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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the
Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Tories have faced a summer of discontent. We talk to four workers at the sharp end of some of the industrial struggles about the mood at work and how people are making the political links
How has the mood of workers changed in the last few months, both to terms of the industrial struggle and politically?
Margot Hill: Things have definitely changed. It’s clear just how tight the squeeze has now got, in terms of personal debt, when we opened our April pay packets and found we were £20 or £30 light because of the increased National Insurance. It’s also clear in terms of the public our members are directly involved with – the housing crisis, the pressure of care in the community, of people sleeping rough and begging in the street – all that brings the crisis up close to our members.
This difference in the situation now is why there has been a strike. People are beginning to feel not exactly a sense of panic but a real worry about what is going to happen to them, about having to work harder as resources diminish. The main resource is staffing – there have been lots of voluntary redundancies, which we have not really had much of a fight over (management backed off over compulsory redundancy), and people have left because they’re fed up with the job.
Those left behind are having to cover lots of extra work. Then there is all the publicity over the rich doing very well. Slogans such as ‘rob the rich to pay the poor’ or ‘tax the greedy not the needy’ have gone down a treat, in a way they wouldn’t have done a year ago.
Jane Loftus: In the Post Office there has been a simmering since the last major dispute in 1988. There has been an erosion of conditions so small that people couldn’t see it as the major issue, but overall continuous attacks. Nationally the union has argued that there’s going to be one big fight and we have to fight that one issue. Wearing name badges they said was not the issue, that it wouldn’t do you any harm having your name on a badge.
Resentment built up with a spate of illegal actions that the national officials have not been able to control. Throughout the union people have become aware of local networks. People have got confidence from that. During the recent Milton Keynes dispute, even though it only lasted a weekend, everyone in Liverpool was on red alert, asking when they were going to be pulled out.
People working on the shop floor know that something’s going to burst and are just waiting for it. Where local officials have stuck their necks out and been able to lead a significant number of people into successful industrial action, and have been able to defend themselves, that action has united the workforce. With our six day dispute, we’ve never had so much unity across different grades. The Post Office is trying to casualise its workforce, all the temporary staff were out with the permanent staff. It becomes harder for Royal Mail to get rid of staff when you’ve all been standing on a picket line and people identify with that. During the recent check off, where we’ve been asking people to re-sign to the union we’ve actually increased our membership. People are now identifying with the union far more to get better conditions and better rights.
Railway Worker: It’s interesting to compare the dispute we had last year on the railways with now. Although the dispute was fairly solid it was called off in a bizarre fashion for no particular reason. We organised pickets, we attempted to have solidarity meetings, but there was very little response from the public. Members of the union were basically going through the motions. Then in spring this year we lost a national ballot on promotion transfer because of the industry being split up.
Things have changed really quickly now with the signalling dispute. It’s so easy to collect money at work for the signalling grades, people who’ve scabbed on us in the past are throwing money at the signalling workers. Solidarity across the grades is a very important change, because it has always been a problem on the railways which the union has never really addressed. It has mainly gone down the road of having single grade disputes like this one, but that is now changing and as the management is trying to play grades off against one another hoping that people are frightened for their jobs.
We’re finding that people are adapting the union structure to try to organise across the grades. The signalling dispute has been really useful because the sort of solidarity being built is revitalising the union. The old branch secretaries who were getting tired are getting involved again and others are getting replaced as people are being involved. There is a real change of mood on the railways and I don’t think this is the last dispute we’ll be seeing in the run up to privatisation.
Pat Dunne: I’ve had quite a good week at work this week. A couple of people were made redundant and they sent over replacements from the neighbouring branch, which is in an awful state because hardly anybody is in the union, there’s no shop stewards and they’re not even getting the basics. These two guys who came over thought they’d get a hostile reception and that nobody would work with them. I said that the problem wasn’t them coming over but management laying people off and that we should work with these guys. We recruited both of them to the union and one of them is going to be a steward.
That’s happening throughout the industry. I spent the last three days talking to these blokes about how you build up an organisation and how you recruit people. You do that by fighting on the very small things and they can do that very easily because they’re not getting things they’re entitled to.
