Yesterday, Coalition Business Secretary Vince Cable gave a speech to the GMB union. The headlines were about possible new anti-strike laws but the whole speech was a recognition of one part of the state to another.
Cable said that the problems of the economy didn't come from the unions and went on to denounce the banking industry, obscene bosses pay and so on. In fact, he said, the unions "did a lot to help the private sector by negotiating realistic deals to restrain pay, vary shift patterns and work flexibility".
He said that the Coalition was committed to support the Union Learn programme with over £21 million this year (he didn't go into the details of all the other state subsidies, direct and indirect, that the unions as parts of the state receive each year).
He praised union participation on the Advisory Panel of the Regional Growth Fund and trade union involvement in the Regional Development Association ("to disperse growth").
He also praised the role of the unions in activity undertaken by UK Trade and Investment in helping "to dispel misconceptions about the flexibility of the UK workforce and the attitudes of trade unions towards new ways of working. He said that the relevant Coalition and state departments were working with the TUC to see this activity "enhanced".
Business Innovation and Skills already involves union experts in advanced manufacturing and this applies to other departments of the state. Cable looks forward to more of this.
The warning about repressive legislation was directed towards the working class. The unions are not "us" - they belong to them.
Jun 7 2011 17:27
Jun 7 2011 23:01
Beltov wrote:
I think this says quite a lot about the fear the bourgeiosie has about the response to cuts, feeling that is has to get workers more scared.
That's a quixotic analysis. If the Bourgeoisie are scared of the workers, they're schizoids. Union membership has been in free-fall for decades. Britain hasn't suffered a lower level of unionization since the 19th century. They're simply pushing their advantage. Unionization in Britain is feeble, but as long as it can conceivably be worse, they'll stamp it down. There's no point when they'll say, "Alright, labour is sufficiently repressed, let's focus on other things."
The Tories will be successful in their efforts to crush the remnants of organized labour. There's no cause for optimism here.
Jun 8 2011 03:43
As Baboon pointed out "Vince Cable welcomes the unions as part of the State", which of course they are. They serve the needs of the capitalist state as do the Tories, the Libs and Labour. That their membership is falling is thus excellent news. As the working class starts to organize itself outside of and against the unions - as it will have to do eventually - cf. The start of this in Greece, Spain, France, Egypt, Wisconsin etc. - then the Tories and their ilk will get more than a scare. We are only at the start of this class struggle, and young people are at it's forefront. There is every reason for a justified optimism and the all- powerful Tories (lol) will be swept away with all the other rubbish of the anachronistic, ever-warring capitalist states. Gerostock do not despair!
Jun 8 2011 06:36
Kinglear wrote:
That their membership is falling is thus excellent news.
why not observe demoralisation, atomisation and defeat, and call it communism? the real movement moves in mysterious ways.
Jun 8 2011 07:39
Kinglear wrote:
That their [the unions]membership is falling is thus excellent news.
I have to say I agree with Joseph here. The reason for the declining number of unions members is not because workers are holding mass meetings and forming independent strike committees.
Devrim
Jun 8 2011 12:00
Gerostock wrote:
Beltov wrote:
I think this says quite a lot about the fear the bourgeiosie has about the response to cuts, feeling that is has to get workers more scared.That's a quixotic analysis. If the Bourgeoisie are scared of the workers, they're schizoids. Union membership has been in free-fall for decades. Britain hasn't suffered a lower level of unionization since the 19th century. They're simply pushing their advantage. Unionization in Britain is feeble, but as long as it can conceivably be worse, they'll stamp it down. There's no point when they'll say, "Alright, labour is sufficiently repressed, let's focus on other things."
The Tories will be successful in their efforts to crush the remnants of organized labour. There's no cause for optimism here.
I think it's already been said, but union membership isn't always a very good indicator of struggle. It's very possible that Gerostock is right and the bosses are afraid of a class response to the cuts--so they go after the unions in the belief that'll inhibit militancy. But we also haven't seen a dramatic rise in self-organization and, unfortunately, many workers (at least in certain industries and certain sections of the wider population) do still view the TUs as the first port of call for a fight back. If we do get self-organized struggle off the ground, we may very well see a situation where the bosses begin promoted the unions as the sole legitimate arbiters of industrial relations (as was seen in the 70s). Finally, look at France. Union membership is significantly lower than the UK (and even lower than the US!), but the French are far better at struggle.
