Why do we lose with the unions?

Fingers Malone;

I think your point is very important. Because for instance in Turkey, majority of the strikes are occuring around the unionisation disputes. And these are also the most militant struggles. They are basically organised by ultra-left. I think one of the weakness of the left communist position is that, since it is developed in the countries where unions are the strongest, it is difficult to analyze the situation in countries like turkey.

An interesting point though; while the tekel resistance tended to eclipse, a working class organism has been borned out of it; platform of the workers in resistance. And it brough together many workers from small strikes in unionisation fight and other sort of issues and tekel workers. As far as I know it was conquered by the trotskyists though. That experience still remains to be analyzed.

I don't think so, but if it does, then it does. Surely the name an organisation calls itself isn't the necessarily directly connected to the role it plays. If a strike committee were to call itself a union, we wouldn't just damn it automatically but try to understand its role.

Possibly part yes, but another part is that the represent workers collectively, which I don't think the IWW in the UK does in even a single shop.

Devrim

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding your or the ICC's opinion, but why not apply this to the revolutionary unions proposed by SolFed and some of the the "union" activity of the IWW or CNT instead of making sweeping statements claiming that all unions are part of the state.

So just to clarify, it's your opinion that for an organization to be a union, collective representation ('a bargaining unit' in American parlance) is an inherent aspect of that? I mean, fair enough, but you must agree that the UK IWW aspires to be a trade union and that a lot of its problems stem from that desire?

I appreciate you're not from the UK, but you have things a bit upside down here. The culture of mining communities - existing for well over 100 years before the 84-85 strike - would've precluded scabbing as the most basic common principle; by tradition scabs usually became permanent social outcasts. So it was the culture those ex-miners were born into rather than one strike that defined their attitude - it was that culture that made the 84-85 strike possible and gave it its content, for better and worse. The mining communities were more or less the last remaining communities defined by a particular industry and located close to their collective workplace.

The ICC position is based upon a criticism of the idea that there can be mass unitary organisations in periods of low class struggle. Its platform states this clearly:

Now if the 'revolutionary unions proposed by SolFed are not supposed to be 'permanent unitary organisations of the class' what we say about unions doesn't apply to them.

Personally I think that analysing the activity of the IWA groups is problematic for the ICC as I mentioned earlier in this thread:

Beginning to understand the real dynamics involved in these types of groups is not in any way helped by the lack of knowledge and understanding of them, including my own, within the ICC.

I would say that we have to rexamine it, which doesn't mean that I don't think that our fundamental outlook on the unions is correct.

Yes, I agree. The IWW does aspire to be a trade union, but in my opinion hasn't managed to become one, and a lot of its problems do stem from that.

Devrim

Fair enough, but I think the point still stands that it's the experience of struggle and solidarity, culminating the 84/85 strike, that led them to refuse to cross picket lines. Perhaps I could have situated it better historically or articulated it better, but the point was communists should be concerned with creating transformative struggle.

Edit: And of course struggle is a process. For the miners it was one that became part of their communities and their culture, but I don't think that it needs generations to take root (not that you were suggesting that).

A slight tangent: do you mean the Mercadona dispute? In what way did the CNT operate as a representative union? I've heard its use of the courts raised a few times as being problematic, would that have something do with it? (not being defensive, just want to understand).

The impression that I had, and I could be wrong, as I just said I am not particularly well up on these things, was that the CNT represented the shop there as opposed to, in recent bigger disputes, acting effectively as a political organisation* within mass meetings.

Now I know virtually nothing about this supermarket strike, and I am not making any particular criticism of the CNT's role in it. What I was stating is that it causes a theoretical difficulty for the ICC in that, if you except the ICC's terms, sometimes the CNT seems to operate as a 'union'**, and sometimes not. I think that the use of the courts is connected to this representative function. I mean, if you are just a small minority of people within a mass assembly, you are not going to initiate court action 'on behalf of' that mass assembly, precisely because you don't 'represent' it.

It seems to me that the things that we criticise about unions are in one way connected to that role, or in some case an aspiration towards that role, an example of which would be, as NCWOB said "the UK IWW aspir[ing] to be a trade union and ... a lot of its problems stem[ming] from that desire"

Devrim

*My definition, but you see what I mean.
**As we would define it

Yes. Because this would mean that the CNT is sometimes part of the state and sometimes not. That isn't necessarily a problem but the dynamics of how this is possible and why it happens one way or the other would be good to elaborate on, preferably in a way that is not just a matter of the individuals involved having correct ideology.

