unity Communists at the TUC
Wednesday 16 September 2009
Repeal anti-union laws
No2EU by Brian Denny
by Carolyn Jones We have discussed the inherent failure of the capitalist economic system and how unions should respond to the impact of the inevitable cyclical recession on jobs and services. To d a y’s debate turns to the key issues of employment rights and trade union freedoms. Will the debate and strategy that follows, be robust enough to defend workers? Issues include improving and extending redundancy payments and the national minimum wage; compensation for forced shorttime working; calls for the implementation of the agency workers directive and amending our laws to protect workers in Britain from the impact of dumping posted workers onto our unregulated labour market. All good stuff. Similarly, ending bogus self-employment and the practice of blacklisting as well as improving the resources and powers given to enforcement agencies are all demands to be supported. So why is there such a sense of deflation? The answer lies in both the
tone and substance. Against the backdrop of workers forging ahead with unofficial strikes, spontaneous occupations and unlawful solidarity action, the motions sound timid – more reminiscent of Oliver Twist’s ‘Please Sir, can I have some more?’ than of Marx’s ‘Workers of the World Unite’ . Such timidity reflects a defeatist acceptance that the present economic and political system is as good as it gets. The current economic crisis and political vacuum – with the proximity of a general election – present ideal opportunities to challenge the system. Basing our analysis on a simple reading of the motions is too pessimistic. Workers are under attack and, at the minimum, need their unions to fight for their jobs or decent redundancy pay. There is the beginnings of a wider rejection of anti-union laws. While one motion even goes as far as ‘congratulating’ workers taking direct action such as occupations to save jobs the POA are once again rattling cages by calling for street demonstrations and selective breaking of the anti-trade union
laws. The disputes at Vestas, the power stations (above), Visteon and Linamar show a militancy and creativity that can encourage further resistance. But I can’t help feeling that a pre-election opportunity to improve our framework of employment rights and trade union freedoms is being lost. A leadership with a sense of history and of destiny would take the fact that when last the TUC came to Liverpool in 1906 – it was the year the Trade Disputes Act was introduced after workers won the right to strike and to take solidarity action – and use it to challenge the laws that prevent workers in Britain today from taking industrial action in support of others in struggle or for political aims. The 1848 movement for the People’s Charter was a mass struggle for working class representation and democratic rights led by the trade unions. Thursday’s debates on the contemporary People’s Charter and on improved political representation can return us to something of the spirit of the Chartists of 1848. Carolyn Jones is the Communist Party trade union co-ordinator
The No2EU:Yes to Democracy coalition alerted voters to the dangers of the centralisation of power to EU institutions and served as a wake up call to the labour movement. Uncritical support from union hierarchies for anti-democratic EU treaties and neoliberal EU directives has long been used to promote the EU project. Prior to the euro elections, a deeply unpopular EU was matched by Labour’s decline with the government embroiled in two unpopular wars, corruption scandals and a deepening capitalist crisis. Two events in December 2008 exposed the undemocratic, antiworker direction of the EU to spur an electoral challenge – the Lindsey oil refinery dispute and the decision by an EU summit to ignore the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty and re-run the referendum. It was clear the Labour vote would collapse. In Euro elections up to 60 per cent vote for parties that they would not otherwise do so. Unless something was done, the Lisbon Treaty would be given a free ride and fascists would step in unchallenged to exploit the volatile political mix. Britain would have rejected the Lisbon Treaty if Labour had kept its 2005 manifesto commitment to hold a referendum. French and Dutch voters had already rejected the original constitution and the Irish later rejected the repackaged Lisbon Treaty. continued on back page
unity TUC Communist Party daily
Bus workers angered
by Graham Steve n s o n
A hundred thousand Unite bus workers looked forward to two promises in Labour’s 1997 manifesto that would have restored lost benefits. One was to end the competitive system that has undermined standards by abolishing on-street competition. It took three years to bring a theoretical approach onto the statute book; but the powers needed by local councils were dulled by Blair’s personal intervention. It took another eight years for the Local Transport Act 2008, to finally enable local authorities to reclaim powers to organise local bus transport. We’ve been waiting for a year now, lobbying on what the practical regulations and statutory guidance will say. These are mechanisms that are crucial to the way in which a new system of quality contracts applied to specified single contractors in defined areas, as opposed to the free for all that now applies (outside of London). Currently, it appears that there will be no requirement on companies to specify any minimum employment conditions for new and future employees, nor a specification for minimum pension provision. It is claimed that it would be
