|
Objective
The principle objective of this chapter is to examine how
one Union in the UK, the T&G, developed and adopted a "Strategy
for Growth” in an attempt to prevent irreversible industrial
and political decline. The T&G “Strategy for Growth”
has two main areas: organising and re-organising workers to build
industrial power and merger with unions to extend industrial
influence.
For the purposes of this chapter it is the organising strategy
that is key and will be exclusively addressed. Understanding
the ideals and application of T&G organising is critical
to understanding what T&G General Secretary Tony Woodley
adopted when looking to reinvigorate and re-focus on the challenge
of re-building the Union. In order to do this the chapter will
be split into six specific sections:
Section 1: Decline and Traditional Response
The arguments for UK trade union decline have been well versed.
However, it is only recently that some Unions have looked at
their own response to a changed environment and how this may
have been the most critical of all factors influencing the dramatic
decline of UK trade union membership, industrial power and political
influence.
It is acknowledged globally that the rise of monetarism and
liberal free market ideology - embodied in the UK by the rise
of Margaret Thatcher – has had a negative impact on the
position of trade unions within the industrial and political
process and within society more broadly. It is acknowledged that
such ideology has sought to regulate the operation of trade unions
through restrictive labour legislation. It is acknowledged that
the active encouragement of the individualisation of society
witnessed through aggressive privatisation, profound change to
the welfare state and moves to encourage house ownership has
changed the context within which trade unions operate. It is
also acknowledged that relative de-industrialisation and moves
towards a service based “knowledge economy” have stripped
unions of a large base of traditional union territory. However,
when all is said and done unions have to look to themselves for
answers. What did we do when faced with this challenge? How did
we respond?
It can be clearly argued that the trade union response for
over twenty years was simply inadequate. Membership levels plummeted,
bargaining power reduced and there was no clear strategy developed.
Instead we blamed our environment for not letting us function
in the way we had before. We blamed workers for their perceived
selfishness - referring to the young simply as “Thatchers
children”. At its most basic we hoped for something better
without ever really believing it would happen – we followed
what we perceived to be the change inherent in society rather
than trying to change it.
UK trade unions did change but the changes made arguably assisted
decline, restricted collective aspiration and inevitably reduced
trade union influence more widely. The central point of a lot
of what was done focused on stopping – ineffectively –
the reduction in membership income, without ever fully realising
what it was that workers wanted a trade union to do. We believed
that workers wanted unions to act as protectors of the individual
rather than facilitators of the collective. This simply
did not work. Many unions – including the T&G
– adopted measures perceived as allowing us to reach out
to the individual worker – insurance policy membership.
We started to prioritise a number of tools which ran counter
to the theory of trade unions as collective agents: The winning
and publicising of legal compensation for individual workers;
concentration on achieving success in individual grievance and
disciplinary matters; the setting up of insurance and holiday
schemes. In addition - and perhaps centrally - we began
to increasingly view recruiting the employer as a key tool in
achieving growth and sustaining the future of trade unionism.
Did any of this stop membership decline? Build industrial
power? Help win elections for progressive policy makers? No.
The UK trade union movement continued to lose members, continued
to lose industrial muscle and continued to witness defeats for
the Labour Party at the polls. The concentration on protection
for the individual reduced the effectiveness of traditional arguments
for mobilisation, enabled the employer to overtly dictate and
restrict bargaining structures and outcomes, and made collective
delivery at political elections increasingly difficult. Employees
of unions - whilst continuing to work hard - were increasingly
working on individual cases and less on building self sustaining
organisation of workers at the workplace, and less on developing
industry wide strategies to build bargaining power for those
workers. Trade union employees replaced the role of the traditional
shop steward at the individual workplace with little time for
anything else – in reality they became nothing more than
[sic] solicitors.
This reality is what faced Tony Woodley when he was elected
General Secretary in 2003. This environment provided the context
for change – the context for the meaningful development
of T&G Organising.
Section 2: Recruitment and Partnership
When the T&G elected Tony Woodley as General Secretary
with an overwhelming mandate for change there was – and
still is in some unions – a central debate over what ideals
should govern any strategy. Should unions adopt the recruitment
and partnership approach, or an organising and constructive dialogue
approach? The recruitment and partnership approach comprises
of many characteristics linked to the adoption of an individualisation
of trade unionism. We individually recruit because workers want
an individual service and not to be involved in any sustained
collective resistance to the employer; we enter into partnership
with the employer because without the employer we have no industrial
base because workers will not accept taking collective action
to force the employer to bargain. This theory is self perpetuating,
built on incorrect assumptions and only successful if used to
undermine effective trade union organisation.
Following acceptance of a changed environment many unions
– to more or lesser degree – decided to adopt –
and in some cases continue – an approach that relied on
the employer facilitating a form of trade union presence at their
operations in order to recruit trade union members and stabilise
union membership. In the majority of cases there is of
course a trade off in this situation. The employer invariably
provides support for trade union recruitment in return for that
trade union agreeing to certain imposed or self imposed restrictions.
