WHY SHOULD UNIONS FEED THE (LABOUR) HAND THAT BITES THEM?

There are growing signs that many trade union activists are seeking to break the strangulating ties with Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party, seeking other means of struggle in defence of jobs, livelihoods and workplace rights. Two developments in the one week are signposts of this shift in outlook.

The three-way contest for the new general secretary of the giant Unite union was won by Sharon Graham, whose main campaigning slogans were ‘Back to the Workplace’ and ‘Payment by results’ for politicians, rather than blanket financial backing for a Labour party hell-bent on crushing the last remnants of socialism from its membership and its actual practices.

The right-wing candidate, Gerard Coyne, was the darling of most of the capitalist media, Blairite and Starmer's pet candidate.  He sought to play on discontent in the ranks with bogus calls for ‘change’, but his track record of cosying up to big business in partnership agreements and his virulent opposition to both Jeremy Corbyn and outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey did not inspire a right-wing coup by Unite members. In fact, Coyne’s vote crashed by 20,000 compared with when he stood against McCluskey in 2017.

UNITE: Sharon Graham Wins Despite Divided Left Vote 

Many workers understandably feared that Coyne might slip through the middle given the divided left vote, where initially there were three self-declared left candidates: Howard Beckett, Steve Turner and Sharon Graham. After putting up a vigorous challenge during branch nominations, with a powerful cache of left-wing policies and high-profile campaigning against the virus of Fire and Rehire, Beckett then withdrew and made the bizarre decision to support Turner. That left two candidates competing against the nakedly right-wing Coyne.

Although declared as the official United Left candidate in a hotly disputed vote, and supported by many of the Labour left and the Communist Party, Turner would have been a move to the right compared with the outgoing McCluskey regime, and much tamer in his approach both to employers and Starmer's right-wing cabal. For instance, Turner declared throughout that there was “no need for an attack dog general secretary”, advocating one prepared to do deals behind the scenes.

Workplace Organisation

Whilst the claims by an extremely well-paid full-time national official of the Union to be ‘The Workers’ Candidate’ is a dubious concept, nevertheless Sharon Graham's well-crafted message of building more powerful workplace organisation hit home with many of the best Unite workplace activists. It's true that a major part of her campaign team were actually full-time paid officials in her own Organising Department of Unite, but they were added to by a whole raft of shop floor fighters, attracted by her fighting talk. For instance, Manchester bus workers who recently defeated fire and rehire through prolonged strike action, and construction industry electricians who likewise defeated deskilling of their jobs by the employers, openly campaigned for Graham, as did hundreds of other workplace activists. 

For many Scottish Unite members, Sharon’s openness to the right of the Scottish people to a second independence referendum - in sharp contrast to her opponents - was an added attraction.

 

Loosening Ties to Labour 

But alongside her promise to pour resources into workplace organisation, her association with high profile campaigns to unionise - such as Action for Amazon – and leverage campaigns to bludgeon employers into concessions, the other significant appeal from her campaign amongst many activists was undoubtedly a refusal to give carte blanche to the Labour Party, including with Union members’ cash. 

She pledged to fight any local authorities, including Labour councils, which imposed cuts and to only support political candidates who side with the workers she represents: “payment by results”.

This undoubtedly points towards a rapid loosening of ties between many union activists and the Increasingly anti-worker, anti-socialist Starmer Labour Party. That process of course is miles further ahead in Scotland, where Scottish Labour is not even a shadow of its former self and is widely reviled amongst many of the most active trade unionists. 

Bakers Union Threatens Disaffiliation from Labour 

Even more stark evidence of the growing breach with Labour is revealed by the Bakers Union, which although small is one of the most combative, fighting unions around.

In April 2020, alongside the Fire Brigades Union and an array of left formations inside the British Labour Party, the Bakers Union launched ‘Don't Leave, Organise’ as an umbrella to resist the charge to the right in Labour, in the hope of reconquering the party for left-wing, pro-worker policies. Less than 18 months later, on 18th September, the Bakers Union are holding a recall conference to debate the possibility of disaffiliating their union from the Labour Party. 

That dramatic step, after helping found the Labour Party in 1902, follows the decision by the Starmer   leadership and their McCarthyite machine to expel Bakers Union President, Ian Hodson, from the party, as part of a wider purge of socialists. In a survey of members earlier this year the majority of Bakers Union members voted for disaffiliation from Labour. It remains to be seen whether the Union sticks by its ‘don't leave, organise’ philosophy or makes the break from a party utterly incapable of mounting serious opposition to the reviled Tories. As Bakers Union general secretary, Sarah Woolley, has said, “We will not accept bullying from any bosses or a party that seems to prefer to be on the bosses’ side.” 