So I guess the point is that dropping union membership isn't automatically good or bad, but that we probably need a more nuanced analysis to understand the role trade union density plays in the workers movement.
Jun 8 2011 11:55
Tangential to the above discussion, but it always annoys me a bit to see anti-strike laws described as anti-union laws, as the 'left' in a broad sense have been doing. I don't see how the actual membership numbers, bureaucrat salaries, etc. will be necessarily negatively impacted by this, or how it will stop TUC unions fulfilling their social role of negotiating the sale of labour. Not a controversial point here, I'm sure, but it does bug me that unions and working class struggle are taken to be the same thing by almost every media outlet, mainstream or leftist.
Jun 8 2011 11:59
I'm a hundred percent with you, even in the anarchist press I see them referred to as "anti-union" laws. "Anti-worker" or "anti-strike" is infinitely more accurate.
Jun 8 2011 12:57
I'm not aware of workers holding mass meetings and forming independent strike committees anywhere and I'm not aware that anyone is saying that they are. I am aware though that that is a need of the struggle and I think that the bourgeoisie in its wisdom is also aware of that and will act to thwart that development. I don't think that weakening union membership is positive in itself just as increasing union membership and a strengthening of the unions could also represent a strengthening of the ruling class vis-a-vis the proletariat.
I think that just as the press failed to report on the Coalition's positive attitude towards the trade unions - and their positive role in running the economy and keeping the workers in check - and presented a minor part of the Cable's speech as an "attack on the unions" is part of the bourgeoise's decades old tactic of getting the working class locked into defend the union "struggles" where it can only get hammered. More legislation against strikes mentioned by Cable wasn't an attack on the unions but one part of the state telling another what its plans would be if class struggle starts to get out of hand. As Chili and RedEd say, these are not anti-union measures - the unions are well fitted for the legalistic manoeuvrings of the state - but threats to incipient working class struggle.
Jun 8 2011 13:14
baboon provides some of the other points in Cable's speech less often quoted in the left press and with Chilli's earlier post gets us somewhere towards a balanced approach to this issue.
We should remember that it is possible, in situations of low working class levels of struggle, for both the working class and the unions, as junior partners in the management of social labour, to come under attack from the senior representatives of capital in the state and economy. I think this is precisely what happended during the last wave of class defeats in the docks, ferries, steel, print and mines in Britain. This does not deny the historic role of the trade unions against independent working class struggle but certainly muddies the water in practice.
Whilst a certain theoretical analysis can be made to justify the description 'trade unions are part of the state' in modern capitalism, this requires a less than common understanding of what the state is, and tends to brush over the not insignificant divisions within different sectors of the capitalist class and management apparatus of capitalism, and different situations in different parts of the world, which does not necessarily aid our understanding of the practical situations we face.
Jun 8 2011 14:18
[edited for exasperation] Of course, some union leaders (if that's what you mean by 'unions', which is itself crude and one-sided) are in favour of the laws, and some are against. There is no abstraction 'the unions', which expresses a definite view, or whose interests point, in one direction. Of course, the laws were introduced as part of a process of breaking the unions: that was their purpose, and that is what they achieved. That's just an obvious historical fact.
The laws are not particularly anti-worker, they are anti-union. Was there ever a law in Britain which said that workers could organise a strike however they pleased (without any sort of union-related procedure) and not be penalised for breach of contract? So what you're complaining about is that the bourgeoisie has failed to legalise wildcat strikes, and this is proof that the laws in question are 'really' anti-worker and not anti-union? Their main topic, for goodness sake, is holding unions institutionally responsible for what they endorse or promote as institutions, and punishing them institutionally on that basis. If workers organise their own strike without the union, they aren't subject to any special provision established under the laws, so I don't see what basis there is for reframing them in that way.
