Union Voices: The Future of Organising in the UK

Colleagues,

Pressure of work since the start of the new year has kept me from posting until now, but I am pleased to use this first post of 2013 to focus on an issue of critical importance to the future of labour movements in the UK: for what, who and how should trade unions organise the unorganised?

These questions, and many others form the focus of a critically new important publication, Union Voices: Tensions & Tactics in UK Organising written by Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Ed Heery.

I am honoured to have been asked to speak about the book at its launch event on 22nd January (6-8pm) at the TUC. Register here: http://unionvoices.eventbrite.co.uk/

Without wanting to give 'the story' away (although many of you will be able to guess the end) the book provides a fascinating insight upon the potential of organised labour under New Labour between 1997-2010 to define and apply a model of renewal sufficient to respond to the onward march of neo-liberalism.

The problem largely of course was that that march was being led by New Labour itself (an account of this more specifically is here: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415426633/) and, as the authors reveal, compelling divergent interests flawed an overwhelming capacity of organised labour to, for example, renew levels of active participation by members, but ultimately to secure a dominant, embedded sense of the future of trade unionism.

Union Voices should be a must-read by all of those within the British trade union movement with responsibility for policy, education and organising.

Working at Ruskin College, and leading an MA for trade union activists and officials, a constant concern however, is the extent to which organised labour isn't always prepared to listen to informed, concerned critical analysis of political, cultural and political impediments to trade union renewal.

Union Voices is written by colleagues with a genuine concern for the future of organised labour in the UK (and internationally) it should in turn be read by, and acted upon, by all and any of those with an influence on this.

In Solidarity

Ian

Organised Labour & The Room for Optimism

Colleagues,

The last posted item before I start leave and I feel the need to end on a positive note.

Scanning the items posted over the year there is indeed much to be concerned about and for me one of the most concerning issues this year was the murder of striking miners during the Marikana dispute.

It is deeply worrying that black SA workers could be murdered by the police under an ANC government. This shocking incident tells us that class remains as a deep faultline in a country in thrall to neo-liberal policy as a means to 'modernise' an economy built on apartheid.

Despite the fact  however that many many leaders of the apartheid-era liberation movement are now deeply embedded in the corrupt practices of the SA government and MNCs( Cyril Ramaphosa springs to mind here) one of the abiding legacies of that movement was a radical political consciousness which found an expression in many forms, including journalism. And, as could be expected the analysis of Marikana, in the context of SA politics, featured heavily in the coverage of Pambazuka News.

Here is the link to the first of many pieces, but one which starts with a report on how Groundup, a community journalism project reporting from SA townships, led on the news coverage of the dispute and of the murders: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84051

What happened at Marikana. not least during the period of a looming election in SA, will not go away, and the independent news media will continue to report on the outomes of an incident rooted in the history of a country built on the manifest exploitation of black workers. Whilst the reputation of both leading SA miners' unions have not reflected well before, during and after the dispute, that the workers decided to strike voluntarily and mobilised across the different mines involved in the dispute is a means for us to constructively conceive of a remaining legacy of how workers can and do respond in a country like South Africa.

Dan Gallin: How and why do workers gain or lose their
political  and industrial consciousness?

Looking globally for further signs of optimism one of the many positive events last year was the summer school of the Global Labour Institute (UK) and the report from this The Political Agenda of the International Labour Movement is, I argue, one of the best ways of exploring the current state of organised labour, the challenges posed, and the responses thus far.

You can get a free copy of the report at the GLI's website, and I encourage anyone interested in the future of organised labour to get a copy, take a break, read, reflect and act upon its inspiring coverage of the outcomes of the school: http://global-labour.net/

The report kicks with Dan Gallins overview of how and why the GLI was created, and the historical purpose of the summer schools, which partly was a means to address what he assesses as a continuing withdrawal - partly by European TUs - from an intellectual analysis of the changing nature of capitalism and of what this meant for changes in working practices and in turn what this meant for workers and trade unions.

