IWW and NUJ dispute with Tommy Sheridan + other MSP

Mate if a full timer who'd been expelled from the labour party called me i'd probably be sympathetic, but its not like i'm going to organise a campaign for there reinstatement due to a 'breach of contract' is it.

And serioulsy those squabbling trots don't even rank close to a local expelled labour party member in terms of how sympathetic i might feel. Can you not to see that they're simply using the moniker of the IWW in order to appear like the 'radical faction'?

as i said i could point to a fucking ton of workers rights issues that cops and screws have but i'd like to think the IWW wouldn't be organising them, even if we recognise that attacks on their rights and working conditions trickle down to us.

Also if the SSP actually had to lay off these workers because of Party needs would they take it up in this manner?

But they aren't employed by the SSP, they are employed by a group of MSPs, two of which have unilaterally withdrawn their funds from the wage pool.

Because he had a contract of employment with them - is it really so hard to understand?

They are employed by SSP (or ex rather) MSP's no?

Yes, they are employed by a group of six individuals all of whom were SSP MSPs, four of whom still are SSP MSPs and are continuing to employ 9 of them, two of whom are now not SSP MSPs and are employing two of them.

However, the two who are now not SSP MSPs (Sheridan and Byrne) have withdrawn the funds for four members of staff.

At no time were the workers in dispute ever employed by the SSP.

Sorry if they were employed by Socialist Party MSP's they are in my mind employed by the Socialist Party. Now two of the MSP's have fucked off, so if this was in my own workplace i would be demanding my wages or compensation from the collective regardless, infact i couldn't give too flying fucks how they get the money, it ain't my problem.

of course this is different because the "workers" have a common interest with their employers, namely the benefit of the party, as such the IWW shouldn't have touched them with a shitty stick.

At the start I thought it was just some cleaners or office staff employed by the parliament ie civil servants that the IWW were organising, not a bunch of party activists employed by the SSP.

As indeed they have, and the remaining SSP MSPs have continued to employ them, however there is not enough money to continue to employ them after Feb, and the only legal option then open to the SSP MSPs is to make them redundant.

Suppose in my bakery example, the four members of the employing group who continued to employ the workers were vegans, and it was two carnivores who opened the butchers. Should the IWW have not allowed them into the ranks because they had something in common with their employers, namely a moral belief that eating meat was wrong?

There is a vast difference between the fact that the employing class and the boss class have nothing in common and extrapolating to say that there can be nothing in common between an individual worker and an individual boss.

Again, not the SSP, six individuals who were SSP MSPs.

So it is OK for private individuals to ignore employment law, but not the state?

when this something in common effects how they struggle against each other, as in the IWW is now being brought into involvement in a fight between two employers as to who should pay up. If the IWW members were demanding their employee rights regardless of which employers pay it then it would be somewhat different, as it is the IWW is being used as a pawn by one set of SSP employers against some ex SSP employers, which is a fucking farce!

why not?

are you joking?

no, not really.

well it might be to do with the fact their day to day role in policing capitalism and in explicit ways.

I was told upon specifically asking, that the SSP actually hired the staff, and that there wasn't such a direct employment relationship with the MPs, even though the MPs did agree to the wage pooling agreement.

Each MSP is given a fund from which to employ staff to work for them in their capacity as MSPs. The usual relationship between parliamentary staff is a direct employer/employee relationship.

The SSP MSPs, the Greens MSPs and some SNP MSPs have pooled their staff allowances, so that individual MSPs do not employ staff, but the collective of MSPs do.

Had Sheridan not been a member of a collective, but an individual employer and behaved in the same manner, the first these workers would have heard of it would have been was when their paycheck didnt arrive at the end of the month.

yes i'd guess that'd be the argument, and wouldn't that be exactly the place to go? there's no theoretical reason cops can't be wobbed up. imagine the benefits.

i'd prefer it if you took a second to catch a clue.

do you think cops receive indoctrination and examination in corporatist economic theory before they're handed a gun? do you really think the motivation for most police is something other than "i can retire at 40 with full benefits" or "it's in the family"? have you known a policement closely in your entire life?

no and yes, but I think the nature of the job and how it relates to society makes it impossible to reconcile it with the rest of the class, it's got fuck all to do with cops being good or bad people, and everything to do with living in the real world.

I don't think we should organise cops or screws, but research staff and clerical workers for a political parties office isn't any different to me as organising the office staff at an NGO or company.

Really is this campaign any different than the organising drive mounted at ACORN a few years back?

http://www.iww.org/en/unions/iu650/acorn

but not if the office staff have an overriding identification with their employer, and as this case has shown it leads to the IWW being entangled in intra employer fights.

Well at ACORN a lot of the folks who work there probably identified with the project, it being a community organisation. Also in Edmonton we were trying to organise youth shelters for a while and by and large these workers very much believed in the need for group homes for kids that left home. In fact all across the social services many people believe in the work they do, that doesn't mean they can't be screwed over (in fact it often guerantees it).

Furthermore I don't think you have given any proof that the IWW actually has taken sides in this fight, in fact all of the literature I have read has indicated the brittish ROC has no interest in doing so. As far as I'm concerned the IWW is doing what it is supposed to be doing: acting like a union.

yeah, i see that, but i still approach it more as a you-can-talk-to-a-guy-can't-you kind of thing.

