A particular quirk of the British left is to celebrate every small industrial action involving a few dozen or a few hundred people as the harbinger of an imminent massive wave of industrial struggle. It does not even particularly matter if these disputes are won or lost. Of course if you say it for long enough you will eventually be right.
This is a version of an article which appears in the current issue of Permanent Revolution.
Key local struggles against plant closures and job losses marked the first half of 2009 in Britain, leading some on the left to declare after Bob Dylan that ‘The times they are a’changing’, but as George Binette documents the sharp downturn has yet to spark a truly mass upsurge in resistance. He assesses the background to apparent working class passivity in the face of an employers’ offensive
Two separate but very much related waves of unofficial strike action, complete with ‘flying pickets’, unfolded in the first half of 2009 in Britain’s engineering construction industry, with both centred around sackings at a Lincolnshire oil refinery. Both involved wildcat action by several thousand other workers at more than 20 refineries, power stations and other industrial sites across Britain.
After a small band of young workers occupied a Dundee box manufacturing workplace, the spring and summer months witnessed the occupation of two of the three factories owned by the car parts manufacturer, Visteon, a spin-off of Ford’s global empire. Ultimately, the occupiers won a substantial boost in redundancy payouts, though no saved no jobs. By June Unite members at the former Visteon, now Linamar, factory in Swansea had secured the reinstatement of their victimised convenor after a show of overwhelming support for indefinite strike action. By late July the sit-in by a small section of the previously unorganised workforce at the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight had become a focus for national media attention and solidarity activity among both trade union militants and climate change campaigners.
The RMT, which recruited dozens of members from among the Vestas workers, staged a two-day strike on London Underground in June. This eventually secured concessions on compulsory redundancies. The union has also been involved in several skirmishes with regional rail privateers around Britain.
Across the education sector teachers in the NUT mounted a successful campaign of resistance through strike action in July against compulsory redundancies at Haggerston secondary school, while UCU lecturers at Tower Hamlets Further Education College launched an indefinite strike in late August over job and funding cuts.
The second week in September saw another indefinite strike get underway as refuse collection workers in Leeds walked off the job in opposition to swingeing pay cuts, associated with the implementation of a “single status” pay package.
Meanwhile, in the public sector, a protracted dispute between CWU members and Royal Mail bosses, with the not so tacit backing of the New Labour government, continued to grind on as the latest and potentially decisive battle in a long-running war of attrition over the restructuring and threatened privatisation of postal services. A national strike ballot was finally underway in September.
The above list is hardly exhaustive and suggests that just possibly a significant change is in the air. An editorial in Socialist Worker (12 September edition, p 16) went so far as to refer to a “new wave” of strikes and suggested that developments in recent weeks hinted at a qualitatively different kind of militancy than witnessed for at least two decades with an upturn in unofficial (and so unlawful) action and indefinite strikes as opposed to the one-day walkout, which had been typical of most disputes since the 1980s.
But however inspiring and instructive these recent fights have been such examples of militant opposition to a widespread employers’ drive to slash jobs and labour costs have remained very much the exception over the course of the past 18 months in the face of the most severe economic slowdown in a generation, with unemployment rising remorselessly. Though the mainstream media has probably exaggerated the extent of concession bargaining and straightforward collapse in the face of bosses’ demands, it has been undeniably widespread, most notably in sections of manufacturing (Honda, Nissan and JCB being prime examples) and at previously nationalised giants such as British Airways and BT. Thus far, at least, even with the examples of resistance cited above, the response of the organised working class – itself a much smaller proportion of the total workforce than 30 years ago – has been muted, whether in comparison to the levels of resistance reported in several other nations or in Britain itself during the early 1980s.
Should we be terribly surprised by this? On balance, no. Despite the frequent assumption that economic crisis breeds working class militancy, there has never been a simple correlation, much less a causal relationship between economic slump and a rising tide of resistance. Indeed, an examination of strike figures during recessions in Britain from the late 1880s onwards indicates that the number of strikes almost invariably falls (Kelly, J – Trade Unions and Socialist Politics, Verso 1988, p 275). Indeed, periods of economic expansion tend to fuel the growth of industrial struggle, though as outlined below that was not really the case during the first two terms of New Labour in office (1997-2005).
Thousands may have marched through the streets of Kilmarnock over the threatened closure of the Scottish town’s Johnny Walker distillery, but a widely publicised May demonstration in Birmingham, called by the Unite union to protest at the loss of manufacturing jobs, attracted at most 7,000 protesters, even with the backing of the odious Digby Jones, former head of the Confederation of British Industry. Many times more had marched through the same city at the start of this decade when the Rover car plants faced the prospect of closure. Today, unlike the late 1970s and early ‘80s, there is no remote equivalent thus far of the Right to Work marches or the officially backed People’s March for Jobs.
