23.03.2023

Turning retreat into attack

Why are so many trade union officials settling for below-inflation deals? Kevin Bean says unions must be democratised, and renewed strength used to beat Rishi Sunak’s latest anti-trade union legislation

The strike wave that began last spring and has continued into this year represents the highest level of industrial militancy in over 30 years.¹ The strikes have involved wide sections of the working class, from railway and bus workers through to civil servants and medical staff. We have also seen the Royal College of Nursing - with its over 500,000 members - taking nationwide action for the first time in its 106-year history. Excellent.

The headlines around Budget Day (March 15) captured the scale and the mood of the strikes perfectly, with nearly 400,000 workers said to be involved: the BBC reported actions and protests by teachers, junior doctors, civil servants, London tube workers and BBC local journalists, followed in subsequent days by further university and railway worker strikes.²

It is clear that this wave shows an increased willingness by these workers to fight in defence of wages and conditions in a period of inflation and attempts by employers to attack hard-won gains in the workplace. Rising food prices, increases in basic utility bills and rising rents and mortgage interest rates have eroded the living standards of many workers and their families: you do not have to look for the mythical lefty agitators so beloved of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph as an explanation for this new wave of militancy, when inflation is currently running at 10.4%, and is even higher on essential foodstuffs and services.³

As well as a boost to the morale and combativity of workers already organised in trade unions, this round of strikes has also acted to increase union membership and strengthen levels of organisation across the board. Reports suggest that there has been a significant growth in membership in public-sector unions, especially amongst younger workers and those on the lowest grades.⁴ Moreover, the level of popular support and sympathy for the strikes - evident from the response to workers on the picket lines and news reports, even in the bourgeois media - shows that the Tory campaign to summon up images of 1970s-style ‘industrial chaos’ and blame the strikes on ‘union barons’ holding the country to ransom have largely been a failure.⁵ Indeed, some have even detected a rare degree of objectivity creeping into media coverage of the strikes, given that it is increasingly hard to portray them, in the face of falling real wages, as anything but defensive.⁶

Even if this type of upsurge in the class struggle (after something of a lull) was only to be expected, given the attacks on living standards and the slight shift in the current balance of forces (‘tightness’) in the labour market, it can only be welcomed by Marxists. The growth in union membership and organisation, the increases in solidarity and class-consciousness, and the determination to fight the employers - all are positive and will undoubtedly have longer-term effects. Communists have always supported economic struggles of this type as important elements in strengthening the cohesion, consciousness and organisation of the working class. They are all the more to be welcomed, as they draw a new generation and new sections into struggle.

However, for us this is just part of the battle to overthrow capitalism and transform society. Communists argue that our class needs to go far beyond the economic demands of the current strike movement and build a movement with a revolutionary political consciousness. To do this, we need a clear balance sheet of where the working class actually stands at the moment. Whilst some workers have won ‘increases’ in line with inflation (in effect standing still), many of the current deals that have been accepted or are under consideration, such as the offer to the nurses or railway workers, are actually below the rate of inflation and so are in effect wage cuts rather than a step forward. While members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union at Network Rail voted for a ‘modest deal’, in the words of the RMT’s Mick Lynch, the offer to health workers is still under consideration and a campaign is currently under way to reject the ‘paltry deal’ agreed by the various union leaderships.⁷ A similar attempt by the general secretary of the Universities and Colleges Union to force through a retreat on wages, conditions and pensions has also met stiff resistance and hangs in the balance, pending the outcome of a ballot for further strikes.⁸

It remains to be seen if these fightbacks are the beginning of a new phase of the struggle or simply a rearguard action, as the strike wave begins to recede. If the latter is true, then the March 15 Budget Day strikes and protests may have marked the high point of the present strike wave.

Sectionalism

The role of union leaders is often that of merchants in the labour-power of the working class, bargaining for the best deal to secure the sectional interests of their members. Their role is normally restricted to working within the limits prescribed by capitalism - not seriously challenging, let alone overthrowing, the system of wage slavery. They function to contain and manage workers’ struggles rather than taking them to higher and higher levels. Instead of a determined and united battle with the employers (and the government), there has been a series of mainly disconnected, token strikes, limited to one, two or three walkouts with long gaps in between.

So union bureaucrats, many of them on salaries which compare with management, have strictly preserved the sectional nature of the disputes and compartmentalised the struggles, even within the same industry or sector. Thus the health unions have played up their ‘special case’ and a sentimentalised view of the national health service, whilst train drivers have maintained their historic craft status and pursued their campaign without real coordination with other railworkers. There has been no real attempt to unite and generalise workers’ struggles into one common working class campaign. This is all the more regrettable when we consider that most of the strikes are either in the public sector or in areas where the government has a decisive role in determining the approach of the employers, such as on the railways.

In general, trade union leaders have consciously depoliticised the strike wave, even though these struggles over wages and conditions are very clearly a struggle between the Tory government, standing behind the employers, and the organised working class. In stressing the purely economic and sectional character of the disputes, union leaders not only mislead their members and the working class as a whole, but they actually weaken and undermine the struggle. In not uniting the various actions against the common capitalist and state enemy, they lead their members into battle with both hands tied behind their backs.

The Tories have not made any such mistake and have gone into battle with a clear agenda. Initially ministers attempted to revive the old tropes of union-bashing by blaming union ‘selfishness’ for contributing to the increasing rate of inflation. Some even saw the old Thatcherite slogans as possible vote-winners and a way to revive Tory electoral fortunes. That political strategy failed dismally, but other aspects of the government’s approach have been much more effective. Playing on the sectionalism of the union leadership, they have adopted a ‘divide and rule’ approach, giving concessions to particular groups of workers, whilst stonewalling others.

The health service disputes are a good illustration of these tactics, whilst employers at Royal Mail and on the railways have played hardball and appear determined to attack workers’ wages and conditions under the guise of modernisation and reform. The RMT has called off its forthcoming strikes on March 30 and April 1, and initial reports suggest that the union’s leadership may back a type of deal with the rail operating companies similar to that recently agreed with Network Rail. While the final outcome still remains in the balance, the Tories will perhaps try to pick off individual unions like the Communication Workers Union or the RMT.

Ironically, Rushi Sunak’s attempt to introduce new anti-trade union legislation, along with compulsory ‘minimum service levels’, and the threat of suing unions and sacking non-compliant workers, gives us a splendid opportunity to build united class action, including specifically political strike action. With or without the TUC there needs to be the closest coordination between different sections of workers (and the aim to involve students and the huge number of still unorganised workers).

Certainly, though, we need more than united opposition to Sunak’s ‘minimum service’ legislation. All the anti-trade union laws must be scrapped and our organisations at last freed from state interference. Of course, this perspective cannot be separated from the fight to democratise the trade unions. All full-time trade union officials must be elected, accountable and instantly recallable. No trade union official ought to be paid above the average wage of a worker in that particular union. In short, we should only support trade union leaders to the extent that they fight for the long-term interests of the working class as a whole.