Such imposed restrictions could include a “no strike”
clause in any collective agreement or limiting the number of
issues to be bargained on or discussed. The self imposed
restrictions could include the knowledge that the particular
trade union will not fight particularly hard to improve terms
and conditions for members, or not cause too many problems when
the employer has “difficult” decisions to make.
Worst of all this approach has been used to stop trade unions
determined to win for their members from entering a workplace
or monopolising company operations – sweetheart deals.
The Union recruits the employer – the employer recruits
the Union.
This approach has not been particularly successful in stopping
membership decline. Despite a significant number of UK union’s
adopting a form of this strategy over the last twenty years total
trade union membership has fallen dramatically over the period
and only recently stabilised at a relatively low level. In addition
to failing to provide an answer to falling membership levels
and income, recruitment and partnership have helped dilute the
aspirations of workers and encourage increasingly confident employers
to “take on” effective trade union organisation. If
any strategy has at its core the idea that workers are no longer
willing to act collectively to determinedly pursue better terms
and conditions, then there are a number of consequences. Firstly,
organisation at the workplace will invariably be weak and employer
led. Secondly, the concept of development of co-ordinated industrial
organisation to build worker power becomes alien and increasingly
sporadic. Thirdly, the ability to mobilise workers collectively
having serviced individually becomes difficult if not impossible.
There are conclusions to consequences: Workers aspirations are
low and easily controlled; bargaining at the workplace becomes
ineffective; raising sector standards for all workers becomes
almost impossible; proper political mobilisation becomes almost
impossible. Arguably such conclusions lead primarily to two results,
continued trade union decline and the continued decline of progressive
policy making.
Section 3: T&G Organising Ideals –
The workplace leader
The election of Tony Woodley as General Secretary of the T&G
in 2003 led to the rejection of any form of previous “pure
recruitment” and “negative partnership” strategies
within the Union. We decided that in order for the trade union
movement in the UK to be successfully rebuilt, we would need
to take the lead, be bold and effectively resource a new strategy.
Tony Woodley as General Secretary and the Executive Officers
of the Union - in conjunction with the elected lay Executive
- developed the “Strategy for Growth” which had organising
workers collectively at the front and centre of its objectives
– we adopted the T&G organising strategy. The T&G
organising strategy has three main elements each of which are
a building block to achieve the key objectives of the rebuilding
strategy; to increase trade union membership, build collective
power to improve terms and conditions, and re-establish an active
base for political mobilisation.
The first and most straight-forward – and perhaps most
crucial – element regarded as critical to any future success
is the re-building of the shop steward movement. Successful progressive
trade unions in the UK traditionally had at their heart a committed
base of workplace leaders who were representatives of workers
– taken collectively they made the shop steward movement.
Effective and successful workplace organisation in the UK remains
built on the role of shop stewards as collective agents. In a
well organised workplace they are the Union - they deal with
grievance and representational matters – not employees of
the Union; they identify worker issues and collectivise workers
around them to get results – not employees of the Union;
they often table the union claim and negotiate locally with the
employer – not employees of the Union. We decided that if
we were to succeed in creating a growing, fighting back Union
winning for workers, then re-establishing the role of shop stewards
would be key. An industry where every worker is represented locally
by a well organised and broadly self sufficient shop stewards
committee, and is represented at a self led industry wide combine
by representatives of their local shop steward committee, should
be the holy grail of trade union organisation – the holy
grail of any trade union growth strategy. [free staff and still
charge a subscription? -EO]
The recruitment and partnership strategies employed on an
ad-hoc basis by many UK Unions – including the T&G –
in their race to embrace the individual member, overlooked and
even discounted the role of effective proactive shop stewards
in rebuilding the movement. The shop steward had increasingly
been seen as a “contact point” rather than a workplace
organiser. Arguably Unions still understood the need for a contact
in the workplace they just did not value or see the role that
a proper workplace representative could play in a changed society.
What was the role of the shop steward in a recruitment and partnership
agenda focused on the individual?
Union employees often found that many workplaces had ineffective
shop steward organisation. This meant that they had to deal with
workplace matters and effectively become the case worker for
members. In many cases this appeared logical to union hierarchies,
as according to them union members increasingly had an individual
outlook and just wanted a service from the union if they were
in trouble, or looking for some other fringe benefit. Therefore
employees of the Union would become increasingly focused on individual
member cases. This shift in work priority for union employees
then became self-perpetuating. The more time they spent dealing
with individual cases seeking to sustain membership levels, the
less time they had to encourage active participation from leaders
in the workplace. The less active workplace leaders secured a
lesser number of shop stewards in place, the more individual
cases to manage for the union employee.