The contrast between Britain and other advanced capitalist states can be overstated, but it is undeniably the case that Britain has not witnessed the phenomenon of “boss-napping”, which became almost commonplace in France in early 2009, nor the months of factory occupations in South Korea, defying brutal military assaults or, for that matter, the 100,000 strong protests seen in the late winter and early spring on the streets of Dublin, which very nearly led to a general strike in the Irish Republic alongside the sustained if only partly successful factory occupation at Waterford Glass.
Beyond the occasional headline reports of protest and resistance, the Government’s own statistics appear to confirm an image of relative passivity. Of course, official statistics, however accurate and detailed, tell only a part of the story, but we ignore the evidence they provide at our peril. While revolutionaries must not yield to an intellectual pessimism that breeds despair and paralysis, its antidote is not to be found in a gung-ho optimism that sees in each and e
very strike or workplace occupation the “end of the downturn” or the harbinger of imminent working class revolt.
So what do the official statistics tell us? Against the backdrop of a remorseless rise in unemployment over the course of 2008 levels of industrial action were not terribly different from those recorded in 2007, the final 12 months of a prolonged economic upturn. According to an analysis published in the June 2009 edition of Economic & Labour Market Review, the number of days lost to employers through strikes in 2008 totaled some 758,000, something of a dip from the previous year. According to author Dominic Hale:
‘The [2008] total is higher than the average number of working days lost per year in the 1990s (660,000). However, it is considerably lower than the average for both the 1980s (7.2 million) and the 1970s (12.9 million). The total of 144 stoppages in 2008 is marginally higher than the 2007 total of 142. . . . The number of stoppages has fallen sharply since the 1980s when the average annual number was 1,129. The average number in the 1990s was 273 per year. There were 511,200 workers involved in labour disputes during 2008; this
compares with 744,800 in 2007. The number of workers involved is higher than the average number involved in the 1990s (201,600) but below the average in the1980s (1,040,300).’
Strikes in ‘public administration’, largely involving members of the PCS in central government departments and UNISON members in local government across England, Wales and the north of Ireland, accounted for more than four out of five days lost. A further 14 per cent of days lost resulted from strikes in the education sector. A total of 28 stoppages in transport industries added up to 24,800 working days.
Despite the media focus on a ‘white collar recession’, ravaging financial services, there is no doubt that manufacturing employment shrunk dramatically from late 2007 onwards. Even as each week in 2008 seemed to bring news of still more job losses across manufacturing industries the total number of strike days across the whole of manufacturing industry fell to fewer than 7,000 – down from more than 15,000 the year before – and the lowest total on record.
In 1966 during the latter stages of the boom following the Second World War, manufacturing’s share of the total workforce peaked at more than 35 per cent, but now barely one in seven jobs across the economy is in manufacturing – one dramatic indicator of the significant structural changes that have occurred in virtually all of the advanced capitalist countries in recent decades, but to an exceptional degree in Britain.
Since the first quarter of 2008 both the proportion of the population aged 16-64 in paid work and the number of people in employment have fallen. The number of advertised vacancies has fallen sharply. The numbers of unemployed people, the unemployment rate and the claimant count have all shot up. All told some 600,000 people lost jobs in 2008 alone. The number of inactive people of working age and the inactivity rate has increased, while growth in average earnings, excluding bonuses, fell over the span of 18 month though earnings grew overall when bonuses and overtime payments were included in the calculation.
The employment rate for people of working age was 72.7 per cent for the three months to June 2009, down nearly a percentage point from the previous quarter and down 2.0 per cent over the year. The total number of people in employment for the three months to June 2009 was 28.93 million, down 271,000 over the quarter and down 573,000 over the year.
The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent for the three months to June 2009, up by 0.7 per cent over the previous quarter and by 2.4 over the 12-month period. Officially, the ranks of the unemployed rose by 220,000 over the quarter and by 750,000 over the year, reaching 2.43 million by June.
The claimant count, which measures the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, reached 1.58 million in July 2009. It has not been higher since May 1997, the month New Labour came into government. The count rose 24,900 over the previous month and by 709,000 over the year.
The number of redundancies in the three months to June 2009 was 277,000, a fall of some 9,000 over the previous quarter but still marking an increase of 150,000 from the same quarter in 2008.