contrary to competition rules on procurement directives for an authority to lay down such standards, a contradiction of earlier assurances given at the political level. Even the guidance on labour standards are not forthcoming; although quality service criteria on the cleanliness of buses is! A competitive tendering regime permitting the continuation of a race to the bottom on wages and pensions seems to be planned, albeit with initial protection for transferred staff. A potentially enormous advance is slipping away. Busworkers have been patiently waiting on a review of the regulations that govern local bus drivers’ hours of work – promised in a 1999 White Paper. These were set as far back as 1968, when conducters collected fares not drivers; roads were less congested; breaks were more numerous and canteen facilities better. Ludicrously, it is still perfectly legal to set a 16 hour day for a bus driver. Most unionised drivers have a reasonable control of their working day, but many are still pressured to drive too long without rest. Unite has long sought an 8hour driving day, in a 10-hour duty; more importantly, we do not think that the industry norm (from the regulations) of a spell
of 5 hours 30 minutes (which can be stretched by ruthless schedulers claiming traffic conditions) is reasonable and we want a cut by one hour. A review of the hours’ rules would have given us a chance to make the changes we need to modernise the regulations. The review began at the beginning of the year but the consultation process lingered and the expected parliamentary timetable now does not look flexible enough to enable legislation. TUC delegates will be familiar with the bureaucratic practice of allowing some things to slip out the time-table. Well bus workers are angry that they have been pushed to the bottom of the pile by the government – TWICE. Even the Office of Fair Trading has referred the local bus market to the Competition Commission for further investigation. The OFT says that limited competition in local bus market arises from monopoly. What planet are these people on?! We always said that privatisation would lead to private monopoly but that at least, before, we had public monopoly and the state could ensure public good came from that. Is this the thin end of the wedge to enable a new government to wind the clock back completely? Busworkers aren’t going to take any of this lying down. Already, in FirstGroup around half of the local subsidiary companies employing about 10,000 workers are piling one after the other into a building wave of disputes across Britain. The company had made a national edict that a ZERO% pay pause will apply this year, using the recession as an excuse, despite the company’s profits soaring and dividends rising by 15% every year. Already, Aberdeen, Yorkshire, Manchester and Essex are in dispute, many more will follow. London busworkers are angry
at massive pay drops and are calling for the unique form of tendered commercialisation applying in the capital to end their “race to the bottom”. Fed up with bus companies cutting pay and conditions to win contracts, with them also refusing to talk to Unite about a way forward, London’s bus drivers aim to end the huge disparity in wages, which can vary by as much as £10,000 a year between companies by seeking central pay bargaining mechanism as a means to streamline standards and treat workers fairly. A prospect exists of a London-wide ballot of all of our 28,000 members across all companies in the capital. Going even beyond that, Unite is now looking at the whole problem of low pay and long hours across the entire industry. The legacy of neglect of the two big legal changes that New Labour has failed to deliver could well be that co-ordinated action right across the industry might begin in the next few years. Watch this space! Unite’s national organiser for transport Graham Stevenson writes in his personal capacity
Ruling Class Offensive, The Challenge for the Left and Labour Movement. £2 at party stall, £2.50 inc. p&p from CPB Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR02 1BD www.communist-party.org.uk
TUC Communist Party daily unity
Solidarity Palestine by Pauline Fr a s e r
Events TUC/War on Want Change We Can Believe In – UK Style John Hilary War on Want. 12:45pm Suites 3/4, Jury’s Inn, Liverpool L3 Refreshments Unite Johnnie Don’t Walker Out on Scotland’s Workers: Defending Jobs at Diageo Len McCluskey Unite, Diageo workers; HarryDonaldson GMB, Des Browne MP for Kilmarnock; Jim Murphy, Secretary of State for Scotland. Chair: Lorraine Davidson Times journalist. 12:45pm Room 11c, BT Convention Centre. Refreshments and a dram. CWU Solidarity with Postal Workers – Fighting for public services and jobs Billy Hayes CWU, Dave Ward CWU, Brendan Barber TUC. Chair: Jane Loftus CWU 5.30pm Room 12, BT Convention Centre Refreshments provided PCS The Future of public services after the next election Mark Serwotka PCS, John McDonnell MP and other speakers tbc. Chair: Janice Godrich PCS 5:30pm National Suite, Atlantic Tower, Thistle Hotel, Chapel Street, Liverpool L3 9RE. Refreshments.
