2015-2020: a do-or-die period for UK trade unions

'Trade unions will now pay a heavy price for Labour’s defeat. Tory plans are set out clearly enough in their election manifesto, including the much-trumpeted proposals for yet more restrictions on strike ballots, most notably a requirement that strikes in certain sectors will need the support of 40 per cent of those eligible to vote, as well as a majority of those voting' writes Professor Keith Ewing in today's Morning Star.

Unions can be driving force for improved public services

How can an incoming Labour Government lift Britain out of the swamp of austerity, privatisation and run down public services, especially given the conventional wisdom that further spending cuts and job losses are required beyond May 2015? David Coats and John Tizard, in a timely New Statesman article, see a key role for public service unions as 'agents of change, fostering workplace cultures where employees understand their role in the process of continuous improvement' and advocate 'collective agreements (to) set the employment conditions for all workers involved in public service delivery – including those employed by the business, social and voluntary sectors and subcontractors.'
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/labour-and-unions-must-develop-alternative-public-sector-pay-freeze

The Union Advantage

#TUC14 On the eve of the annual Trades Union Congress in Liverpool, the TUC has today published The Union Advantage, a guide to how unions make work better and society fairer. The guide demonstrates the benefits of unions not only to individual workers but to employers and society as well. These include:
•55 per cent of unionised workplaces had pay rises in 2011, compared to just 35 per cent of non-unionised workplaces
•16 – 24 year-old union members earn, on average, 33 per cent more than non-union members of the same age
•Union members have 3.8 days more paid leave on average than non-union members
•Unionlearn improves Britain’s skills base and it supported 219,000 learners through apprenticeships, numeracy, literacy and other learning programmes in the year to March 2014
•Union health and safety reps save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds each year by reducing lost time from occupational injuries and work-related illness, according to government research.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/TUC_UnionADV.pdf

Who benefits from union bashing?

Jane Carter, of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee (AFSCME), addressed the 2013 UNISON conference in Liverpool about the relentless and well funded attacks on unions in the USA. Here she is interviewed by Thom Hartmann on The Big Picture and discusses the forces behind the anti union psychosis in many US states. Jane highlights the continued existence of a union wage premium despite decades of membership decline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhJ1BrjnPNU&feature=youtu.be

Unions under the microscope

Last week’s Radio 4 broadcast of a debate on the state of the unions coincided with the BIS publication of the Government’s annual estimate of union membership in the UK. It was a mixed bag of a report with 2013 showing positive growth (+61,000) in private sector membership but that welcome trend was offset by a marginal decline in overall union density (down to 25.6%). The same might be said of the radio debate, which included Frances O’Grady and Alan Johnson MP as well as some excellent studio audience input. Available online until Wednesday 4 June.

New poll backs right to strike

Conventional political wisdom, including in New Labour circles, suggests that strikes by public sector workers are irresponsible and unpopular with the public. A recent Populus poll, commissioned by the BBC, revealed strong support for the right to strike and for the statement ‘striking is legitimate in an industrial dispute if in a ballot of union members the majority of those voting call for it’. However, long term polling confirms the marginalisation of trade union political influence with only 1% of the public mentioning unions/strikes as an important issue facing Britain. On a more positive note 76% see unions as ‘essential to protect workers’ interests’.

A challenge to anti scrounger rhetoric – and to anti union propaganda

As the tide of anti claimant misinformation reaches a crescendo led by Channel 4 at the moment, any challenge to the “feckless shirkers” argument needs to be carefully considered. Larry Elliott in the Guardian does more than challenge the rhetoric. Not only does he provide a manifesto that any socialist would be able to sign up to - full employment, a house building programme, and an industrial strategy - but he presents an argument that tackling poverty requires the unshackling of trade union power and the reinstatement of free collective bargaining. If there is to be an end to poverty pay, zero hours contracts, and a return to permanent employment patterns it can only be achieved by restoring the balance of power in the workplace. That would really make work pay but requires more than demonising the poor. We hope Mr Miliband is reading http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/jan/12/george-osborne-welfare-cuts-distortions-benefits-street

Is This What Europeans Want?

The New York Times asks whether the Europeans want the US deregulation economy, with tiny unions and no legal minimums of any note. It is a good question. If we can re phrase it - is it what the governments and corporate bosses want and what can the unions do about it? Certainly it is what our economic masters want.

