CONSTRUCTION STRIKES - DEFEND THE UNIONS
The proposed deal being reported for the Lindsey Refinery construction site opens up new jobs for British domiciled workers. As the BBC reports
The deal, arising out of Acas talks, offers more than 100 new jobs for British workers out of a disputed 195.
The BBC understands no foreign workers will lose their posts as a result of the dispute at Total’s oil refinery.
We need to be clear what this means. No italian workers will lose their jobs, as the Italian Contractor will redeploy some of its permanent workforce who had been going to Lindsey to different projects.
The origin of the dispute is that the Italian contracting firm, IREM, were advertising jobs only in Italy, and employing workers on Italian contracts, at Italian rates of pay, regulated by Italian employment law. IREM are also a non-union firm, operating outwith industry wide collective agreements between unions and the construction industry employers.
Such a practice in the building and construction industry should have been specifically protected against by Article 3(8) of the 1996 EU Posted Workers Directive, but the Labour government failed to properly implement the Directive in UK law, despite pledges to do so in the Warwick Agreement with the trade unions, and a specific manifesto pledge. Since December 2007 numerous European Court judgments, including the Viking, Laval and Ruffert judgments, have all interpreted EU law to the benefit of unscrupulous employers, allowing them to pit nationalities against one another in a race to the bottom on pay and conditions.
The contracting regime circumvents British legislation that outlaws discrimination. So had the prime contractor, Jacobs, been directly employing the workforce they would have had to allow applications from workers in Britain. But by letting the sub-contract to IREM, the Italian firm were able to recruit in Italy, and exclude UK domiciled workers from applying.
The BBC quotes Unite shop steward Kenny Ward saying workers were “determined to achieve a victory at Lindsey because this is where the fight started”. Ward said people had had enough of employers using “unjust laws” to “pitch one European worker against fellow European workers” in the pursuit of profit.
It is important to understand that both Paul Kenny of GMB and Derek Simpson of Amicus/Unite are broadly left wing leaders of their unions. Both trade unions are 100% committed to an equalities agenda and the jobs being offered to the local workforce will have to comply with UK anti-discrimination legislation. They will be open to anyone to apply for regardless of nationality, race, creed or colour; but will be advertised in Britain, employing workers on British contracts, at British rates of pay, regulated by British employment law; and the union will press for them to be within industry wide collective agreements between unions and the construction industry employers.
Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, told BBC Breakfast this morning that there was a wider problem to address.
“Even if this dispute is settled [there is] still a major problem about how these foreign companies, who win contracts and come complete with a workforce, are going to create other difficulties. We need to build in some sort of concept that the jobs that are created by these contracts are open to everyone - to foreign and to UK workers. It will occur again, and I’m sure it will occur in other countries as well unless there’s a realisation that you can’t just use the freedom of labour to the exclusion of indigenous labour.”
Simpson is correct. GMB and Unite need to use their leverage with the Labour Party to include full implementation of the Posted Workers Directive into UK law, overturning the Viking and Laval judgements. This would also mean that the unions would have something to go to their members with to justify the argument that we should continue to support the Labour Party.
There is likely to be a fog of disinformation about this deal, with anti-working class liberals misrepresenting the deal as being equivalent to “whites only”. It is likely that there will continue to be anti-trade union misinformation, implying that these workers were racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. This strike was a victory AGAINST discrimination, and a victory for workers unity. Socialists need to defend the trade unions from those accusing us of racism.
Is there any information about what’s happened with the other solidarity strikes?
There’s now masses of information on the Socialist Party website about the strike.
Comment by Duncan Money — 5 February, 2009 @ 11:37 am
“Both trade unions are 100% committed to an equalities agenda”
if you were a member of the GMB who has been trying to get fair and democratic equalities structures set up in the GMB, you would know this is a load of rubbish. There are no methods of reserved seats etc on GMB’s CEC etc
Comment by ecosoc — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Great isn’t it? How is this any different from “British jobs for British workers”? The union jack waving burly white men have won the day at the expense of the rest of the class, and this is a victory? Get real comrades, just wait from yet more reaction from these backward elements.
