Trade unions: a way forward - 6 comments

Here's something I wrote 2 or 3 days ago but haven't been able to publish until now. I notice that Stumbling and Mumbling now has a post on the ability of trade unions to influence wage equality, together with some statistics and some interesting comments. Anyway, here's my post.

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Following on from Will Hutton's weekend article on UK trade union militancy, Skipper argues that unionism is in crisis:

It really needs a major figure to emerge to offer genuine leadership towards a new constructive role in our society. The alternative would appear to be further decline and retreat from relevance. Scargill believed he was such a figure- he put up a fight but was wrong. Is Bob Crow a more likely candidate? I really don't think so.

I'd agree: there doesn't seem to be any correlation between 'moderacy' and 'vision' among union leaders, no substantial difference in statist economic outlook, or in the degree to which the 'fat cat' argument can be used to justify any other unrelated policy, only a difference in the degree to which each is prepared to play ball with the Government (and play games with the general public).

This dependence upon Government - especially Labour governments, intermittent as they have been in the past - can hardly be a strategy to ensure the long-term survival of the trade union movement, weak as it is among the labour force, and all the more so in the private sector. Despite the prevalence of the argument, the capacity of trade unions to bring about a nation-wide redistribution of income is minute, still less in favour of the poorest, who are rarely union members; and the 'mixed economy' - with a balance of private and public sector enterprises - is no more, and is not going to return. The economic and political failures of the State, when acting alone, are so evident that supporters of an enlarged public sector must explain how the general public can be protected from labour organisations - shielded from competition - abusing their position, just as one scrutinises companies with great market power abusing their positions.

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While the most likely post-capitalist 'system' is one of liberal, or free-market, mutualism, this form of 'social-ism' is as far removed from the ideal of statist unionists and Labour supporters, as is the current form of free-ish market capitalism we have now. I'm sure this argument has been used before, but the statist tendency that Labour nurtured from the 1940s to the 1970s, and which continues to dominate the Labour left, has been disastrous for the quality, but especially the breadth, of left-wing debate in the UK.

For all the weakness of the left in the USA, the level of free-market, anti-capitalist debate seems much richer there, and change more plausible. Sadly, the most likely consequence of Crow-style militancy is a weakened Labour government, and - before too long - a Conservative government committed to wiping out any remaining safe-havens for trade unions within the public sector, and to allowing the general public to use legal action to eliminate the strike weapon once and for all. The extent to which trade union powers could yet be curtailed by a radical government ought to be of great concern.

This is not an excuse for Labour to make promises to the unions that it has no intention of keeping, nor an argument for impotence, just an argument for the trade union movement to shift strategy from entrenching power within the public sector, and raising their demands to the limits of political sale-ability, to re-committing to mutualism, offering a message of liberty - not higher wages, necessarily, nor even the sham job-security that cannot exist in a free economy - to workers of all 'classes', whether in the public or the private sector. Liberty that comes from providing workers with the skills they need to form voluntarily organisations ('companies', rather) on the basis of individual skills and talents, the desire to provide a good or a service to the consumer or other companies, and to do so in an economically efficient manner, without the need for social or external management hierarchies.

Unions could devote their organisational skills and considerable weight to kick-starting the mutualist sector, in new, or small, existing, firms. Existing employers can be shown the benefit of managing small, flat-structured companies, where the skilled and the empowered can use their skills for maximum efficiency. I can't think of any better strategy for increasing worker control within the private sector. Perhaps I'm making a mistake, though - see Paulie's comment at the Stumbling and Mumbling post. If the trade union movement is in fact a rival mutualist structure - an alternative to workers' control of their own company - then perhaps (a) unions are more likely to try to draw people within the union than help them organise and share power within their own company, and (b) those workers who are able to mutually run their company would not be in the defensive position - of having to protect pay and conditions - that pushes one to join a union.

So, if trade unions gain from state/capitalist exploitation, while rivalling mutualism, these are these two more reasons to support Chris' argument that 'In this sense, unions help underpin capitalism.' Would we mourn the passing of either?

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My fear is that too many with power in the trade union movement can only look back to the imagined Golden Age of the 1960s and 1970s, to the power their forefathers were once able to wield. Sooner or later, British Trade Unionism will have to stop complaining about its own irrelevance, throw off the remaining 'class-war' baggage, and find itself a role that allows 20 million or so potential recruits to take it seriously - or it will have to pick itself off the ground after another wave of privatisation. Perhaps only then can socialism be liberated from statism.