Make the Break – Why Feed the Hand that Bites You?! 

The events in both Unite and the Bakers Union highlight what the Scottish Socialist Party has argued for over 20 years: the modern Labour Party, particularly since the Blair/Brown leadership, transformed into a nakedly capitalist party of New Tories. And although a brief interruption to that process occurred with the election of Jeremy Corbyn, his removal even from party membership and Starmer's gallop to the right have reasserted the anti-working-class nature of that party.

Increasingly, the demand first championed by the SSP over 20 years ago to ‘Make the Break from capitalist Labour’ will revive in popularity amongst trade unionists. 

Why should union members’ fees be used to prop up the party that at local government level attacks them, and nationally is incapable of seriously standing on the side of workers and prefers to cosy up to big business? 

To invert the ancient proverb, why feed the hand that bites you?!

Reject Non-political Trade Unionism 

The SSP firmly rejects the notion of non-political trade unionism. Every daily issue facing workers throws up political choices and questions. 

The battery of anti-union laws which suppress wages, conditions and workplace rights and permits vicious thuggery like Fire and Rehire are the result of political decisions - first by Thatcher's Tories and subsequently by successive Labour and Tory governments. 

Pay cuts and job losses amongst half-a-million Scottish workers employed in the public sector are decided upon by politicians, whether Tory, Labour, SNP or Scottish Green.

Workers need a political vehicle to defend and advance their rights and conditions. Individual members of Unite, the Bakers Union or any other trade union can assist that struggle for political change in favour of the working class by joining Scotland's socialist party, the SSP.

Active trade unionists can enhance the democracy of their unions by demanding rule changes that allow members a multiple choice of pro-trade union parties (including the SSP) which they can fund through the political levy.

Sharon Graham, the Bakers Union leadership and others can boost the struggles of workers against the onslaught by the employers and governments both through workplace organisation and militant collective action, and by helping to build a mass political alternative to the Labour Party which has so demonstrably abandoned workers. 

This article was written on 25 August 2021 for publication in the Scottish Socialist Voice. 

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McSTRIKE! - build the fight for £10now and a union

September 4th 2017 should go down in the history books as the start of a fight by a new generation of workers against poverty pay, insecure jobs, bullying, intimidation and lack of union rights. 

A very brave group of 40 McDonald's workers in Cambridge and Crayford, south east London, voted by a whopping 96% to strike, in the ballot conducted by their union, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU). 

They defied management threats and victimisation - including slashed hours and sexual harassment - for daring to be in the union; walked out to form pickets, were joined by big crowds of supporters on rallies, plus 14 solidarity demos across the UK. 

Their core demand was for £10-an-hour and a union. 

They chose to strike on 4 September to coincide with US Labor Day, where fast food workers involved in the sweeping mass movement in the Fight for $15 went on strike, as did McDonald's workers in Belgium and elsewhere.

It was the start of global workers' action against global capitalism's totemic symbol - McD's - global casualisation and cheap labour. 

Starvation Wages 

The conditions these workers suffer, and are striking back against, are symptomatic of not just one of the world's biggest multinational corporations, but of the modern serfdom that 21st century capitalism relies on to turbocharge their profits. 

Tyrone is one of the Cambridge strikers. Aged 17, he's on £4.75 an hour. He describes working with the unbearable kitchen heat, the impatient queues, the aggro - but still forced to skimp meals through poverty pay; still unable to get a home of his own, sleeping on a punctured air bed in his mate's bedroom, wakening several times to pump it up again. 

His dream of winning £10-an-hour through the union and strike action is humbling in its modesty: "I could get a proper bed. I could get out of my mate's house. That's all I want, a place and a bed."

Tom, one of the union reps, is 24, and therefore on £7.55.  But he often skimps meals to save enough to visit his 4-year-old son, making do with the one free meal McD's allows him. This is the same corporation with the company line: "We have committed to investing in our people, to competitive rates of pay."

That's the problem; the government's paltry levels of minimum wage means they are often all too 'competitive' - in particular for younger workers, whom McDonald's and their ilk prey on for profit, because they're legally cheaper to hire, due to the lower legal youth minimum wages. 

Them and Us 

McDonald's methods encapsulate the whole system perfectly, grotesquely. 

Their own investment calculator reckons if you'd been able to buy 1,000 shares last December - when young Tyrone started with them - you'd have made £34,025 profit by now... whereas even if Tyrone had slaved in a hot kitchen full-time since he'd have earned only £7,410. 