Comment by paddy garcia — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
“The union jack waving burly white men have won the day” - ohh what a shame those fighting against undermining of their jobs and conditions weren’t red flag waving, thin liberal city dwellers then we could all be happy!
Comment by joseph kisolo — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
Paddy Garcia
Let me guess what organisation you’re a member or sympathiser of. The holediggers workers party?
Comment by Doug — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
#5, Paddy is actually a member of the Socialist Party, strange but true.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
Ecosoc #2
Well I am a member of the GMB, equality officer of Wiltshire and Swindon W15 branchm and a member of the Souhern Region Equalities forum. But i am writing here in a personal capacity.
Under rule 10(2) of the GMB rulebook incorporating 2006 Amendements, page 16.
See pages 18 and 19 for Rule 11.
I also refer you to page 20 of the rule book, Rule 21 Reserved Seats on Regional Councils.
Rule 21(1) provides reserved women seats; and rule 21(2) provides reserved race seats on Regional councils.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
Of course it’s perfectly possible to be a broadly left-wing union leader and argue for policies which are implicitly or in practice racist. ‘Import controls to save British jobs’ is one which springs to mind. Some impeccable left-wingers backed that idea back in the 1970s and 1980s, and those of us arguing against the demand were a tiny minority. But we were right.
In saying that such a demand would have racist consequences, the left was never accusing all of those who backed them of being personally racist. But nor did we back off from telling the truth about demands for import controls just because (some of) those who were pushing for them were left-wing.
And yes, we should defend unions and the right to strike in defiance of anti-strike legislation, partiularly against people like peter Mandelson who are promoting a bosses’ internationalism. But the issue of ‘British jobs for British workers’ hasn’t gone away, and we also need to be clear that such demands are reactionary and have racist connotations.
Comment by chjh — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
Yes Eddie, would you be happier if I added “in a personal capacity” after my name on my posts? Sometimes we don’t always agree with what our organisations do. That is allowed you know? Having said that I think that the SP intervention on this dispute was correct even though a little uncritical in my opinion. Seriously don’t you think that a bunch of white men waving union jacks and dodgy placards is just a little problematic? Doesn’t give it give a wrong image to the class, especially those whose origins are not British, and may have suffered under the Brit jackboot? Doesn’t it alienate a lot of workers? Tell me, what is the difference between the deal reached to recruit local workers any different to “British jobs for British workers”? Would these jobs be open to a newly arrived migrant worker? This needs clarification, am just a bit suspicious that’s all.
Comment by paddy garcia — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
For Andy this is purely about class. Its a normal strike - but which has won a victory. Now his task is to defend the legacy of the strike from the slur that it has any nationalist element or dynamic.
That’s his ideological drive, his own crude try at ’stick bending’. He makes some very important points - that the SWP CC have missed - but he does so in a one-sided way.
Reality is a more complex however.
Globalisation, the past defeats of the unions, the retreat of socialist ideas, the sell outs of the labour government, the manipulation of international inequalities to orchestrate flows of cheap labour - all these conspire to generate a potent and dangerous mix of class and national feeling.
Simplistic analysis will not guide us forward.
Comment by Barry Kade — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Any chance of posting up John McDonnell’s comment as emailed to the SU email address?
We’ve had Cruddas’ comment, Galloway’s comment, the Socialist Party’s comment…
Comment by Rory — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:36 pm
“anti-working class liberals” - ha ha. what toytown-bolshevik sillyness. As though it is unreasonable to suggest that a slogan, the origin of which is in the fascist movement, should be problematic for a union to raise during a strike. Unity will be key in the coming period, with the recession biting, socialists have to bend over backwards to prevent any divisions being sown - the vitriol with which other leftists have been attacked who have raised concerns about this, is astonishing to me.