Part of Gallin's concern (and there is a link here to my comments about the SA liberation movement above) was that labour movement did not generate a conscious understanding on the part of members and activists of this change, that leaders were 'bereft of political imagination' and thus were enable to foresse the looming, dominant changes to in European labour markets (women, migrant workers etc) and thus resulted in a scenario where large portions of the European workforce remain outside of collective bargaining coverage and/or unorganised.

I wamted to end with a reference to Gallin's opening statement at the GLI event because Ruskin College has been, I would strongly argue, trying to fill the educational and intellecutal vacuum to which he refers. And, the BA and MA in international labour and trade union studies (ILTUS) are wholly reflective of this.

So, keep an eye on the labour news during 2013, there will be, as always plenty of it, and I will do my best to flag up areas of particular interest and concern.

Hope you have a great break over the Xmas period.

In Solidarity

Ian

But then I found the movement

Colleagues,

I have written before in this blog on the impressive phenonemon in Latin America around the self-organisation amongst child labourers of their own unions.

There was a great piece in Saturday's Guardian about the work of the Bolivian Union of Child and Adolescent Workers (Unatsbo) which illustrates clearly that the phenomena is growing and is worthy of attention and analysis.

A nine-year-old child labourer amid bricks drying in the sun in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where many children have to work illegally to help support their families

A young street worker interviewed for the article, Rodrigo Medrano Calle, now a leading figure in Unatsbo , has lived an incredibly hard life, but in reflecting upon the importance of organising to protect the interests of other young workers says:

"I lived on the street for a time and was going in the wrong direction, but then I found the movement, and it gave me a reason to be. I'm going to fight for my compañeros' rights, not just my own."

The text of the article is below, and questions/comments are welcomed particularly on how such movements arise and whether they can be replicated elsewhere.

Rodrigo Medrano Calle is a Bolivian labour leader who meets and lobbies top government officials for his constituency's rights. That's not surprising in a country where pay is often low, working conditions harsh and unions play a powerful role in society. What's unusual is that Rodrigo is just 14 years old, and his union's members are all children.



"I started working when I was nine, and I've done everything, shining shoes, bus driver's assistant, selling. I've gone through most of the jobs common for child and adolescent workers," said Rodrigo, who now sells chewing gum and cigarettes in bars at weekends, making £4-£5 for a night's work. "I lived on the street for a time and was going in the wrong direction, but then I found the movement, and it gave me a reason to be. I'm going to fight for my compañeros' rights, not just my own."


Rodrigo's organisation, the Bolivian Union of Child and Adolescent Workers (Unatsbo), represents thousands of under-18s, in seven of the country's nine departments. And it's not just a Bolivian phenomenon: there are similar chapters in Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Colombia. Often funded by international donors, the organisations seek to bring young workers together to defend their rights and promote education. In Bolivia, successes include organising pay rises for children who sell newspapers on the city streets of Potosí from 6 cents (½p) to 12 cents a paper, using negotiations and the threat of strikes.


Many international campaigners advocate an end to all child labour, but Unatsbo follows a more pragmatic line, arguing that, in a region where child labour is rife, it is more important to ensure young workers are not exploited. On paper, Bolivia bans under-14s from working, but nearly 750,000 children aged between five and 17 are involved in sometimes dangerous jobs.


Luz Rivera Daza, an adult counsellor for Unatsbo in Potosí, says many child workers are in a legal blindspot: their work is prohibited and so they have very little defence if employers exploit them through long hours, physical or verbal abuse or refusing to pay a decent wage. "If you have to work, then you have to work exploited," she said of those situations.

"This just makes you more vulnerable."





Bolivia's informal economy includes everyone from bricklayers to farmers to shoeshiners, who work without contracts and set schedules. Many adults are part of this market, as are the great majority of child and adolescent workers. These young workers seem to be everywhere – in the cities they pack groceries at the supermarket, shine shoes on pavements, collect fares on buses, and sell cigarettes and sweets late at night in smoky beer halls. In the countryside they help their parents in the fields, herd sheep and llamas, or do the brutal work of mining or the sugar cane harvest.


