Trade unionism from below

Dan Jeffery, Assistant Branch Secretary Lambeth UNISON (personal capacity), and trade unionist of 15 years discusses building grassroots resistance in the unions.

A recent article called “We are trade unionist…” was put on the Left Unity website by a supporter of the Left Party Platform, Felicity Dowling. I thought it was a good article and agreed with all 20 points that were put up. However there seemed to be a glaring omission in terms of one of the single biggest blocks (if not the biggest block), to creating a grassroots network in the unions, rebuilding the trade union movement and achieving the progressive aims outlined in the article. That is the current leadership of the trade unions and the huge bureaucracies which support them.

The bureaucracies have a huge material interest in preventing the radicalisation and democratisation of the trade unions. They have huge salaries, with most general secretaries earning over £100,000 a year (and many much more than that), regional officials often earning £50,000 a year plus and all the perks that go with it. Such as the leadership of UNISON staying in five star hotels at conference, working in plush offices and central London and getting wage increases and protected pensions which they have long since sold down the river for their membership. From that point of view I think a point should be added that all trade union officials are put on the average wage of their membership. It was galling to hear the leader of the TUC, Francis O’Grady, talking about low paid workers at the People’s Assembly when she is happy to take a salary of nearly £100,000 from the subs of trade union members, often low paid themselves.

The bureaucracies in the trade unions are huge, employing thousands of officials, who are mostly unelected and largely unaccountable. Again all officals in the trade union movement should be elected as a basic democratic demand. These bureaucracies are often as vicious as employers in victimising trade union activists who they regard as too radical. UNISON has been a case in point shutting down numerous left wing branches and using regional officals to take them over and run them in to the ground. They have colluded with employers to get activists sacked such as in the case of Yunus Bakhsh. They have used trumped up charges to victimise socialists and try to drive them out of the union, such as the Defend The Four Campaign (Socialist Party members who have recently won their court case against UNISON). They have worked against low paid workers and undermined democracy in branches such as the 3Cosas Campaign. They smeared other unions such as the IWW who were fighting for cleaners rights and St Georges, and in the process effectively undermined the campaign (indeed my branch was told by regional officials that we weren’t allowed to take our UNISON banner to a demonstration in support of the cleaners!). Now while UNISON is one of the worst unions in this regard, bureaucracies across the trade union movement are acting as a block to creating a real grass roots movement.

The recent pensions dispute was a clear example where all the big trade unions tripped over themselves to demobilise the membership and go in to full propaganda mode to convince members that nothing more could be done that to accept a deal which meant working far longer, paying more and getting less. Indeed in the process of doing this UNISON put out “facts” which were misleading at times and outright wrong at others. The GMB and UNITE were more than happy to follow the lead of UNISON in this respect, and even the leaders of the more “left” unions such as the NUT and UCL refused to carry on a fight, where the need for the unity of all trade unions is used to bring everything down to the lowest common denominator. Obviously the call for unity is important, but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse by left bureaucracies to call off action in their sector through a domino effect. The same goes for the rationale of calling off disputes, such as when the PCS leadership accepted a two tier penion deal (something which is already coming back to haunt them). Rather than trying to give the membership confidence and then balloting, there was a defeatist mentality that the membership wouldn’t fight so they wouldn’t even try to push for a yes vote for sustained strike action. Even the left bureaucracies don’t seem to have any strategy other than one day or two day strikes which put little pressure on the employer, but when done time and again totally demoralise and demobilise the membership. It may well be a fact that much of the current membership of trade unions is lacking confidence and isn’t feeling up for a fight, but this won’t be changed by leaderships who are timid, conservative and happy to rely on the full timers in the bureaucracy rather than engage workers in a genuine way.

The attacks on the NHS are another example. A campaign that could have mobilised 100,000s if not millions of people in support of health care workers resisting the cuts and privatisations, and yet the response from the trade union leaders has been pitiful. Indeed in the Lewisham campaign to save the A&E and maternity wards from closure the branch secretary of UNISON denounced protestors as a mob and took part in the most shameful red baiting in an email sent out to all workers at Lewisham hospital with the agreement of management.

Rather than a desire to take on the totally undemocratic anti trade union laws, the trade union bureaucracies often use these as an excuse to do nothing. In UNISON they even add even more bureaucratic rules, such as the fact that you have to carry out an indicative ballot to ask members if they want to have a strike ballot where we are then asked if we want to go on strike! Even at a local level I have seen hurdle after hurdle put by regional officials to stop strike ballots taking place, or at least delay them so long that the membership has become demotivated.

