Colleagues,
Just back from a long, challenging,
exhilarating week at Ruskin ending with a really enjoyable weekend of teaching
a fine group of trade unionists who started the BA in international labour and
trade union studies (ILTUS) in 2010 and are now in the final phase of the
programme. They, and other students of the BA and MA ILTUS at Ruskin, represent
the very best of the international trade union movement.
Ruskin Radical Research Unit
One of the events that made the week so enjoyable
was that the central policy making body of the College formally agreed to adopt
a proposal, largely authored by my colleague Fenella Porter (http://tinyurl.com/onthztu), to support
the creation of a major development at the College, the Ruskin Radical Research
Unit (RRRU).
The RRRU (yet to be formally launched – but
of which I will write when it does, and subsequently) faces an epic (although
not unachievable) task of reviving the legacy of Ruskin’s centrally important
historical role in contributing to research needs of the British, and wider
labour movement.
Trade Union Research Unit
The Trade Union Research Unit (TURU), which
is no longer in existence at Ruskin, was created in 1966 by the then Principal John
Hughes, along with Sue Hastings (whose research of pensions, pay etc has played
an important informative role for the British labour movement) and Denis
Gregory and Roy Moore, who I benefited from being taught by when a student at
Ruskin. Both Roy and Denis were both prolific researchers and authors in their
own right contributing; for example, to the trade union pay negotiations of
Fords at the Dagenham and Halewood plants. Denis maintains his research output
and held a book launch at Ruskin recently with Maarten Keune and Kea Tijdens of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced
Labour Studies (http://www.uva-aias.net/48) to launch their
new book: http://tinyurl.com/njk5x6y.
You
can get a good, broad sense of the importance of Ruskin, and TURU, to the work
of both the trade union movement and also to the Labour Party, in government
and out, during the 60s onwards in this short obituary of John Hughes who sadly
passed away in November last year (I blogged on John’s death at the time): http://tinyurl.com/kfotzez
The Fight for Decent Pay
John’s obituary couldn’t possibly do justice
to the dynamism of Ruskin’s presence, either centrally or tangentially, to the
phenomenal growth in the presence and power of British trade unionism particularly
in the 1960s: a central, epochal phase in our movement’s history.
A particularly important aspect of this phase
was the fight for an improvement in the economic position of poor workers. This
short paper by the well regarded labour economist William Brown helps
illustrate the backdrop to the political economy of Britain in the 60-70s, and
why key sections of the labour movement were placing pay, and in particularly
an advocacy for a minimum wage, as central to their political and workplace
bargaining aims: http://tinyurl.com/nxugvsa
Central to this positioning around a minimum
wage were Alan Fisher (General Secretary) and Bernard Dix (Research Officer) of
one of UNISON’s forerunners, the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE), whose
members principally in local government, were amongst the lowest paid in the
UK. Alan Fisher’s links to Ruskin led to one of our teaching rooms, used
principally for the trade union education, being named after him following the
refurbishment of Stoke House. In his research role Bernard Dix worked closely
with Ruskin also and in particular with the TURU.
Bryn Roberts, NUPE & Low Pay
Central to NUPE’s historical mission (being
formed in 1888 as the London County Council Employees’ Protection Society in 1888)
was a pivotally important focus on pay. As General Secretary for the longest
period in NUPE’s history (from 1934 to 1962) Bryn Roberts made his commitment
to improving the pay of NUPE members clear in a speech to the union’s annual
conference in 1936:
“My mind is
set towards the 100,000 membership mark for this Union. My mind is set towards
raising the wages and conditions of public employees from the low and
capitalistic levels upon which they are now based.
My mind is set towards
creating our own NUPE group of Members of Parliament in order to be on an equal
footing with the other Unions within the service”
Roberts is often penned as the ‘father of the
UK organising;’ as he oversaw as general secretary an increase in membership
from 22,000 to 220,000, and this growth was principally of poorly paid workers –
largely ignored by other trade unions. Here’s a nice, short piece on Roberts
from UNISON Manchester local government branch: http://tinyurl.com/mqq96nq. A more
definitive account of Bryn’s role in the expansion of NUPE, and of the explicit
focus on pay is in W.W. Craik’s 1995 publication Bryn Roberts and the National Union of Public Employees.
