N30, WAS THAT IT?
by Gregor Gall
Was that it? Well, maybe. While France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have been rocked by numerous general and public sector-wide strikes over the past few years, in Britain we have had just the two one-day strikes over pensions reform, on 30 June and 30 November last year.
Apart from these, large-scale resistance to job losses, pay freezes and cuts in services has been notable by its absence. Slogans such as ‘We won’t pay for their crisis’ ring hollow; the reality is that ‘we’ are paying for their crisis and ‘they’ are getting away with it.
Punching above its weight
All of this may be true, but it is also the case that N30 packed a punch well in excess of its weight as a one-day strike. In this sense, it was far more of a protest than an orthodox strike – and not just because it was only a day long. Any strike in the public sector is necessarily more of a political action because the government is the ultimate employer and it responds to political pressure, as opposed to the pressure of a strike as an economic action against a profit-seeking organisation in the private sector.
In the run-up to N30, especially once the ballot results came in, the media was dominated by the prospect of the day itself. This cleverly built up pressure on the government as the first truly mass and coordinated strike in decades loomed large. Indeed, all the significant concessions – in terms of the raised threshold for paying more in contributions and the moratorium on changes affecting those retiring within ten years – came as a result of the threat of the strike.
The concessions were a validation of the unions’ recognition that the best way to strengthen one’s hand at the bargaining table is to threaten action – even if that came late in the day, given that negotiations began in March 2011. But it was also government ineptitude that helped 30 unions to not only sing from the same hymn sheet but coordinate their action on the same day.
Even after the concessions, however, most public sector workers will pay more, work longer and get less when they retire. Moreover, the stomach for further action looks to have been severely weakened and inter-union unity fractured as it becomes clear what different unions are prepared to settle for.
Strengths and weaknesses
The logic of the bargaining process so far is that the only way to get more concessions is to threaten to strike again (and do so if necessary). Yet the strike’s central dynamic is most clearly revealed in Unison and the GMB where – despite grassroots activist pressure – the action was instigated and controlled by the national leaderships.
This may have been less true in other unions, such as PCS or Unite, and there may have been cases where national leaders and activists worked more closely and on an equal basis. Nonetheless, N30 was in essence a mass bureaucratic strike (I use the term sociologically). This is most clearly shown in that the date was set by national leaders and made only a one‑day affair without any subsequent other days lined up. The only discussion on subsequent action concerned ‘smart striking’, which ran counter to the demands expressed by many in the organised grassroots.
The bureaucratic nature of the strike produced particular strengths and weaknesses. Its primary strength was that, in the context of the widespread atrophy of active workplace unionism, N30 was driven and controlled by national leaderships. For example, many Unison branches have poor steward organisation and have been unable even to get quorate meetings recently, but the majority of their members struck on the day. In many cases, the national leaderships – along with their full-time officers – made up (temporarily) for much of this atrophy.
Yet a major weakness is that because some national leaderships now seem to be willing to accept insufficient concessions and disregard their previous statements of not allowing members to ‘pay for a crisis not of their making’, grassroots activists are unable to enforce their will – or the leaders’ earlier statements.
The unravelling of the N30 unity and action also reveals a number of strategic weaknesses, concerning both national leaderships and the grassroots.
No movement?
First, it is questionable whether the unions in the public sector (or the economy as whole) do constitute a ‘movement’ as such. It is common to talk about the union ‘movement’ but there is little sense of the unions pulling together in terms of policy and action. This was evident before the autumn, with the ATL, NUT, PCS and UCU striking on their own on 30 June, and Unison saying striking then was premature as negotiation had not been exhausted.
It is better to see the union ‘movement’ as a spectrum, ranging between the ‘militant’ PCS and the ‘moderate’ Unison, GMB and many small professional unions. What they have in common is currently outweighed by their differences, which are being highlighted now that the government is effectively practicing ‘divide and rule’ tactics. While there are material differences between the pension schemes, the idea of fair pensions for all is being lost.
Indeed, Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, has lambasted what he sees as ‘fatalism’ on the part of many other unions in this fight. By this, he means leaders of the GMB and Unison in particular do not seem to think they can win because they have become so psychologically inured to years of defeat since the 1980s.
Second, the ballot results for N30 raise the question of how much appetite there is for continued action. This would mean either upping the ante with more national one-day strikes or continuing the action in some form of ‘smart’ strike – selective (regional, sectoral) rolling action.