Why did the bourgeoisie introduce anti-union laws in this way? Why has the bourgeoisie of numerous countries repeatedly attacked unions? And why have these attacks, when successful, often represented working-class defeat? Obviously: because they not only perform the regulation of class struggle, they also express it. The state has a strategic orientation toward encouraging the regulative aspect, and diminishing the expressive aspect. This is what the anti-union laws are about.
The expressive and regulative functions of unions tend to increase and decline simultaneously with each other, and with waves of struggle. It's completely obvious to anyone not in cloud cuckoo land that the main problem is that workers' confidence on a basic level is low. Of course Cable wants to emphasise the regulative function. He's a leading figure in the state FFS! What do you think he was going to say to the bleeding GMB conference? "I hereby recognise you as an autonomous organisation of the class"? Of course that's the view he promotes. Is there alot of truth to it? Yes, there is. Is it the whole story? No, it's not.
Finally, talking about 'union membership' as a basis for international comparison is absurd if it's just left on that level: as if 'unions' and 'union membership' were the same thing in the UK, France, Brazil, etc. etc. France does have 8% density, yes. But that 8% means something very different to what it would here. Why? Legal context, level of class struggle, historical development of unions on a political/activist basis rather than industrial basis. etc. etc.
Why do I go on about this? Because, while the above sort of analysis is harmless (indeed, positive) if all it leads to is "we need to organise autonomously from the unions, on a revolutionary basis", it is harmful insofar as it seeks to represent to militant workers a view of the unions which a great many of them cannot and will not recognise on a day to day basis. It makes people who talk in these terms seem disconnected from reality. It does not in general describe what people see of the between their shop-steward at work, and struggle - or the lack of it - in the workplace. As a postal worker commenting on an article on the commune site which took this approach in relation to the last big postal strike put it:
Quote:
On the general thesis about the role of the trade union leaderships and their interests as divorced from those of those they purport to represent, I don’t disagree. However, the author doesn’t seem to allow for any nuances in this – it comes across as “all trade union bureaucrats sell out at all times”. But that takes no account of those (admittedly few) trade union leaders who rarely if ever sell out, nor gives any indication of an understanding that there are countervailing pressures on the buraeucrats – the ones spelt out by the author, but also – to different degrees at different times – the pressure from the membership to represent their interests. The “absolutist” position of the author leaves you wrong-footed when even the most right wing of union leaders do actually lead a fight. The classic case is 1920 in Germany when right wing social democrats and union leaders called for a general strike in response to the Kapp putsch. The KPD was thrown so off balance that it initially refused to support the strike!. . .
The “all bureaucrats always sell out” line doesn’t explain why the origins of the dispute date back to a call by the national union (i.e. the Hayes/Ward leadership) for branches not to make local agreements on job cuts in the absence of a national agreement. This led to mamanagement unilaterally imposing changes and the requests for local strike ballots. Of course, there is then the question as to why it took so long for the national union to call a national dispute and a national ballot for strike action.
http://thecommune.co.uk/2009/11/27/union-sell-outs-disbelief-and-dialectics/#more-4077
In conclusion, 1970s operaismo-type stuff, based on the experience of militants who - unlike the ICC et al. - developed a serious collective practice in the factories, has it about right:
Sojourner Truth wrote:
Unions are instruments workers use to improve their living conditions under capitalism. By representing the interests of groups of workers within the wage system, they provide a means of mediating conflicts that threaten to disrupt the system, in addition to being an arena in which conflicts develop.
One can search diligently through the left press, encountering page after page of denunciation of this or that union official, without ever coming across a statement such as the above, which seems to us undeniable. Fortunately for its continued rule, the bourgeoisie has been able to bring forth class conscious ideologists who are not bound by inherited dogmas as are most of our leftists. Two of these ideologists, Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, both on the faculty at Harvard University and Research Associates at the National Bureau of Economic Research, have published a study entitled, "The Two Faces of Unionism."[*]They begin with the observation, "Trade unions are the principal institution of workers in modern capitalist societies, as endemic as large firms, oligopolistic organization of industries, and government regulation of free enterprise."