In a country where poverty is widespread and the minimum wage is $150 a month, living expenses can overwhelm a family, especially if one parent works. That was the case for Delina Juárez Mamani, whose son, Rolando, began helping her sell used clothes at a market stall in the city of El Alto when he was 12.


"I never brought my children to work," she said. "Then the father left us and since then my kids come because I need the help." Rolando, who is now 17 and a Unatsbo leader himself, puts together the large metal frame and tarpaulin structure of her shop, and makes a little money helping others do the same. He works two long days a week, and that money pays for his transport to and from school. Juárez Mamani believes combining a job and school can be hard on young people because they may be tired from working, but says that education is a top priority for her children. In fact, most working children and adolescents in Bolivia also go to school.


Rodrigo believes that instead of attempting to end many forms of child and adolescent work, the goal should be ending exploitation by creating part-time, safe and better paying jobs for young people who want them. "Why should there be a minimum age if the work is voluntary?" he asked. "The work of a child or adolescent is not bad – it helps society, it helps a family, and it helps us grow as people."

In Solidarity

Ian

To tell the truth is revolutionary

Colleagues,

Just back from the latest weekend of teaching for the professional doctorate in researching work (I'm in year two of four and progressing reasonably well)  delivered by leading academics in the field at the Working Lives Research Institute (WLRI) of London Met University.

The weekend was particularly special as it was the 10th anniversary of the creation of the WLRI and as well as featuring seminars on research completed by the Institute it was kicked off by Professor Carole Thornley, Chair of the Business School at Keele University, who is external examiner for the DProff, but also the MA in international labour and trade union studies (ILTUS) at Ruskin.

Carole's session featured an overview of her seminal text, co-authored with Dan Coffey, Globalisation & Varities of Capitalism: New Labour, Economic Policy and the Abject State. The book provides a penetrating account of the notion of the abject state (the UK under New Labour as a case in point) created as a disinct feature of a hybrid capitalist globalisation.

It was a fantastic, challenging and fitting means to both explore and underline the vital relevance of the research output of the WLRI which acts as a means to generate a critical awareness of the changing nature of work and of this impact on working lives: http://www.workinglives.org/.

The DProff weekends are always hugely enjoyable but also a crucial test of a student's grasp of dominant theoretical aspects of topics being taught. Of the many explored this weekend, and related to the theme of this blog post, was the relevance of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony as a means to generate and disperse ideology.

So, plenty to think about and reflect upon. Coming back home on the train I had the chance to read the latest Paul Krugman column in the International Herald Tribune - always a fascinating, thoughtful insight on US political life. Krugman's piece - reproduced in full below - bemoans the unwillingness of the Republican Party to deal honestly with fact, even where proved as a means of lived reality, empirical observation or rational scientific analysis.




Rubio and Romey: The striated rock of anti-rationality

Speaking of putative presidential contender in the 2016 contest, Marco Rubio, Krugman witheringly comments that, "like striated rock beds that speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken over his political party.

Rubio, as Krugman details, is sadly just the crusty outer fringe of the molten core of an essentially vapid and ultimately stupid Republican approach to the denial of evident truths.

For Gramsci (as the title of this post proclaims) "to tell the truth is revolutionary", for the US Republican party to even acknowledge that the truth exists is illusory. But then, Gramsci would argue that the Republicans are simpy being true to form, and that in constructing their own truths a prevailing dominant ideology - already a solid feature of US hegemonic values - enables ultimate control and domination over what is seen and understood to be 'common sense'.

For decades, for example, the Republicans have been able to harness the support of the poor, uninsured white working class in attacking any means to improve upon the skeletal provision of free healthcare, ditto tax rises, trade union rights etc.

There has been much talk of the need for the Republican party in the wake of Obama 2.0 to undertake a fundamental review its core beliefs and values, not least in its stance on issues of gender and immigration. How this process can commence with an inherently congential inability to engage with hard, inconvenient truths one can only wonder.

Anyway, read the Krugman piece and see if you can figure out the answer - and treat yourself to more of his writing via the link to the original article in the New York Times:

Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco Rubio, whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.

It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to comfort us.