Last December the Israelis launched an onslaught of unparalleled ferocity against the people of Gaza, killing 1,450 and injuring 5,000. The illegal blockade, denying food, fuel, medical supplies, and building materials continues. Gaza and the West Bank are occupied territories. Attacking a people under occupation is a war crime. Israel has been condemned at the UN. Despite this, Histadrut, the Israeli union federation, on January 13, 2009, backed the attack on Gaza. Israel has the fourth most powerful armed forces in the world, including a stockpile of
Solidarity Honduras The overthrow of Honduras President Zelaya marks the return of the military to Latin American politics and threatens the democratic transformation that has brought hope to millions of the poorest from Bolivia to Ecuador. Zelaya directly attacked poverty in the poorest and most unequal country in the Americas after Haiti. He raised the minimum wage by 60 per cent, bought low cost oil from Venezuela, secured cheap generic medicines from Cuba and took Honduras into the n i n e-nation Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, ALBA. These actions angered the country’s elite – whose extreme wealth had depended on close links with the USA and the country’s use as a military base for operations elsewhere in Central American under Reagan and Bush.
more than 200 nuclear weapons. Histadrut has turned truth on its head by portraying Israel as the victim and the brutal invasion as a war between equals. The FBU motion condemns Histadrut’s statement and instructs the General Council to carry out a review of the TUC’s relations with Histadrut. The USA finances the Israeli military to the tune of $60mn a week while pumping $400bn a year into the Israeli economy. Our government has so far failed to condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza. Motion 76 calls on the British government to do so, to end all arms trading with Israel and to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which allows for the influx of Israeli agricultural produce into European supermarkets. Motion 76 calls on the British government to ban all imports of
goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and also calls for trade unionists and consumers to boycott such goods. It seeks to encourage campaigns of disinvestment from companies associated with the occupation. Vote for Motion 76 unamended and make sure your union has no investments which are supporting the occupation, the building of the apartheid wall and the illegal settlements, and the whole apparatus of repression against the Palestinians. Affiliate to Palestine Solidarity Campaign. There are the usual voices urging ‘caution’, or attempting to misrepresent the situation. In solidarity with Palestine, stand firm. Pauline Fraser is a member of the Communist Party executive committee
US involvement in the coup is difficult to quantify. It is unlikely that President Obama had direct knowledge. On the other hand, there can be little doubt that there was knowledge on the ground and that those involved would have been party to US plans for covert action drawn up under Bush. The National Endowment for Democracy had been bankrolling the ‘Democratic Civil Union of Honduras’ with $50 million a year, the coup generals are US military graduates and the plane carrying the kidnapped President was refuelled at the US military base of Soto Cano. Most Latin American countries broke off diplomatic relations. The OAS called for trade sanctions. All member states of the Non-Aligned Movement have demanded action. The US eventually condemned the coup but did not break off diplomatic relations and continued to supply its $30m aid until early September. It has not responded to OAS
demands for trade sanctions – 70 per cent of Honduran trade is with the US. Meanwhile Micheletti’s military regime has arrested union leaders during the August general strike and uses the army to disperse the continuing mass demonstrations. Amnesty International last month detailed the use of torture and deaths in custody. Key demands are for the British government to impose trade sanctions and to use its influence with the US government to do the same. No recognition must be given to the Micheletti regime’s pretence of holding elections. Support is needed for the democratic movement in Honduras and to its unions. Until the scope of the United States military and intelligence establishment to continue programmes of covert subversion is challenged, democratic progress is at risk everywhere in Latin America.
