Letters
New unionism
The Independent Workers Union (IWGB), in our activities organising mostly migrant cleaning workers, has gained wide recognition and respect. Our activity has raised important questions regarding present-day trade unionism. We welcome a serious debate on these issues.
However, the article by Max Watson posted on his blog, ‘IWGB: two small unions?’, cannot go unanswered (http://maxwatsonunison.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/iwgb-two-small-unions.html). It is not that Watson articulates a view better than others or he is an important person due to his post on the Unison national executive. We are responding because Watson has maligned the struggle of cleaners.
It is a lie that IWGB has a strategy “focused on recruiting members of other unions” or of “poaching”; that IWGB accused Max Watson and the London Metropolitan University Branch of Unison of racism; that IWGB “attacked” Max Watson at the same time he was under attack by his employer, the government and officialdom.
Buried within Watson’s article is the more significant question of forming new unions. The IWGB is criticised for not being affiliated to the TUC, that our “view is basically: Unison is a Labour-affiliated, sell-out union full of rightwing officials, so there is no way we should join them”. Facts show otherwise: for example, Alberto Durango, IWGB organiser, was until his victimisation also a Unison shop steward in the NHS. This is but one example.
For Watson the current organisational form of the unions is fixed rigid. But the development of our movement did not begin or end with the forming of the TUC in 1867. Our own time has some similarity to conditions which gave rise to the ‘new unionism’ before the upsurge of 1888-1914. The ‘old unions’ were elitist - migrant, unskilled and women workers were neglected. The workers’ desire for change gave birth to new unions - the General Railway Workers’ Union, Brickmakers and General Labourers, the Dockers Union, to name but a few.
The view of the old union leaders was the same as that of Watson: hostility. TUC leader Henry Broadhurst wanted to “hound these creatures from our midst”. Many who pioneered or were influenced by new unionism played a role in building the shop-stewards movements from 1915-26, taking action within and independent of the established unions. By taking a tunnel-vision view of history, Watson and co-thinkers view activity within established unions as the only historically acceptable option.
It was certainly true in the post-war period, when our union movement expanded to cover 55% of the workforce by 1980, that there was little scope or justification for creating new unions. But 33 years later the situation is different - the density of union membership fell to 26% by 2011. Amidst the deepening crisis of capitalism key unions have opted for a siege mentality of holding on to where they are already. This mentality has not halted the membership decline. Today union organisation hardly exists in the hotel, restaurant, fast-food, leisure and service sector. At a time when 47% of union members are in professional occupations the similarity to before new unionism is obvious.
There is an urgent need to organise the workers, neglected by the old guard of the movement. That does not mean abandoning all existing unions, but it does mean there is scope for new unions again. This possibility can be seen with the North Sea oil workers. After the Piper Alpha disaster the workers, frustrated with the failures of the established unions, formed the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC). In 1991 they established themselves as an independent union and today they continue as OILC, Offshore Energy branch of the RMT.
In the majority of workplaces IWGB organise there are no other unions: in most of them sub-contracted cleaners are not organised by unions representing ‘in-house’ workers - an example is the Barbican, where we have fraternal relations with the GMB.
Instead of solidarity Watson engages in slanders. To strengthen his disagreement over the events at the University of London he has fabricated a story of very minor events at London Metropolitan University. His disagreements arise from the presence of cleaners at London Met who are IWGB members. In February 2012 the cleaners, employed by Dynamiq, protested - in response the workforce was locked out and told they would be made redundant. They forced Dynamiq to agree they would stay together in alternative jobs, be put on the London Living Wage and relocated on TUPE ‘protected employment’ conditions. In the end all the workers were transferred to London Met, where Dynamiq had a contract.
Watson claims this was “behind our backs, so in effect in collusion with the employer”. Is he seriously saying that workers, who had never even heard of Max Watson and were not in Unison, should have asked his permission to save their own jobs? Is he saying forcing an employer who wants to sack everyone to find them jobs with a pay rise is class-collaboration?
At London Met the other cleaners were impressed by the new workers’ accounts. But there was no decision by IWGB to go on a “permanent recruitment drive”. Our union did later agree to work with Watson organising cleaners. At a meeting of all cleaners, Alberto Durango emphasised there was already a union established and they should be part of it - Unison! A meeting of cleaners was held which elected reps, regardless of their union membership. An IWGB activist was one of them - she is a political refugee with a respected history of activity in Colombia.
It is bizarre indeed that Watson should approvingly cite some anarchists associated with the Industrial Workers of the World to attack us. During a brief period we joined the IWW. The people Watson cites were engaged in constant attacks on us for, amongst other things, engaging in legal strike action, and “getting into bed with Labour MPs”, meaning our friendship with John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn.