I don't think 'correct ideology' has anything to do with it. It's just a matter of analyzing the situation through the context of what proletarian tendency one is convinced is the best one.

Though it would be nice if those involved in this thread could pick one specific topic, then elaborate from there. Such as comparing the activities of the CNT when they act as a network of militant and/or revolutionary workers pushing for mass assemblies of union and non-union workers to make collective decisions, and when they act as a more direct mediator/negotiator with the state or private business through the state; and the process/results of each.

To me, and I may understand it different than the ICC, a "union" doesn't become part of the state the minute they represent workers officially in negotiations, or seek legal recognition from a government body, or whatever. The point of the idea that the unions have become part of the state apparatus is that the State (and bourgeois parties hoping to capture it) fosters a relationship with the unions and comes to depend on them to maintain labor peace and co-manage the national economy. For me, this doesn't happen overnight, but in a country like the US, you can see it experimented with during the First World War, and different parts of the bourgeoisie watched this very carefully--by the time the begin to see the CIO, the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie is completely behind them, encouraging unionization, setting up the NLRB, etc., and in exchange for setting up conditions for the unions to have a huge influx of members (state-backing and all that entails, specifically) get a no-strike agreement for the 2nd World War. This kind of stuff didn't happen with the IWW in the US, but it did with the CGT in France (which is a "red" union). I think the left communist analysis is that permanent mass, non-political organizations strictly for the defense of workers' living standards, when they are successful, become grafted on to the state machinery--mainly because outside of workers' struggles, there isn't any meaningful reformism or other activity in which to engage and there are thousands of dead-end channels for permanent organizations to feel useful while mobilizing for sham "reforms" and "victories" that are actually either stalemates or real losses, that waste workers' energy and leave them jaded, etc.

This isn't to say that the ICC & left communists in general don't need a better and more nuanced analysis of the IWW, the IWA-AIT, and other revolutionary unions. For example, while I disagree with quite a bit of the IWW's strategy (no disrespect), I think there's a huge difference between their organization and say Labor Notes and Rank'n'File Union Reform/Union Democracy groups--I would put the latter on the side of capital ultimately (despite the sincere intentions of many of the members of those groups to advance the proletarian cause), but I would definitely not say the same of the IWW. But that's why this thread is so important, I think.

I don't know if this clarifies anything and I really don't mean any disrespect to the IWW or the IWA-AIT. I just think the idea of unions becoming part of the State needs to be understood as a process--concurrent to the process of capitalism itself taking a more statified form and resistance against individual employers by only the employees of that firm becoming less and less effective against a more coordinated national economy.

-soyons tout

What I meant was, here's one explanation of why things take a bad route: because the people involved had bad ideas. If they had had a better ideology things would have gone better. I personally think there is a whole lot to this kind of explanation. But if that's only as far as stuff goes then I think our critical assessments are of limited use, they amount to "damn it! if only people had thought the correct thing!", which is little more than hand-wringing and finger-pointing. Either there are better explanations (JK has talked about the need for structural explanations, if I understand him right, and I agree) and/or we should be talking about how to eliminate incorrect ideas and foster correct ones. This also gets at something NCWob said on the "solidarity and revolutionary unionism thread", about learning from mistakes as part of the process of the class getting radicalized; how we handle mistaken ideology in order to get people to take on correct ideology is a key question in my opinion.

I agree. It would be good to look at what a group like that had tried both the 'network of militants' approach and the 'representative' approach and see what they experienced. It might also be good to discuss concretely what 'victory' and 'defeat' mean in this context. I'm not sure if this belongs in another thread or not.