There were 427,000 job vacancies listed in the three months to July 2009. This was the lowest figure since comparable records began in 2001 and marked a decline of some 26,000 over the previous quarter and 203,000 over the year from July 2008. Most sectors have shown falls in vacancies over the second quarter of 2009 with the largest decline occurring in finance and business services (down 13,000).
The inactivity rate is an estimate of the proportion of people of working age, who have dropped out of the official labour market. The inactivity rate rose to 21 per cent for the three months between April and June 2009, up 0.3 per cent over the previous quarter and an overall rise of 0.1 per cent over the year. The number of economically inactive people of working age rose by 127,000 over the quarter and by 83,000 over the year to reach 7.95 million.
Such a backdrop would hardly seem likely to create an auspicious atmosphere for fights over pays.
Average earnings, both including and excluding bonuses, which shrank substantially in the financial services sector in the immediate aftermath of the credit crunch, increased by 2.5 per cent in the three months to June 2009 compared with the previous year. This figure suggests the lowest annual growth rate in earnings since comparable records began in 2001. Even so, this average figure was ahead of either official estimate of the inflation rate over much of the same period as by late spring 2009 the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index was below two per cent and the Retail Price Index was negative, fuelling speculation about the prospects of Britain experiencing a period of Japanese-style deflation, which has yet to materialise.
In fact, generalisations about changing patterns of pay growth/contraction are notoriously problematic due to the uneven pattern of unionisation across the economy, the differential impact of the recession on various sectors of capital, the persistent reality of skills shortages in certain industries/occupations and the varied responses of organised sections of the working class to those attacks that have been unleashed by the employers. What is clear, however, is that despite the defeats suffered by the organised working class over the past 30 years, the type of wage stagnation that has characterised the experience of the US workforce since the early 1980s has not reallybeen repeated in Britain.
As Alastair Hatchett and Ken Mulkearn of Income Data Services (IDS), one of the most highly regarded sources of pay analysis, noted in a letter to The Guardian published on 7 July 2009:
The data for April 2009, using figures not seasonally adjusted and excluding bonuses, shows earnings growth of 2.5% in the private sector and 3.3% in the public sector, consistent with IDS research on pay settlements. In the private sector, the official figures show manufacturing (where most freezes are) at 1% and private services at 2.9%.
Meanwhile, recent developments in the public sector again refute the notion that its workforce has been cosseted against the impact of developm
ents in the real economy. In early September three unions (UNISON, the GMB and Unite), which between them organise the majority of local authority workers, numbering more than 800,000 across England and Wales, announced that their members had overwhelmingly consented to a pay deal entailing just a one per cent ‘rise’ for the vast majority of council workers. In a joint official statement the union tops charged with negotiating with the local authority employers said: ‘Acceptance of the offer comes at a time when our members are facing daily threats to jobs and services. They are providing vital council services with the threat of redundancy constantly hanging over them. This vote reflects that threat. We will now be working hard to show the public and service users how much our members do – for so little – in the run-up to next year’s negotiations.’
Just don’t expect us to lead any strikes, then! This, however, begs the question of how do such often unelected full-time officials sell deals that amount to real pay cuts without incurring little more than a murmur of opposition in the big three unions, which account for 60 per cent or more of the TUC-affiliated union membership.
There are several parts to the answer to the question ’how do they get away with it?’ The combination of structural change in British capitalism – itself in no small measure a product of working class defeats – combined with significant lasting juridical changes, associated with Thatcherism, has substantially altered the balance of forces between the main contending classes in favour of the bosses. Meanwhile, within the organised working class movement itself the effects of neo-liberal counter-reform have strengthened the dead hand of bureaucracy. The successive rounds of anti-union legislation of the 1980s and 90s, left largely untouched by New Labour, have meant protracted delays in initiating official action, which is now the all but exclusive remit of union full-timers. There has also been a much enlarged role for lawyers accompanied by vastly greater difficulties for militant activists in arguing for solidarity action and overtly political strikes.
While the sort of business unionism that became the norm in the post-war United States has shallower roots in Britain, the degree of casual collaboration with the employers and their HR lieutenants has risen sharply. For example, a 3 July Guardian article described a meeting of ‘union leaders and their traditional foe – management (in the shape of human resources directors) – . . . at the TUC in central London. The aim was to bring the often warring sides together for a friendly debate on the future of union and employer relations.’
Still more notable has been the unwillingness or inability of the unions affiliated to the Labour Party to obtain meaningful concessions from the Government when the party’s reliance on union funding has actually increased dramatically in the last five years.