From his high office Watson also attacks the John Lewis cleaners’ struggle. In order to justify branding their achievements as “hyper-bollocks” he simply lies about their campaign. The cleaners of John Lewis in Oxford Street are 100% migrant workers, who from December 2011 until August 2012 struggled with the employers to stop compulsory redundancies of a third of the staff and cuts in their hours. They added to their campaign the demand for the London Living Wage.
Without a penny in strike pay, the cleaners took two days of strike action in August 2012 and announced a third. The strikes were accompanied by protests and direct action. The employers agreed to a settlement of no job losses, no cuts in hours, reinstatement of two workers, re-organisation of excessive shifts and a 9% pay increase. This was followed by the same pay rise for hundreds of cleaners in John Lewis across stores in London. At this time there were mass job cuts and austerity measures across the country. In this context we were right to state the cleaners’ “achievements are not minor - they are almost unheard of in the current period of austerity”.
Watson belittles the statement as “laughable” and, even worse, condemns the cleaners for ‘giving in’, when “others had been winning the Living Wage elsewhere”. By any decent standards Watson’s article is contemptible and his views should be treated as such.
Our movement is at a crossroads. We need a new unionism for the 21st century and the seeds are germinating in the struggles of today. We are part of this process and we urge genuine trade unionists to support and assist the Independent Workers Union.
New unionism
New unionism
Weird science
In response to Simon Wells, I find very little science at all in his contribution (Letters, October 17). I did not say ‘climate science’ is part of the conspiracy against the British mining industry. This ‘climate science’ is on a worldwide scale totally ignored in terms of most of the huge coal-producing countries anyway. What I am saying is that the plan to destroy coal mining in Britain was a conscious political action to, first, defeat the National Union of Mineworkers as a militant vanguard of the manufacturing proletariat, which then, when that failed, went up a key to one of total extermination of the industry as a whole.
This is hardly a secret or some crank conspiracy theory, as - from Ridley in 1979 advocating nuclear power to replace the Bolshie miners, through Thatcher’s plan to take on and defeat the NUM as a prelude to her free-market programme, through to Major’s rigged energy market and privatisations - they have all expressed this quite openly. We should compare the apparent rationale for Thatcher’s closure programme - that the coal industry was ‘unprofitable’ and had to brought into line - with the recent decision to guarantee a subsidy of £90 per gigawatt hour, paid for out of taxes and levies, to the private nuclear power stations. Compared to the £50 GWh paid on average to current non-nuclear generators, which already includes a 40% fossil fuel levy on coal generation. Energy policy in Britain has never been about a ‘free market’ or economics, but is almost entirely based upon political/class considerations, as well as the chance to write your own cheque in terms of uncontrolled profits.
I am putting forward two overlapping though different things. Firstly, climate change is a natural process which predates us by billions of years. The forces involved are constantly recurring with or without us, though obviously we inhabit the planet in our billions and we make a marginal contribution to this process too. Secondly, the stoking up of climate change panic and new ‘green programmes’ are largely to promote new industrial developments in new markets, scrapping old structures and opening up vast new areas of profits and speculation. The ‘green’ arguments being used by the government to kill coal stone dead in Britain and make sure it never rises again are indeed based upon class bias and the need for an energy structure which cannot be dominated by militant mass unions and labour-intensive industry. To that extent the climate debate is used here as part of their political class struggle. As a world impact it scarcely registers.
So let us be quite clear. I didn’t say, “the whole of climate science should be junked”, although it is deeply flawed and partisan. That it is applied in a partisan fashion here can be seen in the double standards used in the fracking debate. Coal is burdened with a fossil fuel tax which ensures industrial users and energy producers of coal are charged a 50% excess levy because fossil fuel is polluting. Shale fracking systems are to be given a 40% tax discount and no additional fossil fuel tax, even though the methane produced through the process is two thirds more polluting than CO2.
Simon doesn’t listen - another fact which inhibits his ability to utilise the science he hails. Coal production does not generate CO2 but coal combustion does. We have been developing clean coal plants which minimise CO2 emissions to the point of virtually eliminating them since the late 1970s and reached the point last year, with the Don Valley power project, where coal and gas could generate power without any CO2 emissions at all and a 90% reduction in all other emissions. The government pulled the plug on it, as Thatcher did with Bretby and Grimethorpe in the 1980s and 90s. Coal power does not equal CO2 emissions if you don’t want it to, so we have got a safe and sure way of burning coal on a mass scale.