Tom can barely afford to travel to see his toddler son, but McDonald's Chief Executive, Steve Easterbrook, has use of the company's private aircraft, and enjoys a package equivalent to £5,684 an hour!! 

They use zero hours contracts to wring maximum profit out of their 80,000 UK workers - and almost zero-rated corporation tax; well, a rate of 1.49%, to be accurate! They only promised to offer secure contracts, with guaranteed hours, in a state of panic after the strike ballot. And they've yet to put anything acceptable in writing. 

"I'll Tell You What It's All About!" 

As BFAWU Scottish Organiser Mark McHugh told the recent SSP public meeting in Govanhill, McDonald's were the first to introduce zero hours contracts to the UK, back in 1974! 

"It's taken this long to take them to task. I'll tell you what this strike is all about. It's about respect and dignity at work; the right to join a union; proper health and safety - not suffering burns and being told to take your break now, instead of getting treatment. It's about the right to join a union. About having the same right to go on holiday as anyone else. To actually get a shift when you turn up, not be sent home because it's quiet. 

We owe it to young people to win decent rights, because these retail park jobs are not stop gap jobs, they're what thousands face long-term. The food industry is booming, so they should be treated as serious jobs." 

From Acorns to Mighty Oaks 

It's to the eternal credit of these strikers, and their union, that they've taken serious, courageous action. For £10 and a union. For abolition of zero hours contracts and secure jobs. For an end to bullying and sexual harassment, both of which are rampant in these sectors: fast food, hospitality, retail. 

These are sectors bedeviled by the poverty pay and job insecurity that go with zero hours contracts like burgers go with chips. 

The strikes were a tiny proportion of the total workforce. But a similarity small section of McDonald's workers went on strike in New York City in November 2012, starting the Fight for $15, which through strikes and mass actions in the communities has now won big wage hikes for 22 million workers in the USA. 

£10 Now! 

The trade union movement needs a leadership that is serious about its own grand words and wishes. A long, torturous 3 years ago - September 2014 - the TUC congress voted unanimously for the BFAWU Motion for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers." 

Since then most union leaderships have done little - or literally nothing - to implement that demand. The BFAWU and some other union branches have campaigned for it - as has the Scottish Socialist Party, on the streets, in our unions, and as a demand we put to councils and the Scottish government to immediately introduce. 

And unlike even Labour's best, Jeremy Corbyn, the SSP wants £10 immediately, not three years hence, in 2020; in fact £10 is rapidly approaching its sell-by-date, given the inflation on daily necessities. 

Defend the Strikers

These McDonald's workers deserve a medal, but above all deserve the protection and solidarity of other workers and other unions. As the BFAWU President, Ian Hodson, told a strike rally,

"If even one striker is victimised for going on strike, we demand that others come to the McDonald's branch and occupy it." 

That's the militant spirit of defiance and class solidarity that pioneered the creation of the trade unions, especially amongst the most exploited sections of workers nearly 150 years ago. 

We owe it to the next generation to build on the courage of the first ever McStrikers in the UK, to fan the spark they lit into a flame that helps burn out the casualisation and super-exploitation faced by millions. 

The SSP pledges to play its part, alongside the BFAWU and others, for £10 now and a union; for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract instead of the serfdom and insecurity of zero hours contracts; for full union rights and full employment rights from the first day in a job. 

Ultimately, for a society based on workers' solidarity and sharing out the collective wealth workers produce. As a Guardian columnist put it, "The problem isn't one company, but the system of which it is part." 

.............................................................................................................................................................

Here's the video the SSP did to build solidarity as the McStrikers prepared their brave action:

STRUGGLE OR STARVE! - pay, prices, profit

There's no evidence of low paid workers and apprentices doing the Conga in the closes, celebrating in the shopping centres, or throwing street parties in the housing schemes. 
The Westminster government's increasing variety of national minimum wage levels have risen this month, but not so you'd notice. 

Workers aged 21-24 are now guaranteed £6.95-an-hour; those aged 18-20 £5.55 - in both cases a paltry 25p rise. And it gets stingier still: workers aged 16-18 have 'enjoyed' a 13p rise to the giddy heights of £4-an-hour. Worse still, apprentices have been granted an insulting 10p increase to a £3.40 minimum wage. 

Discounted Young Workers

How the hell are people meant to live on such basement level wages? Young workers or apprentices don't encounter sales banners in retail outlets or supermarkets declaring vast, special youth discounts. But that's precisely what the bosses - many of them billionaires - enjoy under the pernicious regime of age wage discrimination in this fabulously rich country. 