The truth is that this approach failed. Membership continually
declined and bargaining power reduced. This was the case even
though we recruited in some cases one hundred thousand members
per year - we lost this and more because there was no collective
delivery for workers. We did not stabilise the Union as an organisation
and we did not win for workers. Instinct and practical experience
is backed by research as academics such as Jeremy Waddington
have consistently proved that workers want unions to deal with
the terms and conditions of employment and that key to workers
view of the union is what the union does in the workplace. Effectively
safeguarding and improving the conditions of employment and being
effective in the workplace are almost impossible to deliver without
effective collective organisation – neither can be delivered
through an individual member response. We must acknowledge that
effective, relevant trade unions are those that seek to develop
a collective not individual worker response. To achieve this
any union must develop collective agents – workers who are
able to organise a collective worker response – they are
shop stewards. No union employee with a multitude of workplaces
to deal with can effectively act as the worker representative
in each workplace – neither if acting as the representative
can they develop the critical leadership base from which the
T&G rebuilding strategy is built. For the T&G the answer
is simply to identify, educate and re-empower workplace leaders,
so they are equipped to take responsibility and drive forward
the workers agenda – in short rebuild and extend the influence
of the shop stewards movement.
In practice this means building effective shop steward leadership
in workplaces and companies with existing trade union agreements,
and building workplace leadership in workplaces and companies
where there is no union presence. The T&G organising strategy
at its most basic relies on identifying effective workplace leaders
– it is they who, if convinced, will most easily organise
workers and build membership through collectively driven issue
based organising. It is obvious to say that workers will more
closely identify with and be convinced by fellow workers, particularly
if those workers are respected and undertake a natural leadership
role within a group of workers. Workplace leaders convinced of
the argument are the seed from which any strategy must grow.
The second element of the T&G Organising Strategy is the
development of workplace leaders - or shop stewards as they now
are – into industry leaders. If a key objective is to defend
and progress terms and conditions of employment, then any shop
steward must be prepared to look beyond his/ her workplace. If
we want success at the bargaining table we must broaden horizons.
Companies do not operate on a site by site or even individual
basis, they have a broader context, and so must we. For example,
if we have a company with ten UK sites of which only two are
properly organised - with leaders who can mobilise workers and
fight back effectively – what long term chance of success
do those two groups of workers have to achieve significant progress?
They may force the employer to operate on a different basis in
their individual sites; they may improve the terms and conditions
of their members on those sites, but what happens when they are
under attack or want to reach for something really significant
to the employer? More often than not they will be played off
against other non organised sites, their rising costs in comparison
with other sites will be used as a way of managing aspiration
and reducing bargaining influence, closure and redundancy may
become a reality as they are viewed as the key cost centres.
If we recognise this reality then the automatic response is
to ensure that all sites have effective workplace leaders willing
to acknowledge that key issues must be resolved on a company
wide basis. Further, if we are to really improve the standard
of living for the workers in the company, then we must look at
the whole industry. The same negative control that happens to
individual organised sites which are in a minority within a company,
can also happen to the individual company, well organised in
a sea of non organised competitors. The T&G Organising response
is to develop industry-wide co-ordination of workplace leaders,
representing – if possible – all sites within all major
companies. We seek to; raise standards on an industry wide basis,
maximise worker and therefore bargaining power, realistically
raise aspirations, and minimise employer ability to undercut
any advance. This underlying assumption – success will be
limited unless we take the industry – is now dictating our
thinking. We instigate any organising strategy by first analysing
and then taking an industry, not an individual site or company.
The third element of T&G Organising is the need to extend
workplace organisation beyond the borders of country boundaries
- the need to co-ordinate effective workplace leaders globally.
If the logic of the argument and the lessons from the failed
recruitment and partnership approach are fully accepted, we must
then look to not only develop effective workplace leaders at
the site, company or industry level within any particular country,
but globally. As we all know, major corporations and industries
are largely global operations. Referring back to the earlier
example, if we fail to organise on a global industry wide basis,
then workers in individual countries, where there is effective
industry wide organisation, will encounter the same problems
as the individual worker faces being employed in one of the two
sites that are organised within the country where the other eight
company sites are not. If unions that are organising fail to
address this problem then all we will achieve is to pass on the
organising dilemma to others, whilst at the same time offering
little prospect of long term sustainable progress to those workers
we ourselves have organised. We must seek to promote global workplace
leader co-ordination on an industry wide basis so that we fully
maximise bargaining power and attempt to prevent employer undercutting
wherever possible. The uncomfortable truth is that it will be
difficult to defend and improve standards long term for workers
within any country or industry – particularly if it is transferable
– without seeking to defend and raise standards for all
workers along that particular industries global supply chain.
Movable global corporations working within transient global supply
chains will take advantage of any organisational weakness to
suppress or replace areas of organisational strength. Even in
anchor industries where it is not possible to move work, it is
safe to say that if we allow organisational weakness to occur,
that the bad practice developed there will be exported to areas
where we have organisational strength.
The three elements of T&G Organising are all built upon
one central core – the need to develop effective workplace
leaders. Without effective workplace organisation – the
ability to act collectively to maximise bargaining power in order
to defend and raise standards – then it is impossible to
operate and rebuild successfully at either the national site,
company and industry level or the global company and industry
level. Without organising effectively globally we can not realistically
expect to achieve long term sustainable success at home.
Section 4: T&G Organising Practice and
Structures
Having discussed the theory, we must now discuss the key practical
components of the T&G Organising strategy – what was
needed to build the strategy and how it works on the ground.