But then we come to the most scientific part of Simon’s response to my letter. Until we find such a method for burning coal (which, as said, we have found, though not used), “we should keep most of it in the ground”. Now ask yourself if this is naive, sentimental wishful thinking or science? I’ll say this again. Coal production doubled in the last 20 years. It will despite the recession double again in the next 10 - 50% of the world’s power is produced by coal. Coal reserves far outstrip oil, uranium or gas reserves, which will all dry up long before coal does. Japan is going over to coal generation to replace nuclear. Germany has abandoned nuclear and is building 23 new coal power stations this year. India has 455 new coal stations planned this year and China 363.
Science needs to take account of facts, not day dreams. The fact is coal is not being left in the ground and will not be left in the ground, with the possible exception of Britain, which, for reasons stated earlier, has a different agenda and one only loosely related to Simon’s. If coal is going to be used, and it will, then the imperative is not to sit like Canute calling on the tide to stay back, but to produce clean coal technologies to allow it to be burned as safely and environmentally cleanly as possible.
Science is not neutral. It is political and ideological. The reports which are being marshalled are not some objective academic exercise, but funded and publicised to a particular agenda of capitalism, mainly in the west. How long have we known scientifically how to feed the world, ensure enough water, clothe and house the world’s population, and stop the global decimation of the forests? We have known this for a century and a field full of reports and commissions would demonstrate that. But why hasn’t it been acted upon in the haste and passion of ‘climate change’? Politics, my dear Simon, politics.
I can’t find much disagreement with Bill Sacks (Letters, October 17), except to say again the intention is not simply to prevent the loss of coal miners’ jobs. The utility of clean coal power plants, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and, more importantly, the fluid bed, would reduce the demand for coal and reduce the number of miners. It would also give us the chance to organise and demand safe working conditions, shorter hours, union rights, etc.
Weird science
Weird science
No merger
Andrew Northall appears to doubt the sincerity of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s stance (Letters, October 17). Our latest executive committee minutes (available to read on the web) has one EC member commenting that the party’s letter seems to give the impression that a merger of the two organisations is being proposed. He, therefore, proposed a resolution that the EC make it clear that there will be no merger between the two organisations.
No seconder was found and it was argued that we need a meeting to discuss the similarities and differences between our and their positions and that the discussion should be open-minded.
A sign, I suggest, of the integrity of the SPGB, unlike the sectarian, dismissive tone reflected by Northall’s portrayal of some of the Socialist Platform signatories as “flotsam and jetsam” and with their “dubious lineage and promiscuous political CVs”. Perhaps he may be proved correct in the end in his description, but only by an honest exchange of views and opinions can that be determined, which is the purpose of our own overtures.
No merger
No merger
No reforms
I see Andrew Northall has retained enough of the understanding he had while he was in the Socialist Party to realise that we would not agree with the clause in the Socialist Platform that suggested that a ‘state’ might continue in socialism. This was precisely one of our disagreements with it, as set out in an article from October’s Socialist Standard:
“There are, of course, differences. For instance, clause 2 could imply that a ‘state’ will continue to exist in socialism. Clause 3 does not say explicitly that socialism has to involve the complete ending of production for the market. Clause 5 ends with a peculiar formulation on Europe (even though this is an advance on the No2EU embraced by most of the left). Clause 8 is the real stumbling block from our point of view, as it opens the way for the party to campaign for reforms.”
No reforms
No reforms
Camp filth
Peter McLaren says: “Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is disgusted at Conservative proposals to force those unemployed for more than two years to work, train or attend their job centre every single day in order to qualify for any state benefits” (Letters, October 3).
If Tusc are that disgusted, perhaps a first step might be to call on their fellow trade union members in the department for work and pensions to, you know, show some elementary solidarity and cease victimising some of the most vulnerable people in society. The sanctioning of claimants for the most trivial and illogical reasons has increased dramatically, leaving many claimants totally without money.
McLaren fails to mention the endless attacks on the sick, but here the situation is similar. We have trade union members in ATOS, mainly represented by the PCS, whose only role is to force the sick off benefits and consign them to long-term penury.
Until Tusc begin to address some of the filth in their own camp, forgive me for seeing them as no more than a Trojan horse within the working class who represent the interests of relatively better-off (unionised) sections of the class.
Camp filth
Camp filth
Ultravox
Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists supports the view that “The Labour Party should only consider forming a government when it has the active support of a clear majority of the population and has a realistic prospect of implementing a full socialist programme” (‘Safe for capitalism’, September 26).