Trade union density in Britain peaked just as the Thatcher era dawned. After a dramatic expansion in the 1970s of both union membership and organisation among white collar workers in the private as well as the public sector significantly more than half of the total labour force was at least nominally unionised. Nearly 12.2 million workers belonged to TUC-affiliated unions in 1979. Three decades later and the proportion of the workforce in unions has roughly halved, having stabilised since 2005 at between 26 and 28 per cent of the total. The most recent official figure, based on the Labour Force Survey, indicates a union density of 27.4 per cent, with approximately 6.5 million members (more than 90 per cent of the total) in TUC-affiliated unions after a fall of some 125,000 between 2007 and 2008. According to The Guardian online (11 September 2009) there is evidence of a further overall fall contained in the TUC’s annual report that was due to be released in mid-September. Combined membership of the 61 TUC affiliated unions reportedly fell by about 300,000 in the year to January 2009 to just over 6.2 million.
Across the private sector fewer than one worker in six (15.5 per cent) was in a trade union, while in the public sector union density stood at just over 57 per cent in 2008. The decline in the proportion of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement has proved even more dramatic over the past 25-30 years, with barely one in three workers covered by a collective agreement, compared to more than 80 per cent at the start of the 1980s.
Though less well documented than the fall in overall union density there has also been a parallel decline in shop stewards’ organisation with the ratio of members to lay representatives worsening dramatically and many stewards’ posts going unfilled year after year even in supposed union bastions. On the one hand, this means that there is often no transmission belt between union headquarters and memberships at large, but it also means that there are often no organised poles of opposition at workplace or branch level to full-time officials even as the existing cadre of stewards becomes mired in a swamp of individual casework.
While quite a few on the Marxist left continue to see in the aftermath of the ‘credit crunch’ a latter day replay of the Great Depression of the 1930s and there is not yet a solid consensus among bourgeois economists about the prospects for the British and world economies, the worst of the recession does appear to be at an end. Even so, unemployment will continue to rise into 2010 and all three of the main parties have made it plain that the public sector workforce must suffer considerable pain to cover the cost of the multi-trillion pound bailout of the banks.
In a 8 September interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Tory leader David Cameron effectively promised to outdo Thatcher by cutting ‘public spending in real terms’. In short, the stage is set for intensified attacks and potentially sharper conflict.
So is the prognosis all doom and gloom for the foreseeable future? The purpose of this article has been to refute simplistic optimism about the prospects for working class resistance by highlighting the legacies that bear down on today’s trade unionists and the workforce as whole. As ever, those who shall make history do not do so in circumstances of their own choosing and the recession has undoubtedly made the terrain of struggle that much more inhospitable for many.
But if – in addition to de facto pay freezes – large scale job cuts, a longer working week and attacks on other terms and conditions, including pensions, are in the offing for the public sector workforce then there might be some good reasons to believe that the real upsurge in struggle will come in 2010 and beyond. Union density is no guarantee of combativity, but public sector workforces remain much more unionised than their private sector counterparts and there is some evidence that there has been an upturn in recruitment to UNISON in 2009, not least among younger workers. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that there has been no national campaign of note waged by the union since the disappointing local authority pay strikes across England and Wales in July 2008.
The more generalised character of the threatened attacks also creates the possibility of a much broader response, involving far larger numbers of workers across wider geographical areas. While the media and employers have frequently sought with some success to put public sector workers against service users, there is also the enhanced potential for alliances between local tenants and service users generally, which again opens up
the prospect for generalisation of struggles. In some cases, as in the campaigns to save primary schools in Glasgow and Lewisham, parents may kickstart campaigns where union support is either weak or absent, though successful resistance on a large scale to closures and privatisations will almost inevitably entail strikes and occupations involving workers in the directly affected services.
Of course, there can be no way of knowing in advance what level of spontaneous resistance forthcoming attacks may provoke. What is, however, certain is that such resistance will face not only the obstacles imposed by the employers and the state, but a variety of forms of opposition from existing union leaderships, particularly in the three biggest unions, with the anti-union laws serving as a pretext for delay and inaction, however strong the evidence of members’ willingness to fight. There can be no pretending that ‘the left’ is in control of any these unions so the challenge for militant activists is clear in UNISON, the GMB and Unite, but there also lessons to be learned from the experience of ostensibly left leaderships in other unions where an emphasis on electoralism and an with it the capture of existing union structures has yielded little or no fruit for the rank and file while failing to transform the unions into vibrant democratic organs of struggle that are truly fit for purpose.
Liam redux 
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