The union officials are so slow and lethargic that people phone me up rather than the officials when they want advice on how to approach any problem that they have. That’s the result of being at meetings over the years and arguing with people about how we go about having a fight. I’ve always taken the position at any meeting that we should always take on the employers, and that is getting more of a resonance than ever. Even at my own shop meetings, where we’ve always had a few people saying don’t upset the apple cart because things are running reasonably smoothly, the feeling among people now is that management are going to take the apple cart away unless we do something about it. People are now realising that they have no choice but to fight. And given even a small lead people are willing to do something.
The bitterness that’s come out of my workplace, which led to unofficial strike action, was one incident of a couple of people going up the road because management didn’t think they were making enough money out of them. It was also the fact that they didn’t get strike action after a positive result in a vote. The officials dragged their heels for three or four months so we didn’t get a chance to have a go at the employers.
My industry is based on hours and overtime working to make up the pay packet. That’s been cut back massively and we’ve had tax increases, so people are straining at the leash at the moment to have a go. With someone there to give even a small lead you can cut past the officials if you’re seen as a militant because people realise the best way to win things is to take immediate action, even though the stakes are high.
An indication of that is with these two guys going up the road. The Tory anti-union laws say you have to give seven days’ notice of a ballot. Then you’ve got to have a postal ballot. It takes two to three weeks to turn a ballot around. Then ten days’ notice of any industrial action. People realised that the situation would be lost if they didn’t take action and the same goes with any other disciplinary matter – if they sack a shop steward or a worker. The only way to defend that person is to take immediate strike action.
Everyone knows about the signal workers’ strike. But how do we get across what’s happening in terms of solidarity, with Sefton, with the signal workers, with some of the smaller strikes?
JL: Liverpool docks, which was a totally shattered workplace reduced to 400 dockworkers, came out illegally over disciplinary action and then were out within two weeks on legal action that they’ve been balloted for. People are being balloted and getting yes votes but not being called out. That’s backfiring and people are coming out on action. You feel confident because you’ve already won the ballot. The buses have been out for a day in Liverpool. There’s talk of GPT starting to ballot over their pay deal. People are starting to read more about strikes in the local papers and are feeling more confident.
When you go on picket lines the main idea people have is solidarity. They welcome anybody from other industries. One of the mainstays of my own dispute was people coming down and offering you solidarity. That seems far more important than it was a few years ago. People are still a bit wary of the law. So the more people send messages, the more people collect money for you and come on the picket line, creates more confidence. These are not just isolated instances. One of the dockers coming out said we should be doing what workers in France did.
Sefton was splashed across every news, so you couldn’t help but know that people had got taken to court. The actual fine was just a joke, nobody on Sefton council believed that was a hefty fine.
MH: It makes an enormous difference if you’ve got someone taking round a socialist newspaper, raising the arguments, taking round collection sheets for other workers. The immediate response of most people is, the law is wrong and it stands in the way of us fighting, but there is not a way round it.
In the dispute we’re involved in at the moment, we came within about 20 votes of going out unofficially, but the motion that won the day at the branch meeting was that the union should back us, and they should make it official. We were quite lucky because Sefton was going on at the same time. The National Disputes Committee must have thought that the best thing to do was to make it legal rather than find themselves in court again! It was a unanimous decision.
The mood of most people at present is not sectional, unlike a few years back. The issues are much more general because the attack is more general. We’re in dispute about a performance code. If you don’t achieve set targets, you get the sack.
The feeling is that we’ve all got to get together and fight it. There is a good strong core of stewards who can give a lead, rather than allow it to be sidelined into lots of sectional disputes. You see the same thing on the railways. The signal workers are the symbol of a general problem, which is the privatisation of the railways. The Sefton dispute was built from a mass meeting and it won. That makes it very difficult for the officials to slag it off, the fact that the workers came out unofficially and won by the following day. There’s a difference between being spineless before the anti-trade union laws and supporting them. If Unison officials go down the road of openly supporting the laws then there will be something of a backlash as the support for Sefton showed.
RW: Management has really stepped up the attacks on our conditions. Every week there are changes they try to impose on us. The local reps bear the brunt of fighting back and they’re getting in touch with other reps. About two months ago there was an unofficial walkout at Birmingham New Street when a rep got a disciplinary letter. It only took them about half an hour to get that letter withdrawn. When people heard about that in five different depots I know of, they all took a vote and each one of those depots agreed unanimously to walk out if there were any disciplinary letters to reps.