Committed Leadership
The first and perhaps the most critical element needed to
develop an effective organising strategy is the firm commitment
and direction of the leadership of the Union. Prior to the election
of Tony Woodley as General Secretary of the T&G, the Union
had no leadership commitment to any meaningful strategy for growth
- let alone an organising strategy built on the principle of
collective action. It is safe to say that without the election
of a General Secretary committed to organising any union will
find it impossible to rebuild effectively. It may be the case
that within any union there are pockets of commitment to organising,
and indeed some unions have had nominal numbers of organisers
parachuted into particular areas, but this type of action will
fail without the principle drive coming from the leadership.
The leadership of any union needs to see organising as the central
base, not only for growth, but for winning for members at work.
This can not just be a policy, as difficult decisions must be
made to ensure that the organising culture is the cornerstone
of the union. At the first stage of implementation the shift
to an organising union will be perceived by some as an attack
on the status quo. The leadership needs to be prepared to ensure
that compromise does not derail the organising strategy. The
key base for any decision must be driven by what is needed to
build collective organisation for workers, not the placation
of differing personal interests.
Allocation of substantial financial resource
In order to be able to drive a successful organising programme
the union needs to ensure that it makes available the necessary
resource, both in terms of organising capacity and the running
of campaigns. At the beginning of moving resources to organising
hard decisions need to be made so that the necessary resource
can be allocated. As the programme develops the union needs to
ensure that it dedicates protected funds to organising. The T&G
has committed 3 million in year one, five million in year
two and seven million in year three of the programme. The
union also needs to ensure that all funds spent on organising
are actually spent on the day to day organising of workers -
not conferences or glossy materials.
It is important to bear in mind that in the early years of
changing a culture to organising, and as the union is building
organising capacity, the programme will not pay for itself. Indeed
arguably the amount of organising spend in a year will never
be recouped in the same year, but as the programme builds sustainable
organisation, the union will see membership staying with the
union, not only winning industrially but truly growing year on
year.
The establishment of a central organising department and
national targeting strategy
Critical to the success of the organising agenda is to have
a centrally driven national organising department. There must
be one strategy in place not a number of different approaches
adopted throughout the Union. Success or failure must be judged
on the agenda set by the leadership. The T&G National Organising
Department comprises of: The elected Deputy General Secretary;
the Director of Organising – leading the department on a
day to day basis and leading key sector campaigns; and three
lead organisers - leading key sector campaigns. There are also
eight organising teams within each of the T&G’s eight
regions – to ensure that national campaigns have the capacity
to be driven on the ground across the entire union and targeted
sectors. The eight organising departments in each region currently
consist of one senior organiser running one team (one team leader
and five organisers) or two teams. The T&G Organising Department
was put in place in June 2005 and we currently have sixty
eight organisers. As we continue to develop the strategy
and build on success we will be expanding both national and regional
capacity.
It is critical that organising targets are set nationally
and taken by sector not by geographical location or on an individual
site or company basis. If we are to move workers across sectors
then our organising strategy and resource must be geared towards
this from a central base. How campaigns are targeted is critical
to the success of the strategy. There must be clear targeting
criteria, not driven by individual preference or previous encounters
with an individual employer. To ensure that we target strategically,
it is vital to map the economy in order to understand what sectors
are suitable targets. To achieve this aim, the criteria we use
includes; sustainability, growth, power and precarity. It is
also necessary to take into account the industrial landscape
of the Union when considering appropriate sector targets.
Essential resources
The main resource used within any organising strategy is the
dedicated organisers themselves. Very early within the development
stage of the organising strategy we decided to set up and run
our own T&G Organising Academy for organisers. This was despite
the fact that TUC had already set up an organising academy in
1998. What was evident from our experience was that organisers
being trained through the TUC academy had not been trained on
the type of organising that the T&G wanted to adopt –
therefore we knew we would have to grow our own. This inevitably
slowed the rate of our development, but we needed to ensure that
the type of orgnaisers entering the T&G structure were assessed
against our organising ideals and trained to implement them.
The T&G organising academy therefore has two primary functions.
Firstly, the assessment centres, where people are interviewed
for appointment. The seven day assessment is extremely detailed.
The first two days are skills based assessment workshops, the
following three days are training days, then there is a final
two day assessment in the field. Applicants need to pass the
full seven day assessment to become a “trainee organiser”.
The second function of the T&G academy is on-going training.
This again comprises of skill sets linked to our ideals, including:
Advanced organising training; union busting training; and planning
and delivery of campaigns. Throughout the organisers’ training
period, most of what they learn is out in the field on actual
campaigns. On average it takes nine months for a trainee organiser
to become an “organiser”. Organisers are assessed daily
on outcomes linked to the particular campaign to which they are
assigned.
The other key resources that need to be developed for an organising
strategy to succeed are: Research, Media and Communications,
and Education. All three are critical to the building of successful
organising capacity. Without effective proactive research then
targeting and client strategies become impossible to create.
Without effective use of the media then maximising the output
of the client strategy becomes impossible. Without education
programmes committed and focused on building collective strength,
then workplace leaders will never become the shop stewards and
industry leaders that we need them to be.
Key elements of T&G organising in practice
The T&G’s organising ideals are based on building
a shop stewards movement within key suitable sectors of the economy.
