(en) WSM - Irish Anarchist Review #11 - The Twisted Road to
Partnership: Can the trade union movement be saved from the
bureaucracy? by Gregor Kerr
Is the trade union leadership does its best to drag us back into a new round of 'social
partnership', Gregor Kerr - an activist in the Irish National Teachers Organisation -
compares the best and worst of recent developments in the trade unions and poses a
challenge - Can we save the movement by ridding it of the stultifying bureaucracy that
seems set to strangle the life out of it? ---- The past number of months have witnessed
the best and the worst of the trade union movement and its leadership. On the one hand,
the presence of 5 trade unions - Unite, Mandate, CPSU, CWU and OPATSI - in the leadership
of the Right2Water Campaign has certainly contributed to its being able to mobilise some
of the biggest street mobilisations in the history of the state. But on the other hand
the paucity of ambition and their perspective on how change in society is brought about,
sees those unions and their leaderships doing their best to drag what has been largely a
community-led campaign down the well-trodden and unlikely-to-succeed electoral path.
Instead of recognising that the only way in which the successful abolition of water
charges can be guaranteed is through a mass refusal to pay, the R2W leadership is pinning
its ambitions on putting together a "coalition of candidates" who will be asked to sign up
to a list of "alternative" national policies. This document or manifesto will be agreed at
a closed meeting in early May and "a public statement will be made asking any candidate or
sitting TD from any party who opposes water charges to agree to fight for the policies if
they win a Dáil seat".
Even in the bid to pin the campaign's hopes on electoral gain, however, the foolishness of
depending on electoral gains to bring about change is acknowledged, with Brendan Ogle,
Unite official and R2W spokesperson, agreeing in the same interview that the campaign will
have no way of ensuring politicians will implement the policies after an election. "If we
can find the secret to making politicians do what they say they will, we'll share it", he
is quoted as saying.
Collective muscle
But of course there is really nothing secret or mysterious about making politicians do
what they say they will. It's called using our collective muscle. It's called standing
together and imposing our will on those who would govern us. It's about using the very
basis on which the trade union movement was founded - strength in unity and mutual solidarity.
It's not that surprising that the union officials at the helm of R2W don't appear to
realise where our strength lies. For an entire lifetime, these basic principles of trade
unionism have been forgotten and fallen into disrepair. Instead of a movement based on
the strength of the picket line, the trade union movement in Ireland has effectively
become a policeman for the state. Decades of so-called 'social partnership' have left us
with a layer of trade union leaders many of whom see their role as being to compromise, to
find common ground, to negotiate between workers and their bosses. The idea that they as
leaders of a movement are actually supposed to represent their members and are supposed to
use the full might of our movement and our muscle to impose the will of our members on
government or on employers has been lost.
In the Greyhound dispute last summer, for example, the workers were effectively abandoned
on the picket line by their trade union leadership (notwithstanding some sterling work by
the union organisers most directly involved). In the face of High Court injunctions and
the threats inherent in the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, the senior SIPTU leadership
proved itself to be craven and spineless. Locked out workers were told that they had no
option but to mount 'legal' pickets which effectively left them helplessly standing by the
gates waving their placards at scab-operated trucks as they drove past them for 10 weeks.
It was only when the workers themselves and their supporters basically bypassed the
official union position and mounted effective blockades of the plant that some movement
was achieved.
Ironically, on some of those unofficial blockades, workers were joined by senior officials
of other unions, including on a couple of occasions the current president of the Irish
Congress of Trade Unions, John Douglas. Yet the only way in which the senior leadership
of the workers' own union, SIPTU, saw the dispute being resolved was if the government
could be persuaded to introduce a Registered Employment Agreement which would "guarantee"
wage rates in the waste industry. The contrasts between two visions of how trade unions
should operate were probably never so stark - Workers on the picket line, taking
collective direct action to defend their jobs and realising that the only way to win was
to mount effective pickets which actually shut the operation down versus trade union
officials in suits believing that all that was necessary to win was the right word in the
right ear, and that clever negotiation skills are more important than industrial muscle.