In my experience there are a few different ways a struggle can go, which may lead to some disagreement over what 'winning' actually means (these are broad generalizations, I realize):

1.) clear victory -- usually the revocation of all attacks, or the main attack that drew people into the struggle (i would also say that in the clearest victories, the bosses are scared for a little while afterwards, and the workers self-confidence is increased dramatically--other struggles may be inspired and people may become politicized by the experience)

2.) mixed "victory" -- this is where the difficulty lies. Frequently, a struggle will begin over something directly affecting working life sometimes with a focal demand that brings everyone together, but in the negotiations and maneuvering this demand will be sidelined by a) defense of the union / union recognition, b) wage rises that either don't keep up with inflation or barely do and will fade away in a year or so because of inflation, c) court battles / fighting for what is legally yours in the first place, or d) a war of attrition that saves the employer enough money to cover any raises or demands and uses up all the workers' energy on basically breaking even. There are plenty of other possibilities but I would say that in all these cases, you will have the union shouting "victory," and it will make the union stronger, but the workers will not feel stronger, will not become more self-confident in their ability to struggle, etc. I think many of us would often disagree over where to draw the line here and would perhaps argue that this category should be split into 2 or 3 categories (mixed victories that are mostly positive, neutral ones, and mixed defeats that are mostly negative)

3.) obvious (to revolutionaries) defeat -- usually the union will still proclaim victory here, and will have won something more obviously useless to the workers, who will generally feel all the more powerless at the end of the ordeal.

Do these characterizations make sense to others? Does it make sense to include gains in self-confidence/willingness to struggle or is that too abstract?

-soyons tout

Soyonstout; I think this is a very good description. And no I don't think that self-confidence is too abstract. The problem is it is really hard for me to say that I saw much "clear victory" and in fact in no "defeat" the defeat situation is clearly made possible to be realized by the unions and the left...

EDIT: thinking over it, yeah I quess there were some real results conquered by the workers in some struggles I could follow. For instance, some months ago there was a radical struggle of workers in some factories in Diyarbakir. And recently there was the strike of Hacettepe hospital workers. These were all defensive struggles -for unpaid wages etc- but they were very militant and quickly got result, probably increasing self-confidence. But these kind of examples I know are mostly from the non-unionised sectors.

It's definitely possible to get gains without it improving self-confidence whatsoever - one job I left, it was just before a summer holiday - which I'd get paid for if I was 'working' since I got paid monthly the same regardless of timetable, but there weren't going to pay me for it if I quit.

They were so obviously wrong on this that I just went to HR and ended up having a 1-1 meeting with first a vice principal then the HR manager (who was an absolute bastard).

They just agreed that they'd been doing this wrong for years and agreed to pay the time that'd I'd be on holiday, and that they'd change this for all other stuff in a similar situation (there was only about 5 staff in the whole college who'd ever be affected, and only if they quit shortly before a holiday, but obviously I made sure everyone knew about this just in case). If they'd not fallen over so easily then getting a group of people to march into the office might've helped - and then could possibly have been used for other cases like that which only affect a few workers or one individual, but I had about two weeks left at the job when I realised what was about to happen.

This was a clear win for me (over a month's wages iirc), but it wasn't an issue which affected a lot of staff, or which had much potential for organising collectively.

These are also the kinds of situations where shop stewards or similar can help individuals doing case-work type stuff within the union framework - especially in situations where HR or whoever are so incompetent they don't even know what they're doing until it's explained to them.

It's also a similar sort of thing to what SeaSol is doing (more or less wage theft), except attempting to do so in a way which doesn't involve representing people.

These kinds of examples are particularly problematic I think because:

1. You often /can/ win with the unions if it's a purely individual dispute, the organisation has some pretense at adhering to employment legislation and are doing something completely wrong. This is purely unions as a service provider of course, and they don't always provide that service.
2. You often /can/ win with some kind of legal advice that's not via the unions, or like I did just turning up and telling them they're doing it wrong.
3. In a highly militant workplace, these kinds of disputes have and do prompt short walkouts of all staff or marches on the boss despite them being an individual grievance.
4. Depending on the type of employer, non-workplace groups like SeaSol can do it too, but that often won't involve direct participation from people working there (especially since it's often when people have often left the job already).
5. I think many people (at least in my experience) have a view of unions primarily as service providers in the sense of #1 (and either good or bad at that depending on their experience with them), both SeaSol and solfed have strategies for correcting that perception if applied to them but it's clearly something that comes up.

At this job I was in the process of trying to get organised for about a year or so before I left, with some very limited success - if someone else had run into this issue rather than me, I probably would have tried to organise #3, but since it was me who had the issue, and I thought I had a decent chance of getting it sorted out, I just represented myself.