As for this agreement there are two things here:
1) You’re all so focused on the particularities of this dispute that you don’t even consider the wider implications: a strike has been seen to have won on a nationalistic basis, under a nationalistic slogan. And, while Italian workers were displaced from jobs that they have, they are specifically excluded from the remaining 102 jobs. “Those foreigners have enough jobs already” is the way it will translate more broadly. It will give confidence across the country to racists and chauvinists in every workplace.
2) the specifics of the agreement itself - again, the deal specifically targets British workers to receive jobs, ie. jobs are given on the basis of nationality. This sets a dangerous precedent of fighting, not for more jobs, not for better jobs, but of fighting to eliminate foreign competition for jobs. Today it is 50%, tomorrow 75%, etc. Besides which, what does British mean - a British citizen? What about the 250,000 immigrants who arrive in the UK each year - do they get a crack at the jobs? Whatever happened to the very basic trade union principle of seniority as the basis for hiring - regardless of nationality: workers register with a union and accrue seniority, that’s how they do it in numerous industries that have hiring hall type structures to their unions, including transport, film, construction, et al. That isn’t “liberalism” or anti-working class.
Of course, there are pluses potentially - the militancy shown against trade union laws could provide an example to future fights. Of course the workers weren’t nazis or any such nonsense - they were trying to find ways to fight to save jobs, in the context of union leaderships having led no fight against the erosion of conditions, wages and jobs. All of these are no small things. But if it goes down nationalist channels - all the militancy in the world won’t matter. And chest thumping, name calling schoolyard stuff won’t do you any good.
Comment by redbedhead — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
rORY ‘11
Just done it, I only just checked my e-mail.
thanks for sending it to me.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
#12
“Whatever happened to the very basic trade union principle of seniority as the basis for hiring ”
It became illegal under age discrimination legislation.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
#12 “the deal specifically targets British workers to receive jobs, ie. jobs are given on the basis of nationality”
No, that would be illegal under UK employement law. The jobs will have to comply with anti-discrimination legislation.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
#12
“Whatever happened to the very basic trade union principle of …. workers register with a union and accrue seniority …. that’s how they do it in numerous industries that have hiring hall type structures to their unions”
That would be a pre-entry closed shop, illegal in the UK for about thirty years now
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
my bad, I wrote: “And, while Italian workers were displaced from jobs that they have, they are specifically excluded from the remaining 102 jobs”
I meant: “And, while Italian workers WEREN’T displaced from jobs…”
Comment by redbedhead — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
“That would be a pre-entry closed shop, illegal in the UK for about thirty years now”
So are strikes without a ballot, sympathy strikes, etc. etc. Lots of working class principles are “illegal” - our class is oppressed, after all.
Comment by redbedhead — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
“Whatever happened to the very basic trade union principle of seniority as the basis for hiring ”
It became illegal under age discrimination legislation.
Age and seniority are not the same thing. Besides which, see above.
#12 “the deal specifically targets British workers to receive jobs, ie. jobs are given on the basis of nationality”
No, that would be illegal under UK employement law. The jobs will have to comply with anti-discrimination legislation.
So, the union leaders are lying to the membership that 102 workers will be specifically British?
Comment by redbedhead — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Why would anyone believe that the media would characterise a workers strike positively? They want our class at each others throats.
Those who have had an inhibiting effect on this dispute must surely question their current ideas and leadership now that victory is achieved?
Hopefully, the rank and file working class elements of the swp will recognise that their mistaken posturing as a symptom of the well known democratic deficit and will hold the CC to account in the weeks ahead. The same disasterous blundering shouldn’t be repeated.
Comment by redcogs — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
#17
Actually these workers are not excluded as such, I assume they could move to the UK, become domiciled here, and then apply. Ok - they are unlikely to do so.
What is specifically excluded for this particular contract is IREM recruiting workers in Italy under Italian contracts, under Italain pay and conditions, to work on this specific job.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
#19 The union leaders are not lying to their members. The concept of Britishness is a civic one, that includes people who live and work in Britain, regardless of which passport they carry, or what colour they are. Most of the affected workers will have understood the nuance.
