to higher public spending for future generations. Already the UK has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world with nearly four million of our children living poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that child poverty costs around £25bn a year in terms of poor health, educational inequalities, social exclusion and worklessness;

4) Housing - The reforms to housing benefit, including caps on the benefit that claimants can receive, a shift to up-rating benefit in line with consumer prices index, instead of retail price index, and reducing the value of local housing allowance risks driving thousands of vulnerable people from their homes in areas where housing costs are high. The cuts will also mean higher rents for many low paid workers and the recently unemployed, who along with pensioner claimants, make up the majority of households claiming Local Housing Allowance (housing benefit for the private sector). The housing charity, Shelter has warned that if housing benefit support is taken away, this will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness;

5) Disability - conference has many grave concerns about the government's plans to reform Disability Living allowance into a 'Personal Independence Payment' (PIP) and cut the future budget by 20 per cent by 2013/14. Over 3 million people currently receive DLA (1.8 are people of working age) with the total amount spent on the benefit this year forecast to be £12 billion. Just some of the concerns about the proposals are:

a) extra conditionality and the doubling of the eligibility lead in time before someone is able to claim DLA will result in an increase in disability related poverty for many disabled people;

b) there will no longer be automatic qualification for certain conditions and the proposed approach to assessments, necessitating regular face to face meetings, is problematic as it fails to recognise that society is still largely inaccessible to disabled people, including those with less complex impairments and barriers;

c) the proposal intends to withdraw the mobility aspect of DLA funding if an individual is in hospital or a residential home 28 days, 84 days for children; the right to control independence and offset the institutionalisation of disabled adults and children will become even more critical and place additional, unnecessary strain on both health and social care workforces.
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Dead sheep threaten to savage our trade unions!

Wondering about the timing of the “news” story that prompted the last post on this blog, I was reminded of what I had heard before about the so-called “Trade Union Reform Campaign.”

This outfit for Tory outriders who want to make the anti-union policies of the Government seem reasonable by voluntarily posing as foaming at the mouth far right loons (with even more extreme views) has it’s launch meeting at the House of Commons today, to be addressed by the sane and reasonable Eric Pickles.

It’s obviously a great worry that these brilliant campaigners can get a story in a freesheet the day before their biggest event to date (and aren’t they proud). Whereas previous generations of reactionaries tried the Combination Laws, this retirement home for failed Tory politicians (and their unpleasant wannabe hangers on) is clearly determined to beat the working class movement into submission with press releases!

I agree with the comrades at the Morning Star that our best response to this latest assault from the less intelligent output of Oxbridge is to build and organise our trade unions. I would go to tonight’s TURC launch, but I think I’ll wait until our class enemies can come up with some worthwhile opposition.

Keep trying boys.