But of the 30-plus union ballots, only three secured the backing for action of more than half of those entitled to vote. With so many members either not voting or voting against, along with the large numbers of non-members, it would be a major challenge to transform any further strike from a one-off protest into an ongoing action that shuts down public services. Yet this is an important way to exert more pressure on the government and is what the unions must face up to.
Public opinion
The third strategic weakness is public opinion. Polls showed strike support climbed from being evenly split in late October to clear support (60 to 40 per cent) as N30 approached. This resulted from a combination of effective union campaigning and government ineptitude. But it was only a case of ‘so far so good’, because while public support is critical to not undermining a strike (especially in the public sector), it is not sufficient to winning one.
Despite occasional strikes in the private sector over pensions (such as the one at Unilever), there is a lack of any widespread organic connection between private and public sector workers, with many private sector workers believing public sector pensions are ‘gold-plated’ or seeing nothing wrong with public sector pensions being brought down to the level of their own.
This chasm between public and private has been reinforced by the union movement not taking the necessary steps to create widespread and deep-seated alliances of users and producers of public services, where the interests of both are cemented in the common interest of more jobs with better rewarded staff providing a better service.
The union movement in Britain is far behind its counterparts in, for example, Australia and the US in this regard. Union movements in these countries approximate much more to social movement unionism, whereas in Britain the sole locus of the workplace remains much more dominant.
Just how telling the disconnection will be depends on whether there is more action and to what extent the general public feels inconvenienced by it. The longer any action goes on, the more likely public feeling will move towards the government.
Thus, quick, sharp action is needed to win and keep the public on side. The unions could blunt any public hostility by mobilising citizens again in a show of generalised anger against cuts – with pensions as part of it – as they did on 26 March 2011.
Finally, if unions really do wish to stop workers working longer and paying more but getting less, then they must address the issue of where and when to knock out public services. In Greece last September, civil servants occupied their workplaces so that the audit team could not do its work of assessing revenues and liabilities for another bailout. Would UK unions be willing to target the tax system itself, which will be responsible for implementing the increased pension contributions come 1 April 2012?
This necessity of creating strategic levers of power also faces the other major ongoing battle of the moment. Electricians at seven major companies face a ‘sign or be sacked’ ultimatum. Their campaign since August last year has highlighted that they need to stop the construction sites, rather than just protest outside them.
It looks as if 2011 was just a warm up as these struggles are yet to be concluded. Unions face crunch time. Their actions so far could point the way to victory but that is very far from assured. To gain those victories, they must address their shortfalls in terms of acting strategically, as a movement and in alliance with the wider citizenship.
Gregor Gall is professor of industrial relations at the University of Hertfordshire.
This is also published by Red Pepper
Good response at Red Pepper from Heather Wakefield of UNISON, worth quoting:
An interesting but hardly insightful article,odd it should be published by Red Pepper in that that magazine carried a stomach churning eulogy/obituary to right wing witchunter and Prentis fixer the late and it has to be said very unlamented Kenny Bell a man who spent much of his later years driving decent activists out of the union
Citing the US unions as an example to follow is bizarre given the level of weakness of union organisation in the US not withstanding the magnificent resistance in Wisconsin .
Of course ‘public opinion’ is important but firstly do we have to assume that the 6 million public sector workers and their families are not part of the ‘general public’ or is Gall simply accepting the Tory agenda that the real ‘general public’ are in fact the middle class minority ?
Professors have their uses but they should venture out of their ivory towers a little more.
If Gall wants to win an argument as to the tactics to be adopted by the unions involved in the construction dispute might I suggest he sets his alarm for an hour he’s probably rarely seen and get himself down to one of the many demo’s and pickets organised by the rank and file electricians there’s plenty to choose from
Quick off the mark there Andy in giving the capitulationist view point from Heather Wakefield a good airing. The phrase Lions led by Donkeys comes to mind when it comes to the UNISON leadership.
I dunno, hch, I think what this site needs, what the left needs in general, is more weasel words from supposed leaders, justifying their pathetic behaviour.
A good contribution.
The Pensions issue is not the be-all-and-end-all of the issues the Liberal-Cosnervatives Coalition pose for the labour movement, and for anti-cuts campaigns in the widest sense.
I have raised in our Trades Council and anti-cuts campaign the issue of relaunching activities around cuts by Suffolk County Council outsourcing and the transfer of the library services to an ‘industrial and provident society’ whose first job is to make ‘substantials avings’.