This dispute was never about race and nationality, it was about preventing contracters bringing in a whole workforce from abroad, and excluding the existing workforce.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
“Age and seniority are not the same thing. “
Well no they aren’t, but a hiring scheme based upon seniority might raise a presumption of age discrimination, and an individual who failed to get a job might take a civil action against the employer.
Any employer setting up a potentially illegal selection criteria for employment is asking for big trouble
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
#18
“So are strikes without a ballot, sympathy strikes, etc. etc. Lots of working class principles are “illegal” - our class is oppressed, after all.”
yes, but while I agree that trade unionists must be prepared to break the law; you are asking THE EMPLOYERS to break the law - which is not a precedent we really want to encourage.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
But anyway, good to know that the whole last 30 years of trade union practice in Britain fails to meet the basic standards of purity of some geezer in Canada.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
#9 Paddy;
‘Militant Trade Unionism An Inspiration’ by Richie Venton and Eddie Truman
http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/SSP-Trade-Unionists/militant-trade-unionism-inspiration.html
Comment by Eddie Truman — 5 February, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
The strike is now coming to a conclusion. The British labour movement will emerge from it a great deal worse that when it began. The negotiations are centred around which nationality gets which jobs, with even more reactionary demands emerging from the SP that jobs should be ‘local’. The strike began about BJ4BW, some gave whole hearted support and pretended the posters, union jacks and pickets comments were just ‘media lies’ (Galloway et al), others came to the schizophrenic conclusion that the strike might be on reactionary demands, but ‘really’, dialectically, in a contradictory way it was about a fight to advance the rights of all workers and since it might become that it was ok – a sort of ‘if your aunt had balls’ argument.
Now the moment of truth is upon us, turn your head away and pretend not to see but the Eyties’ are to be turfed out, our British, or better still our ‘local’ lads will get first call on 101 out of 198 jobs, is it? And presumably these locals will have to pass some test of ‘localism’ or ‘Britishness’ set by the local union committee. And now we can move on to ensuring ‘fairness’ in every other site and in council house allocations as the Sun and News of the World have advocated for so long.
I worked in the buildings for 20 years, I have know many English Tory brick layers, I know what reactionary craft unionism is and this is what you are seeing here. The founding of the Labour party was a result of the great blows struck by the New Unionism inspired by the Match girls and the London Dockers against the elitist, privileged empire loyalism in these unions. They would troop across Westminster Bridge a century ago in bowler hats to go to work in the building sites, the same reactionary aristocracy of labour represented by the Ulster unionists, which many of us believed was its last redoubt.
The marginalisation (but not elimination) of this reactionary tradition allowed the Labour party to be founded as a bourgeois workers party (in Lenin’s famous characterisation) and this was a great world-historic advance for workers everywhere. The re-emergence of the ascendancy of craft unionism will destroy the Labour party as a workers organisation of any kind unless it is fought, and its influence halted and reversed. The defeat has not yet been inflicted on the working class but unless we fight these reactionary labour lieutenants of capital in our ranks now the future will be bleak. And that would be a world-historic defeat and a reversion to the 1870s, but in far worse circumstances.
Barber applauded Brown’s British jobs for British workers speech, did anyone notice which other TU leaders did so too? We can hope that some trade unions will refuse support to these strikes, but their silence to date speaks volumes. In any case Unite and the GMB have adopted this line, they have allied with reactionary labour aristocratic unionist consciousness against the ‘lower orders’. And that is not just targeting Johnny Foreigner, it will target the unskilled and the unemployed and, ultimately it will rebound on its ‘socialist’ supporters too – apparently the German Social Democratic leaders were pleading with Hitler to be allowed to serve his cause as they were being led to the concentration camps. The BNP are correct to see fertile recruiting ground opening up for them.
So yes, Patrick, Janine and Chris and Stuart, you did get it profoundly wrong and when the moment of truth arrives, when the deal based on the nationality or the locality of the workers is accepted, you will have to turn your heads away and pretend not to see.
Gerry Downing
Comment by Gerry Downing — 5 February, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Andy, ‘This dispute was never about race and nationality, it was about preventing contracters bringing in a whole workforce from abroad, and excluding the existing workforce’.
