Workers’ battles can beat bosses

Submitted by AWL on 8 December, 2021 - 9:52 Author: Editorial
UCU picket, Manchester University

A number of countries, including the US and France, are seeing waves or flurries of strikes as workers try to gain or make up ground as economies revive after lockdowns.

Here, pay in the private sector is rising but inflation is rising faster, with the left-Blairite Resolution Foundation noting that "real wages are already falling and are likely to continue to do so for the next six months”. In the public sector the government is seeking to impose even more real-terms cuts after more than a decade of huge cumulative losses.

There is a wave of attacks on pay, terms and conditions as bosses try to readjust after the lockdowns, with more than a million workers subjected to “fire and rehire” tactics.

Yet in many ways the conditions to fight are good. Many workers have had their sense of the importance of the work they do, and the size of the effort they put in, heightened during the depths of the Covid emergency. The government is in disarray and its popularity declining. There is a shortage of labour in many sectors. Workers in some areas, notably trucking, have won major pay increases through the combination of market forces and some very limited union activity. A surge of campaigning and strikes can win much more.

Through a determined all-out indefinite strike, Clarks workers in Somerset defeated an attempt by one of China’s most powerful capitalists to slash their pay by thousands of pounds a year and derecognise their union. These workers have no tradition of strikes and their union is the very right-wing Community — and yet they won.

Strikes are the most effective form of protest and direct action to pressure and push back employers and the government; and, perhaps equally important, the channel through which workers can mobilise, self-organise and start to feel themselves a power.

The UK labour movement is a huge potential power, with close to seven million members in trade unions. Seven million is fewer than it used to be, but still a high figure in a broader historical overview.

Our movement suffered defeat in big battles in the 1980s. Its failures to exploit the comparatively favourable environment of the relative-boom years of the last Labour government, or to fight back seriously after the 2008 crash, were perhaps equally important for the difficulties we face now.

We may face a new turning point now, when what we do now will shape things for years to come.

Although the UK saw important workers’ struggles during the lockdowns of 2020, usually short and local actions which won better Covid protections, the pandemic has increased the labour movement’s difficulties. Many connections have weakened. Some workers have been working largely “from home” for almost two years.

But weakness can quickly change to strength. The 1-3 December strikes in universities has already changed the atmosphere. Socialists and trade union activists should rally round as many strikes and workers’ struggles as we can, big and small, and be on the lookout for openings to launch more.

On 6 December, Sheffield food couriers, delivering for JustEat, began a strike against a major pay cut by gig economy firm Stuart. Sheffield has become the epicentre of couriers’ struggles, through a militant branch of the IWGB union, aided by Workers’ Liberty and other socialists. Activists there hope to spread the dispute to other cities.

Recent strikes in London’s Royal Parks and at Great Ormond Street Hospital (the latter continuing with security guards this week) have seen outsourced (usually precarious, often migrant) workers win important gains and in some cases challenge outsourcing itself. The Royal Park dispute has shown how small “independent” unions and larger established ones can cooperate fruitfully (in that case, UVW and PCS).

Workers at the Sage care home in north London recently won pay rises of up to 20% and more. The left and labour movement should support the efforts of rank-and-file care and support workers’ organisation CaSWO.

Tesco drivers around the country may strike soon. Workers on London Underground and at Transport for London have started a fightback against cuts designed to redress lockdown losses, with strikes against grade consolidation on Night Tube.

400,000 Unison members and 60,000 Unite members in local government are voting on strikes on a 1.75% pay rise (i.e. a new real-terms pay cut after years of previous cuts). The unions are calling for a 10% increase.

In local government the third major union, GMB, is dragging things out and has not moved to a strike ballot over pay. In health, it’s the other way round, with GMB’s ballot closing on 15 December and Unite and Unison dragging things out.

It will be difficult to meet the turnout thresholds imposed by the Trade Union Act 2016 in the local government ballot. In health, the biggest unions are not moving even as far as a formal ballot. The best help to success will be strikes in other sectors strong enough to convince sceptical workers that changes can be won.

The Covid years have had big street demonstrations, like Black Lives Matter, the early Police Bill protests, and the Glasgow climate march on 6 November, but with unions only a small factor in them. The recent midwives’ and birth workers’ demonstrations show that workers can and will use the streets to mobilise on workplace issues too.

A number of unions have passed decisions for a workers’ rights demonstration in the New Year. Activists will press for that to happen, but also for unions to get onto the streets before then.

In the two biggest unions, Unison and Unite, there should be openings for change now. The left now has a majority on Unison’s national executive for the first time ever. Sharon Graham’s election in Unite reflects a ferment in that union and has opened it up further - but what is needed is clear and radical proposals for change, and rank-and-file organising to win them, not just praise for the new general secretary.

The current general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), Jo Grady, was elected to the job as a rank-and-file activist in 2019, on the back of attempts at rank-and-file organising growing out of previous UCU strikes. There are signs that the union machine has changed her more than she has changed the union, but rank-and-file networks still exist and can be developed.

To make the most of changes at the top, systematic rank-and-file organisation, in the workplace, throughout unions and across unions, is needed — a shift away from the drift of the left in the unions to focus almost solely on the building of blocs to win elections for union positions.

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