Walking through Cambridge today, I spotted the regular Socialist Worker Party stall near the Grafton Centre. The stall had posters of David Cameron with the tagline He must Go (well, its not up to the SWP but the electorate) and a poster with the inevitable cry out to the TUC to call a General Strike.
Leaving aside the fact that to call a strike requires an industrial dispute and a secret ballot of members. Yes, PCS, NUT and others have an existing mandate to strike. But to get the likes of the British Dietician Association and United Shops Distributive and Allied Workers involved would be a different kettle of fish. There would be no point in the TUC calling a general strike if all the affiliates are not taking part.
Is such a call realistic? Would the revolution win out?
For it to work, it has to be one hundred percent legal and without reproach. The slightest mistake in a ballot or to proceed without reference to law, no matter how tempting, will alienate the public, lead to injunctions and employers will be perfectly justifiable to dismiss for breach of contract and harsher rules introduced on calling a strike.
Your standard socialist as you might find in a Trade Council up and down the country has a theory that when taking this course of action, two million workers would walk out, Dave Cameron go "D'oh! Of course, its obvious! I must resign as a prime minister, dissolve parliament, call an election" out of which the Unions channel the spirit of 1973 and win through with a socialist government elected.
The socialists are fond of their history. But no so fond as to leave out the inconvenient bits that disrupts their narrative. The glaring omissions from the average socialist who harkens back to the glory days of 1973 are Wapping and the 1984 Miners Strike. Even Owen Jones missed this in his article for The Independent newspaper when discussing the use of the word socialist as an insult.
History is not on the Unions' side. The 1926 General Strike was a failure and more recently, Wapping and the 1984 Miners Strike have given Employers carte blanche to ride out an industrial dispute. The Government will do no less. They can't afford not to.
Even if by some miracle, the Left achieve their aims and the government falls, the Conservatives will do a re-run of Heath's "Who Runs Britain?". The only two winners out of this scenario will be the Tories, perhaps with an overall majority, or Labour who promises £8 in cuts for every £9 proposed by the coalition government and are certainly in no rush to overturn decades of anti-union laws.
The Unions are no longer in a position to hold a government or a country to ransom. A General Strike will fail and people who lose a days pay will lose it for nothing.
Showing posts with label unite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unite. Show all posts
Saturday, 26 May 2012
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Industrial Disputes - A 21st Century Model
Good News as tanker drivers in the Unite union vote to accept the deal on their dispute over terms and conditions.
In stark contrast to the unyielding and unbending stance of both sides in the public sector pension row, there are lessons to learn from how the tanker drivers approached their dispute and the willingness of the employers to seek a resolution.
The easiest course of action was to call the union's bluff, allow strikes to go ahead and then utilise public anger over queues and petrol shortages to force agreement, imposed or otherwise.
Instead, both sides went down the hardest course of action. To sit together at ACAS and thrash out the issues, to collaboratively cobble together a final deal and persuade the workers to accept it.
Post Wapping and the Miners '84, it is no longer feasible to work through an industrial dispute within the context of a class struggle. More than any anti-trade union law Thatcher introduced, these two events emboldened the employer side making them willing to stare down the unions. This is very clear from Francis Maude's approach towards the pensions dispute and because of this, I cannot see a situation in which a Prime Minister in a position similar to Edward Heath would countenance going to the country over an industrial dispute like he did in 1974.
Instead, these days, industrial disputes are, and should be resolved by negotiation first and working towards the best deal available. This does mean compromise and it really is not a dirty word.
However, it is right that strike action (or the threat of) can and should be used. Changing terms and conditions of a contract, whether written or implied is a breach of contract by the employer. The employees can therefore be justified in responding accordingly, they do not have another recourse in law.
But it has to be a last resort after all else failed. Its obvious that if the tanker drivers had in the end gone on strike, they would have done so if there was no alternative. Instead, we had a grown-up conversation, a grown-up deal and a grown-up resolution to the dispute.
Such a shame that this approach completely by-passed the collective wisdom of Francis Maude and the PCS.
In stark contrast to the unyielding and unbending stance of both sides in the public sector pension row, there are lessons to learn from how the tanker drivers approached their dispute and the willingness of the employers to seek a resolution.
The easiest course of action was to call the union's bluff, allow strikes to go ahead and then utilise public anger over queues and petrol shortages to force agreement, imposed or otherwise.
Instead, both sides went down the hardest course of action. To sit together at ACAS and thrash out the issues, to collaboratively cobble together a final deal and persuade the workers to accept it.
Post Wapping and the Miners '84, it is no longer feasible to work through an industrial dispute within the context of a class struggle. More than any anti-trade union law Thatcher introduced, these two events emboldened the employer side making them willing to stare down the unions. This is very clear from Francis Maude's approach towards the pensions dispute and because of this, I cannot see a situation in which a Prime Minister in a position similar to Edward Heath would countenance going to the country over an industrial dispute like he did in 1974.
Instead, these days, industrial disputes are, and should be resolved by negotiation first and working towards the best deal available. This does mean compromise and it really is not a dirty word.
However, it is right that strike action (or the threat of) can and should be used. Changing terms and conditions of a contract, whether written or implied is a breach of contract by the employer. The employees can therefore be justified in responding accordingly, they do not have another recourse in law.
But it has to be a last resort after all else failed. Its obvious that if the tanker drivers had in the end gone on strike, they would have done so if there was no alternative. Instead, we had a grown-up conversation, a grown-up deal and a grown-up resolution to the dispute.
Such a shame that this approach completely by-passed the collective wisdom of Francis Maude and the PCS.
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