Weakest Ebb
That belief in clever negotiators and an almost disdain for 'old school' union tactics of
pickets and flexing of industrial muscle was responsible for the trade union movement
being at its lowest and weakest ebb when the economic crash happened, and completely
unable to respond in a way of painting an alternative vision for members to the
government's policies of wage cuts, cuts to public services and austerity. Worse than not
painting an alternative, the union leadership fulfilled a very useful (from the
government's perspective) role in aiding and abetting government policies. The two major
demonstrations organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions under the banner of 'There
is a Better Way' were more about opening the safety valve and allowing us all to let off
some steam than actually organising workers behind an alternative platform or programme.
For workers in both the public and private sectors, union leaders became very much the
facilitators of the imposition of austerity. In the public sector they busily and almost
enthusiastically sold first the Croke Park Agreement and subsequently the Haddington Road
Agreement - both of which slashed wages and gave away terms and conditions that had been
hard fought for over the last number of decades. 'Social partnership' had supposedly
collapsed but the mindset that had underpinned it still lived on.
Density
Trade union density - especially in the private sector - has plummeted over the 28 years
since the first 'social partnership' agreement, the Programme For National Recovery, was
signed in 1987. Official OECD figures show that the percentage of the workforce who are
members of trade unions has fallen from 46% in 1994 down to less than 30% in 2013 . There
are, of course, many factors at play in terms of why the trade union movement has
haemorrhaged members not just in Ireland but internationally. But it would be foolish to
deny that the fact that Irish trade unions, through their involvement in social
partnership, effectively hitching their fortunes to that of the government was a crucial
factor.
Ironically while many unions remained affiliated to the Labour Party it was Fianna Fáil
led governments for the most part with which unions entered 'social partnership'
agreements. Successive governments managed to do through 'talk' what Thatcher's
government in Britain had done through 'war' - effectively defeat the trade union movement
as a force for positive social change.
Bureaucratic Nightmare
Throughout the years of social partnership, the bigger unions such as SIPTU in particular
have become bureaucratic nightmares. New structures mean that it is almost impossible for
ordinary members to raise issues or to find a way to have democratic input into the
formulation of union policy. These same structures mean that groups of workers in
struggle, such as the Greyhound workers last year, often find that the resources of the
union are used in the first instance to attempt to dissuade them from taking action. The
union bureaucracy is positioned as an impediment to furthering struggle, and union
structures are no longer used as a means by which workers in struggle can mobilise the
support of fellow workers.
At the same time, within SIPTU as in other unions, a layer of union organisers beaver away
at doing what union organisers should do - talking to workers, discussing their
grievances, encouraging them to combine with their fellow workers to take on those
grievances... but at the same time having to find their way around the bureaucratic
minefield that the upper echelons of the union have become.
Many of these organisers are doing sterling work, and see a return to grassroots
organising as being the key to re-vitalising our movement. It is from this same
perspective and focus of organising workers and encouraging them to tackle their
grievances that some of the more hopeful signs of union life have come in recent times. In
early April, staff at one of the most anti-union employers in the state - Dunnes Stores -
took strike action for a day in a dispute over union recognition and zero-hour contracts.
The strike action came as part of a long and innovative and ongoing campaign using
social media and other campaigning methods, "Decency For Dunnes Workers".
Reaction
As this article is written a week after the one-day strike by Dunnes' workers, reports are
emerging that some of those who participated in the strike have been summarily dismissed,
others have had their shifts changed and/or their shift patterns altered. As a strongly
anti-union company this reaction from the Dunnes' management should have been anticipated.
Yet the initial reaction from the workers' union, Mandate, as enunciated by Assistant
General Secretary Gerry Light, was "The only resolution I can see to this, other than
further escalation of our industrial action, is when the government's collective
bargaining legislation goes live in July...That will give the workers more teeth and may
make Dunnes sit up and take notice." Echoes here of the stance taken by SIPTU's
leadership last year in the Greyhound dispute, a hope that government will come to our aid
through legislation.
