The Unions Fight Back
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It doesn’t surprise me that a lot perhaps a majority of people are sympathetic to the railway workers. After all, they are in the same boat, needing to keep their pay up with the rising cost of living.
The discussion between Dave Ward and the bloke from the Institute of Economic Affairs (a free-marketeer think tank) was interesting. Ward put well the case for trade unionism under capitalism and the free-marketeer also put well that capitalism cannot afford a general wage increase for everybody as this would reduce profits, lead to bankruptcies, unemployment, etc.
The obvious answer Ward should have put to this was that the only way out was to replace capitalism by socialism. He might know this but, if he did, he didn’t say so. Instead he called for a new “social settlement” that would somehow rectify the imbalance between the owners of the means of production and workers. In an article in the Morning Star (18 June) he called it “collectivism” by which he seemed to mean trade unions and social protest movements getting together to act collectively to try to improve things.
Reformism of course and of course doomed to fail. But at least it shows an awareness that workers are not going to get much from the Labour Party. Other unions too are deciding to pay only the minimum they have to the Labour Party to affiliate and using the rest of their political fund to finance other campaigns.
Now even the police
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62001386
The Scottish Police Federation (SPF) is set to begin its “most overt” action in a century at 17:00 on Friday.
Scottish officers are protesting about a “derisory” £565 pay rise offer.
By law, officers cannot take industrial action but will now charge for all overtime and refuse to begin shifts early.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/30/bt-staff-vote-for-first-national-strike-in-35-years
BT staff have voted for their first national strike in 35 years,
Royal Mail managers across the UK are poised to take industrial action in the next two weeks in a dispute over jobs and pay. Unite, the union that represents the workers, said 2,400 managers would work to rule between 15 and 19 July, followed by strike action between 20 and 22 July over Royal Mail’s plan to cut 700 jobs and slash pay by up to £7,000.
Last year, Royal Mail paid out £400m to shareholders and made a £311m profit, the union said.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/05/royal-mail-managers-to-strike-over-jobs-and-pay
My memories of the vast majority of Royal Mail managers with the exception of an honourable few are of them acting as strike-breakers.
That experience may well mean CWU members will cross the picket lines but I am also sure they will do their utmost to obstruct those managers who will scab to further their careers.
Aslef at eight train companies have voted to walk out in a dispute over pay.
Hundreds of Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) members at Southeastern have also voted for strike
Meanwhile in Scotland, after taking industrial action, the train drivers there have won a 5% increase. More than the 2% offered by other employers and presumably what other railway workers and others will expect to settle for.
Postal workers vote for strikes
Some 97.6% of members from a 77% turnout voted in favour of striking. The union has demanded Royal Mail group enters into negotiations to secure a “straight, no-strings pay increase for workers”.
More promising is that RMT is distancing itself from political parties.
It has withdrawn from TUSC
[Lynch] “…reportedly argued the RMT should not be currently affiliated to any party, and that candidates seeking support should come to the union, not the union go to them…”
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1404/one-foot-in-the-grave/
Truss has promised a further crackdown on trade unions, widening restrictions to a significant new number of industries. Truss said she would legislate for minimum service levels on critical national infrastructure in the first 30 days of government under her leadership. The pledge would go further than the Tories’ 2019 policy, which promised a minimum service should operate during transport strikes.
The new law proposed by Truss would potentially restrict teachers, postal workers and the energy sector. Tailored minimum thresholds, including staffing levels, would be determined with each industry.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT said unions would organise mass resistance if the plans went ahead, calling it “the biggest attack on trade union and civil rights since labour unions were legalised in 1871.”
“Truss is proposing to make effective trade unionism illegal in Britain and to rob working people of a key democratic right,” he said. “If these proposals become law, there will be the biggest resistance mounted by the entire trade union movement, rivalling the General Strike of 1926, the Suffragettes and Chartism.”It looks as if she’s going to win but my guess is that she will be PM for a year or so and after that the Leader of the Opposition.
On the issue itself I think Lynch is exaggerating a bit. It will depend on what the “minimum service” levels are. Even during the miners strike the NUM agreed to safety workers working. If it’s anything more than this, as her rhetoric suggests, then it will be unenforceable. What are they going to do, send requisitioned rail workers or teachers who refuse to work to jail?
By coincidence they tried this fifty years and it didn’t work.
>>>send requisitioned rail workers or teachers who refuse to work to jail?
More likely a fine for the union itself and have their assets sequestered as happened to the NUM.
There could be jailings…Ricky Tomlinson is there to remind us that examples can be made.
There could be sackings, plenty of miners were sacked for supposed infringements of the law
But my view is that Lynch’s analogy of resistance would be more about a watered-down TUC one-day strike as in 1971 rather than a 1926 event.
But it is a leadership campaign promise for Truss that she is unlikely to keep if she does become PM. She talks the talk but the opportunist she is she doesn’t walk the walk.
I fear Priti Patel’s ruthlessness very much more. And if she is still Home Secretary, I well imagine troops deployed in the factories, standing behind workers with bayonets being jabbed into their backs (I exaggerate just a little)
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