08.02.1996
Reasons to be cheerful
SWP, trade unions and strikes
International Socialism 69, the SWP’s theoretical journal, recently reviewed two reports from the TUC. Despite received opinion that Thatcher’s reforms have led to a more ‘rational’ and conciliatory trade unionism, the review gave an optimistic assessment of the state of the organised working class.
Pete Morgan’s article identifies the ways in which the present statistics hide the anger and discontent many of us know exist in the workplace. On the surface there were only 205 stoppages of work last year because of labour disputes, the lowest since 1891.
The TUC report Trends in trade unions surveyed all affiliated unions and gave a different interpretation to these figures. Strike ballots had been organised by 57% of the unions surveyed in the previous six months. Of the ballots for which details were available 66% had been successful, but only 25% of these resulted in industrial action actually taking place - hence the low recorded figures.
This pattern of only a small number of actions masking a larger number of disputes and successful strike ballots confirms a 1994 Acas report which shows 1,783 ballots with a 70% success rate. The TUC survey also shows a continuing pattern of short disputes, 72% of the industrial action lasting less than 24 hours. The official figures exclude such action and those involving less than 10 workers.
Morgan’s conclusion remains locked in the SWP’s ‘downturn’ theory. This theory focuses on workers’ confidence alone and looks for a resurgence or ‘upturn’ in a change in workers’ mood. The author concludes that “The working class is better placed to fight the battles ahead”, but that “All the signs are there that the first half of the 1990s is a period of the re-emergence of working class strength and confidence” (ISJ 69 p76).
Startlingly bad figures of union strength and strike activity have been transformed into an illusion of re-emerging strength and confidence. This is not an argument about balance; it reveals a profoundly undialectical approach to the analysis of class struggle.
Let us take the example of the recent strikes on Merseyside. If we are to believe the article, these disputes should express re-emerging strength and confidence. In the firefighters’, dockers’ and residential social workers’ disputes we find an aggressive employer rather than a confident or assertive workforce. An assessment of class forces must take account of the other side. Strikes are the rational and local outcomes of situations in which workers have little control.
This failure to contextualise workers’ actions is reflected in the view taken of strike ballots. The large number of successful ballots is compared to the recorded strike rate. This contrast is used as evidence of anger in the workplace and further to argue the following: “Yet more often than not the trade union leaders squander this opportunity and use the majority vote in the ballot to strengthen their position in negotiations with the employers in order to agree some deal” (ISJ 69 p71). The position of the SWP is clear: the workers are ready for action; it is just the trade union leaders that stand in their way.
The firefighters in Merseyside balloted for strike action in 1994 but did not go on strike. In 1995 they balloted for strikes and have been taking action ever since. The ballot results for the series of nine-hour strikes were remarkably similar to the year before. What then has caused the difference in outcome? There has been no significant change in leadership either nationally or locally in the FBU, yet in 1994 the members’ ballot was ‘squandered’; in 1995 it was acted upon. The difference lies in the rational behaviour of both union leaders and members in the two years.
In 1994 the employers were stunned by the result and withdrew their proposals. This removed the basis for action. In 1995 the employers’ stance has been assertive and they refuse to make concessions. The consequence is that members and leaders of the FBU support action. There is no ‘deal’ for either leaders or members of the union.
All the above should not be taken as indicating blanket support for trade union leaders. The question becomes: what are the conditions both leaders and members find themselves in and how do we expect the class struggle to develop? We find the national leadership in a bind. The avenues for ‘deals’ are limited by employers squeezing the last drop from a dispute. The local and lay leadership in the unions is poorly organised, unable to offer a real alternative after years of relative passivity and little generalisation of disputes. The members are not straining at the leash, but are often forced to fight by the aggression of employers. Far from squandering ballots, many leaders have obtained successful ballots by telling members they will not have to fight, that “some deal” will emerge if the ballot is successful.
The class struggle and workplace resistance is of interest to all socialists. A renewal of left politics will not take place without a return to working class strength and confidence. The difference for us is that we see strength and confidence as outcomes of action. Upturns and downturns are concepts taken from bourgeois economics: they ignore the dynamics of class struggle.
Faced with an employing class intent on its own ends, workers take concrete and rational actions. The strikes on Merseyside reveal the current dynamics of disputes. The dockers’ strike was ‘illegal’. Action taken in the past weeks by Liverpool dockers in New York would also have been illegal if mounted in the UK. The strike remains unofficial, because national leaders are hog-tied by trade union law, however convenient that may be for them.
In the case of the residential social workers and firefighters the Labour authorities falsely claimed they were forced to act by the measures taken by central government. In fact they were attempting to solve their own problems. Firefighters have seen all this before. In 1977, faced with the Callaghan government, FBU members took national strike action. A ‘new’ Labour government can be expected to be just the same as ‘old’ Labour when it comes to relations with organised workers. Strikes in the public and private sectors are in these ways developing an immediately political character.
Union membership is now more centred on the public sector. This sector has disputes which are inevitably political and often non-commercial. A strike in the fire service is not like a strike at Fords or on the docks. No production is stopped, no profits lost. Share value and income is not affected, while labour costs decrease. The effect of the dockers’ action was to cause ACL, a US-based container firm, to threaten to leave Liverpool. This wiped millions from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company’s shares. The tactics in public sector disputes need to be different as councillors are not open to the same pressures. They fear de-selection and failure in elections not the pressure of the markets. FBU members on strike on January 24 used the time to leaflet the council ward of the chair of the fire authority prior to the May elections.
Renewed strength and confidence will not come out of simple spontaneous action: it requires clear political strategy. Workers are being forced to confront political questions posed in the course of normal trade union activity.
The SWP’s combination of aggressive trade unionism and support for Labour at elections is no longer a credible approach. Rebuilding in the workplace will require left unity: a united front, not going it alone. The dockers have applied pressure by using the methods of international solidarity to circumvent UK laws on picketing and strikes. Council workers find the removal of Labour councillors is a pressing need, elections too important to ignore.
The SWP, in order to become a real political party, needs to challenge Labour at elections and state its programme. This will not only help the SWP. It will help those of us who want to see it engage in the wider move towards rapprochement.
Chris Jones
RDG (faction of the SWP)