You can't see the difference between people working in the voluntary social services sector and full time trots in the employment of the parties politicians? Come on! My mum works in as a care assistant and funny enough thinks her work is vital for old people but that's rather different than her sharing the political and ideological aspirations of the her employers.

And the IWW is being dragged into an inter employer battle because it is allowing itself to be used by one pool of employers against another, if this was a typical workers struggle they wouldn't be overly fussed how their employer met their contract conditions, just that they do. I mean if two investors left the company I work for in a shady manner and my wages were being threatened I wouldn't care to shits about the rights and wrongs of the partners fallings out, all I care about is that my contract is upheld.

Exactly, but their contract isn't being upheld and that is the issue. Other than that the IWW hasn't taken any stand on the issue at all, all they want is that these folks are paid until their contract is up. Seriously revol, produce evidence that the IWW has taken any stand other than the issue of these folks being employed and I will concede that this whole campaign is a mistake. I can take several direct quotes off of the IWW website that says the exact opposite, that the IWW has no interest in the internal politics of these groups.

except do you think this would have happened if the SSP had to cut back for anyother reason than a political schism? Seriously it's a fucking farce that youse see value in organising party full timers especially when these people are dedicated party members, it completely undermines the notion that the workers and the bosses have nothing in common.

so clearly the IWW and NUJ are taking sides. I'm not even suggesting they are taking the wrong side from a moral perspective but they nonetheless are in a position of piling pressure on what section of their employers in order to relieve the problems of another.

I will concede that this is obviously not part of a strategic decision to organise workers and build a revolutionary syndicalist union. However, the notion that we shouldn't stand up for these workers now that things have gone sour with their employers is pretty aweful. Again I could care less about the SSP, solidarity or anyone else, and maybe one faction is trying to capitalise on it, that doesn't mean these workers aren't getting shafted.

Just because you identify ideologically with your bosses doesn't mean they can't screw you over.

Seriously is it rare to have the office staff for political parties unionised over there? It isn't here, the NDP office was picketed for a week last year by its own staff in Edmonton. Also I know for a fact that some organisers in mainstream unions in the USA have tried to organise themselves and faced some pretty vicious union busting from their union employers. Would you say these folks shouldn't organise?

Also what about NGO's like ACORN would you say the SSP is all that different than a community organisation that lobbies for living wage ordinances? Should NGO's not be organised because the workers believe broadly with the aims of the organisation?

Firstly i'd like you to comment on the points i just quoted which clearly shows that the IWW and NUj are backing one side of the employing collective over another.

Secondly i wouldn't have a problem if it was just office staff doing admin or cleaning, basically folks just doing a job like civil servants, but it is clear that these IWW members are also members of the SSP and as such their relationship somewhat complicated.

And as i said my mother cares about elderly care alot but she doesn't conflate this with her employer, now I can imagine plenty of folks in NGO's and the voluntary sector who are able to distance themselves from their employers but in the case of a political party where they all have membership I doubt it and considering the noise i'm hearing from this campaign regarding "who is ultimately responsible" it appears i'm not about to be pleasantly suprised anytime soon.

I think that the first thing that people should consider in this situation is whether the workers are in dispute with the correct employers. There are in fact three different possibilities in that they could be in dispute with Sheridan and Byre, the four remaining SSP MSPs, or even with both groups.

The answer to this question depends upon the details of the contract, which we haven’t seen. The originally post, however suggests that the people that they should be in dispute with are the four remaining SSP MSPs . These are the people after all who are issuing the redundancy notices:

Now, the way I see it if I work for an organisation that is trying to make me redundant I am in dispute with that organisation. The NUJ members may be in no doubt who has caused the situation, but this is not really the point. What causes an organisation to issue redundancy notices can be any one of a myriad causes. The point is that you are in dispute with that organisation. I mean really, if you work for a small fast food joint, which goes bust, are you then in dispute with McDonald’s for driving it out of business.

This is interesting though. Of course, maybe they have read through the contacts, which we haven’t, but it does begin to give one a feeling that there is at least some political motivation in this dispute. Because to me it seems very clear that what we have here is a group of workers siding with their employer in a dispute with their employer’s former partners.

Who are the workers actually contracted by? Is it the individual MSPs, or is it by the SSP parliamentary group. From what was stated it seem to me that it is the SSP parliamentary group.

In which case it seems clear that the employer is the SSP group. To use another analogy, if you worked for a company with six investors, and two of them pulled out, would you be in dispute with the company, or the departing investors? I can see an argument saying that you would be in dispute with both groups, but to be in dispute only with the departing investors, and even worse whilst in alliance with the remaining ones seems a little bizarre.

To return to the original question, it seems to me that there is no workplace dispute here. Are these people in struggle? Are they taking any form of industrial action against their employers? No, because in fact they are in complete agreement with their employers. It seems to me that the best course of action for the workers involved would be to take some action against their actual employers, the SSP Parliamentary Group. Maybe it is possible to take Sheridan, and Byrne to an industrial tribunal for breach of contract, but this is an individual solution, not a class one.

It seems to me that the fact that the workers are very clearly blaming Sheridan and Byrne, and not the SSP group, shows very clearly that this is little more than another episode in a particularly squalid leftist dispute, and not a worker’s dispute, one that in my opinion further tarnishes the IWW reputation.

Devrim