The bureaucracies aren’t just full timers for trade unions either, they are the thousands of trade unionists all around the country on full time facility time who often haven’t been in their substantive posts for years or often decades. Sadly some of these trade unionists call themselves socialists, but in reality have become routinist, conservative and passive and see active trade unionists who come in the branch as a threat, rather than allies. In my own branch, probably regarded as one of the most left wing UNISON branches in the country, I have seen this happen again and again, as new activists have been bullied and attempts made to marginalise them.This included the rather surreal but disturbing moment when our branch secretary (who was a candidate for UNISON United Left for general secretary), went around telling people that one new activist was an MI5 agent! Another basic demand should be that no trade unionist should have full time facility, and should spend at least a couple of days a week in their workplace. This keeps people in touch with what is going on and stops people caring more about keeping their facility time, than building the trade union branch. From my experience it cannot be over emphasised what effect years of being on full time facility time has. However hard people work in such a role, it is not the same as having management breathing down your neck, and the constant pressure of threats of capability and grievances. New activists and grass roots organising becomes not just a threat to facility time but a whole way of life that people have got used to.

To rebuild a grassroots network and rank and file movement we would need an overhauling of the entire way that trade unions operate from top to bottom. Many on the left are good about talking about building a rank and file and the need for it, but the reality of doing it seems sparse to say the least. In all the conferences I have been to ranging from Unite the Resistance, to the National Shop Stewards Network, Coalition of the Resistance and the People’s Assembly trade union bureaucrats are given centre stage with barely a criticism and rounds of applause.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is no easy way to turn this around, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. But we need something far better than the current broad lefts which are tiny in size and seem utterly incapable of creating even the initial building blocks of grass roots structures. In UNISON, UNISON United Left barely functions. I say this not as an insult, as there are some fantastic activists involved in it, but as a reality. The revolutionary socialist organisations in UNISON, with probably a few hundred members in UNISON, either don’t take take it seriously (the SWP) or just don’t try and build a independent rank and file organisation at all (the Socialist Party). This results in AGMs of 20 or so people in a trade union of 1.3 million members. On a personal level I have taken some heart by what we managed to achieve in the Lambeth UNISON branch, when in the face of bullying and bureaucracy from the leadership of the branch we formed an organisation called Lambeth Activists. This involved a dozen or more stewards and many more members, produced a grass roots bulletin and enabled us to stand jointly at AGMs where we ended up winning many officer and leadership positions in the branch while standing on an openly socialist manifesto. This helped us shape the branch in a more postive way and the density of the branch went up, the amount of stewards increased substantially, a branch bulletin was produced for the first time in more than a decade, work place meetings of members were built for the first time in years, union notice boards were put up all around the Council and AGM attendance went up hugely. Lambeth Activists is no longer functioning, partly because many of us are now in the leadership of the branch (but none on more than small amounts of facility time), but also, to be blunt, because I think just functioning at a local level makes you feel a bit isolated, and the constant attacks of the past few years from the government and Labour Council does wear you down! But the results achieved by Lambeth Activists, in spite of hostility from the leadership at the time, makes me think that it is a genuinely good model for organising. If this could be done in even a few dozen branches around the country and they linked up together this could lead to a small but real basis for building regional and national networks. Left Unity, with hopefully at least a few hundred trade union activists among its membership, could play an important and exciting role in doing this. We could share our experiences to give each other solidarity and tips about how to build grass roots activity in our branches, link up regionally and nationally and help to produce grass roots bulletins, blogs and websites.

We cannot hide away from the fact that the current bureaucracy and leaderships are not our allies, in most cases they need to be swept aside. This is a daunting task given the level of confidence that there currently is in the trade union rank and file, but it is a task that is probably as vital as anything else out there. I remember about three years ago in the ALMO Lambeth Living (a private oragnisation which runs Lambeth’s housing stock) we faced severe job cuts and launched a workplace and community campaign against this. We didn’t achieve everything we wanted, but we did stop many of the job cuts and service cuts. One of the highlights for me was when half the staff at the staff conference walked out when the Chief Executive was speaking. Outside the conference there was a feeling of real empowerment as we had a mass meeting and agreed to go back to work. The atmosphere that afternoon in work was probably one of the best feelings of my political life as we had a small feeling of what it was like to take control. But even that small act would not have been possible had it not been for the hard work we had done to build up a network of stewards and substantially increase our density. Left Unity as a national organisation could start to build such things all around the country and start to rekindle the hopes and confidence of trade union members. I firmly believe that if this was done in a systematic and genuine way the results could be substantial. There is genuinely a lot of pain and anger among our communities and in our workplaces because of the barbaric attacks of this government, but to turn this in to action needs someone to take a lead and build the first few building blocks. This would be worth more than a thousand passive conferences listening to bureaucrats and leaving at the end of the day with no direction. From this point of view I like the sayings “from small acorns, great oak trees grow” and, “a single candle can light a darkened room”. I hope that Left Unity can start such a process and candles are lit regionally and nationally!