"In modern industrial economies," the writers observe, "and particularly in large enterprises, a trade union is the vehicle for collective voice — that is, for providing workers as a group with a means of communicating with management." Writing in the purest sociologese, they say: "By providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of the economic and social systems."
The writers take up the arguments against unions that have been traditionally put forth by management interests — that they raise wages, introduce new work rules, lower output through strikes, etc. — and show that these objections to unions, while not entirely without foundation, are outweighed by the beneficial effects of unions in actually increasing productivity by reducing quit rates, regulating the time workers spend on breaks, and in general providing a more stable work force. They conclude that, "the positive effects of unions are in many settings more important than their negative effects," and that "the on-going decline of private-sector unionism — a development unique to the U.S. among western developed countries — deserves serious public attention."
Three cheers for Harvard. Now we in STO, similarly unbound by traditional dogmas and in addition motivated by something other than the search for industrial peace, have gone even further than the two professors. We have noted that although labor unions at times have grown out of mass struggles which had a revolutionary component, unions, as such, do not play a revolutionary role. This consistency (it cannot be called a failure) is the logical consequence of their character as institutions structured to bring about an improvement in the terms of the sale of labor power, while the aim of the proletarian revolution is to abolish the sale of labor power. In fact, unions which develop as working class institutions, even if not as revolutionary institutions, increasingly become separated from working class interests and become the structures within the working class that support the hegemony of capital over it.
We have come to the conclusion (I do not wish to anticipate the articles that follow) that work within the unions cannot be the center of a communist labor policy, that something else, which embodies the revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat, as distinct from the reform interests of groups of workers, is needed. To discover the character of that "something else" and to help bring it into existence is the central feature of STO's labor policy. But it by no means follows that we wish to destroy or weaken the present unions in general (we do wish to weaken or destroy some of them, in certain aspects) or that we are indifferent to the quality of a particular union in a particular place, or any of the other things that could conceivably be implied in the charge of being "anti-union." Indeed, a necessary consequence of the development of a mass revolutionary working class current will be the revitalization of the trade unions. This will be impelled both as a direct response to the radicalization of their constituency, and because of the heightened interests of capital in maintaining their legitimacy as a structure able to confine the working class within the capital relation.
Jun 8 2011 14:20
Not sure who that post was aimed at (ICC et al.. does that include Chilli and Spikeymike?) but I'm just getting in early and saying let's keep this civil. Not that posi's post had anything too bad in it but I think it's best for the discussion if it doesn't get too confrontational (That said, posi is a massive cunt.. 
)..
Jun 8 2011 14:35
Also, I can never understand in these discussions why apparent agreement emerges between members of the AF/SolFed on the one hand, and comrades such as Spikymike or those from the ICC. This is because although both sides agree on many of the dynamics which determine how unions behave, in fact their tactical orientations are totally different - something which presumably implies something, unstated, on the level of analysis.
i.e. AF and SolFed members consider it a tactical question whether to take elected union positions and facility time, and would sometimes be involved in asking others to join the union or vote in a certain way in a strike ballot, this is not true of the tendency roughly around the ICC. This tactical difference suggests, to me, an analytical difference, which rarely gets drawn out in these discussions. For me, the obvious lacunae is that not only are their structural/historical reasons for union incorporation, there are also structural/historical dynamics which point the other way. But there seems to be a great reluctance to say that. Or perhaps I haven't been following these discussions closely enough lately.
Edit - Ed, duly noted. The need to be civil that is, not me being a cunt
Different parts of the post were aimed at different tendencies. One topic I address is obviously whether the 'anti union laws' really are anti union laws, or something else. That is addressed to those people who were discussing that specifically. The more general points are directed toward baboon (ICC sympathiser), and Beltov (ICC, I think), and Spikymike, who I think has basically the same position - or at any rate, I have yet to understand the differences in his position from the ICC.