Every sector campaign has the objective of winning relevant sectoral
agreements within at least 75% of the companies within the targeted
sector – including key companies that seek to undercut major
players. The membership objective within these areas is to achieve
at least 65% density within all targeted sites, as we believe
that this is the minimum collective density required to ensure
a sector agreement is won. This is done by organising workers
on the ground and also by triggering client leverage at a suitable
stage. When we pursue significant improvement for workers it
is vital that we maximise the influence of customers who often
control the “ability to pay”.
Each sectoral target has a national organising plan that includes
a strategy for a number of key areas. Some of the key areas are
as follows (each area has a timeline of key stage actions). Firstly,
the ground campaign. We look to building workplace leaders through
issue based campaigning – initially done through local issues;
building organising committees made up of workplace leaders by
site; training of workplace leaders – with the training
comprising of planning sessions where workers take ownership
of the campaign; identified issues are won through a series of
collective actions that are split into low risk and high risk
– a low risk collective action would be a petition of badge
day, a high risk collective action would be collective grievances
or industrial action. An issue is escalated through collective
actions with every collective action requiring the worker to
become more visible in regard to the campaign. It is important
to say at this point that the recruitment of members in a campaign
is seen as a collective not individual action. Therefore at key
points in the campaign we trigger “collective sign up”
around particular issues. Another key part of the ground campaign
is building senior workplace leaders from local site organising
committees to form the campaign sector combine. When at this
stage we view the sector as one bargaining unit and it is at
this point that all workers are mobilised around the key relevant
sectoral agreement through the direction of the sector combine.
Secondly, the development of client leverage to ensure maximum
campaign success. Information is gathered about who the targets
supply to, who they sponsor or any organsations that they belong
to (for example ethical bodies). Research is completed on this
area prior to the campaign, to make certain that when we need
to pull this lever all necessary information is available.
Thirdly, the inoculation strategy, ensuring workers are prepared
for the employers campaign against the union. It is important
in any inoculation strategy, that we have a plan to inoculate
workers but not to give them the disease. All communications,
whether or not an employer attack on the union is present, will
always carry an inoculation message. Every one to one with a
worker or any meeting of workers will also carry an inoculation
message. The severity of the employers campaign against the union
will determine the Union’s messages of inoculation.
Other key areas of the plan will include; the media campaign
- again lever areas are looked at with the potential for public
exposure at the right time in the campaign; the community campaign
and the legal campaign.
The workplace leader – why/how?
As previously indicated, the cornerstone of the T&G organising
strategy is the rebuilding of the shop stewards movement. This
is only possible through the identification and development of
effective workplace leaders. The key to any campaign is finding
the right workplace leaders and this is always the hardest task.
Traditionally our activist base has played an important role
within the movement and this is no different in organising campaigns.
What is different in an organising campaign environment is that
when we are looking for workplace leaders they must always be
the natural leaders of the workplace and in some cases they may
be anti-union or in the first instance be against union ideals.
Previously unions may not have sought these leaders out, as there
was no serious recognition about how key natural workplace leaders
were to winning any campaign. Unions tended to put their hand
on some-ones shoulder or task the first person who showed an
interest in the union rather than thinking strategically. Of
course all those that show an interest should be involved in
the campaign, but without effective workplace leaders the campaign
will not succeed. The key task of an organiser is to ensure that
workplace leaders are on the union programme not on the employers.
If natural workplace leaders are not converted to the union programme
in a campaign, they and the workers they lead will become advocates
of the employer.
How do we identify a workplace leader? Through one test -
workplace leaders have followers. When organising in any environment
it becomes very apparent who are the workplace leaders –
in a group environment they will be the one other workers seek
guidance from, in a one to one a worker will state key names.
They are not always the most vocal and as stated they are not
always for the union. As the campaign may succeed or not depending
on whether we get this right, organisers are trained to test
workplace leaders before we build site organising committees.
Leaders are tested on who they can move in a workplace. We test
on small actions initially, to ensure when we have to mobilise
workers for key actions we bring the whole workplace with us.
The task of electing shop stewards obviously always must remain
with the members.
Section 5: T&G Organising success
The T&G Organising strategy has had considerable success
in what is the opening phase of development. The National Organising
Department was established in June 2005, following agreement
by the lay-led Executive Council of the Union. [Fact: nearly
all of them are from an approved list called Broad Left promoted
to those few members who vote] The net membership figure gained
from organising activity between June 2005 to date is over fifteen
thousand. This was achieved despite starting from scratch –
employing and training new organisers; establishing and targeting
new areas. All the targets we have been set within the scope
of the resource we hold have been met. For any Union, it is critical
to understand the importance of success in the development of
any organising strategy. In order to establish organising as
core business it is vital that those within the Union are convinced
of its merits – this can only be achieved through delivery,
not theory. Because of the transparent initial success we have
achieved the T&G culture is beginning to change to an organising
culture. We have now set the ambitious target of organising net
twenty thousand new members through the national organising strategy
in 2007 and are now looking at how we move the strategy on, in
order to organize 30, 40, 50 thousand new workers into the Union.