Low Pay & How to end it
Of course many trade unions placed members’
pay at the heart of the bargaining strategy, but the obstinacy of the low pay
issue across the public sector, and in particular in local government, means
that NUPE’s role is central to any historical analysis of the trajectory towards
the Labour Party’s implementation of the national minimum wage legislation
(including the creation of the Low Pay Commission) in 1999.
Alex Callinicos has written a fascinating account
of why NUPE remained focused on low pay and poverty, and explores this through
the growth of rank and file movements within NUPE, and other unions in the
public sector which, he argues, forced the union leadership to act as the
General Secretary’s role transited between Roberts and Fisher: http://tinyurl.com/kk4op76
Dix and Fisher published in 1974 the historically
important Low Pay and How to End it.
As William Brown’s article outlines, the British trade union movement had won
hard fought for gains in setting wage minima, and bargaining mechanisms for
this, in the form of wage councils. The ’74 publication however, was the first,
authoritative advocation for a national minimum wage (NMW).
The fight for the NMW found advocates and opponents
not only across British society, but also within the labour movement.
Unsurprisingly it was unions liked the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers
(AUEW – one of UNITE’s forerunners) who were the fiercest critics of the Fisher
and Dix NMW proposal, and as is shown by Mary Davis’s excellent, short account (http://tinyurl.com/pbmo7hw) of the
allied movement for equal pay, the reactionary role of segments of the labour
movement has to be understood and acknowledged in properly interpreting labour
movement history.
Peter Barclay & The NMW
As a result of current rising structural
economic inequality an analysis of the movement for the NMW is of acute
importance to the contemporary demands for a shift to a living wage. Indeed, a
2007 report for the Work Foundation by David Coats tells us much of how (a)
history repeats itself in economic and political terms and (b) a profoundly
weakened labour movement finds itself incapable of generating a collective
bargaining solution to improved pay.
“A
central element of Dix and Fisher’s argument was that the Labour governments of
1964- 70
had missed the opportunity to tackle low pay, poverty and inequality. Simply
expressed, the
government had capitulated to ‘economic orthodoxy’ and had failed to use a
large parliamentary
majority to ‘relate its social policies to economic needs and use them as a spearhead
to attack the real problems confronting the country’. Thirty-three years on we
may view much of this as mostly wishful thinking. Those governments confronted
profoundly difficult economic problems –
balance of payments crises, speculative pressure on sterling, devaluation, and inflation – and it was hardly
surprising that what would otherwise have been high social priorities were given less
attention. But even if we accept that the Dix and Fisher critique was a little
over-ripe, there was still something to be said for the argument that collective
bargaining was failing to protect the low paid and that existing low pay
institutions (like wages councils) were increasingly ineffective.” (http://tinyurl.com/nyyv6hr)
I was prompted to write this item not just because
of the creation of the RRRU and the legacy of the TURU, but also because of the
death on 29th June of Peter Barclay. Barclay was pivotal to
maintaining a high-profile focus on social and economic inequality under
Thatcher – and from outside of the labour movement.
In chairing the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation Inquiry into Income and Wealth (1995), he was able to bring
together the TUC and CBI (and others) in agreeing a set of unanimous recommendations
(including that of the NMW) most of which were adopted by the Labour Party,
included in the election manifesto for the general election in 1997, and
implemented within two years of forming government. Barclay had, in effect,
taken the 70’s-based demands of Dix and Fisher and re-fashioned an approach to
tackling the residual problems of low pay in a modern age. There is a suitably appreciative
obituary of Barclay in this weekend’s Guardian. For anyone interested in how
the fight for a NMW was won it is required reading: http://tinyurl.com/qxmvh99
It is the ambition that the new research unit at
Ruskin can supplement our educational activity in the field of labour and trade
union studies, and support the research needs of other programme areas at
Ruskin. Undeniably the range of challenges that beset the contemporary British
labour movement require acute, critical engagement and analysis, and I truly
hope that our new unit can in some way continue Ruskin’s important, historical
tradition of aiding the growth and stability of organised labour in the UK and beyond.
In Solidarity
Ian
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