Jun 8 2011 14:45
Quote:
i.e. AF and SolFed members consider it a tactical question whether to take elected union positions and facility time
I'm not sure about this. SF members are shop stewards, but I think anything more than that would be suspect in regards to our constitution. Even on the issue of facilities time, I don't know of any SF members who have it and I'd personally be against someone new joining if they had it (although I would allow them to take out a 10 quid a month sub to Catalyst )
Jun 8 2011 14:56
Chilli Sauce wrote:
Quote:
i.e. AF and SolFed members consider it a tactical question whether to take elected union positions and facility timeI'm not sure about this. SF members are shop stewards, but I think anything more than that would be suspect in regards to our constitution. Even on the issue of facilities time, I don't know of any SF members who have it and I'd personally be against someone new joining if they had it (although I would allow them to take out a 10 quid a month sub to Catalyst
The constitution doesn't prohibit it though, the test is whether someone is 'accountable to the union or to the rank and file', i.e. it's a case by case thing above shop steward.
Jun 8 2011 16:03
I'm in a pretty hypocritical position - I don't think that communists should take facility time. The more involvement with unions I have the more I think people shouldn't even be union reps (apart from possibly on a temporary basis to take advantage of a possible agreement on laws around management having to consult and share information with them).
However, I am a rep and have facility time. But importantly here I don't think that my doing this helps class struggle in any way - quite the opposite in fact. I think it makes me a less effective militant at work. However, I enjoy it on a personal level, which is why I do it.
Only anti-union laws really being anti-strike laws, I disagree with you here posi.
I do not believe they are anti union as such, because as somebody pointed out they don't affect necessarily the size of unions or their income, or take away their seat at the negotiating table with government/employers.
What they do do is make strikes more difficult. Which often unions are quite happy with, as they are happy to prevent strikes as it is.
Jun 8 2011 16:34
just a comment on the OP, if Cable had been to talking to bunch of business people and thank them for any number of things, he might feel were positive contributions to the national economy would baboon then claim this proved they were part of the state? Or would the fact that companies receive money from the state also then be sited as further proof?
Jun 8 2011 16:52
Whether or not SolFed lets people join who have union positions > shop steward join is different to the organisation having a tactical position on people being shop stewards/facility time or not.
The implication with membership criteria is there is a potential conflict of interest (as with managers/supervisors).
With a tactical position that suggests that it'd fit with an overall strategy, which would be informed by ideology.
I don't think you can have a purely tactical position on official union roles, but you might have a pragmatic position in terms of what individual members end up doing in their individual workplaces when there is not much of a framework in place to determine this overall.
These are two different things for me - they're obviously inter-related, but it's about what is acceptable behaviour for a member of an organisation to engage in (in relation to work specifically, this may or may not be specifically about workplace organising), vs what members of the organisation engage in at work as part of the strategy of the organisation.
Jun 8 2011 17:27
Jason Cortez wrote:
just a comment on the OP, if Cable had been to talking to bunch of business people and thank them for any number of things, he might feel were positive contributions to the national economy would baboon then claim this proved they were part of the state? Or would the fact that companies receive money from the state also then be sited as further proof?
As I believe he has a 'state capitalism' analysis of contemporary society, quite possibly.
Jun 8 2011 17:30
Following on from what Jason says, I feel I should make clear that I think the idea that the unions are part of the state is ridiculous.
Unions are part of the management of capital overall, but it is silly to try to claim they are part of the state, which they clearly are not.
Jun 8 2011 19:25
Steven. wrote:
Following on from what Jason says, I feel I should make clear that I think the idea that the unions are part of the state is ridiculous.Unions are part of the management of capital overall, but it is silly to try to claim they are part of the state, which they clearly are not.
I don't think it is all 'silly' to claim that the unions are part of the state. The majority of unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, which up until last year was the governing party in the British state:
Wiki wrote:
Unions select twelve of the thirty-two members of the Labour National Executive Committee and elect fifty per cent of the delegates to Labour Party Conference.
Even on such a simplistic argument it is not 'silly' to suggest that unions are part of the state.
Whether it means anything is a completely different question.
It all depends on how you define the state anyway, but ultimately you could say that the unions are a part of the state, and argue for work within them, or say that they are not a part of the state and argue against work within them. It doesn't really take us anywhere in a discussion with people who define things slightly differently than we do.