PD: The one big hope is that the signal workers get a good pay rise because people realise that the pay norm is going to be set, and they will get 1 or 2 percent on offer. You can get collections.
MH: What is so frustrating is all these open ended opportunities – the signal workers, the drivers whose pay has not been settled, the entire public sector local government – and yet nothing is moving at the top. If they were to call a national demonstration it would be something that would link us all together on the basis of ending low pay. A breakthrough for the signal workers could push our officials into going for a round of ballots. I can see things beginning to move later on, which is why pushing the signal workers is the task at the moment. Sooner or later there will be a ruck over pay, but there could be one imminently if the TUC did something.
There’s real pressure both ways on the bureaucracy. A year ago a common thing you heard people saying was, when will the trade union leaders ever fight? Whereas now it’s more common to hear that a whole layer of people are doing things despite the union leaders. At the same time you get the feeling the employers are not very confident.
MH: That is true, like a case I heard of where postal workers were out for 45 minutes to get someone reinstated. But underneath there are all the big things. There is a consciousness that things are at breaking point. In some of the London Labour councils, nasty and vicious management are on the offensive. Temporary workers are being brought in without immediate opposition. We’ve been fighting a losing battle against agency workers in housing benefits. We win agreements that they’re going to go next month, then they don’t go. They do clear up work which takes pressure off other members, so holding the line on it and getting a strike is quite difficult. Several came out on strike with us – and these are often workers who are in a desperate situation.
JL: There are heaps of little incidents, which are quite cheeky. In the Post Office they go to the canteen for three hours till the reps see the manager and gets it resolved. People are challenging a lot more. Management retaliation is then on the pettiest issues, like you can’t go to the toilet unless you ask the manager, so people start organising toilet breaks.
Quadrant, the Royal Mail catering company, has been offered an appalling pay deal: over 2 percent but anyone new comes in on £20 less. The staff there have kicked it out. So we’ve had a canteen boycott. In Liverpool we put free tea and toast on and all of a sudden even the managers were boycotting the canteen. Nationally the union is not going to ballot on the Quadrant, but individual branches can approach for a ballot. So Liverpool applied for one. In Warrington there are two canteen staff, and the rep went round to see how they felt about it, and they said, yeah, yeah. The next day one woman came in without her uniform because she thought she was going to be on strike. Where there’s a four week period between starting a ballot and ending it, people are saying: Is it tomorrow? We’re going. People are prepared to forego the money to prove a point, which is a complete change in the atmosphere and mood.
RW: The members see our union leadership as being concerned about two things: their own jobs, and getting some sort of machinery with the new railway companies so that they can carry on having meetings with them and being prepared to sell us out. They’re also seen as stuck in the methods of the 1980s, which means single grade disputes. There are actually very few grades on the railway that can stop trains. Disputes kept to one grade automatically limits them. One day strikes are the methods of the 1980s – the bureaucracy forced to take some action but deliberately limiting the action so it’s not enough to raise the stakes at all. There’s an increasing frustration about these methods. We want a machinery of negotiation with the new railway companies, but it’s not our main concern. If workers in a depot are organised and they have reps, then if they take action the management will meet with them. The most important thing is that we are organised within and across the grades in the industry and we’re able to take action.
PD: When they announced redundancies at the company I work for there were 40 people across 26 different union branches. The stewards got on the phone to each other and said that we should have a national meeting about this, so we phoned the full time officials. It took them two weeks to get back to us. Within two hours of taking unofficial action the union official was getting back to me – it was the other way round. I phoned up the office next day and he wasn’t in but they said you can have his mobile phone number. So you tend to get an increased service from the union officials. Unofficial or illegal strikes don’t happen that much and for that reason it has a far bigger impact. They called a meeting of the stewards after all the redundancies had gone through. We had been asking for a national committee for a long time and actually won that because they sensed they had missed a mood. Our union officials say they realise there is a mood when they get shop stewards phoning up and complaining. They do realise that it’s the rank and file that drives them and not the other way round, but they miss the mood. They get up and say, I remember ten years ago we tried to do this and nobody would do it and I say well that’s ten years ago, this is now. Things actually do change. They live in a different world, but they like to be on top of the situation and sometimes they give a lead so that they can keep hold of things.