Just run that past me again, its not about race or nationality, but about a workforce being brought in from abroad, excluding the existing workforce.
Am trying here, but again please…
not about race or nationality just about workforce from abroad
sorry don’t get it
BJ4BW, now that I get, that makes some sense, I think that is what you are trying to say, just not very clearly
Comment by Anon — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
It’s amazing the number of Leftists that even now just don’t get it, including someone in my own organisation, who clearly expects workers in north east lincolnshire to look like a Benetton ad and to have been transformed into red flag waving revolutionaries within a week or two. Greetings, Paddy, I am from planet earth where socialism has been on the defensive for 30 years or so, FFS.
Comment by Doug — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
I wrote: “So are strikes without a ballot, sympathy strikes, etc. etc. Lots of working class principles are “illegal” - our class is oppressed, after all.”
Andy replied: “yes, but while I agree that trade unionists must be prepared to break the law; you are asking THE EMPLOYERS to break the law - which is not a precedent we really want to encourage.”
What? hiring by seniority and the closed shop is giving power to the employers by asking them to break the law? This makes no sense. The closed shop was fought for and won through a massive post-war strike wave in Canada and the US (where it was subsequently lost via “Right To Work” laws). The loss of the closed shop in Britain was also a Thatcherite defeat for the class. Seniority - as opposed to favouritism, racist or sexist, etc. criteria - is a long-standing international trade union principle - don’t you have pay grids, seniority based internal job postings, seniority based promotions, etc? Surely this isn’t an alien concept in the UK?!?! Do you have union hiring halls over there? How do they work - first come first served on a day to day basis or via seniority lists?
Comment by redbedhead — 5 February, 2009 @ 7:23 pm
Oil refinery and power station strikes
Firm strike leadership gains results
Editorial from The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party, cwi England and Wales
The strikes by construction engineering workers on oil refineries and power stations - that have swept across 22 sites in the UK - is one of the most significant strike waves in recent times.
These workers are involved in a struggle to defend their hard-won trade union-organised conditions in some of the most hostile working conditions in the country. They are out in all weathers, often working at great heights. They are keenly aware of the need for proper trade union organisation as the employers put them under great pressure to finish crucial contracts on time.
This trade union consciousness of the need to act collectively led to the outbreak of these strikes. They know that the employers, hiding behind new EU directives and court rulings, are putting in jeopardy all that they have fought for and won on site after site over many years.
In a magnificent dismissal of the anti-trade union legislation, these workers ignored the laws on issues like ballots and picketing, in order to assert their right to tell the government and employers what they think, and demand changes.
The media has concentrated on the slogans of some strikers that said: “British jobs for British workers” (which have partly or even mainly been a reaction to the same nationalistic phrase that was used by Gordon Brown). On the basis of this, some on the left have drawn the wrong conclusion that these are reactionary strikes.
No workers’ movement is ‘chemically pure’. Elements of confusion, and even some reactionary ideas, can exist, and have done in these strikes. However, fundamentally this struggle is aimed against the ‘race to the bottom’, at maintaining trade union-organised conditions and wages on these huge building sites.
Through firm leadership by the Lindsey strike committee, in which the Socialist Party has played a role, the mass meetings adopted a correct class position of ‘trade union rights for all workers’, making this the overwhelming nature of the strike.
The demands taken up include the need for all workers on these sites to be covered by the national trade union negotiated agreements which set out basic pay and conditions, such as proper breaks from work. The EU courts ‘have deemed these agreements as a barrier to trade’ (Guardian letters, 3.2.09).
Responses to the strikes
The government at one time seemed spilt on how to react to the strikes, with a strident Lord Mandelson trying to convince the workers to go back to work by saying that the EU rules are there for their benefit. Whereas health secretary Alan Johnson, the former general secretary of the postal workers’ union, expressed more feel for the situation by referring to the need to curb the worst excesses of a rampant deregulated EU market.