Devrim
Jun 8 2011 19:39
posi wrote:
Why do I go on about this? Because, while the above sort of analysis is harmless (indeed, positive) if all it leads to is "we need to organise autonomously from the unions, on a revolutionary basis", it is harmful insofar as it seeks to represent to militant workers a view of the unions which a great many of them cannot and will not recognise on a day to day basis. It makes people who talk in these terms seem disconnected from reality. It does not in general describe what people see of the between their shop-steward at work, and struggle - or the lack of it - in the workplace.
I think that a lot of what the ICC has said on the trade unions, particularly about shop stewards has been very badly expressed. Reading some articles you could be forgiven for thinking that we believed that shop stewards were subjectively on the side of capitalism, and are up all conspiring about how to keep the working class down. We don't.
In fact what we actually think is as you put it "we need to organise autonomously from the unions".
Devrim
Jun 8 2011 19:43
posi wrote:
As a postal worker commenting on an article on the commune site which took this approach in relation to the last big postal strike put it:Quote:
The classic case is 1920 in Germany when right wing social democrats and union leaders called for a general strike in response to the Kapp putsch. The KPD was thrown so off balance that it initially refused to support the strike!
The comrade is factually wrong on the reasons that the KPD didn't support the strike. What they were opposed to at the time was the 'leftism' of the recently expelled KAPD who didn't support the strike call and indeed went as far as to call for an insurrection and set up recruiting offices for a Red Army. It wasn't because they were opposed to the call from ' right wing social democrats and union leaders'.
Devrim
Jun 8 2011 23:43
Devrim wrote:
I don't think it is all 'silly' to claim that the unions are part of the state. The majority of unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, which up until last year was the governing party in the British state:
Wiki wrote:
Unions select twelve of the thirty-two members of the Labour National Executive Committee and elect fifty per cent of the delegates to Labour Party Conference.
If the Labour Party NEC had any control over the Labour Party in government, or even any influence, this particular argument would be stronger. As it is, we all know that whichever party is in power, the shots are called by big business. None of whom are usually elected en bloc to the Labour NEC (or indeed any other Party's).
Regards,
Martin
Jun 9 2011 01:20
Is that really true though, can we discount the reformism of the TUC unions contrasted with thier dualist state role, I mean even as opposition, when the unions are stronger, they maintain a pretty strong influence over the PLP, which is basically part of the state. I think its worth investigation because there were unions talking about disaffiliating recently(ish)
Edit: But I dont find any issue with shop stewards being anarchists, or members of organisations
Jun 9 2011 01:41
Devrim wrote:
In fact what we actually think is as you put it "we need to organise autonomously from the unions".
imho, this is the difference between transcending the limits of trade unionism in theory, and doing so in practice. It's relatively easy to agree trade unionism is a dead end for revolutionary - or even plain effective - struggle. The question is how do we go beyond it? Posi's right to pose that question. SolFed obviously propose one answer; it's not the only one, nor necessarily a correct one, but if we want workers to organise beyond the limits of the trade unions, these are concrete questions we have to answer. Imho it isn't enough to point out these limits: if we advocate autonomous organisation, we need to either actively support it and/or have concrete proposals to offer.
Jun 9 2011 02:03
Joseph Kay wrote:
if we want workers to organise beyond the limits of the trade unions, these are concrete questions we have to answer. Imho it isn't enough to point out these limits: if we advocate autonomous organisation, we need to either actively support it and/or have concrete proposals to offer.
Absolutely. There was a discussion at an ICC meeting I was present at in which cdes were talking about the confusion expressed by workers on strike when revolutionaries denounced the unions or said abstractly that workers needed to struggle outside the unions. Workers would sometimes respond "but we ARE the union." What was said very clearly was that the more important thing, for communists, was to continually make proposals about the way decisions were made (in assemblies for example) that would transfer control of the struggle from the union officials to the workers themselves outside of the rules and regulations of union struggle and to be able to expose in practice how the union was incapable of furthering the struggle because they would quelch these attempts. Still, the point was not an evangelistic one of convincing the workers beforehand of the uselessness of the union, but to point out the needs of the struggle and what kinds of action and decision-making would allow it to grow and threaten the bosses/state. If our theory doesn't address the concrete needs of the struggle, it loses the materialist link with the working class on which it hinges.