At this development stage the strategy has focused on four
key target sectors:
- Meat processing industry
- Low cost airlines
- Building services (cleaning)
- Logistics
In the meat sector we have not just increased industry
membership and won recognition at all the major market players,
we have implemented a growing sector wide bargaining strategy.
This has been achieved through the development of the “meat
combine” for shop stewards to drive issues on a sectoral
basis – maximising bargaining power. Through this sector
combine we have already used our client strategy to move on the
issue of excessive agency working at sites and pay parity. For
the first time the key processing companies and their supermarket
customers are having to deal with such issues in the face of
united industry wide trade union organisation – all shop
stewards pushing for the same agenda building pressure through
increased power.
In low cost airlines we have not just increased industry
membership by tackling companies undercutting traditional trade
union employers. We have done this in the face of union busters
employed to encourage workers to oppose the Union. When organising
the low cost carrier Flybe the company employed the Burke Group
(American Union busters) in an attempt to derail the T&G
recognition drive. Through correctly identifying workplace leaders
and building worker organisation though them, we delivered a
resounding and unparalleled result in the UK. Following the competing
campaigns of Burke and the Union, workers voted by secret ballot
94% in favour of trade union recognition on an 89% turn-out.
This delivered one overwhelming central message – effective
disciplined and focused organising works.
The success of the client strategy in the London cleaning
campaign has delivered another vital message – leverage
is paramount. With able assistance from Grant Williams of the
SEIU we have now forced the vast majority of cleaning contractors
in the City of London and Canary Wharf to sign “zonal agreements”
with the Union. We have done this by putting at stake the reputation
of key clients. Well organised daily demonstrations against clients
who would prefer to accept the possibility of paying a marginal
increase in cost rather than have their reputation tarnished
has proved hugely successful. The clients have used their clout
with the contractors to force them to the table and sign agreements
with the Union. All agreements are zonal based agreements locking
contractors into what in effect becomes one bargaining unit.
This approach has been developed to increase the power of disparate
cleaners, increase the likelihood of sustainable progress at
the bargaining table and prevent the possibility of companies
undercutting each other in a race to the bottom.
The logistics campaign has focused on the parcels sector
– taking the major companies and driving up standards throughout
the industry. We have already achieved major success at the bargaining
table through an organising approach built on a sector strategy.
The campaign is now set to target the contract logistics sector,
and in the first instance grocery retail logistics. Research
proves that grocery retail is a key area of the UK economy, and
also an area extremely vulnerable to supply chain problems. The
logistics process is critical to the major clients (retailers)
which hold a massively profitable monopoly position within the
UK. If consumable produce is not delivered then retailers have
big problems. This campaign will bring together a key occupational
group with critical leverage in a sector where the clients undoubtedly
have the ability to pay for significant improvements at the bargaining
table.
Section 6: Moving forward – building
on success in the New Union
The creation of the new super Union following merger between
T&G and Amicus will lead to the establishment of the largest
Union in the UK with over 2 million members. This offers immeasurable
opportunities in regard to organising. The success of the T&G
organising strategy and the strong T&G leadership focus has
meant that both Unions have already agreed to spend 10% of membership
income on organising within three years of merger. This commitment
will ensure that 1/3 of trade union members in the UK will be
automatically part of a Union with the organising culture at
its core. This commitment will allow tremendous scope for the
development of the main ideal of T&G organising – the
rebuilding of the shop stewards movement. From this base we will
pursue economy wide industry strategies to maximize bargaining
power to win for workers. We will develop capacity to take organising
trade unionism to the millions of workers previously untouched
by trade unions. And we will develop an effective global industry
strategy to maximize bargaining power and fundamentally alter
the balance of power between workers and their employers. However,
none of this will be possible if we do not continue to deliver
and remain committed to the creation of collective organisation
at the most local level. We are confident that T&G organising
will remain a lasting legacy not only of a commited leadership
team but also of the T&G as new traditions are made in the
new Union.
Sharon Graham
Transcribed from Union Ideas Network.
Much of the same article is on the T & G website but with
some of the Gerald Ratner highlights removed:
Section 1:
Members should buy legal insurance separately from ordinary
union membership.
The text doesn't say this but it says services to members are
out of fashion and even claims they were prioritised, when employment
lawyers are getting less than one pound a year per member according
to the legal director's interview
with The Lawyer magazine.
Individual members' services are not defined in a contract
- there is no "schedule II" as the rule book says there
should be - and even the rule book itself is interpreted as a
historical guide to current norms
rather than a fixed contract about how things should be by the
certification office.
Individual members' legal services at tribunals have a
90% success rate according to the TUC, suggesting a complete
rip-off of members who had a 51%-89% chance as well as a system
where there's no time or money to say "the chef would settle
more quickly if he knew that Mr Ramsey were removed from the
kitchen and not given a good reference to supervise staff".
Unite-T&G live in a different world:
We believed that workers wanted unions to act as protectors
of the individual rather than facilitators of the collective.
This simply did not work.
