03.06.1999

Unison pulls plug

Tameside careworkers

The council workers’ union Unison has withdrawn strike pay from the Tameside careworkers, who have been fighting for reinstatement since they were sacked whilst on strike against a pay cut.

Just one week before the workers’ application for a judgement of unfair dismissal was to be heard at an industrial tribunal, Unison conducted a ballot on a ‘final’ monetary offer from Tameside Care Group, the ‘arms length’ private company which dismissed them. The company is controlled by the Tameside Labour council.

All 200 workers who had been Unison members at the time of the sacking were included in the secret ballot. The majority of these have, by now, obtained other employment, leaving about 80 still actively pursuing the dispute. The union’s letter, accompanying the ballot paper, cautioned that any settlement achieved in the industrial tribunal might not exceed that on offer from the company. It also made clear that a majority vote for acceptance would mean the ending of strike pay and that the union would not represent any of the workers who wished to pursue their tribunal claims for reinstatement. Despite the clear implication that this decision was about whether the official dispute was to continue, no mass meeting was called to debate the issues. The union’s tactics were designed to undermine the rank-and-file leaders whose work has sustained the strike for so long.

The outcome was that 85 voted to accept the offer - equivalent to the amount of state redundancy entitlement plus 60%, with a token £500 for those workers who would have had no redundancy entitlement due to having less than two years employment. The most active of the strikers - 63 in all - voted against, and of these 20 have signalled their intention to proceed with their tribunal cases, with private representation. This latter decision has infuriated Unison officials, because of the danger that the employer may withdraw the offer. The Tameside branch secretary, Socialist Party member Noel Pine, has suggested the debarment of the 20 ‘refuseniks’ from the strike committee, should the employer indeed withdraw the offer and the strike continue.

This strike, like so many others in recent years, has been characterised by the almost total absence of traditional trade union solidarity. The official picket lines have been ignored by other Unison members. Social workers have continued to refer clients to the scab-run elderly persons homes, not only in breach of solidarity, but despite a whole succession of horror stories, many of them published in the local newspapers, concerning the deteriorated standards of care. Council finance workers have processed payments to the company which sacked 250 of their colleagues, as if nothing had happened. Refuse collectors - once a bastion of muscular trade unionism in the council - have passed through to empty the homes’ bins as if the pickets were so many statues. At no time did the Unison branch attempt to argue for solidarity from these workers, preferring to assume that failure would be the result.

This strike is further evidence of the very sorry state of the trade union movement in Britain. As a corollary of this, the strike also had a feature that has become common to contemporary industrial struggles. It was sustained by a strike support group, drawing in wider layers of working class activists. The Tameside Careworkers Strike Support Group was inaugurated at a 150-strong public meeting (on the same evening as an England World Cup football match), in June 1998. Virtually the whole of the Manchester left were initially involved. One by one they dropped out, as their perspectives for the furtherance of the economic struggle of the working class were confounded.

First to depart (abandoning their several recruits in the process) were the Socialist Workers Party, whose recommended tactic was that of left pressure on the union bureaucracy: “Get Bickerstaffe down here to kick ass” was the SWP mantra. Unison general secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe did eventually, and reluctantly, come to Tameside following an SWP-led resolution at the union’s national conference. However, the only ‘asses’ he kicked were those of ‘outsiders’. “This is a Unison dispute” were his opening words from the platform of the pathetically attended national demonstration in Ashton-under-Lyne last September.

Workers Power initially appeared to have a more effective blueprint. Well written and regular strike bulletins proposed militant anti-scabbing operations. WP led occupations of scab staffing agency offices, in the early days of the strike, which resulted in the temporary withdrawal of two such agencies from scab supply to TCG. These actions were substantially staffed at first - in a powerful challenge to the anti-union laws - by students and unemployed workers. Strikers themselves were slow to become involved, not least due to the advice of comrade Pine - that participation in occupations might lead to their victimisation after a return to work. WP impatience with the conservatism of Unison and many of the strikers, however, led to their own departure not long afterwards.

As the months went by, the main tactic of the strikers became that of pursuing and embarrassing the council leader and his senior associates. In the council elections last month, six strikers, standing as ‘Defend Public Services’ candidates, polled an average 10% after a campaign which took on issues such as the privatisation of council housing and schools, in addition to those directly connected to the strike. A meeting of the support group on June 1, after the withdrawal of Unison backing, resolved to continue to function, with the three aims of supporting the tribunal 20; building a campaign against the housing sell-off; and launching ‘Defend Public Services’ as a permanent organisation. A conference is to be organised on July 10 to inaugurate the latter campaign.

More so than in the Liverpool dockers’ and other recent defeated strikes, there does seem to be a determination from careworker activists to continue with political work beyond the end of the dispute. Whether this mood will outlast the conclusion of the industrial tribunal proceedings remains to be seen.

As always, it remains the role of communists to argue the need for directing the struggle of workers to the issues of democracy and state power, and to the urgent question of the building of a Communist Party.

Donations to the careworkers’ fighting fund are urgently needed and should, henceforth, be sent to: ‘Tameside Strike Support (Hardship) Fund’, c/o 15 Springvale Close, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs. The strike support group continues to meet every Monday, at 7 pm in the Station pub, Warrington Street, Ashton.

John Pearson