09.10.2014

Employers attempt to outmanoeuvre unions

Will Pragnell reports on developments in Unison

As readers will know, there will be three consecutive one-day pay strikes next week involving public-sector workers. On Monday October 13, NHS healthworkers will be out, while on Wednesday the 15th it will be the turn of civil servants. Sandwiched in between will be the largest action, from local government and education workers.

I cannot predict how successful the action in other sectors will be, but in local government it is beset with problems. The employers, thanks to a tactically astute provisional offer, at one time seemed to have successfully neutered GMB and Unite, which would have left Unison to fight on alone. However, as I write, all three unions are still on board, although, with negotiations still proceeding, a last-minute deal is still possible.

After months when the employers simply refused to negotiate beyond their ‘final’ offer of 1%, the ‘improved’ provisional offer includes a combination of percentages and lump sums spread over two years. Overall the offer is miniscule, but includes increases required to comply with the minimum wage and larger lump sums for the lowest paid, clearly designed to tempt Unite and GMB, which have higher proportions of low-paid workers, and leave Unison, the much bigger local government union, isolated. The employers also calculate that the cash lump sum will induce many workers who struck on July 10 to abandon the action this time around.

Any local government shop steward with a real connection to workers would have known before the strike ballot that, without a determined campaign to show how we can win, there is little mood for a fight over pay. The ballot result should have given everyone pause for thought: 86% of members did not vote, while 8% voted yes to a strike and 6% no. This sort of result is not necessarily disastrous - it is possible to develop strength during a struggle - but a sober assessment has to be made, a strategy worked out and appropriate tactics adopted. However, the unions - and more particularly the left - seem unable to rise to the challenge.

Matters worsened when the extremely poor support and picketing for the July 10 strike demonstrated to everyone the timidity and fragility of our forces. It was at this juncture that the employers took note and adjusted their tactics to split the unions and offer workers an easy and cheap (for the employers) way out that would help further disorganise and weaken the working class.

Around the country there are now reports of pessimistic Unison branch officials and shop stewards campaigning to call off the strike and threatening to stay away from picket lines. As well as pointing to real issues that make the strike problematic, some are resorting to misinformation about the legality of the dispute and employing various other scare tactics. Thus far national and regional officials are trying to galvanise the dispute through branch briefings. For example, London regional officials, meeting representatives of branches in the capital on October 8, went to great lengths to dispel rumours that the other two unions had pulled out.

Of course, regional and national officials had already been gauging the strength of support for the action, so I would not discount the possibility of the action being called off, following a ‘breakthrough’ in the ongoing negotiations. Although at the moment Unison leaders are going all out to persuade local officials to stand firm, it is likely a very slightly better offer would be enough for them to settle - and, given the circumstances, it would be hypocritical for the left, whose inadequacy in all this is obvious, to cry ‘sell-out’.

This relatively stauncher stance of the Unison leadership (compared to the GMB and Unite), albeit not recognised by the left as matching its own lofty aims, was also seen in the run-up to the local government pension dispute and is indicative of something deeper. Unison (and this is true of all unions pretty much worldwide) is worried about decline, and loss of prestige and relevance. The government and employers are increasingly uninterested in the unions’ traditional mediating role; the decline in union membership continues, particularly and worryingly amongst the young (the age profile of local government workers will result in a substantial loss of membership over the next 10 to 15 years if the situation is not turned around); the shop steward base is nowhere near sufficient to maintain the unions as a strong force indefinitely; and there is a substantial and growing disconnect between the leadership and the members.

Whatever criticisms can be made of union tops, in the past they could rely (whether they liked it or not) on both pressure from below that represented something real; and the fact that thousands of shop stewards could and would galvanise and cohere union forces when necessary (again whether they liked it or not). On what can they rely now? The organisational base is weak. Sections of the left attempt to act as a substitute, but with little serious analysis, strategic thought or sense of reality: it simply applies pressure for a strike - any strike, for any reason - and, when one is called, insists it must be more extensive and longer, regardless of the facts. The occasional sane voice is easily swamped by inane dogma that repels many workers. So the disconnect does not simply reflect an out-of-touch leadership that lacks stewards on the ground: it is even more pronounced with the left, which adopts policy over the heads of workers in the momentary interests of this or that sect.

Unison’s leadership and those of some other unions see the need to rebuild organisation and organising ability through the recruitment and development of a shop steward base, and that is certainly an urgent task. At the same time there are signs that they increasingly see the left both as an obstacle to that task and as an unrealistic but vocal ginger group, holding positions and influence out of all proportion to its actual support. This is unlike the historic opposition that existed from time to time to the ‘official’ Communist Party and activists it cohered - that was based on the fact that the old left, despite its many problems, had real strength and support far exceeding its numeric size and was able to push union tops further than they wanted to go and on occasion lead in their stead.

Given the very real weakness and disorganisation that this dispute (and many others) reveals, it is insufficient for most of the current left to continue demanding more strikes, bigger strikes, longer strikes or to hypocritically harangue leaderships for ‘selling out’, sometimes in advance, whatever the facts might be. As things stand, the left is part of the problem instead of being part of the solution. A root-and-branch self-critique is long overdue. The left has to recognise its very real isolation and lack of support. No matter what good intentions or high ideals many activists hold, the fact is the left does not speak for the working class - either at the most basic level of trade union politics or on the higher plane of independent class interests that would offer the prospect of taking us beyond capitalism.

We need to do what the employers do, but do it better and take it further. We cannot forever be slaves to spontaneity, ever looking for the short cut or quick fix, and hoping for some sort of working class epiphany, while things get progressively worse. We live in the real world and need to analyse that world and chart a way forward.