Short-lived series of irregular bulletins, formerly called Dispatch, produced by admins and users of libcom.org during some major workers' disputes 2007-2009.
Tea break bulletin
Dispatch 1 - Royal Mail strikes, August 2007
First issue of a bulletin about the public sector pay struggles of summer 2007 by a group of workers around libcom.org. This issue focusses on postal workers.
Available here in TIF and here in PDF format. The text follows:
Dispatch
Public sector pay dispute — information for action
Issue 1 - August 2007
Royal Mail workers: Fighting to win
Doing the job as it’s meant to be done
Several offices now, and many individual postmen and women across the country have been turning up on time, weighing their bags, not using their cars, taking the vans out and cutting off at their finish time. In other words, "doing the job as it should be done".
At Southend, Royal Mail have had to bring up to 70 managers a day from all over the South East to try to deal with the resulting backlog.
It costs you nothing to do this, and is essential if the strikes are going to be effective so backlogs don't get cleared. Why not join in now?
Wildcats back on the prowl
Oxford and Abingdon, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool and Chester are just some of the offices that have been out on wildcat strike during this dispute, from a few hours up to a week.
It's essential that we support each other if people are suspended or mail diverted, and that unofficial action is spread as far as possible once it has started to maximise its impact.
For more views on the wildcats see the back page of this issue, check out libcom.org/pay-2007 for the lastest news and log on to royalmailchat.co.uk for minute-by-minute updates and discussion.
Work the 318
• Don't use your personal car for deliveries
• Weigh your bags - follow the legal maximum of 13kg
• Take your meal break
• Cut off at your finish time
New postal strike dates
Week 3
• Mail Centres and Airports - 7pm Thu 09/08 - 7pm Fri 10/08
• MDECs - 12 noon Fri 10/08- 12 noon Sat 11/08
• Deliveries and Separate Collection Hubs - 7pm Fri 10/08 - 7pm Sat 11/08
Week 4
• Network and International/HWDC - 7pm Mon 13/08 - 7pm Tue 14/08
• Airports - 12 noon Tues 14/08 - 12 noon Wed 15/08
• Mail Centres - 7pm Wed 15/08 - 7pm Thu 16/08
• MDECs - 12 noon Thu 16/08 - 12 noon Fri 17/08
• Deliveries and Separate Collection Hubs - 7pm Thu 16/08 - 7pm Fri 17/08
Pay 2007 disputes roundup
Civil service: 280,000 PCS members are being consulted on further strike action, following previous strikes and action short of strike over a 2% pay offer.
Local government: Unison is consulting its one million members in local councils over pay. Areas counted so far have overwhelmingly rejected the offer and voted to ballot on industrial action. 600 social care workers are on indefinite strike over other pay cuts. Parking attendants in Manchester went on wildcat strike over pay and management treatment. In Norfolk bin men worked to rule over job cuts, and bus drivers struck over pay
Health: The Royal College of Nursing is consulting its members in England and Wales on a ballot for strike action. Midwives are undertaking their first ever ballot over a 1.9% pay offer. Unison health workers have also rejected the pay offer as “insulting.”
Education: Teachers are building a campaign for their pay to be reviewed after the government reneged on its promise to do so.
Postal service: Workers at Crown Post Offices have been striking over the transfer of services to WH Smith which will cost jobs and conditions.
Elsewhere: Thousands of workers at Heinz, Coca-Cola, Scottish airports have all been on strike against sub-inflation pay offers, some launching on the job action as well. More strikes at Grampian foods, Manchester NHS and information about possible strikes by PCS, Unison and Unite members all online at libcom.org/pay-2007
It is essential that we coordinate strike action across the public sector for us all to win. Some of the unions are talking the talk about fighting together, but in practice are keeping all of us separate when we’re fighting for the same thing. Visit picket lines of other workers, leaflet, invite them to meetings, discuss online. Direct communication between workers in different sectors is the only way this will happen.
Discuss the strike
Postal workers from around the country are discussing this strike and the best ways to take it forward at royalmailchat.co.uk
Mass meetings have controlled and won strikes at Royal Mail and in workplaces all over the world for decades. Don't just take your meal break, take it with everyone else and use it!
Posties, public sector and other workers are exchanging information and discussing the wider public and private sector disputes at libcom.org/pay-2007
"This will be bloody. We have had the miners, we have had Longbridge and now we have this." - Royal Mail Director, Sunday Telegraph, 3 June 2007
A striking London postal worker’s analysis of the dispute and where to go from here…
Royal Mail with the support of the government have provoked this strike. Its not just about a 2.5% pay offer when inflation is more like 5%, it’s the business plan what they call ‘modernisation’. Royal Mail bosses know that to get their business plan through – 40, 000 job losses, closure of post offices, slashed pensions, reduced pay, increased workload, a flexible and largely part-time workforce – they have to break postal workers’ tradition of sticking together and of standing up for themselves. That tradition has meant that management in the past have had to do deals through the union about how the job is organized. Postal workers and the union were not going make the kind of agreement that Royal mail wanted on the business plan, so Royal Mail decided to have a showdown and break this tradition of deals once and for all.
