John McIlroy, Withington CLP and author of Trade Unions in Britain Today, gives his seasonal round up of the state of play in the unions.
In January TUC General Secretary John Monks surmised "1998 promises to herald a restoration of worker power in the UK". So far Mystic Meg isn't losing any sleep. The phasing-in of pay review awards for 1.3 million public sector workers saw New Labour doing exactly what the Tories would have done. This particular restoration of worker power means that with inflation increasing at an annual rate of 3.6% and a 2% increase in wages until December, nurses and teachers are facing a wage cut in 1998.
New Labour's caution over the minimum wage also continues. The Bill published in November provides for a single national rate. The figure has still to be decided upon. The armed forces will be excluded and there remains the possibility of a lower rate for those under 21 or 26 and it is here that low pay is concentrated. Employers are still lobbying for exclusion of the two million workers under 26 and the CBI's evidence to the Low Pay Commission suggests a breadline level of £3.20 an hour. The preference of Blair's advisers is said to be £3.50 while the TUC has finally come down for £4. The IMF have put in a plea for third world wages saying if the level is "as high as £4 an hour, thousands of jobs will be lost". There is growing support for the rate to be set initially at a low level with increases phased gradually. The bets are on £3.60 an hour.
As Blair boasted about retaining the bulk of the most iniquitous labour laws in the western world, action over recognition was seen as the bare minimum unions had to have in return for sustaining political loyalty and funding. Here, too, 1998 has seen prevarication and vacillation. In what was either fudge or incompetence, modernised well-advised union leaders claimed the manifesto gave them all they wanted on recognition ("where a majority of the relevant workforce vote in a ballot for the union to represent them, the union should be recognised").
Blair, insisting it should not impede flexibility and should constitute an exercise in social partnership, has urged the CBI and TUC to agree between themselves on what should go into the legislation. Not surprisingly, the potential wrongdoers have sought to limit the scope of legislation which could be used against them. While opposing legislation, the CBI kindly suggested that Labour's manifesto meant that recognition would require the support of a majority of the workforce (not a majority of those voting in a ballot on representation). So a 60% vote for recognition on an 80% turnout would mean no recognition as only 48% of those eligible would have voted for it. The CBI has also demanded that:
What was promised as a non-negotiable union right is now the subject of trade offs.
Despite slow progress, union leaders have talked up the prospects and maintained their pre-election restraint. Monks has even derided ungrateful colleagues: "Many union leaders still don't seem to realise just how much this Government is promising". Writing in the Guardian -- in uncritical appreciation of Bill Morris' support for the Liverpool dockers -- Monks urges us to accept the anti-union laws on industrial action. He urges trade unionists to take on bad employers. How about starting with the Mersey Docks and Harbour company?
Morris says that sympathy action was not forthcoming for the Liverpool dockers. He has a point. But there was some solidarity action. Yet when a UNISON branch voted to take strike action to attend a dockers' picket their action was immediately repudiated by the UNISON leadership -- just as action by TGWU members would have been repudiated by Morris! Even if we accept this is necessary to protect union funds, the same branch has successfully defied injunctions in other cases.
The question remains: just what is being done to remove this restriction and threat to union funds? John and Bill would have a good wicket to bat on. The restrictions on sympathy action maintained by the Blair Government have been condemned by the ILO as a breach of their convention to which Britain adheres. Last year, TUC Conference called on the Government to honour ILO conventions. A Labour administration sustains the violation of the basic right to support fellow workers -- surely the stuff crusades are made of?
With the public sector pay cuts there was, in contrast, strong condemnation from leaders of UNISON and teaching unions. But not a dicky bird when it came to organising protest action. On welfare cuts, the TUC congratulated union leaders for not getting involved! Across the unions the trend is to focus on a few issues and amplify what has been achieved: adhesion to the EU Social Chapter, GCHQ, union leaders invited to Downing Street, meetings with Margaret Beckett, good relations with Ian McCartney, Morris elevated to the Board of the Bank of England. Then urge patience, "don't take on Tony when he's got a 110 per cent approval rating in the polls. We'll get what we want by playing ball".
Of course some pressure has been applied. The TUC has systematically and successfully lobbied MPs over recognition. But it has been limited. Weakness breeds conservatism. Union politics have been reorganised around partnership with employers, and idealisation of the EU social market and social dialogue popularised by Will Hutton. Blair too toyed with the social market given cohesion by a developmental state, strong, responsible unions, greater equality, and a modernised financial system as an answer to Britain's regeneration in the global economy. However Blair retreated into the current crude credo that there is only one possible response to globalisation: modified Thatcherism, neo-liberalism with soundbites.
Blair has put blue water between New Labour and the TUC since 1995. His embrace of low wages, low welfare, and flexibility has repositioned Labour as the national party of capital. This envisages weak unions operating at best as extensions of management. The bathos of the strategies of union leaders lies in their inability to grasp the reality of Blair's conversion to Thatcherism with a human face.
They stubbornly believe that they can bring him round to their way of thinking. And they doggedly insist that the way to do this is by responsibility and loyalty to a man who has little understanding of trade unionism and sees its resurgence as a barrier to economic and political success.
Blair abases himself before the rich and powerful. For the union leaders he is the rich and powerful. The Blairisation of the unions is facilitated by the absence of strong workplace organisations able to launch autonomous action and the weakness of the left. In the TGWU, supporters of the broad left have sustained the march of Blairism on Labour's NEC. Elsewhere, the left has been able to act as some constraint on accommodation but has been unable to influence decisively the agenda and, as in UNISON, is under some threat.
Our energies have to go into building the left in both the Party and the unions by winning the arguments. If the honeymoon is over for us it is not over for many trade unionists. We must support the long running disputes at Critchleys, Magnet and Noon Products which are hopefully the first signs of struggles to come.
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