Having just written a review of Paul Mason’s “It’s all Kicking Off”, which sees a huge movement of resistance at work across the globe, here, there, and everywhere, I would add something based on the lines to Gregor Gall’s informed and much less optimistic summary.
We will pay a heavy price for the splintering of the unity achieved in the November 30th action.The 30th of June strike was possible because it had the clear political project of pulling Unison, GMB and others into coordinated opposition to the Government’s attack on public sector pensions.The Unilever dispute indicates that there were possibilities of linking up with private sector struggles.
There was a clear objective basis for that unity. The attempt to worsen pensions was by four means: restructuring the schemes, increasing employee contributions and capping those of the employers, increasing normal pension age and changing the indexation of the pensions from RPI to CPI. Some unions have made a great play of the fact that the schemes were different and therefore the restructuring discussions had to be separate and inherently divided. As the IFS has pointed out recently the restructuring is the least significent aspect of the Government offensive. The greatest is the change in indexation: the OBR has calculated that CPI runs on average 1.4% less than CPI and not the 0.7% previously believed. This gives a cut on a life time pension not of 15% as Hutton argued but above 20%. The impact of the increasing pension age will be felt most cruelly by manual workers with their far lower Disability Free Life Expectancy and is particularly important for unions such as Unison and the GMB. The most important attacks were common attacks and required a unified response. I hope we will not see a splintering and fagmentattion of the opposition of the unions. If we do, an increasing perception of union impotence will see a reversal in the large membership gains many unions made in the run up to N30 and a less effective opposition to the cuts.
Nice to see Heather Wakefield is in favour of strikes against cuts. I wonder whether she has considered if the weakness of union organisation in the NHS is connected with her union’s support for ‘partnership’ when New Labour was in government. After all UNISON and the other major unions identified the interests of their members with the management and government and the ‘modernisation’ of the service, which involved opening the NHS up to big business.
And then to cap it all, in the run up to the last General Election they supported a ‘partnership’ agreement which included a £20 billion cut in NHS funding.
Maybe because the vast majority of people realise the need for cuts.
#8
Instead of collecting the tens of billions in taxes that the top income recipients manage not to pay?
The atomisation and privatisation of the NHS will create loads of lucrative little committees; and after all I’m told nurses in the USA earn comparatively twice what they do here. I think this is where they’re coming from – ” I want more, fuck the poor!”
“and after all I’m told nurses in the USA earn comparatively twice what they do here.”
Perhaps British nurses are underpaid and US nurses not overpaid?
Perhaps, but once the USA has destroyed all better health care models, what would you bet on US nurses maintaining their wage levels?
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you are saying.
no.2 – Kenny Bell led the community struggle which overturned the plan to privatise Newcastle council, and was the inspiration behind the community struggle which just trashed – at the 11th hour – a determined effort to privatise most of Edinburgh council. He won, and he showed the rest of us how to win.
I do not agree with everything that Gregor Gall says in his article but as a position paper worthy of debate its okay as a start. What puzzles me given the vast numer of contributions on other issues is the limited nature and number of contributions on this issue – which is after all important for the workers movement. Ignoring the contribution from the Tax Payers Alliance representative why is this? Is it because you lot have thrown in the towel already? Because you are understandably cynical about TU leaders? Because you are all moderate supporters of Unison/GMB? Or because you are all retired now and therefore don’t see this as an issue?
#14 Sorry Pete but as a resident and union member in Newcastle I must have missed that ‘community struggle which overturned the plan to privatise Newcastle Council’ which you claim was led by Kenny Bell.
Did that include the 3 residential homes that closed despite the staff demanding a ballot for action which Bell refused to support,did it include the shoddy equal pay deal Bell signed that left hundreds of low paid workers worse off and which led to the rise of the no win no fee solicitor Stephan Cross ,or even the 500 jobs lost in the last 2 years or what about the sell off of the Byker Wall one of the biggest stock transfers ever ?
Bell talked a good fight but spent most of his time cooking up behind the scenes deals with the then Lib Dem council ,he was always good for a plan,which normally involved the staff being used as best as a stage army but action was thin on the ground
Though if Hilary Wainwright is to be believed Bell established ‘dual power’ in Newcastle turning the city into a latter day Petrograd. Such nonsense might read well with the left liberal chattering classes who read her magazine but its a sick joke to those who have had to put up with rhetoric and gimmics from Bell whilst our jobs and services were cut.