The trade union leaders have been tardy in their reaction, failing to map out a way forward. But the mass meetings at Lindsey called for the strikes to spread, which happened mainly by word of mouth, by text, email and website. Meanwhile the union leaders have, it seems, worked behind the scenes without the knowledge of the strikers, doing who knows what.
The Lindsey strike committee only found out through the management that two national officials from Unite and the GMB were in talks with Acas in Scunthorpe. Fifty strikers set out for Scunthorpe, where the officials were ensconced in a hotel with Acas. When the strikers got there they were blocked from the hotel by police.
Only by smuggling a note past the police did the strikers get the national officials to come out and talk to them. As a result the strike committee forced their way to the table to ensure that no deals are done behind their backs.
Over the last few months these workers have watched as the bosses attempted to bring labour into the construction sites under the banner of the “posted workers” EU legislation. This means that the bosses can ignore any trade union-organised workforce and replace them with unorganised cheaper workers as long as these workers have the same minimum conditions of the country they come from.
This was tested out two years ago when a Latvian building company won a building contract in Sweden and brought in Latvian labour to work it, disbarring in the process Swedish building workers from working on the sites. The Swedish unions took the employers to court but the EU court ruled in favour of the Latvian company.
Stop the race to the bottom
The EU courts in effect have given the green light for employers to replace trade union labour with unorganised labour. This is what was happening at the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire and before it at the Staythorpe power station in Newark, Nottinghamshire.
At Lindsey the contract for new plant was taken from a British company, that had to employ union-organised labour, and handed to an Italian company that was able to hide behind the EU rulings and did not have to employ union-organised labour. The Italian company knew that this was going to be resented and that is why they hid these workers on a ‘hotel’ ship off Grimsby.
There is a long and dishonourable history of the employers using the law to cover up their anti-trade union activities to boost their profits. And during strikes, the bosses will often bring in other workers from outside to attempt to break the strikes.
Marx wrote about the attempts by the British capitalists, at the time of a London hatters’ strike in the 1850s, to bring in Belgian hatters to break the strike. The workers’ international, of which Marx was the leader at the time, put out an appeal to the Belgian workers and they responded by refusing to do the London hatters’ work.
The British construction engineers are some of the best organised workers in Britain. They know that it is not the Italian workers who are their enemies but the bosses who seek to divide workers on racial and national lines when it suits their purpose. The Italian government ministers who are complaining of “English racism” are the same ones who are using the police and the army to drive Romany people from the streets of Rome.
As The Socialist goes to press, a significant climbdown by the Lindsey bosses in the face of the determined workers’ action appears to have been achieved (see front page). A victory at that plant would be an important step forward for construction workers in Britain and beyond, and similar gains will be sought by workers at other plants where supportive action has already taken place as well as action on their own similar issues.
Comment by Socialist Party Member — 5 February, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
#30
Shawn
You are showing the difficulty of trying to critique in detail from another continent, and a very different trade union and political context. Any demands made upon the employers towards recruitment pratice need to be consistent with equalities laws that the unions have fought for, and we don’t want employers starting to defy them.
No, there is no such concept of a union hiring hall in the UK. Indeed i don’t remember ever hearing of such a thing in the past, though some industries did used to operate the pre-entry closed shop before the Thatcher laws, where you needed to join the union before you could get a job. This was particularly true in the print, where for example my dad got a NATSOPA card as a 14 year old school leaver, because his dad already worked in Fleet Street.
The actual operation of pre-entry closed shop as it worked in the old days might not be consistent with more modern equalities agendas, as they tended to perpetuate overwhelmingly white, male workforces.
Actually, restoratioon of the closed shop has almost no resonance among even union activists as an urgent demand - there are plenty of areas where we would like to see the law relaxed before more important than that. The fact that the unions could not ballot solidarity action by other contractors facing the exact same issue as the Shaws workers, for example.
Now as it happens, one of the demand of the Lindsey strikers, has been the 50:50 split. Which is an incredibly important victory in terms of pulling some control of hiring away from the bosses and towards the union. And in the future could be expanded upon to include a union run register of available workers.