I also agree that low union membership is, in the present historical situation, more likely a sign of demoralization than of a militant critique of the unions, although I do think there are ways in which some advantages could be gotten from it in terms of consciousness. I don't think it's necessary, for example, for a non-union sector of workers to fight for unionization and then go beyond it, in a kind of stage-ist way.
Jun 9 2011 02:42
Steven:
Quote:
I'm in a pretty hypocritical position - I don't think that communists should take facility time. The more involvement with unions I have the more I think people shouldn't even be union reps (apart from possibly on a temporary basis to take advantage of a possible agreement on laws around management having to consult and share information with them).
However, I am a rep and have facility time. But importantly here I don't think that my doing this helps class struggle in any way - quite the opposite in fact. I think it makes me a less effective militant at work. However, I enjoy it on a personal level, which is why I do it.
(post 17)
What personal enjoyment do you get out of it and wouldn't you feel more personal enjoyment refusing this role, since it would be in harmony with your real point of view? And though I admire your honesty in this case, it's an honesty used to avoid a practical truth; theory contradicted by practice (at least in those aspects of life over which we have a margin of choice) is schizophrenic and unhealthy and personally unfulfilling, as well as something which, as you said, undermines your desire to contribute to the class struggle - and so unnecessarily.
Jun 9 2011 09:11
soyonstout wrote:
I don't think it's necessary, for example, for a non-union sector of workers to fight for unionization and then go beyond it, in a kind of stage-ist way.
Agreed - in a sense it is an opportunity, since without unions grievances still exist, and in the absence of a mediating structure direct action is pretty much the only collective way to approach them. But decline/growth of unions could signal a range of things in different circumstances, from an upswing in militancy to the recuperation of struggles or demoralisation.
Jun 9 2011 09:58
Samotnaf wrote:
What personal enjoyment do you get out of it and wouldn't you feel more personal enjoyment refusing this role, since it would be in harmony with your real point of view? And though I admire your honesty in this case, it's an honesty used to avoid a practical truth; theory contradicted by practice (at least in those aspects of life over which we have a margin of choice) is schizophrenic and unhealthy and personally unfulfilling, as well as something which, as you said, undermines your desire to contribute to the class struggle - and so unnecessarily.
Sam, I think these are interesting questions, and I'll answer them but I don't want to derail the thread into a discussion about me! Although I would find it interesting I think to engage in some sort of more formal interview/discussion which is critical about my union role at some point.
In terms of the personal enjoyment I get, basically my job is mindnumbing database stuff. Whereas in my union facility time I mostly represent individual members of staff with problems - often disabled or bereaved staff with performance issues, disproportionately black and minority ethnic staff with disciplinary issues, management bullying, mothers with flexible working issues, job regradings, underpayment, etc. On an individual level I have been able to help a lot of them, saving people's jobs, getting sacked people reinstated, collectively winning colleagues hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation, etc. While not contributing to class struggle, it gives me a sense of personal satisfaction to help individuals in this way, which I do not get from my day job - and I love getting one over on arsehole managers!
Before I had facility time, I found my job so unbearable that I had no other option than to fight. But now it's bearable. I don't want to give up my union role, because if I went back to my job full-time I would end up getting myself fired, and would then be fucked as my job prospects are not good in the current economic climate, especially due to my disability. While I care about "the struggle", I only have one life, and I'm not so voluntarist to think that my individual actions will have a big effect on the class struggle as a whole.
Can comment on articles and discussions
I also thought it was striking that while the protests in Spain and Greece receive little attention in the news, the government were grabbing the headlines with threats of tougher laws against workers striking, despite the record low levels of class struggle in Britain. I think this says quite a lot about the fear the bourgeiosie has about the response to cuts, feeling that is has to get workers more scared. It also strengthens the unions, who'll be able to say "ffs, don't rock the boat too much else those Tories will make things even harder!"
One news reader on Radio 5 Live also referred to June 30th as a 'General strike'. Slip of the tongue?