While this is probably another diversion from the specific focus of this thread, and maybe more suited to the discussions around direct action casework, so many issues now are individualised that I do think this presents a real barrier to collective organising, and also means a lot of day-to-day issues are in a context where people do want representation (because they're only trying to get stuff that they're legally owed anyway, as opposed to a wage freeze/cut where it's just about balance of power usually).

Soyonstout, that´s a good description. The strike at Tower Hamlets college is a good example of the union calling it a victory, and the workers I know saying it was definitely a defeat. The union said they had won no compulsory redundancies, but the staff laid off had been bullied into taking voluntary redundancy, the workers called it "compulsory voluntary redundancies".

Just to address a couple of your points (not to ignore others), I agree that unions can get individuals certain gains on an individual basis, and also agree that there are real legal gains that individuals can sometimes get from unions. But I think the question of class struggle, as a class is a very different matter, in which the unions are forced to stifle, isolate, and stitch up the workers, when it really comes down to it. They will point to all the individual things they've achieved but on the whole things have gotten worse for everyone--to take an example, the union I'm in frequently boasts of various bonuses won in previous contracts and how drastically they reduced the number of people set to be laid off in this or that round of redundancies, but the overall picture is, we have fewer and fewer staff as the years progress and our benefits are more and more expensive (the contrast is particularly stark in US manufacturing firms, where the unions have presided over the liquidation of the entire sector, whilst probably helping some individuals out from time to time with legal matters, etc.). So I think the stuff I've enumerated still more or less applies (clumsily) to collective struggles on a class basis.

I'm just thinking out loud with the following, but I wonder if there is any connection between the unions' permanent existence, the individual and legal services they provide in times when there is no class struggle, and the way they behave in the class struggle. It's almost as if they want to try the same tactics that sometimes work for individuals getting screwed when its a question of the whole workforce--calling the lawyers, and following the union rule book, etc., and perhaps its this framework that allows them to call it "victory" in their perspective because they've "won" everything they could whilst remaining in the legal cage for "class struggle" dictated by the State, and maintaining company profitability/competitiveness, etc. This is further from a structural critique though (except in terms of tendencies for a permanent organization to have a tough time switching from individual-legal-service-provider to coordinator-of-[usually]-illegal-class-confrontations-on-a-class-basis) because it otherwise seems to be based on attitudes and social function.

-soyons tout

Yes I agree entirely with this, but I think it's an important distinction to make - it's also an argument that can be brought up when people mischaracterise an anti-union position as one which would encourage people to leave unions - I wouldn't do that in the same way I wouldn't try to persuade someone to close their bank account. I may think the role of unions as service providers, sometimes collective purchasing associations is a serious problem politically (certainly it strengthens their role as representatives etc.). But arguing that people shouldn't pay dues/use the legal support etc. is a bit like calling a boycott - it might make sense as part of a broader struggle against the unions, but in isolation, like any boycott, it's not up to much.

I already brought up this point but I think individual disputes like this pose a problem for non-representative workers organisations too (networks of militants/SeaSol) - precisely because the legal/representational route can in some cases be effective. In fact the specific language of 'wage theft' is one which emphasises the legal breach (non-payment of wages, breach of contract) vs. the class issue (surplus value/exploitation). And yeah I think it's very likely that on an individual level, people get accustomed to representing individuals against management, acquire a lot of legal knowledge etc., then when a collective conflict comes up continue to do the same thing out of habit - that doesn't seem to me to be incompatible with a structural critique of the unions at all.

How do you organize a fragmented service sector work force who is enjoying compounding levels of gains in material conditions? (When I say material conditions I'm speaking to life expectancy, food/shelter/gadgets/cars etc not exploitation....)

The Starbucks Workers Union, Jimmy Johns Workers Union are two recent IWW examples of organizing the service sector.

Service sector workers are low paid, un or at most semi-skilled, suffer from very high turnover (retail stores often boast a 50-70% turnover rate in one year), in many cases negative social stigma (fast food jobs, retail stocking and cashier jobs, custodial services, telemarketing, so called 'McJobs'), no or very little chance to make a career out of it by working up the ladder or staying in the job for many years, inability to make ends meet on a minimum wage or just over minimum wage job (let alone caring for a family), high mental stress and numerous and common ULP's (from unrealistic speed-up requirements by management, arbitrary and selective use of the rulebook, etc) and so on.