Misdiagnosed labour pains

The Economist has highlighted the continued drop in the `labour share’ of national income around the world - a drop from 66% to 62% - and it is going to continue to curve down according to the OECD. This is consistent with a decline in union power across the world and the continued race to the bottom between global companies. But the house journal of big business presents this as a natural and unavoidable state of the world economy. It claims it is down to immigrant labour, to technology and to deregulation:
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21588900-all-around-world-labour-losing-out-capital-labour-pains

TUC final verdict on Thatcher – ‘Good at Destruction'

‘Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed,’ says TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady in a Guardian article on the legacy of arch neo-conservative ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
    Frances goes on to point out that the ‘financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the policies Thatcher championed. The dominance of finance in the economy and the failure of bank regulation flowed from her belief that markets should always be left to themselves’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/09/clearing-up-margaret-thatchers-mess

Class politics and the media

Former FT journalist Stefan Stern writes on the CLASS blog about the difficulties faced by campaigners and trade unionists in securing media coverage:
   'This is a familiar saga to trade union press officers, who have long known that unless their union is calling a strike their work gets very little coverage at all. The national media have hardly any specialist reporters left covering trade union and workplace issues, even as more people than ever (30 million of us) are going to work full or part-time'
http://classonline.org.uk/blog/item/Class-politics-and-the-media-breaking-through-the-barriers

Unions buck the trend as Women's representation in UK public life goes into reverse

Trade unions are in danger of becoming ‘irrelevant’ and ‘cannot connect to a whole swath of the workforce that thinks they died out with the ark’ former Labour Cabinet Minister and ex-CWU General Secretary Alan Johnson recently told Progress.
   Strange then, that trade unions are one of the few areas of public life in Britain where women’s representation in leadership is growing. A new report Sex and Power 2013 compiled by the Counting Women coalition, finds a ‘shocking absence of women from UK public life. The number of women in senior levels of the judiciary, education, the arts, finance, the civil service and government is plummeting’

Twenty Myths About Unions

Great insights from Bill Fletcher Jr on why unions need to do more to convince non-union workers of the benefits of trade union membership: http://therealnews.com/ t2/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8834#.USWoQDcucwc

The State of the Unions in the United States

The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, a progressive global network linked to Germany's Left Party, has published a report on how the US trade union movement has come to terms with neo-liberalism, union organising strategies as well as internal divisions including the split in the national trade union centre. Sean Sweeney, Director of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, analyses these recent historic development as well as the current state of US trade unions:
http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/turmoil-and-transition-the-recent-history-and-future-prospects-for-the-u-s-trade-union-movement/
http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wp-content/files_mf/sweeney_stateoftheunions.pdf

Unions: Quote, Unquote

The Economist magazine’s A-Z of business quotations focuses on unions and includes the timeless wisdom of the late American Lawyer Louis Brandeis:
“Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labour bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labour contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organised and that their organisations must be recognised by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/z-business-quotations

Trade Unions are Capitalists? Pull the other one!

These days the notion of a Tory trade unionist is as contradictory as a meat eating vegetarian. Yet it wasn't always the case, as UNISONActive recalled in a 2011 blog post http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/lost-world-of-tory-trade-unionism.html

Union Renewal - all ideas welcome but organising is the key

Veteran labour movement commentator Geoffrey Goodman writes in the current edition of Tribune on the role that trade unions can play in rebuilding Britain. Harking back to a 1960’s era of ‘national consensus, Goodman identifies that union membership levels in the private sector have declined to a sub-critical mass, ‘fewer than one in 10 workers in the private sector are now in any trade union’
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2012/06/wanted-courageous-leadership-with-vision-for-the-mass-of-the-people/

Australian Unions silent on ALP leadership contest

A UNISONActive reader reports from Sydney on a Labour leadership contest in which affiliated unions had surprisingly little to say: Over the past week the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has resembled a soap opera. The ongoing saga of Julia Gillard v Kevin Rudd has continued and reached a level of intensity in recent weeks that culminated in Rudd resigning as Foreign Minister and Gillard calling for a ballot of the ALP (and in turn the Prime Ministership).

How marginalised are trade unions in the UK?

Jerry Latter of Ipsos/MORI has written a short article on surprising opinion survey findings that the public view the public sector strikes as relatively unimportant in answering the question 'what are the most important issues facing Britain today?' Whilst the article doesn't give the alternative answers that the public gave, it does help us to reflect on the findings: http://www.ipsos-mori.com/newsevents/blogs/thepoliticswire/962/Igniting-the-squib-public-opinion-on-strikes-and-trade-unions.aspx

Superficial Labour constitutional reforms will fool nobody

The Guardian reports that ‘Ed Miliband has tabled proposals billed as the biggest change to the party's structures for 20 years,’ including diluting the trade union share of the vote in leadership elections by conferring the same democratic rights on non-paying registered party ‘supporters’ as those held by trade union political levy payers. Predictably, despite the hype of ‘Refounding Labour’ project, the democratic deficit in the electoral college, which in last year’s leadership election gave each MP a vote equivalent to that of 608 individual party member and to that of 12,915 affiliated trade unionists, will remain unchanged:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/20/ed-miliband-labour-voting-unions