12.09.2013
The problem is Labour
PCS militant Dave Vincent reports on the unions stalled national campaign in defence of terms and conditions
Members of the Public and Commercial Services union have so far taken about two and a half days of strike action in the campaign to defend their terms and conditions against government attacks. There has been a national, all-department day of action, plus three half-days involving two or more related departments taking coordinated action (one department in the morning, another in the afternoon) to cause maximum disruption. Members are now urged to ‘work to rule’ (no overtime, only normal hours of working, non-cooperation with new projects, etc).
There has been a national consultation, due to end in mid-September, with branches encouraged to book a national executive speaker, following which the October NEC will decide the next steps to be taken. PCS publications are relentlessly upbeat, assuming (hoping?) members will be up for further action. Paid, selective action in targeted areas, supported by a voluntary levy of members - something long advocated by the Independent Left faction at successive PCS conferences (but always voted down after NEC opposition) - is now included in the possible tactics being advocated in consultation with branches.
Will low-paid members - many of whom having suffered a two-year pay freeze - be keen to pay the levy? It will be quite a task for workplace representatives to collect this money from their members and if some refuse to pay that will be demoralising for reps. It will be the national disputes committee, not the levy-paying members, that decides who takes that action and for how long.
A cynic may conclude the NEC will have it both ways - if too little is collected we cannot mount targeted action and the Independent Left will have been proven wrong; meanwhile the executive will be seen to be giving it a try and seriously attempting to win the dispute. And if branches reject this option the NEC can blame them (fair enough). No prizes for guessing the outcome of the next PCS national conference debate if this tactic is raised again by the IL.
The PCS slogan has been: “They won’t talk, so we must act”. What next? - ‘They still won’t talk, so we must continue to act’? Hardly inspiring, is it? The huge implication is that PCS is ready to compromise on a range of issues - if only the government will agree to negotiate. But it will not and shows no sign of doing so any time soon. PCS has 260,000 members now, down from a high of 320,000 due to all the job cuts. But there are also 100,000 non-members, most of whom are not exactly queuing up to join the union, and they are undermining our action. There are also large numbers of fixed-term-contract and agency staff who will not dare to strike (agency workers cannot do so anyway, as they work for a private employer).
As I said at conference last May, the NEC will not call the kind of action that would actually get the government into negotiations because the members are not prepared to take it (an all-out strike for at least five days, if not indefinite action) and what the NEC has called so far (2.5 days over three months) - what members are prepared to take - is clearly not succeeding either. General secretary Mark Serwotka has moved from arguing in 2011, in the run-up to the November 30 mass pensions strike, that PCS cannot win on its own to claiming in 2013 that PCS can go it alone (rather than it has to, as no-one else is doing anything). But to win what? A few concessions on our terms and conditions of service? Mark is arguing for an escalation of industrial action, with no promise of any other union fighting alongside us. If the results of the consultation show there is little mood for escalation, will we be told this?
I have to say that, although I have had very little feedback or apparent enthusiasm from my members, each time they have been asked to strike they have consistently supported the action called. Members have given the NEC the benefit of the doubt so far. But they have seen hardly any media coverage, little disruption as a result of walking out, and no other unions rushing to come on board. Oh, yes - the National Union of Teachers had a one-day strike in the north-west on March 27. Big deal. The NUT may now call a one-day national strike in December and the Communication Workers Union will set a date for action against privatisation. Is that it? Hardly November 30 2011, is it?
Many activists I know think members will need a lot more convincing that any further action is going to succeed. We have proved to the government we have been prepared to strike in defence of our terms and conditions. I feel we should now pause and wait until circumstances are more in our favour instead of a PCS-alone fight to (our) death with this government. And, now there is constant talk of an economic recovery, workers will think we are over the worst and things will get better. It will have to be demonstrated to them that this is not the case before they will act.
To those union activists who will not call action under Tory rule because it will ‘harm Labour’s electoral prospects’ - but who will also not call action under a Labour government because it will ‘help the Tories get back in’ - I say, why should anyone join such a toytown trade union? Instead why not just join the Labour Party if that is what we must look to for change?
The Socialist Workers Party argues that this government is weak. It is clear to me that it is the Labour Party and affiliated unions that are weak.
Union link
That brings me to Labour itself. Well, well, well, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey’s campaign to get his members to join the Labour Party to ‘pull it left’ (hasn’t that dead horse been flogged enough?) didn’t get very far, did it? As soon as the tactic appeared to be working (judged by the selection of more union-friendly candidates), the right, in total control of the party, suspended the Falkirk Constituency Labour Party amidst accusations of vote-rigging. McCluskey asserted that the union had acted within Labour rules, the police decided no law had been broken, yet still the Falkirk branch remains suspended. There are calls for all 41 constituencies targeted by Unite to be similarly investigated.