Many unions – including the T&G – adopted measures
perceived as allowing us to reach out to the individual worker
– insurance policy membership. We started to prioritise
a number of tools which ran counter to the theory of trade unions
as collective agents:
- The winning and publicising of legal compensation for
individual workers;
- concentration on achieving success in individual grievance
and disciplinary matters;
- the setting up of insurance and holiday schemes.
In addition - and perhaps centrally - we began to
increasingly view recruiting the employer as a key tool in achieving
growth and sustaining the future of trade unionism.
One bizarre bits of the quote is to say a 90%-chance-of-success
no-win-no-fee solicitor paid 66p per member per year is "prioritising"
or an official who doesn't turn-up to recognition agreement meetings,
my bosses disciplinary meeting, and then my dismissal meeting
is "concentration on". If this is what the union concentrated
on I hate to think what happened to the things they neglected.
Luckily the Discuss conference suite and the Eastbourne care
home are separately paid for, so I suppose this is the only thing
the main part of the union had to concentrate on.
My guess is that the boss here has long thought that the
union neglected workplace organisation, is putting all he can
into it now, and that an assistant is writing it up.
My guess is that all sorts of legal protection organisations
started a few years ago when no-won-no-fee was allowed, and that
everyone is gradually getting the hang of it just as union organisers
and union members are getting the hang of it. Unbion publicity
might have mentioned pay-outs a few years ago, but that's because
people didn't realise they can get personal injury payouts for
free by answering adverts in the post office:
"Did you walk into a lamp post when it wasn't your
fault?"
"Sue the council for £1.000,000 and see if they settle
for £1,000 with £100 to claims-R-us".
There is an odd sense that individual services might not
be collective. It isn't clear from the article what Sharon Graham
thinks, but the opportunity to use tribunal cases to win concessions
for future employees is missed, even though the Hattersley research
shows complainants motivated to do just this, rather than be
paid to shut-up which is what happens.
The setting-up of insurance and holiday schemes. Dumbfounded?
Me too. She must be on about union central offices who flog services
to the mailing list as anyone with business sense would, but
it is to get money in; it does not mean that the union is providing
Liverpool Victoria insurance or whatever holiday scheme some
union might be offering.
The last two lines are so odd as to be hard to comment
on. My best guess as to what Unite-T&G means is that they
had three million members in the 1970s, the number reduced quite
fast and they only have 750,000 now because of a reputation for
fecklessness among public sector management. This is an attempt
to paraphrase what Shaman Graham of the T&G seems to me to
be saying:
"We have to recognise a union", the argument
would go; "It's lucky we've got a feckless one like Unite-T&G"
"Just don't tell the new recruits how many times this union
has tried to settle with us before employment tribunals when
they haven't even read the the evidence. We don't even
bother to settle with them any more."
 Section 2:
Trade Union indistinguishable from management - Union agrees
with
Bullyoffline.com
Sharon Graham notices that members who join almost by default
at certain employers will leave just as quickly when they change
jobs. I don't know why these employers recommend a union in their
employment contract but it's known that they are public-funded
employers. I know from experience that recognition is with contempt:
one employer used to see the union official as long as it was
at 7.30-8am on a Monday morning. Another used to allow union
meetings as long as a senior manager who was a bit mad and used
by them as their bully could attend and gerrymander. They would
see the delegated rep for recognition agreement meetings or not
- sometimes they just cancelled. And the official, who had several
thousand members to answer to, was never there to press the case.
A good guess at why these employers recommend union membership
is that it doesn't cost them much - the staff pay subscriptions
and time off for union duties is negligable - while it makes
their grant proposals look posh. These employers are grant-artists
and anything that makes them look good on paper is what earns
them their grant. Like second-hand motor traders, many are honest
but the trade is great for crooks who sell something hard to
define to a funder who half wants to be conned.
All of this can happen without anyone conciously thinking
about it, but Sharon Graham suggests that things have gone further
and that at some employers there really is a concious conspiricy
between employers and union officials and general secretaries
who know each other's names and have agreed that unions are crap.
And nobody has told the members.
Sharon Graham suggests that unions should be more organised,
recruit more stewards and protest. This is a brave gesture when
Amicus for example is said on a political web site to be running-down
its voluntary structures to concentrate on subscriptions and
paid staff while the University and College Union even has office
space to let because it does so little. The creaky old money-laundering
machine of the T&G that has less than a pound per member
per year for employment lawyers is no help to those who protest.
Until she breaks the usual good manners and says that unions
have been a fraud on their members for years it will be hard
for her to end the fraud, which is what she seems to be trying
to do.
For months there has been an Airport dispute of union members
against their own union in Belfast. It's all seemed too local
and specific to make sense of; it's hard to believe a union would
let down large numbers of their own members. But after reading
section two of this page, the Indymedia story repeated on the
DearUnite.com web site does make sense. The themes of my own
worse-than-useless union legal service, the Unison-lawyers.html case and the much more serious
Belfast case are not exceptions but an emerging pattern of cause,
effect, and some acknowledgement from the union itself.