And don't go thinking workers over 25 have it cushy. Try living on the Tories' maliciously, deliberately misnamed 'National Living Wage' of £7.20-an-hour. Or indeed the Living Wage Foundation figure - currently £8.25, about to be increased - which builds in several self-imposed caps on what is actually required for a basic but reasonable standard of living. For instance, the Foundation itself admitted that a full three years ago, in 2013, it should actually have been set at £9.08 in Scotland to match living costs. And it's entirely voluntary, left to the whims and fancies of employers, with no power to legally enforce it. 

Profits Plunder Pay

Profits for big business are at record highs. Company chief executives award each other salaries that defy human imagination. On average they earn 183 times as much as their average worker. To keep all the figures bandied about for a real and genuine living wage in perspective, if the government's national minimum wage had kept pace with the rocketing pay levels of these company bosses since it was introduced in 1999, it wouldn't be £7.20, nor the Living Wage Foundation figure of £8.25, nor even the immediate £10 which the Scottish Socialist Party is demanding, but at least £18.99-an-hour, here and now in 2016! 

Wage Stagnation 

Workers' wages are stagnating, and have for over 30 years. Real wages have plunged by 10% since the 2008 financial crisis, brought about by bankers, billionaires and the political choices of their capitalist system. Wages have been consciously slashed to boost profits, with the aid of the legal chains forged to stop unions fighting back for a better share in wages and public services. 
And it's set to get worse for millions of workers' families over the next couple of years, as inflation re-enters the political economy after a period of very low official inflation figures. 

Food banks for Food workers

Even before the Brexit vote, workers' wages were slaughtered by the cost of basics like housing, transport and food. 

An astonishing six million UK families - five million of them with one or more people in jobs - are what the Tories have christened "just managing families". In poverty, working to remain poor, in more honest English. 

As the Resolution Foundation think tank has measured, these families now spend 25% of their incomes on housing - equivalent to a hidden income tax rise of 14p in the £1 compared to their situation in 1995. Transport costs are the highest in Europe. And contrary to the press propaganda, most of us haven't noticed the alleged fall in the price of food the last couple of years! On the contrary, as I recounted in my book Break the Chains, there are cases aplenty of fast food and supermarket staff serving food but having to rely on food banks to stave off hunger on their starvation wages. And as the Food Foundation recently commented, 

"Higher prices force families who are struggling to go for the cheapest calories. Children in the most deprived areas already experience twice the levels of obesity than children in the least deprived."

Before and after Brexit vote 

Now the Brexit vote has triggered a nosedive in the value of sterling, which spells disaster for the cost of living for low and middle-income families.

A lot of economically illiterate dross has been pumped out by some capitalist commentators about the fall in value of sterling against the Euro and US dollar meaning a heyday for British exports. What exports? For decades the dominant finance wing of the capitalists, and their hired politicians, have decimated industry in the likes of Scotland. Instead, they've concentrated on making big bucks through financial speculation and slaughtered wages. 

With wages so low, they shored up demand and sales through a glut of credit for a period, which then crashed in 2008, with workers made to pay twice over: through the £1.3trillion bailout of the banks from public funds, and eight years of austerity cuts since to recover that debt. 

Plunging Pound and Inflation 

The central fact is that the uncertainty post-Brexit Referendum has added to panic on the money markets and amongst manufacturers, with an 18% fall in the value of the £pound since May. Already car manufacturers like Fords, Vauxhalls and Peugeot have passed on price increases in the UK to compensate their profits for the weakened pound. The price of raw materials and goods needed by UK factories have in August grown faster than at any time since 2011. 

The very public spat between suppliers Unilever and retailers Tescos over the price of Marmite, PG Tips and Pot Noodle highlights the looming price rises for food. Prices at the petrol pumps are set to rise this month. Foodstuffs and other daily items are already being priced beyond the reach of the lowest paid, including a million people below the breadline in Scotland. For instance, butter prices have rocketed 75% since May; items like shampoo by 17%. 

All this has led economists at several leading banks to forecast inflation will leap to 3% or 4% in the next year, eating away at the value of workers' wages as they fork out for food, everyday essentials, housing and transport. That's also the view expressed forcibly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney - not noted for his trade unionist or socialist tendencies! 

Pay Cuts - With Worse to Come 

Meanwhile, wages are stagnant, and capitalist employers, governments and local governments are poised to make things even worse by protecting profit margins and implementing austerity cuts through de facto wage cuts. For instance, Deloitte did a recent survey of the chief financial officers of major UK companies, and found 94% of them view cutting costs as the key priority for the next year; in other words, cuts to wages and/or jobs. 