People often realise limited strike action isn’t going to win but there’s a feelgood factor about it. People are under constant pressure all the time, the bosses are trying to get more out of them and increase their productivity. That leads to a bit of action – we must do something about it. Having said that, it’s not back to the 1970s yet, when everyone was dead cocky. The feeling is more, where are we going to go from here.
What about Labour and the election of Blair? Has it had an impact at work? People seem very fed up with him on the one hand – he attacks the unions, single parents, can’t give a straight answer to a straight question. On the other hand, the recent election results have given lots of workers a real boost, with the feeling that Labour can win at last.
JL: The leadership election was dead in work. The majority didn’t vote. A lot had sympathy for Margaret Beckett and said she was being scapegoated because Thatcher was a woman. No one seemed enthusiastic, yet overall UCW members voted for Blair. They fell for the idea he could win the election for Labour in the south, and if we have to sacrifice so be it. But no one had a fixation with it or talks about it. Everyone laughs about him.
MH: People were delighted to see the Tories stuffed in the elections. No one I’ve met who voted in the elections can stand Blair. But probably about half the people who had a vote did vote for him, because he can beat the Tories. When you’re working for a Labour council you have to talk about another kind of vision because otherwise it’s quite frightening.
RW: There’s frustration that Labour has refused to reverse privatisation. Our assistant general secretary Vernon Hince is on the Labour NEC. A lot of people have collared him about it but all you get is excuses. There is even more frustration about the lack of solidarity expressed for the signalling grades, with the exception of a few Campaign Group MPs. The vast majority on the rail voted for Prescott, who was seen as the most class conscious and also sponsored by the union. Nobody really trusts Tony Blair because he’s a public schoolboy. They hold him in contempt. Someone said, ‘if the Church of England can sack a vicar who doesn’t believe in God, why can’t we sack a Labour leader who doesn’t believe in socialism?’
What about the role of socialists in rebuilding the unions? If you look historically, every time there has been downturn, recession, decline in union membership, then the people who put the movement back together are the socialists, the militants from previous upturns. And how can Socialist Worker help to organise a periphery?
PD: Having a militant or socialist in the workplace is crucial. If we could implant one into every workplace it would make a hell of a difference. Confidence would increase, there would be unofficial strikes everywhere. That’s what the paper tries to do. Having the bread and butter arguments when times are bad pays dividends.
RW: The most important part of the paper is the industrial pages, because it tells us what’s going on. After that dispute with the drivers when that guy got victimised, someone phoned me and said I’ve read in Socialist Worker what the drivers did – we’ve got to do something. You just can’t get the information anywhere else. We’re also trying to get readers’ meetings. I had a discussion with someone about the Labour leadership and he said what we need is more people like those SWP, so that was one of my easiest sales ever. We need readers’ meetings so socialists in the industry can get together, talk about their problems and explain how being a member of a revolutionary party can help you fight.
JL: The SWP has really shifted to sell papers outside the Post Office. For years it was a battle to get people down there at 5.30 in the morning. Selling outside is really important and getting the readers’ meetings. The industrial reports are so good. For years I defended my politics, now I tell people to defend theirs. I say how would you do it different?
MH: The paper stops us becoming single issue zombies. We talk about Rwanda, about Winston Silcott, the issues people actually talk about at work. We’re seen as people who have an understanding of what’s going on around us, precisely because we read the paper and we take it round and talk to people. Raising other issues that are in the paper helps strengthen the struggle. Every time we’ve had a strike it’s usually come on the back of something happening outside the workplace. When we got people on a demonstration about the Gulf War it gave us a right to talk to them about other issues and the specifics of a workplace dispute. The day after the walkout in support of the miners two years ago we got a strike against a sacking. This present dispute has obviously come on top of a whole range of Tory outrages, the elections, the signal workers’ strike. You build your dispute by being aware of what’s happening elsewhere. We have to sell more papers. If we sell the paper outside a workplace it raises the profile of the party and now if people want to know what’s going on in the union they ask the SWP.
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