It has been hard to miss the coverage of Grangemouth petro-chemical works in the past few days. From a parochial local matter, the affair has been escalated into the national headlines as an example of union intransigence costing workers jobs. The origins of the dispute lie with union perception and reaction to the victimisation of a member, an affair going back to the Labour Party and the Falkirk candidate selection conflict.
Ineos alone chose to up the ante, threatening closure unless the entire workforce agreed to drastic cuts in terms and conditions (including the closure of the final salary pension scheme), a no strike agreement and as a last resort attempting to cut the union out by going directly to the workforce. This can best be described as blackmail, at worst as extortion.
‘We have a very clear view. We believe that public services are best provided by the public sector. Because you get the public service ethos, the services are provided on a comprehensive basis and not for profit. But over 20 years ago, we recognised that privatisation was on the increase and that we could no longer be just a public sector union,’ says Dave Prentis in an interview published by Ethos, the public policy journal of business services conglomerate Serco. The UNISON General Secretary explains the twin track approach which the union has honed since the 1980's privatisation of the UK's major utilities - 'We do meet with the private companies. And we do say openly that our principled position is to swing the pendulum back towards the public sector being the preferred provider. But we also recognise that we have to build a relationship with private sector employers. You can only have collective bargaining if you’ve got a relationship’
http://www.ethosjournal.com/topics/public-service-delivery/item/465-the-interview-with-dave-prentis-unison
Stephen Wilks considers the implications of private sector companies now delivering one third of public services provision according to spend (£80bn). The Public Services Industry now accounts for 6% of GDP with 1.2 million staff - almost three times the number employed in the civil service - yet these corporations are not subject to the disciplines, probity and regulations applied to the public sector:
http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=1248
David Goodhart, former FT employment editor, analyses the expansion of low paid employment in Britain - a product of a low wage flexible labour market - and notes that ‘unions have a particularly weak presence in the low-skilled and poorly paid one-third of the labour market where they are needed most, both from the point of view of individual workers and, arguably, from that of the British economy.’ We might take issue with his caricature of
UNISON and failure to acknowledge our sustained growth over the past 15 years (until 2012) but otherwise a challenging read for all trade unionists who oppose wage exploitation and a wake up call for rebuilding union strength in the private sector:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/low-skilled-jobs-trade-unions-david-goodhart/#.UcaxOlpwbIU
An article in the April 2013 edition of Labour Research magazine highlights that the trade union presence in the UK private sector 'has hit dangerously low levels.' The decline in unionisation has been rapid in the manufacturing sector, where the proportion of workplaces with any union members fell from 24% in 2004 to just 15% in 2011. In private services, which is the sector of the economy where employment is fastest growing, union membership presence is 6% although in hotels and restaurants this falls to only 3% of workplaces. In construction - which accounts for 8% of overall employment - only 7% of workplaces include some union members. The LRD analysis is based on the 2011 Workplace Employment Research Study First Findings:
http://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=LR&iss=1655 (subscribers only)
A new report by Social Enterprise UK correctly identifies the emergence of a ‘shadow state’ in which a small number of large companies providing outsourced public services are 'becoming too big or complex to fail'. Yet the report's call for 'a more level playing field for social enterprises and charities to bid alongside traditional private sector providers' is not the solution to the problem. Third sector organisations run on a shoestring are no substitute for democratically accountable local authorities and public bodies. The Con Dem Open Public Services agenda is a breeding ground for Sharks. And Sharks come in all sizes!
http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/news/new-report-public-service-markets-favour-large-companies-and-shareholders
The latest edition of LRD's Workplace Report (No 100, March 2012) has an interesting feature on the fragmentation of collective bargaining and a new approach by unions targeting the supply chain of large companies and organisations - in order to improve labour standards at suppliers.
TUC research identified that a 'reputational risk' strategy can be used to force 'client leverage' on employers down the supply chain
(see below) http://www.strongerunions.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/TUC-ESRC-Research-Bulletin-No-1-March-2011.pdf
A strike involving almost 3000 members of Unite and GMB will start on Friday – workers in the private sector striking to keep their final salary pension scheme. The significance is not lost on us as public sector workers. The Government has tried to divide us from private sector workers by claiming somehow we were better off than private sector workers and should take a hit because we are lucky to have jobs and pensions that no-one in the private sector enjoyed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/unilever-staff-prepare-for-strike-6273374.html
Private sector workers who produce Marmite have left a nasty taste in the mouths of the Government and their bosses by voting to take action over Pensions. Instead of swallowing Con Dem propaganda about public sector pensions they have shown in the most dramatic way that far from being separated from them - they agree and are ready to take action to defend theirs too:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/97075178-19d2-11e1-ba5d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1f6q7h5zw
UNISON members at the Tory flagship council in Barnet, North London are staging another 24 hour strike today in protest at plans to transfer staff to the private sector. Branch Secretary John Burgess said " The council is gambling that the private sector can deliver £100 million savings over the next 10 years. We have seen no evidence to substantiate these claims. In other parts of the country we have seen the consequences of such blind allegiance to 'public sector bad, private sector good'. Our members are not daft, they can see that redundancy and cuts to jobs and services are behind the transfer from the council to a private sector contractor"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/council-staff-to-stage-24hour-strike-2371897.html
The long running dispute in Barnet reached a new low yesterday when the Tory Council threatened financial detriment to 400 UNISON members taking part in today’s half day strike against a large scale programme of privatisation:
www.barnetunison.
me.uk/?q=node/680
The TUC's annual PensionsWatch survey is published today and highlights that Directors of the UK's top companies have amassed obscene pension pots worth an average of £3.9 million:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/tucfiles/73/
PensionsWatch2011.pdf
PensionsWatch analyses the pension arrangements of 362 directors from the FTSE 100 companies, shows that the average transfer value (pension pot) for a director's defined benefit (DB) pension is £3.91 million - providing an annual pension of £224,121. The biggest pension pot in this year's survey is worth £21.5 million.
The survey shows that the average director's pension is 23 times the average occupational pension (£9,568), and 34 times bigger than the average public sector pension (£6,497).
Mao famously said that political work must precede economic work. This dictum is well understood by the Tories as evidenced last year by their rolling out of the big lie about Labour’s ‘deficit legacy’ before embarking on £95 billion spending cuts to fund the banking bail out.
Attacks on national bargaining are not new. Neither are myth-peddling and selective statistics to whip up hysteria against public service workers. But to see both so transparently together in a self-contradicting liberal think tank paper would be entertaining if it were not so dangerously dressed up as academic analysis.
A Reuters column
(here) notes that only two weeks ago the IMF's board lauded the Libyan government, currently using mercenary troops to massacre protesters, for its "strong macroeconomic performance" and "ambitious reform agenda" and for "enhancing the role of the private sector", reports ITUC Washington's Peter Bakvis.
Private sector pensions could also be indexed to CPI. In July 2010 the Government announced that from April 2011, private sector Occupational Pension schemes, the Pension Protection Fund and the Financial Assistance Scheme could use CPI to calculate increases in payments to pensioners and for revaluations of deferred entitlement.