unity TUC Communist Party daily No2EU: reflections on the campaign by Brian Denny and Phil Katz ava i l a ble free at the RMT stall continued from front page To project an alternative, an electoral alliance was fashioned of pro- w o r ker political forces including the RMT, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Alliance of Green Socialism. For the first time in a century, a trade union entered the electoral arena aside from the Labour Party, which the unions had formed to represent the political interest of workers. It was clear that defence of workers rights, progressive legislation and institutions and Britain’s right to decide its own destiny, free of EU interference, was the key issue before the labour movement. As Bob Crow said: “if we aimed for sovereignty in our own unions, taking responsibility for our own rulebooks and asserting our freedom of action free from state interference in such things as union elections and collective bargaining, it was no great leap should we want to protect these principles when applied to the state of Britain as a whole”. Successive RMT AGMs had committed the union to campaigning against the ‘liberalisation’ of European rail networks carried out under the EU directive 91/440 that demands the splitting of rail operations from infrastructure and fragments networks to allow the development of private rail monopolies. This failed and expensive privatisation model is now being rolled out across Europe, despite research which shows that privatisation produces services that are less efficient and with an inferior record of health and safety. No2EU
warned that the same failed approach threatened our public services including the NHS. Four judgments by the European Court of Justice – Laval, Viking, Ruffert and Luxembourg give new powers to employers to bring in contract labour. The employers exploit EU rules on “free movement” to drive down wages and exclude organise labour in order to maintain their profits. No2EU was an attempt to provide an EU-critical left alternative to the far-right fascist BNP and the unfettered-freemarket policies of UKIP. The BNP won two seats after a complete collapse of Labour’s vote despite having a lower vote in both the North West and Yorkshire than in 2004, indeed their total vote was down. No2EU: Yes to Democracy campaigns showed the need for a socialist, EU-critical, working class political voice. It created unity within the labour movement on an issue that has not been seriously discussed for over twenty years. It deepened a process of political education that will grow stronger. It helped to alert working people to the growing dangers posed by antidemocratic EU institutions and structures dominated by corporate power. It gave voice to those who previously simply did not have one. The trade unions and political forces in the labour movement now have the political space to put forward a clear EU-critical agenda and promote the principle of popular sovereignty and put it into practice.
OPINION Campaign for decent jobs by Joanne Steve n s o n Unions need to be more imaginative in dealing with employment. Where is the sense that there is an understanding of what actually faces ordinary people in the recession? Too much of the TUC order paper creates the a g e-old sense of competitive unionism. How are unions relevant to the young unemployed? The neglect of the concerns of young people maybe explains why so few are organised? Most youth jobs are hardly above welfare benefits. The reality for most young people is that it is the option of workfare, or a McJob. This is the ‘choice’ for most young people, women, migrants, and ethnic minorities. Capitalism deals with crisis by shifting much of the workforce into this kind of work. Premium rates of pay, sickness, holiday, redundancy and disciplinary rights are becoming sub-standard. This has been one stimulus for recent tide of strike activity, notably in the private sector. Wider sections of the organised workforce are beginning to grasp what it is like to work yet live on the edge. Unions need to start reconnecting with communities. The mining and mill towns are long gone. Steel city and car city is no more. But Star City is alive and well … and Merry Hill Shopping Centre, Bluewater, Meadowhall, and Westfield! Entire sectors need to be targeted for unionisation. Unions are strong in airports – are they as strong in the massive retail world that’s surrounds them? Unions are strong in container ports – are they rooted in the wharehousing world that surround them? We must make sure we do not endlessly repeat past mistakes. Looking back on the Depression of the 1930s, an observer noted that unions then believed that it was impossible to organise youth and women. Official opinion was that the lack of a tradition “comparable with that prevalent in the mining, railway and cotton industries, is a serious obstacle … Time alone will not overcome this …” Unions have been hiding for 20-odd years. No matter how scary or terrifying it is, unions must start connecting now. It’s the only way they will recruit. It’s the only way to stop the membership decline. Unions face terminal decline unless they begin organising youth. Union leaders need to get out of their suits and into the real world. We need edgy and straight-talking people who will shout from the roof-tops that it ain’t good enough! The first step to making such a massive shift in outlook would to show that unions care about unemployment and crap work. Unions need to establish open and broad-based co-ordinating committees to link union districts, trades councils, community bodies, social and religious organisations, youth workers, and others, to campaign for Decent Work for All. Such a campaign could also link with the Peoples’ Charter. The Young Communists propose that the labour movement lead a March for Decent Jobs; a stream of converging columns across the country, recruiting mainly young people, linking with communities. If unions sponsored something like this, then it might even be the first step for young people to think that someone, somewhere does care. Joanne Stevenson is Young Communist League general secretary