25.06.1998
Union strains aid Scargill
Minimum wage
Strains between New Labour and the trade union bureaucracy will inevitably increase following the government’s rejection of several of the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission.
The commission had advised an hourly rate of £3.60 for workers aged over 20, to commence in April 1999, with an uprating to £3.70 from June 2000; and £3.20 for 18-20 year-olds, again starting in April 1999 and being increased to £3.30 in June 2000. Workers aged under 18 were to be exempted. The government announced last week that the £3.60 rate will be applied at the age of 21, with no commitment to an uprating in 2000. The rate for 18-21 year-olds has been reduced to £3, with an increase to £3.20 in June 2000.
In a letter to Professor George Bain, the head of the commission, Tony Blair explained that the government wanted “to minimise the risk that the recommended £3.20 an hour development rate for younger workers could result in job losses at this critical point in the economic cycle”. Embarrassingly for the Labour leader, a study of the experience in 17 countries with existing minimum wage legislation, published this week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, indicates that “the negative employment effects for young adults are generally close to, or insignificantly different from, zero”.
Earlier leaks to the press had stressed the worries of chancellor Gordon Brown that the commission’s proposed minimum wage rates would discourage employers from taking on long-term unemployed 18-24 year-olds under the euphemistically named ‘New Deal’. One of the ‘options’ is for six months’ work at ‘the rate for the job’ with the employer receiving a £60 per week subsidy from public funds.
The Low Pay Commission report had been unanimously approved only after the three trade union commission members had won the recommendation for the June 2000 uprating. The government’s dilution of the proposals, which had been welcomed by most business leaders, is a humiliation for its allies in the union bureaucracy. John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB union, called the decision “a slap in the face” for young workers, whilst Bill Morris, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union, branded the government announcement as “an endorsement of workplace poverty and a green light to the bad employer”. He added: “The commission’s plan for a lower youth rate will create second class citizens at work, and any delayed implementation for the miserable £3.20 rate merely adds insult to workplace poverty.”
Earlier, Trades Union Congress general secretary John Monks, addressing the conference of the British Chambers of Commerce, had warned of the implications for “trade union politics” of any government dilution of the commission recommendations. Explaining that the TUC was “bound into the Low Pay Commission report”, Monks warned that “if the government moves away from that, then we will jump free of our commitment too.” The strains upon Monks’s version of trade union politics - ie, that of naked class collaboration or, as he prefers to call it, social partnership - were further evidenced by the TUC’s publication on June 18 of figures showing yet another drop in union membership. A 1.6% decrease in the last year, to 6.6 million, was a continuation of a relentless decline since union membership peaked at 12 million in 1979.
A vacuum is opening up on the left of trade union politics, and it is this that is the source of Monks’s fears. Already, the Socialist Workers Party has offered its cadres as union recruiting sergeants, with its launch of the ‘Union Rights Now’ campaign, which has hosted official TUC speakers on its platforms. Meanwhile, the United Campaign to Repeal the Anti-Trade Union Laws, sponsored by Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, has secured the affiliation of nine unions at national level, and 150 other union bodies, and is aiming to capture a ‘head of steam’ through its attempt to win TUC support for a massive national demonstration on May 15 1999.
These developments offer opportunities for communists to fight within the new formations for the politics that is really required: that of building a revolutionary rank and file movement, along the lines of the National Minority Movement of the 1920s, and crucially reforging the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Derek Hunter