Numerous retail giants - with profits measured in £billions rather than £millions - have won kudos for increasing hourly pay rates, in a very few cases volunteering the Living Wage Foundation rate of £8.25. The same ruthless profiteers have tried to bury the bad news that they've robbed back some or all of that wage concession by slashing premium payments for anti-social hours on Bank Holidays, Sundays, nightshifts or overtime. In several instances, workers are literally worse off each week - but their bosses win extra customers through appearing like 'ethical employers'. 

What Alternatives to the Tories' Atrocities?

Most people won't be fooled by the stomach-churning guff from Theresa May (or Ruth Davidson) about the Tories being "the party of the working class", concerned about "the just managing families". This is the party driving people into starvation, even suicide, with their benefits sanctions regime, and whose anti-Trade Union Bill makes Britain the most repressive anti-worker state in the entire western world.

But what alternatives are on offer from other, anti-Tory parties?

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has persistently fought for a living national minimum wage - for all over 16, apprentices included, with equal pay for women - based on a formula that would challenge poverty head on, and automatically upgrade pay with rises in average pay or prices: a minimum calculated as two-thirds male median wages. Since 2014 that has meant we've demanded £10-an-hour, here and now, not in some distant future. 

In September 2014, the TUC - representing nearly seven million organised trade union members - unanimously voted for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers". 

In the last month or so, Labour's socialist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (and less volubly Jeremy Corbyn), have echoed that demand of the TUC.

TUC and Labour

But here's the problem. The TUC leadership - and most of the individual affiliated unions - haven't lifted a finger to pursue that aim, two years on, despite the demands of SSP members and other socialists in the unions. It's been left hanging as 'an aspiration', with no timescale fixed for achieving it, no plans laid to agitate and organise a battle for it, with union negotiators lodging pay claims that include a £10 minimum. 

In the case of Corbyn's and McDonnell's Labour, whilst an extremely welcome addition to the clamour for a real living wage, they only ask for £10 by 2020! Provided the Labour leadership advocate that for workers of all ages, it would obviously be better than the Tories' 'promise' of £9 by 2020 - but only for those over 25.

It would also be substantially better than the £8.70-an-hour by 2020 which the SNP committed to in an independent Scotland since the 2014 Referendum campaign. 

But £10 in 2020 would be nothing like the £10 now, today, in 2016, which the SSP and an honorable minority of unions - especially the Bakers' Union - are demanding. It would be drastically devalued four years hence, given the forecasts on inflation already explained. 

Waiting for Westminster?!

We can't just sit back and wait for generous handouts from the Westminster government - increasingly likely to be Tory for at least another parliamentary term, given the shameful civil war against Corbyn by Labour MPs and the Scottish Labour leadership around Kezia Dugdale. 

Workers and socialists need to agitate and organise for £10 now in their unions and on the streets, and bombard local councillors, MSPs and the Scottish government to implement a Scottish living minimum wage of £10 for all without further delay. 

The SSP campaigns for devolution of power to Holyrood over setting the statutory minimum wage. But whilst fighting for that, we should also demand that all Scottish councils and the Scottish government not only gain the kudos of volunteering as Accredited Living Wage Employers, but also insist on them implementing it through contracts and procurement... and set the (voluntary) Living Wage for Scotland at £10 here and now. 

SNP Shortcomings 

The SNP government claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. At the recent SNP conference, they made the wholly welcome call for an end to the lower youth rates for the so-called Living Wage. The original Motion, from the SNP Trade Union Group and Chris Stephens MP, only asked for the feeble £7.20 for all ages. A Paisley branch amendment improved that substantially to the Living Wage Foundation's £8.25. But the Motion agreed merely asks the Westminster government to implement this, rather than any concrete proposals on how to archive this within Scotland - even within the confines of devolution - and furthermore puts no timescale on when Westminster should implement it!

Slave Wages at Sea

At the same SNP conference, a lobby of seafarers in the RMT union demanded an end to the scandal in the Northern Isles where a shipping company (Clipper), registered in the notorious Bahamas tax haven, is paying foreign workers a criminal £3.66-an-hour for working the contract they won off the Scottish government. That's the brutal realities behind the headlines, which must be outlawed immediately. 

Join the SSP's Struggles 

The SSP won't relent on our campaign for £10 now, for pay before profit, for a radical redistribution of the wealth produced by the working class in the first place. Join us in battling for a genuine living wage, with no age or gender discrimination, and put the employers, councillors and Scottish government under relentless pressure to outlaw the crucifying poverty pay suffered by about half a million workers in Scotland. 

It's increasingly, literally, a case of the old 1930s socialist slogan: Struggle or Starve!