No wonder the former leader of the Council a Lib Dem described him as a man ‘who he could do business with regardless of his ‘politics’
He might have once been a man of the left but he ended his time as a hard right wing [CONTENT DELETED] witchunter
I’m a Unison member. All the official magazines and leaflets that we get from Unison appear as if they had been ‘ok-ed’ by the Labour-link first.
In PCS Mark Serwotka can put a clear alternative to all cuts before his membership.
In Unison we only hear the Labour Party position of there being no alternative to cuts (maybe we can do it a bit more slowly etc.) The ‘vote labour to get out of this mess’ message that we get from the labour link people only inspires hopelessness.
Stuffing ‘consultation’ meetings with unelected full-timers doesn’t help either.
Rather than helping the trade unions to win their fight, the ‘labour-link’ and it’s supporters are acting as lead boots.
We are always told there is no mood for struggle and therefore it’s all ‘hopeless’, but when a clear, distinctive and well-explained ‘No to all cuts’ alternative is put before the union membership, then they vote to fight back!
What is the point of fighting is the most you can hope for is ‘cuts next year instead of this year’. That is simply an approach that has been designed to demoralise.
It is a real pity, because Unison has some great people in it and could be a great union; unfortunately it is in the grip of cynics, greasy-pole climbers and idiots.
We need to win our union back from these apathy-mongers.
#16 I refer to the ‘our city is not for sale’ campaign (which of course did include industrial action), and the remarkable success of the Newcastle City UNISON branch in avoiding and minimising of compulsory redundancies.
I am not sure a lib-dem council is necessarily any worse than one of any other political persuasion, seeing as Poplar Borough Council is no longer with us. The bigger factor is that whichever party is in power, our class is well enough organised for them to know we can exert pressure. The “Our city is not for sale” campaign took place against a Labour Council, but its success showed the subsequent Lib-Dem council that it could not get away with privatisation in the came way they did elsewhere.
Taking action at any opportunity is not necessarily a sign of union power. The threat of non-cooperation or of realistically being able to take action if necessary is part of what maximises our influence in any specific situation.
I have no doubt the Newcastle branch under his leadership could not achieve everything they wanted – I am equally sure Mark Serwotka did not want to see the privatisations which have occurred on his watch. But we should learn from campaigns such as Newcastle and Edinburgh about how to maximise our power through building alliances, community campaigning, political influence, industrial action, and detailed engagement with employers.
YouGov has been asking about attitudes towards the cuts and they have found that 61 percent think that the cuts are necessary. This us up from 55 percent a year ago.
61 percent is certainly a majority, but is it vast?
“Thinking about the way the government is cutting spending to reduce the
government’s deficit, do you think this is… Necessary or unnecessary”
Necessary Unnecessary Don’t Know
2011 February 6-7 55 34 11
2012 February 5-6 61 26 13
This 61 percent is not spread evenly across the country. In the South East 69 percent think that cuts are necessary: in London it is 53. In Scotland it is only 48 percent against 35 percent who think that the cuts aren’t necessary.
On the question of whether the cuts have been good or bad for the economy attitudes have tended to swing in the opposite direction.
Good Bad Don’t know
2010 22-23 Jun 53 28 19
2011 20-21 Mar 35 50 15
2012 22-23-Jan 39 46 14
Obviously there is a contradiction here. Some people think that the cuts are both necessary and harmful to the economy.
I think the reason for this is that while the first question rests on economic theory the second is more empirical.
Considering that the media present economic news on the basis that cuts are absolutely necessary and there is virtually nil coverage of the case against cuts, I would say that the powers that be have a serious credibility problem.
Lets be clear N30 was the trades union movements best moment for some considerable period of time. Thousands of union members from many different unions united against what is a serious attack on workers conditions. In the teeth of a considerable government/employer propaganda effort. And I don’t think the issue was just pensions. There were many slogans about cuts and so on.
The weaknesses on the trades union movements side were there for all to see before the action took place however. As the article says no further days of action were talked about, planned or proposed. Under such circumstances it was a simple matter for the government to sit out N30 and offer minor concessions. Equally the government knew where the weak link in this coalition of trades unions lay namely Brendan Barber and his friends at the top in Unison/GMB. It was a simple matter to offer separate negotiations to these self-serving TU leaders to peel them away from what has turned out to be a fragile coalition. The quote above from Andy by Heather Wakefield clearly demonstrates just how self-serving and lacking in values of solidarity many of these higher ups are. In the last year or so Unison in particular seems to spend more time withhunting left-wing activists and suspending branches than it does in actually fighting the employer. There also seems to be no love lost between the leaders of these Labour-affiliated general unions and some of the others. I was at a meeting some weeks ago to discuss the next steps of the campaign which was addressed by Mark Serwotka. He openly implied that the leaders of Unison/GMB “traitors” and people who acted in bad faith. He seemed particularly upset by the rude way in which he claimed to have been treated by both them and Barber.