Then there is the question of the Labour-union financial link. Blair and the Labour right wanted to remove this link in favour of donations from big business until the ‘cash for honours’ scandal killed that off. But now Ed Miliband, who only won the Labour leadership by virtue of trade union votes, now wishes to move away from reliance on the unions and towards state funding of political parties. Those who have long argued that affiliated trade unions funding the Labour Party represents ‘a link with the organised working class’, and that is why we have to support Labour, have some explaining to do on why they are against opting in.
It is a fact that fewer trade union members than ever see Labour as their party. It is equally a fact that, mirroring the anti-democratic practices of Labour itself, affiliated trade unions deny their members a conference debate (or all-members ballot) on whether the funding should be drastically reduced or the link actually broken - or whether other candidates to the left of Labour should be supported. Labour must be supported, whether a majority of union members like it or not - they are not to be given any say in the matter.
The Labour-union link does not ensure the party represents (much less takes any mandate from) the ‘organised working class’. The link represents solely the union tops helping full-time careerists get elected as Labour MPs, or aspirations for their own knighthoods or lordships for ‘services rendered’ to the Labour Party (by delivering the votes of their members instead of fighting for their pay, pensions and jobs and against privatisation).
How else to explain how united action over pensions (argued for by PCS for two years previously), that saw 2.4 million union members come out on November 30 2011, was so quickly sold out by the Labour-affiliated unions within days instead of going on to call out four million workers? The biggest strike since 1926 was killed off rather than escalated. And yet, as a result of 30/11, the trade unions involved saw their biggest recruitment surge in years. But, following the sell-out, union membership is on the way down again, with PCS and Unite showing the biggest rate of decline (over 6%). I think a fighting union like PCS is also seeing a drop in membership because of disillusionment that PCS on its own is going nowhere, yet it keeps calling for more action.
The link between the trade unions and Labour Party has kept the unions servile rather than forced Labour to represent the interests of unionised workers. We have the bizarre spectacle of some on the left clamouring for that link to be retained, even when union and Labour leaders suggest it be broken! The CPGB advocates maximum democracy - but is silent about union members having a vote on whether to keep handing money over to Labour for nothing, or even on whether a union should fund other candidates who will follow that union’s main policies.
The Labour Party is ‘our party’? Really? Lenin’s summation of Labour (look at who controls it, not who is in it) is still bang on in 2013. Those advocating retaining the link should tell me where their mandate has come from for that line? In a union, are you? Debated the matter with your branch members, have you?
Those activists in PCS who are members of the Labour Party never argue now that PCS should affiliate to the Labour Party - nor do they advocate we should vote Labour and explain how that will make our members better off. They keep their heads down.
Why do people stay in this abysmal Labour Party that has promised to keep the Tory cuts for at least one year after a general election? That is hinting it will support the cuts to welfare benefits? Yet Labour-affiliated unions are now likely to argue even more desperately that their members must take no industrial action before 2015 for fear of ‘proving’ Cameron’s assertion that Miliband is a paid puppet of ‘mindless militants’.
Early days yet for Left Unity, but the Socialist Platform published in the Weekly Worker is 100 times better than the dire reformism offered by the Labour Party. So here’s a thought: why don’t those advocating a Labour-union link argue for a union-Left Unity link instead?
If McCluskey actually used Unite’s millions to fund Left Unity, what excuse would the Labour-union linkers have to continue to urge a vote for Labour, ‘no matter how bad’? Why stay in a party that does not want you, has no genuine internal democracy, is hostile to the left, allows you no part in establishing party policy and forces you to make excuses all the time?
A party like Left Unity, if the Socialist Platform were adopted, would not be a Labour Party mark two. Even if it was, I would rather be in such a ‘Labour Party mark two’ - with MPs on a workers’ wage, recallable and with real socialists in it, that is genuinely democratic, pro-union, anti-cuts and anti-war - than continue to push the constitutionalist, royalist Labour Party mark one that encourages unions to sell out their members for patronage and a seat in the House of Lords.
Protest
I, along with thousands of others, am building support amongst union members for the September 29 demonstration at the Tory conference in Manchester. Angry at the attacks on public-sector workers and their services and at the lack of support from the Labour Party, those thousands are not going to turn up just to be told by union tops we must vote Labour in 2015. We will be asking such quislings to name the day for united action to bring this government down and warn Labour we will fight against their cuts too.
It is a shame the TUC has made defence of the NHS the focal point (when the unions organising in that industry have called no industrial action in defence of the NHS, and Unison is said to wish to consider each proposal for privatisation ‘on its merits’!). It should now be made clear that this protest is about opposition to all the cuts and privatisations, and for the defence of all our public services and the welfare state.
Thirty-five thousand attended the 2011 lobby of the Tory conference and estimates for 2013 range from 40,000 to 100,000. We shall see.