But in the UK, trade union involvement in recruitment has not been seen for a generation or more, so the Lindsey OR strike has been a significant breakthrough in the right direction.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
People have asked over and over again, what precisely are the pay and conditions of the Italian workers though it’s been assumed that the only reason why IREM got the tender was because of undercutting. In fact, it’s simpler and it’s about tax. It would seem that the British and German tax collecting systems are more firmly policed than, eg Italian ones. Apparently, it’s easier for Italian contractors to split their employing arms into subsidiaries in a way that fools the tax man. The deal then struck by the contractor with his men, is that he doesn’t pay their tax, no one pays tax, the boss wins, the workers ‘win’ by getting more take home pay. I doubt if ACAS is going to find this out, and if they do, they won’t divulge it. I suspect that the workers’ lack of union membership is part of the no-tax deal the workers have struck with their employers.
I wonder if Andy (or anyone else) ould post up as much of the final agreement as is known. In the news reports I’ve read, it says that a fixed number of jobs at Lindsey have been won for ‘British’ workers. Andy has said this means ‘British domiciled’ workers. Could he please spell out what ‘domiciled’ means in this case. From memory, the Home Office has a set of categories for people who live and work in the UK,: full citizen, to EU, to ‘leave to stay’, foreign but ‘domiciled’, to short-term work permits etc etc. Does he know which of these are being included in the agreement?
He and others are saying that the strike is a victory. When you make clear what precisely has been won and for whom, then we’ll know whose victory it was.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 5 February, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
Michael, why do you start from the presumption that the unions have negotiated a racist deal?
BTW some of italian workers were interviewed on ITN and revealed that they are paid 1000 euros per month less than the british workforce.
but if michael is correct that the Italian workers are exploiting a more lenient tax collection regime, then this is clarly discriminatory against British domiciled workers who have to pay the full whack. this is precisely the type of issue that Article 3(8) of the Posted Workers directive was intended to prevent.
There is BTW an article commissioned for this site that has the full details of the deal, you may be be pleasantly suprised.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 11:45 pm
Michael - you’re entering an infinite regress here, which might not be halted even by Descartes’ question. Don’t you think it’s best just to let this settle and come back when we all might have a better handle on the reality you ask us to relay to you, but which none of us is able to?
Comment by Nas — 5 February, 2009 @ 11:48 pm
“but if michael is correct that the Italian workers are exploiting a more lenient tax collection regime, then this is clarly discriminatory against British domiciled workers who have to pay the full whack. this is precisely the type of issue that Article 3(8) of the Posted Workers directive was intended to prevent.”
I AGREE!
There is BTW an article commissioned for this site that has the full details of the deal, you may be be pleasantly suprised.
GREAT! AND I WOULD HAVE TO EAT SERIOUS HUMBLE PIE. BIG TIME.
I didn’t assume racism. I haven’t used that word. I’ve used the words ‘divisive’ and ’sectional’ which may date me, but that’s a different matter. I said assumptions were made about the Italians’ work conditions. Or that no one knew either way.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:38 am
Nas, perhaps you’re right about that. I think, more than anything else, I’ve been expressing a straight down the line worry and fear that stretches all the way back to the defeat of the miners’ strike eg around some feelings that class politics lost out so badly at that moment that it’s left a vacuum for sectional politics whether over resources and provision or through employment. (My father was a ‘foreigner’, who didn’t dare apply for citizenship because he believed to the day he died that he would become stateless if he did so!)
Comment by Michael Rosen — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:43 am
I am taking secondary action in solidArity with Rosen
this site needs to be picketed and shut down
we need a new site for non sectarians as we can’t get along with the sectarians nnudge nudge wink wink
I therefore am withdrawing my keyboard labour and refusing to work at this site and will never return until Andy Newman admits he has got something wrong.. in other words I will never return.