In the smaller rejectionist unions such as PCS or NUT it remains to be seen whether the leaderships have the bottle to take the fight further without the others. Debate seems still to be going on but the longer it does the more I suspect nothing will happen and the government will have had its way.
There undoubtedly is poor grassroots organisation in some unions as the professor refers to. And the more the unions sell out or do nothing the more no-one wants to get involved. Ironically of course the only thjing that can act as a counterbalance to the prevarication and venality of our leaders is a strong grassroots movement. This is why in the medium term activists do need to find strategies to improve morale at the base. Brendan Barber isn’t going to do it afterall a bolshie membership might start questioning his undoubtedly brilliuant pension provision.
Sent to me:
Dear Green Party Office
Sadly after 6 years I feel that I am left with little choice but to cancel my membership of the Green Party.
I have had a number of concerns about the political and organisational direction of the party and some of its electoral representatives and candidates.
However the final tipping point for me has been the budget proposal put forward by the Green Party in Brighton & Hove. This budget proposal, aside from being in contradiction with the national party policy of affiliation to Coalition of Resistance, is on the face of it proposing millions of pounds of cuts to jobs and already squeezed services.
This for me is unacceptable, even more so when excuses of ‘maintaining electoral respectability’ are put forward by the party. Sadly it seems that when push comes to shove, some elected Greens with a sniff of personal power are no different than New Labour or Lib Dems in supporting a Tory agenda.
Whilst I continue to devote my own activist time to working within the anti-cuts movement, I find my position within a party willing to propose such cuts and job losses untenable.
Regards
Andy Hewett
Lambeth
Former Green Party Campaigns Co-Ordinator
Former member of GPRC
Former Co-Chair of Green Party Trade Union Group
Former Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Greenwich & Woolwich
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/9514309.Have_Greens_listened_to_Brighton_and_Hove_/
H’mmmm
Where’s that from, Jimmy?
Unfortunately, the UCU have decided to backtrack on their strike call and have reversed their opposition to another ballot. The reasons for this are not clear at the moment (unless you sit on the NEC, which I don’t) It may be that the consultations produced an outcome more favourable to Hunt and co’s argument, who knows? Presumably all will become clear over the next week or 2. Hopefully, it will mean just a delay in strike action, as opposed to an indefinite shelving.
Dear Colleague,
Welcome to this week’s UCU Campaigns Update.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES:
TPS negotiations – update from Sally Hunt:
“Your National Executive Committee (NEC) met earlier today. I reported both on feedback from branches and members and from my talks with other unions.
The NEC has now agreed to withdraw its previous call for strike action on 1 March and rolling strike action during February.
I am delighted to report that the NEC has now also agreed that UCU members be balloted on the government’s offer and whether you wish to take further industrial action starting at the end of March.
The NEC’s position is that you should reject the government’s offer and support action.
Our colleagues in NUT and PCS will be undertaking similar consultation exercises and all three unions will hold NEC meetings in mid March to consider the results of the respective ballots and decide next steps.
Thank you for your support for the union, and especially to the 300 branches and thousands of members who took part in our initial consultation at my request. I will write with further details of the ballot next week.”
“UCU NEC unanimously agreed to join with our sister trade union the NUT, and the PCS, and therefore to re-schedule our previously agreed date for national strike action from March 1st to March 28th in line with the unanimous decision of their NECs.”
http://markcampbell4gs.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/ucu-nec-unanimously-agree-to-join-with-nut-and-pcs-in-strike-action-on-march-28th/
This was sent to me via Facebook just as the piece on the Green Party. There seems to be a momentum building for industrial action on the 28th March as can be seen below:
http://www.fbu.org.uk/?p=5218
But the action planned for 28 March is conditional on the results of a ‘consultative’ ballot (which is not legally required). So we’ve moved from a definite, to a maybe. The decision will be made at an NEC meeting on 16 March, which is very late, considering the action, if it takes place, will be just 12 days later.
HOPE not hate
Celebrating modern Britain
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