Whether you have an x-box or a 56" plasma tv or a leather recliner that vibrates and heats your ass to come home to doesn't matter because of the misery and nihilism that comes from the above mentioned daily realities in the service industry. However, they are also often times pretty militant. The disposable-job feel (from the high turnover, social stigma, etc) also means some people are more willing to take a chance being a troublemaker at work to stick it to the boss/company, help out their co-workers, etc.

I just read about Jimmy Johns. I still don't think Americas labor movement has recovered from the outsourcing of industrial manufacturing. The two mentioned above are definitely positive but ...there's not only the service sector there's the information sector as well. Things were so much simpler in the beginning of the industrial revolution (I imagine- as far as organizing goes- still wasn't easy then I suppose, in fact, many people died in the process).

What sort of leverage can service sector employees have if management can just fire them and have another body in the next day picking up the slack? I work in construction so it costs more to train journeymen- the capitalists way around this is to promote mass immigration while pushing politicians to keep them "illegal" and in fear. A captive work force (but unwillingly) driving down wages.

The capitalists know what they're doing. Bastards.

^ Here's where we disagree these advances in our material conditions are whats keeping us from mass revolt. It's just the way things are.

But it's not either the individual or the class, there are many scales in between - on the level of the department, company, or industry for example, and it's absurd to miss out that unions win gains on these levels too. The working class isn't posing the question of its own unification for itself at present. The reason that such unification is not happening is not that there are unions.

... in general, I think you're presenting the union has something wholly outside and disconnected from the workforce, rather than seeing it as something which is in part an expression of (a necessarily distorted expression of) the current subjectivity of the workers themselves. Maybe that's true in your workplace, I don't know. But I don't think it's true in general.

But, as a revolutionary, can you seriously claim that any form of economic action (union or not) within capitalism is capable of consistently stabilising employment, particularly in times of relative capitalist austerity?

Industry-wide gains by the unions? Where? I don't mean to seem contrary but I don't know of examples that I would call real victories won by the unions on the industry level or really the company level. This is maybe where we might classify different "victories" differently.

If the unions are really successful in their job, the working class will never feel the need to pose the question of its own unification. I have yet to see a union deal with a struggle that didn't either emphasize the distinctness of the particular workers it represents or claim to be engaging in struggle on behalf of the whole working class while kindly refusing the help and participation of any other workers.

I don't mean to show it as totally separate--it certainly approaches that in my workplace and many workers feel that way, frankly I think many of them view it exactly the same as they view the Democratic Party in which many also participate, not just as voters but as volunteers, neighborhood captains, etc., and I think they're right in estimating that they have about as much control over the union local as they do over the local government. This may be an extreme case and perhaps I don't have enough experience to know of good examples where the union really successfully defends entire company's (or industry's) workforces winning real gains by the power of their struggle that aren't outweighed by the defeats/concessions. Most that have been given to me are highly debatable and highly mixed.

I'm not only talking about the last two years but the last forty, and as a revolutionary no I can't say that employment can be stabilized permanently through without revolution, but it begs the question of the use of the union's approach of fighting for the odd reform here or there (the majority of which I would argue are like the Obama healthcare reform, not really reforms at all but net losses for the class as a whole) whilst the workers as a whole are bled to death with no real fight. This is the basic perspective of unionism and basically what unions achieve in my opinion, because they exist to serve the needs of the national economy (this is admitted openly) and mistakenly think there is room within that to meaningfully defend the living standards of the working class or even their particular sector.

-soyons tout

well, we were taking about "gains" rather than "victories", so the definition of the latter isn't an issue. I'm fairly sure that in the states as well there would be whole unionised industries where workers' pay etc. is higher than non-unionised industries, due in part to histories of struggle mediated by the union form. It is certainly true in Britain. Ask tube workers, steel workers, etc. Anyway, because you didn't pick up on the case of the company level, I'm assuming that you accept at least that - which was my main point, unions win "gains" (gains relative to what there would otherwise have been, or even, temporarily, gains in absolute terms) not merely on an individual level, but on a sub-class collective level.