I would like to say its been fun, but lets be honest it hasn’t. The last straw is the kind of personal abuse given to Mike Rosen with Repsect members saying he is like a nazi because he diisagrees with them.. it really is the pits. I am a fan of Rosen and indeed my kid loves “going on a bear hunt” which has a much better handle on this dispute than the idiotic statements of Galloway.
So Respect, so long , far well, and in the words of Shakespere… Get a fucking life.
Comment by ll — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:50 am
ll - it’s good you’re off. Goodbye. But please don’t try to drag Michael into your cesspit. He doesn’t belong there and he wont’ go there.
Anyway, goodbye and I hope people truly representative of the SWP feel able to post now you’ve gone.
Comment by Nas — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:53 am
I’m not a member of Respect, so you cant use that as a stick to beat them with.
That said it was an over the top remark-mea culpa.
Comment by fred — 6 February, 2009 @ 7:35 am
‘That said it was an over the top remark-mea culpa.’
Is that a ’sorry’?
Comment by swp member — 6 February, 2009 @ 9:00 am
yes it is-Sorry Michael…………still think your wrong mind
Comment by fred — 6 February, 2009 @ 9:02 am
fred, no worries
Comment by Michael Rosen — 6 February, 2009 @ 9:37 am
cheers
Comment by fred — 6 February, 2009 @ 10:03 am
Ok Michael##
Let us put the bad feeling to one side as an artifact of internet communication - I think keyboard based communication is prone to that.
But my big worry is that you are
i)echoing the arguments of the rigt wing in the unions
ii) doing so in such a way as to imply that the left are worse than the right
Let us be clear, you saying that talking about the different expereinces between Migrant and indigenous workers is divisive, is the argument used by the right wing in the unions to avoid taking the measures required to organise migrant workers. Think how right wingers have aclled affirmative action divisive in the past, and you get my drift,
This is why the model of primary education in an already multicultural London borough is not a good paradigm by which to judge predominanatly white trade unions, with a white male middle aged leadership, rather set in their ways.
The left needs a vocabulary to discuss how the need to organise migrant workers is different from the current practice of the unions that is tilted towards indigenous workers, and we eed to be able to discuss what institutional and poltical barriers need to be overcome. To do that we need a cocabulary that deracialises the debate.
Ok maybe the word “indigenous” has a ddy provenence from your point of view. What alternative word do you propose instead?
We have to be able to discuss this, or we are gifting victory to right wingers who don’t want to change, ,and who tacictly oppose organising migrant workers.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 February, 2009 @ 10:56 am
Ten days later has the dust settled on this argument?. No. Because the BNP are now crowing that in N.Lincs they will now win the MEP elections and that their paper sales are going well in Grimsby.
No, because though the dispute has moved to Stayforth the backing for the strike has not spread throughout the TU movement, because hospital workers, bus drivers, in multi-ethnic unions with mixed labour forces do not feel they should support pickets carrying British Jobs for British Workers placards and Union flags. No, because in Italy the Northern Leagues, the local equivalent of the BNP are calling for ‘Italian jobs for Italian workers,’ and for the British workers to be sent home.
No, because the Socialist Party editorial hid behind meaningless phrases like ‘chemically pure strikes,’ and talked of hard won gains being taken away by the bosses in one paragraph and later blamed union leaders fro negotiating these away in another paragraph.
All praise to the local shop stewards committee that removed the offending placards at Stayforth but it was a bit too late. They should have led the strike, not tail ended the nationalists demands endorsed by the Sun and the Daily Star and by Gordon Blair whose worship of the EU free market for labour has let the bosses drive a wedge into into the site negotiating procedures that is called secondary subcontracting.
So what are the lessons?
Rebuild site stewards committees that have been whittled away, despite the promises in the blue book national agreement. Fight for Jobs For All Workers with terms and conditions set by the workers and for the workers. Don’t rely on the judges to impose laws in worker’s favour. Support the union leaders when they support the rank and file and organise to make them do so when they fail.
Don’t let nationalism divide us, and demand the right to recall all TU reps negotiating any deals before they sign them.
Nick Howard SWP
Comment by Nick Howard — 14 February, 2009 @ 8:22 pm