Woodley Faces Hunger Strike
Unite joint General Secretary Tony Woodley is facing a hunger
strike by two of the union's own shop stewards. Bizarrely this
is because Woodley reneged on promises he made to end a previous
hunger strike, according to the workers. Unite shop steward Gordon
McNeill, referring to legal costs not being paid, told Indymedia
"We soon discovered that the word of Tony Woodley
and other senior leaders of this union is worthless. "
The union deny that they have reneged on a promise to pay
the legal costs, see their press release at bottom.
The dispute arose because the union repudiated a strike,
siding with the employer's claim that it was illegal. The union's
executive minutes are littered with such strike repudiations*,
which basically amount to giving in to employer's lawyers. However
in this case the workers then took their own legal action, and
won a determination that the strike was in fact lawful at an
Employment tribunal and then again at the Appeal court.
Last September's hunger strike and rooftop protest at Transport
House in Belfast was called off after Woodley agreed to pay the
£200,000 in legal costs arising from this long court battle,
which the workers had to fight without any support from their
union. The two hunger striking shop stewards say not one of promises
made has been kept.
"We will not call off our hunger strike until we have
firm commitments from Tony Woodley that he cannot wriggle out
of."
* Typically the Amicus Executive alone was making about
10 strike repudiations per meeting, until these
decisions were buried in the joint NEC minutes last May.
Section 3: Shop stewards are expected
to have time to work for free while paying £15 monthly
membership and backing members who do not get proper HR or legal
help. Stewards are stuck in the middle. If they have any sense
they insist on a meeting with the full-time official and take
the member along with them (Mr Jervis's rep in Unison-Lawyers.html
didn't have the sense to do this and was stuck sending rejections
by email on behalf of paid officials)
In my own experience even this fails. When shop stewards
discover that they can't refer colleagues to decent help, the
shop stewards resign leaving only political activists who are
willing to cover-up the holes in the budget. If there are only
400 staff and 750,000 members paying £10-£15 a month
there is a very big hole in the budget: a social work agency
might have one human resources worker per hundred staff or less.
A fair use of the subscriptions would pay for one member of staff
on an average wage per so-many-hundred members. This union has
one official per several thousand members or more. They are not
an equal match. No wonder officials don't answer letters unless
forwarded by a union rep: they are forced by pressure of work
to be volunteer co-ordinators rather than proper officials, and
the volunteers are people who have begun to realise this but
are interested in unions because of politics, so they carry-on.
The result is that large amounts of money are given to
people who turn-up once a month to donate it to the Morning Star.
Who else would do rep work, hold down a normal job which is probably
difficult because it needs a union, live their own lives and
go to sit on extra committees and training sessions?
Section 4:
Cost: The union had 750,000 members that year, so millions of
pounds, weeks of training, and several dozen staff take just
about all the divertable cash. There is less than £10 per
year spent on paid staff and expenses per member, out of a subsription
of £12 a month.
Merging union Amicus is even closer to chaos, hiring temps, harassing
left wing staff and selling-off their stately home according
to DearUnite.com and running-down what's left of their volunteer
branches according to socialist worker web site.
The union's decision-makers are putting all their eggs
into one basket, which is the organising and troublemaking basket,
and none at all into the legal insurance or the buying-out employers
baskets. Members are not asked which resource basket their subscription
eggs should be placed-in with any kind of mutual chicken online
subscription egg-basket allocation democracy system on a show
of clucks-pecks-and-wings, which would have fitted the 1922 rule
book better.
Research shows a number of tribunal complainants so hopping
mad with their ex employer that they are willing to give-up career
prospects and months of their lives just to sue, and it is their
unions who are imposing a quick settlement for a gagging agreement
not the members: there is certainly demand from some members
for legal services as advertised
in a short pdf download leaflet.
Sharon Graham would fit-in well to the rival union, Industrial Workers
of the World, which raises hardly any money but makes a lot
of noise. It has 152 UK and Ireland members to Unite-T&G's
750,000. Presumably she's using T&G with it's different objectives
of legal insurance an d buying-out employers because it is so
large and hard for members or employers to leave and therefore
able to offer a living, whoever runs it. Nobody else is hired
to run it because the democratic stucture is decayed and other
advisers wouldn't appeal to the few political activists who squat
derelict committee structures.
Section 5:
Confrontation is preferred for its own sake.
For the same cost the union could simply buy logistics companies,
cleaning agencies and a slaughterhouse if not a low cost airline.
This is what the rule books "objectives" section says
it's for, after legal insurance. The idea of eternal class struggle
in which union members are eternally to stay in their place fighting
against the bosses is a repeated idea on sites about trades unions
- the Industrial Workers of the World for example - but the different
idea in the T&G rule book of taking over companies, educating
staff, and insuring against poverty looks a much more popular
idea.
There's a hope in the article that this union can give-up
being an organisation that takes money away from un-critical
subscribers and gives it to a political party that shields the
union from being sued by clever use of the law. There's a sense
that it can get back to basics and do what non-union members
always imagined that trades unions did (join one and you'll discover
they don't). This is sentimental shit. Until the shits come clean
about the massive hole in trades union accounts - equivalent
to ten or eleven of members' twelve monthly subscriptions - they
cannot pretend that they will make trades unions do what trades
unions are meant to do. They know this. They should be in prison.
|