It is, at present, the basic perspective of the working class - and blaming "the unions" for it is to imply the problem is essentially one of this or that structure, or form. When pushed, ICC and those with similar views will often mention the ideological element of trade unionism - i.e. reformist sectionalism, "the union's approach of fighting for the odd reform here or there". But this isn't an ideology merely of "the unions", it's an ideology with deep roots in the working class. You can probably get your fellow workers to agree that the union is remote, and has achieved less than they'd like - perhaps even that it signed a deal they didn't want, or a number of other criticisms. There's nothing radical in that recognition alone. But can you get them to agree that the sort of action you think is necessary is (up to and including revolution, by your own lights)? Would they picket out other workplaces, or respect the picket line of other workers at theirs? And if not, whatever mass organisation they had - permanent or temporary - wouldn't it do essentially the same thing (or, certainly, something not outside the ambit of "trade unionism" in general)? And given this, does telling workers that the problem is "the union" help - when what you actually need them to accept is something far deeper and less palatable?

I think the discussion on service workers should be another thread, but I want to say quickly that it's not poverty (absolute or relative) that's responsible for the revolutionary potential of the proletariat, it's the alienation inherent to the working class experience. And, besides, it's struggle that's brought up the standard of living in Western Europe and N. America. Workers may not have the "long memory" to recall this, but demonstrating this truism should be a really big part of the propagandizing that we, as radicals, undertake.

Alienation is part of it yes but so long as material conditions are 'comfortable' for many in the west that group will not be advocating revolutionary socialism (marxism/anarchism).

And yes, ironically it has been the struggle which has made workers a tad more content with capitalism. It was also the struggle which served to outsource all of the Wests manufacturing jobs and shuffled in the service sector/consumer debt economy.

I'm not excusing capitalism here but just as Marx I see it as a necessary step in the chain of history towards socialism. I agree with Marx when he said capitalism will probably be around until it's productive forces are exhausted, at which point a revolouti0on would be necessary.

CRUD, there's already a thread where you're expounding your theory of comfortable western workers living it up. Please don't derail this one.

I'm responding to a poster. Mind you're own business OR you can just delete my posts....ban me? Do whatever you want kid.

This isn't really addressing the point though.

The reason that tube workers earn higher wages than, say, retail workers is not because the tube workers have a union and the retail workers don't (not even getting into USDAW). There are a number of factors:

* The tube is an essential service which has a major financial impact on London as a whole when there's a strike on.
* The work is highly skilled.
* There's significant cost to high staff turnover in terms of training, cutting on this risks health and safety and/or reliability.
* There is a high level of capital investment compared to most industries, further automating (like the DLR) carries very significant costs.
* The work can only be done in one location.
* Transport (and heavy industries like steel) have been around a long time, with regional continuity etc.
* Alongside all this, we then have worker militancy and the presence or not of unions.

To make the "workers in a union have better wages and conditions than workers outside one" argument, what would be an interesting discussion would be two companies, doing the same work in the same industry, with and without unionisation. Or possibly finding a metro in a major city which has an un-unionised workforce, and where wages are (relatively) significantly lower than tube workers in London.

I don't know what skill has to do with it. I worked in a truss factory and a phone factory, both very mindless jobs that took less skill than the fast food place I worked at. Both paid better than the fast food place.

Turnover costs and capital investments make sense as factors.

In the US in auto unionized plants make more money consistently than non-union ones, this has been the reason behind a push for auto companies to relocate to southern states with much lower union density. Auto workers also saw significant pay rises during/as a result of the wave of struggles that unionized auto (we can quibble about whether the causes were militancy or unions, I think for US auto early on that's a false dichotomy). It just is true that in general new unionization efforts result in better terms for the sale of labor power. That doesn't speak to tendencies after unionization occurs, but I'm baffled by the claim that union organizing drives don't result in higher raise pay compared to non-union workers, if that's what folk are saying. I mean, very simple and small scale efforts like the Starbucks Union and Jimmy John's Union touched off rounds of raises by the employers in almost no time at all. In healthcare in the US, unionization tends to raise wages and improve conditions across the board and non-union healthcare companies (especially in cities/markets where the local industry/market leaders are not unionized) tend to pay worse. This is the single biggest point in favor of unionization drives in the US, like in every single example I've ever heard of the pitch has involved higher pay and there's almost always a pay raise accompanying an official union victory in a campaign to unionize. Does it work different with new unionization efforts in the UK?