The idea that Labour should only form a government on the basis of the maximum programme of socialism is ultra-leftism, pure and simple. This form of ultra-left thinking ignores the fact the working class can benefit from a government based on carrying out minimum demands. To demand that a reformist party should only form a government on the basis of the full socialist programme is absurd. Such an argument rejects reforms while upholding only the maximum programme, like the old Healyites used to do.
Is it the aim of Labour Party Marxists to turn the Labour Party into an ultra-left movement?
Ultravox
Ultravox
Well done
After reading comrade Stan Keable’s article (‘Inching to the left’, October 17), I suddenly understood the CPGB line on Left Unity and would like to congratulate you, for the following reasons:
1. By dividing the votes for the Socialist Platform (with which, however, you basically agree) you will help the more rightwing Left Party Platform to win a majority at the November founding conference;
2. With the Left Party Platform leading the LU party into the next general election, this party might take more votes from Labour than one led by the SP would have done;
3. With your help to the LP Platform, the Labour Party is likely to lose the general election; and
4. CPGB action within a Labour Party in opposition is likely to develop more efficiently than in a Labour Party in government.
Congratulations, comrades!
Well done
Well done
Pressing matter
In 1842 Marx wrote a series of articles for Rheinische Zeitung in which he passionately argued for full press freedom: “Freedom of the press, too, has its beauty which one must have loved to be able to defend it. I feel that its existence is essential, that it is something which I need, without which my nature can have no full, satisfied, complete existence. What an illogical paradox to regard censorship as a basis for improving our press! ... You cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences. You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns! The free press is the ubiquitous, vigilant eye of a people’s soul, the embodiment of a people’s faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealises their crude material form.”
Marx’s defence of the freedom of the press is an eloquent companion piece to the original bourgeois liberal statement of John Milton in his 1644 tract, Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, which opposed the 1643 Licensing Order. Milton argued that an individual must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in “a free and open encounter”, so that “truth will prevail”. Milton passionately wrote: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties”. He believed: “If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must [also] regulate all recreations and pastimes” and that licensing is “a dishonour and derogation to the author to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning”.
Freedom of the press was achieved in England in 1695 when the Licensing Act was not renewed by the House of Commons. This was companion ‘legislation’ to the 1688 Bill of Rights and the bourgeois liberal Glorious Revolution.
The critical lines in the Leveson report are probably the following, where a newspaper/magazine, as a “subscriber to a recognised regulatory body ... provides for the claimant to use a fair, fast and inexpensive arbitration service ... claims for costs incurred by a claimant who could have used the arbitration service. On the issue of costs, it should equally be open to a claimant to rely on failure by a newspaper to subscribe to the regulator, thereby depriving him or her of access to a fair, fast and inexpensive arbitration service”.
Is this not the type of ‘licensing’ that Milton and Marx argued passionately against? Would the Socialist Standard and Weekly Worker have to ‘subscribe’ to the “recognised regulatory board”? It is acknowledged that Tories who oppose Leveson and any diminution of the freedom of the press are defending the bourgeois rights and liberties of capitalist media owners (owners of means of production) - such as for Murdoch to own as many newspapers as he can - and exercise editorial control in support of a capitalist agenda and oppose the interests of the working class.
The independence of the Socialist Standard and the Weekly Worker in bourgeois capitalist society is ‘protected’ by the notion of freedom of the press established by the non-renewal of the Licensing Act in 1695 and the abolition of stamp duty tax on newspapers in 1855.
As Marxists, we should not support any statutory regulation on the freedom of the press in bourgeois capitalist society.
Pressing matter
Pressing matter
Escortise
It’s October, so it must be that time of year when I do my annual analysis of the adult workers index - the total number of female escorts advertising on Adult Work, the UK’s premier website for putting escorts in touch with potential clients. The number of escorts with profiles on Adult Work has increased by 25% from just over 18,000 a year ago to more than 23,000 today.
There are four things to note. First, there has been a big increase in adverts from women who are either married or in a relationship. These women are probably trying to supplement their family income through the tax-free income available from escorting.
Second, there has been a huge increase in adverts from single women aged 18-30 working from home. These women are probably unable to get a job or are unwilling to work for the minimum wage in zero-hours contract jobs.
Third, there has also been a significant decrease in the average hourly rate charged by escorts from £100 an hour a year ago to £80 an hour today. There has also been an increase in women offering discounts and ‘special offers’.
Fourth, this 25% increase in the adult work index clearly shows that, in spite of talk about the UK economy ‘turning the corner’, the reality for many women is very different. Hence the increase in women escorting.
Escortise
Escortise