Fight for union rights

Submitted by Janine on 11 December, 1997 - 9:31

The welcome show of spirit by Labour MPs against the government's mean proposal to cut one-parent benefits has put down a marker. Let's see the union leaders do at least as much - on the one-parent benefits issue, and also on the most basic, bottom-line question for all trade unionists, the right for unions to organise, to negotiate, and to take effective action.

In the early 1980s, when the Tories started axing workers' rights and introducing what Tony Blair himself calls "the most restrictive trade union laws in Western Europe", Labour opposed the Tories. For a while Labour was committed to a broad, even if not fully adequate, programme of trade union rights. Then Labour leaders used the unions' demoralisation after the defeat of the miners' strike in 1985 to force them into accepting weaker and weaker policies.

By May 1997 only one thing remained. Labour would bring in a law to give unions some legal rights to gain recognition. Now that policy, too, is being cut down to nothing. The Financial Times (9 December 1997) reports: "The Confederation of British Industry [the top bosses' organisation] is confident it has convinced Tony Blair to limit the scope of the government's plan to strengthen trade union power through recognition rights from companies. In particular, Mr Blair is understood to want a majority of all employees in a bargaining unit to have to agree to recognition in a secret ballot before it can be introduced. He rejects the view of the Trades Union Congress that only a majority of those voting in a ballot would be needed to secure recognition. Union leaders fear Mr Blair is moving towards the CBI position".

The government is holding talks with a view to legislation some time in 1998-9. The CBI has other demands besides the one about a majority of all employees, which comes down to counting every worker who fails to return a ballot paper - for whatever reason, illness, wrong address, fear, confusion, simple error - as a vote against the union. It wants employers to be able to decide the "bargaining units" for which recognition will be decided. This means that an employer can neutralise an initial foothold of union support in a non-union company by decreeing a very big bargaining unit, in which most workers have not yet heard the union message - or chop away at union strength in a unionised firm by selecting small units in which they can win derecognition ballots.

The CBI proposes that trade unions would have to show 30% support in a bargaining unit before getting a recognition ballot, and bosses could also get a ballot to derecognise the union in any unit where they had 30% support for it. The seeming even-handedness here is a fake, because it means that workers have to be confident enough to stand up and be counted against an employer - running all the risks of victimisation - before they can even get a chance of union protection against that employer.

The bosses also call for small companies to be exempt, training to be excluded from collective bargaining, and "disruption in pursuit of union recognition to be deemed 'inappropriate' " - in other words, if a boss stonewalls, all the union can do is wait for the case to grind through the courts. It seems likely, also, that the legal penalties to force bosses to grant recognition where the law demands it will be slight. Finally: "Individuals to be free to agree their own terms and conditions with their employers even if they work in units covered by union recognition" - even if the union jumps through all the hoops and is recognised, the boss can put pressure on individual workers to sign individual contracts outside union negotiations.

If the government accepts all the CBI's demands, then the new law for union recognition will say not much more than: you can have a union if you already have one or if the boss agrees. Even if the Labour government turns round, rejects all the CBI demands, and sides with the TUC on every aspect of the recognition issue, we would still be far from what a workers' government - a government based on and committed to the majority who do the toil and produce the wealth - would so. Such a government would immediately legislate the right for workers to strike, picket and take solidarity - a right which exists to some degree or another in many countries' laws, but which the trade union leaders have given up even talking about.

A new campaign, the Free Trade Unions Campaign, set up at a conference this July, is pushing for those workers' rights. It plans meetings, petitions, and a demonstration. Its most important work is to encourage the rank and file members in every union to get involved, to assert their rights, and to demand that the union leaders start agitating for the rights of worker self-protection to which most unions are still committed by past conference policies.

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