The new TUC general-secretary needs to make unions truly relevant once again

By Denis MacShane

—The trade union question is now haunting the left across the world. Anti-union attack dogs are on the rise everywhere. Conservative MPs seek every opportunity to bash and trash unions. Their main objective is to force a renunciation of the European Union’s social rules. These do not impose a common EU social model because this does not exist. German trade unions have as much in common with Spanish trade unions as currywurst has with paella.

But the EU is the only regional treaty organisation in the world which writes social obligations, such as rules over working time or protection for disabled workers or, more broadly, the obligation on employers to consult with workers, into enforceable supranational legislation.

The Tory onslaught on social Europe with demands for the repatriation of all social rules is not about making the EU more effective. Rather it is an ideological attempt by Thatcher’s children to harness the anti-EU feeling in the nation against trade union rights in general.

Despite non-stop, if sadly non-reported, counterattacks by Labour MPs there is a constant grind of anti-union laws and policies. Access to industrial tribunals is made more difficult; backbench bills are introduced to deny shop stewards time off to carry out union duties; modest British financial support for the International Labour Organisation is axed; every time workers vote in a secret ballot to stop work there is a hue and cry about banning or limiting strikes. Unionised outfits like Remploy are singled out for attack. Long-standing national pay structures are threatened by proposals for regional pay as if an army colonel at Catterick in Yorkshire should be paid less than an army colonel at Aldershot in Hampshire.

There is a faux debate about the links between the unions and the Labour party. There is no centre-left or broadly progressive party in the world – from the Democrats in America to the Swedish social democrats who have recently poached a 55-year-old welder, Stefan Lovfen, head of the Swedish metalworkers’ union, to be party leader – which does not have intimate links with trade unions. The precise nature of those links varies according to era and elections but Ed Miliband has been robust in the House of Commons in defending the connections between unions and Labour in Britain.

The global problem is much more worrying. Other than in a few northern European countries where unions have entered into deep social partnership with capitalism and the state – de facto renouncing or limiting the right to strike and promoting the interests of private enterprise as the only wealth generator – the disappearance of unions from the world of capitalism is accelerating. In America, only seven per cent of the private sector workforce is unionised. In France fewer than one in 20 workers in the market sector are in unions. Britain is a little better but more than eight out of 10 workers in the private sector are not in unions.

In eastern Europe, unions have all but disappeared while in southern Europe they are still divided along political lines dating back to the great fissure in European trade unionism brought about by Lenin after 1917. Majority Muslim countries see unions as a secular threat and worker rights have not figured in the Arab spring. The union movements that helped overthrow military rule in south America or apartheid in South Africa have lost much of their momentum and organisational hold.

Where union membership has held up it has been in the public sector. Unions that arose from the struggle against capital in Britain have morphed into largely public sector general unions. Sectoral public sector unions, like teachers, nurses, or top civil servants, have maintained an existence. Arguably the most successful unions are the British Medical Association and the National Farmers’ Union, which are brilliant at extracting taxpayers’ money from the government but profile themselves as non-political and play no part in the Trades Union Congress or Labour affairs.

The old idea of unions combating capitalism for a fairer share of national wealth extracted from the boss or rentier class has been replaced, for good or ill, by public sector unions whose wholly legitimate demands can only be met by other workers paying more tax. This is a dilemma that the rhetoric of union activism disguises. The Fabian Society broke a taboo recently with its report showing that Labour voters opposed higher taxes to support workers in the public sector save in narrowly defined circumstances. To be sure, the horrors of G4S, A4E or Atos show how ‘private equals good, public equals bad’ is a false equation. Nonetheless, it is a major category error to assume that voters as workers, public or private, are ready to pay higher taxes to assure the pay and conditions of all public service employees at all times.

Private versus public is the wrong debate just as it is wrong to shut down any debate on the nature of the relationship between workers and employers or between unions and their linked parties. In Germany, for example, trade unions themselves impose a rule that requires more than 75 per cent of all employees in a relevant industry to vote to go on strike. This is way above what some Tory MPs are demanding in legislation. Has it done German unions any harm to create a high bar to strike action? Swedish unions allow their TUC to carry out wage bargaining so as to assure a fair balance between different sectors. Is this too egalitarian to consider? Australian unions in the 1980s created a blue ribbon commission that travelled the world looking for good examples to import into their organisation and structures. This forward-looking approach segued into the long Australian Labor party rule under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Could the British Labour party and the TUC carry out an inquiry into what might be learnt from abroad?

Two new actors enter the trade union stage this year. Frances O’Grady becomes the TUC’s first female general-secretary. Guy Standing, a veteran British international union official, takes over as director-general of the ILO, which was founded by Britain in 1919 and shamefully ignored by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown when in office. O’Grady and Standing are smart and full of insights into the new needs of workers. They should be supported as they seek to shape a new trade unionism fit for purpose for the 21st century. Labour should be part of that process, not to dictate to unions, still less to split from them, but to engage in a process that brings the union-party relationship closer to the successful Nordic model than sticking rigidly to the Anglo-American tradition which has seen such a drop in worker organisation.

Labour might also take international trade union organisation seriously. Global manufacturing employment has been offshored to China just as agricultural employment in the past evaporated with mechanisation and cheap food imports which benefitted low-wage industrial workers. A new proletariat in Britain, Europe, and north America – immigrant, low-wage, female, exploited, often without passports or status – has come into being. It cannot be wished away with British National party calls for British jobs for British workers. Winning voice and representation for the new proletariat is a major challenge for progressive politics. Old thinking from Labour or from unions needs to be cast aside to shape a new deal for workers for the 21st century.

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Denis MacShane MP is former president of the National Union of Journalists

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Photo: Toban Black