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I spent this
afternoon in Leeds at a half day event marking twenty years since the
publication of John Kelly’s Rethinking
Industrial Relations, which has been the subject of a special issue of the
academic journal Economic and Industrial
Democracy.
For me this was
a trip down memory lane in more ways than one, since I was a student at Leeds
University in the early 80s and then went on to the London School of Economics
where I studied Industrial Relations (with John Kelly as one of my lecturers).
Rethinking Industrial Relations was an ambitious attempt to rescue the
field of industrial relations (as an area of academic inquiry) both from its
own lack of theory, and from being swallowed up by the study of Human Resources
Management (a field of enquiry very much at the shallow end of intellectual
endeavour and which has subsequently spread so far and wide that, like an
annoying puddle, it is difficult to avoid stepping in it).
Today’s event
was an interesting opportunity to meet comrades I had not seen for years (or
have never seen but have corresponded with online) and to listen to debate
around the issues raised in Rethinking
Industrial Relations (in particular around “mobilisation theory”, which is
really a model explaining how people come to think and act collectively in
certain circumstances).
I am not
blogging to provide an overview of six hours of discussion because (a) I am
tired and (b) I doubt I could do justice to the debate across the various
sessions. As I had hoped, attending today’s event has got me thinking, so you
may be unfortunate enough to read more here in future (if you are unwise enough
to return).
There are
really just two points I intend to make here and now. The first, which I made
myself earlier today, is that I am not at all convinced that the leadership of
our big trade unions really want to “renew” our union movement, in the sense of
embedding a radical and transformational approach to organising union members.
Fourteen years
on the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON (2003-17), all of them also
on the NEC’s Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee, showed me that
there are activists and officials who are (subjectively) “serious” about
organising, but these are massively outnumbered by those who will (at most) pay
lip service to the “organising agenda” – which helps to explain why essentially
identical and very worthy motions about organising are agreed year on year at
National Delegate Conference with only limited impact upon reality.
The bulk of the
leadership of the big unions (lay as well as full time) are content to carry on
having the bargaining relationships and political influence which they have
(however much they might like more) – and are miles away from genuinely wanting
to organise the unorganised.
This isn’t just
a shame because there are – as I saw today - some thoughtful and radical people
trying to work out how we could reverse the decline of our movement (and to
understand why we haven’t done so yet).
It is also
shaming to our unions because of the second point which I want to make, which
was made by John Kelly himself today, which is that an incoming Labour
Government might be about to give our unions an opportunity which they may not
be in a fit state to make use of.
A Labour
Government would legislate in accordance with the Institute for
Employment Rights (IER) Manifesto for
Labour Law – a fairly moderate set of proposals (which would not even
repeal all of the anti-union laws introduced since the 1980s). The IER
manifesto has at its heart sectoral (national) collective bargaining with
representative organisations of employers negotiating national agreements with
trade unions (presumably intended to set a floor for pay and conditions).
The very good
point which John Kelly made today is that, as desirable as it may be to extend
collective bargaining coverage, this will not of itself reverse twenty years of
failure of the “organising approach” as applied by UK trade unions. Workers
need the right to bargain collectively with our bosses, but we also need trade
unions which are strong enough to bargain effectively.
Given that
twenty years of “talking the talk” about organising has not really made a
significant impact in terms of organising the growing mass of unorganised
workers, there is no immediate reason for optimism that our big unions could
seize this opportunity to extend union influence for the benefit of working
people by driving up union membership.
At the close of
this afternoon’s event Gregor Gall therefore took the opportunity to repeat the
point which he had made in
the Morning Star this summer that a “union default” system would be
required alongside sectoral collective bargaining if we were to restore union
power so that workers could go into this new collective bargaining machinery
with a hope of getting something worthwhile out of it.
In a “union
default” system, newly appointed employees would be enrolled in the appropriate
trade union on obtaining employment in the same way as they are (now) enrolled
in an occupational pension scheme (and – unlike the old “closed shop” – they would
have the same right to opt out of the union that they have in relation to the
pension)(which seems a bit wishy-washy to me but apparently human rights law
requires it).
Although
promoted from the Marxist Left this “union default” idea may well come to have wider
purchase within the trade union movement, with stalwarts of the (former) Labour
establishment, Jack
Dromey and John Monks recently promoting the idea of “default” company level
joint bodies courtesy of the Fabians, and – keeping it nicely in the
family, Jack’s son Joe
has made the union default case on behalf of the Institute for Public
Policy Research.
Now it is of
course true that even collective bargaining rights and union organisation won’t
necessarily mean that sectoral bargaining will deliver anything for workers. I
say this as a local government worker (as regular readers of this blog – Sid and
Doris Blogger – will recollect) and although we are the largest bargaining unit
in the economy, represented by the three largest unions, our living standards
have fallen by 20% over the past decade.
However, at
least workers who are covered by collective bargaining and are organised into
trade unions have the possibility of fighting effectively to defend our
collective interests against employers and the state (even if we may have some
internal battles within our own trade unions which we also need to wage to get
to that point).
We need the political wing of our movement to provide the opportunity for regrowth that our industrial wing has been unable to find for itself.
Therefore those
reading this blog who are active in the Labour Party certainly need to think about
how we can campaign to add the “union default” idea to our next manifesto (and
those reading this blog who are not active in the Labour Party ought to be!)
2 comments:
A thoughtful and interesting blog.
An organising strategy can only succeed if it has the commiment and support of the national full-time and lay leadership. In UNISON neither the general secretary or the lay leadership indicated support for a national organising strategy. This lack of commitment perculated down to the regional leaderships. As a consequence it was never possible to grow the membership, build an effective activist base or meet national and regional bargaining objectives. Where the strategy has been implemented, for example in the current North West region membership has grown, activist numbers have gone up and local bargaining objectives have been met.
Union default is a strategy for lazy and inactive unions that will undoubtedly increase membership but will not grow the number of activists or help meet local bargaining objectives. It is a useful strategy for small dispersed workplaces like the shops.
I considered attending the seminar but though it might be dominated by academics who are good at theorising but often fail to understand the practical challenges activists face on the ground
My initial response to a "union default" position is very iffy. Firstly the lazy bureaucrats will use it as the excuse to do no positive organising. Secondly, as you know, without the resources and activists to service these members (the organising union) we will increasingly be pushed towards full-time officials dealing with the work. Thirdly, the unions will spend more time arguing about who gets these default members in work-places where more than one union exists or is recognised, than they will representing them. There will be a mass of petty squabbles. I am all in favour of no hinderance to recruitment, access to recruit, and employer statements encouraging union membership as the only way they can consult and negotiate. But this is a free dinner.
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