But we shouldn’t let go that easily. Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is like driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can clearly see what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated rock beds that speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken over his political party.

By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.

What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.

The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.
      

But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

 

What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science writer Chris Mooney published “The Republican Brain,” which was not, as you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election night — encounter any hint that what they believe might not be true.

      

And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.

 

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” — what about the geologists? — that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?

      

And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service finding no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report. On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone else to hear about it, either.

So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal with geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one that may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/krugman-grand-old-planet.html?_r=0

 

In Solidarity

 

Ian

Workplace Justice on Black Friday

Colleagues,

Despite the extent of setbacks we face as trade unionists, there is always room for optimism and hope - and here is the latest cause for celebration.

Workers at Wal-Mart across the US are out on strike and currently campaigning for mass action on Black Friday (a mass shopping event in the US - where Wal-Mart makes millions in profit overnight).

Although different labour movement and/or social justice organisations are working with Wal-Mart workers to mobilise for the event, some of the best coverage (and organising activity) is being managed by the Corporate Action Network: http://www.corporateactionnetwork.org/

As an employer of 1.4 million people in the US alone Wal-Mart has consitently used its corporate muscle to attack attempts to organise in supermarkets. Thankfully, when Wal-Mart bought ASDA in the UK a similar attempt at union bashing was ultimately thwarted by the GMB, but only after the ruthless victimisation of trade union reps and workers across the UK chain of shops (http://www.workersliberty.org/node/6486).

So, use the CAN site to read more about the latest cause for celebration for trade unionists globally. If workers in Wal-Mart succeed in improving terms and conditions the knock-on effect across the States and elsewhere will be phenomenal, so keep an eye out.

In Solidarity

Ian

Farewell Bill McCarthy

Colleagues,

With the sad death earlier this year of Bill Wedderburn, and now the passing away on Sunday of Bill McCarthy, the UK has lost arguably two of its most impressive, outstanding experts on labour law, industrial relations and the of the role of trade unions within these.

Despite the almost luminary position that Bill McCarthy came to occupy as an industrial relations academic, and also principal adviser to successive Labour governments – his input well established historically in those seismic shifts in UK trade unionism, the Donovan Commission report of 1968 and the flawed policy of Barbara Castle, In Place of Strife – his roots were much more common to those of us in the trade union movement.

Bill came to Ruskin College in 1953 supported by his union USDAW. He met his wife, Margaret Godfrey whilst at Ruskin and they went to become stalwart activists in the Oxford Labour Party.

Whilst Bill went on from Ruskin to pursue a career which dominated the industrial relations landscape of the 1960’s-80s’ he never came to conveniently ignore (as many others did) his trade union origins.

As a student at Ruskin in the 1980s Bill’s book, the magisterial Trade Unions, was seen as of such fundamental importance to building the knowledge base of new students that it was set as mandatory reading before we even set foot across the threshold. His written and advisory output over 40 years in academia and government circles was prolific but within this he retained his deep, abiding interest of what it was that could retain at a grandscale union strength and influence in collective bargaining and industrial relations machinery; but absorbed also by the minutia of the union rule book.

There is a wonderful obituary to Bill McCarthy in today’s Guardian, supplemented by a personal reflection from Geoffrey Goodman.

Taken together the coverage represents a fine critical analysis of the role of an individual during a period of fluctuating fortune for British trade unions; but one in which without the imprint of Bill McCarthy our current position as trade unionists in the UK could not have  been the same.

The Guardian obituaries are here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/19/lord-mccarthy

As a mark of respect for Bill's work in support of British trade unions he became one of only two honorary fellows of Ruskin College, and at the next meetings of the College's Governing Executive and Governing Council, there will be a minute's silence.

In Solidarity

Ian

14/11/12: European Resistance Starts Here

Colleagues,

Great up-to-the-minute coverage in The Guardian (and I am sure many other news sources, blogs etc.) of the phenomenal wave of protest across the EU (some in the UK, but not massive) against austerity measures.

Follow the coverage here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/14/eurozone-crisis-general-strikes-protest-day-of-action

In Solidarity

Ian