But a trade union movement that was truly built on grassroots organising and on the
concept of an injury to one being the concern of all would have had only one response to
this bullying by the Dunnes' management - The stores where this disciplinary action took
place should have been shut down by mass pickets straight away. The wider trade union
movement should have called for a complete boycott of all Dunnes Stores until the
punishment of workers was reversed. The union movement should have established a
solidarity fund to which all union members could contribute a few euro a week to support
those dismissed or taking action.
Responding in this fashion would have shown that we know that together we are far stronger
than the company. But we are only stronger if we choose to use our muscle. Instead we
find the union leadership relying on the possibility of government legislation to put
manners on Dunnes management. Yet another stark example of the fact that the hard work of
organising being done by many on the ground and by many union organisers meets its first
obstacle in the failure of the movement as a whole to see itself as a campaigning
movement, one which can mobilise large numbers in defence of vulnerable groups.
Outside of the official union movement, the last couple of years have also seen much
innovative work by groups such as Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) in terms of
organising groups of workers that are in some of the most precarious employment. The
Domestic Workers Action Group has been inventive and original in terms of its strategies
and tactics, and has been hugely successful in terms of bringing people together and
winning victories through collective actions.
Two souls of Trade Unionism
The on-the-ground organising within the official union movement and the work of groups
like MRCI are two examples of one soul of the union movement - the one that gives hope for
the future. But unfortunately, as referred to earlier, much of the movement is being
smothered and stultified by a bureaucracy that is the polar opposite of the organiser
model of trade unionism. And that bureaucracy appears to want to drag the movement away
from organising and back into a new round of 'social partnership' and deals with government.
Following the general election of 2011, with the Labour Party in government and many
unions still affiliated to that party, the unwillingness of large sections of the trade
union leadership to oppose government policy in any real way became even more pronounced.
Indeed sections of the union leadership, most notably SIPTU's general president Jack
O'Connor chose on a number of occasions to use public speeches to attack not the
government that was imposing austerity policies on his members but 'the left' which was
attempting to organise people to oppose those austerity policies. Speaking at a
commemoration for Alicia Brady, who was killed during the 1913 Lockout, in January 2014
O'Connor described 'the left' as having "a poverty of ambition" going on to say that "we
have an obligation to offer more than protest and caustic commentary..." He criticised
the left for "indulging in relentless political cannibalism on remote points of dogma",
saying that "We must be sufficiently pragmatic to avoid condemning those with whom we
disagree on questions of strategy and tactics,... [and] be sufficiently flexible to
recognise that until we command a majority it is entirely legitimate, indeed essential,
for parties and individuals to participate in government with those on the centre right
either in Dublin or in Belfast ."
As defences of Labour's role in government go, this speech by O'Connor was perhaps more
upfront than most. It was certainly one that outlined in stark terms the other soul of
trade unionism, the one that would keep us wedded to the 'jaw jaw' version of trade
unionism, and undermine and blunt the grassroots organising taking place on the ground.
'Social Partnership' renewed?
That is clearly the ambition of the trade union bureaucracy - to get us back into some
form of 'social partnership'. In recent months, we have seen O'Connor cosying up to Sinn
Fein. At a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in February, he advocated a
'left-led' government and effectively tied the fortunes of the trade union movement to a
new 'social partnership' type deal with whatever government is elected after the next
election.
The period leading up to and following the next general election will see the battle for
the soul of the trade union movement intensify. We will be faced with a stark choice -
are we going to continue to build the 'organiser' model of trade unionism which has been
so successful in recent years? And in order to do so, are we going to rid ourselves of
the stultifying bureaucracy that is preventing this move from organising to fighting? Or
are we going to allow ourselves to be brought back into a new round of 'social
partnership'? If we allow the latter to happen, it is likely to sign the death knell of
the movement that has been so painstakingly built over the past 100 years. If we want the
former - which I imagine most of the readers of this paper and article do - the question
is how?
That's an urgent discussion, time for it to begin.
http://www.wsm.ie/c/twisted-road-partnership-can-trade-union-movement-be-saved-bureaucracy