Royal Mail’s strategy has been to play hardball: they've talked about being ready for months of strike action; they've refused to negotiate with the union but simply reiterated their position; the plan seemed to be to give a constant message to the workforce – “We will not back down, there is no ‘give and take’ any more, you just have to accept our plan”. With the first two one day strikes they managed to filter the work through the following days so it seemed our action was having no impact except on our pay-packets. They have also said they will proceed unilaterally with plans to impose new start times and reduced overtime rates as if to say: “We are going to push through our changes whatever you do”. The feeling was we had to escalate the action. The next obvious move was to strike for two consecutive days. However, while this would surely have more effect, RM expected this move and had contingency plans. The union came up with a new idea - staggered strikes with different workers in the different parts (functions) of the postal system striking one day after the next. The hope was that for no extra cost to posties the impact on RM would be increased. This does seem to be working. Mail is backing up and managers are at a loss on how to deal with it. Though we are only at the stage of ‘talks about talks’, Royal Mail refusal to negotiate seems to be cracking.
But there is a problem with this tactic. With some postal workers striking while others work it creates the possibility of one postie being told to cross another’s picket line. This means we go against the very traditions of solidarity that Royal Mail wants to modernize away. The union has tried to avoid this kind of clash - where posties from different functions are in the same building they strike together - other times picket lines have been stood down to allow a shift from another function to go to work. But inevitably some posties have come up against a picket-line and refused to cross and then been disciplined by management. In the great postal tradition their colleagues have come out in support and we have then had unofficial strikes. The union response to unofficial strikes during the national dispute is to do everything possible to get those posties back to work, even if the issue bringing them out has not been satisfactorily resolved. The argument the union is making and whach seems to be winning out at the moment is that, the staggered action is working, we should keep disciplined, and - at least for now - stay within the protection of the official strike. There is also the point that August is the lightest month for mail so it may be best to just keep the strike going at a pace that we can manage for a month and then escalate. Also by that time other groups of workers will possibly be in a better position to join us.
What is the alternative? Should an area provoked by management into going on unofficial action try to bring out everyone else? Even if they don’t, management attempts to divert work from a striking area could provoke other areas out anyway. But going for an all out unofficial strike is a high stakes gamble for either side. At some point we may have to go this direction. It may not be our choice. Royal mail was hoping the action would start to falter after the first few strike days. Instead the strike, if anything, is more solid. If the staggered action really starts to hurt them, they may decide to up the stakes by provoking us into an all out unofficial action. They did this in response to the 2003 London weighting strike, and we took the challenge and beat them. Royal Mail have said they will unilaterally impose new times and work arrangements on the 13th. They may well back down from this but if they don’t it will be the spark for more unofficial action. While Crozier and Leighton have talked the tough talk they have underestimated our determination. We have shown them and their masters in the government that we are up for the fight.
We can win this one.
Dispatch
Public sector pay dispute — information for action
We're a group of workers who are interested in discussing and co-ordinating a response to the ongoing public sector pay disputes. We believe the key to winning is to unite the disputes, fight together and for workers ourselves to control the struggle.
We work in several different sectors, including the postal service, NHS, education and local government and all use the website libcom.org
To contact us with feedback or comments for the next issue e-mail dispatch (at) libcom.org
We are not related to royalmailchat.co.uk in any way, although we support their work.
Dispatch
c/o libcom.org
Freedom Press
84b Whitechapel High St
London E1 7QX
dispatch (at) libcom.org
Please give comments on the bulletin here. If you can help distribute it please comment here.
Readers should note that this bulletin was renamed and continues as Tea Break
Attachments
dispatch-issue-1.1.TIF
(128.34 KB)
dispatch-issue-1.pdf
(142.33 KB)
Comments
Tea Break 2 - local government strike, July 2008
New issue of the irregular workers' bulletin put together by users of the website, libcom.org focusing on the 2008 pay dispute over sub-inflation pay offers.
Attachments
tea break july 2008 final.pdf
(266.87 KB)
Comments
All 3 texts from July TB published as separate articles in Slovak language here:
http://priamaakcia.sk/?action=view_article&id=446
http://priamaakcia.sk/?action=view_article&id=449
http://priamaakcia.sk/?action=view_article&id=450
Tea-breaking comrades!
Tea Break is all very well, but what are you asking workers to do? To ignore their unions and organise resistance - how? to what? with the aim of what? - spontaneously? This is pie in the sky and will not happen. And this is where much of British anarchism falls down. There is an over-reliance on spontaneity and a refusal to embrace organisation, structure and ideology. God forbid that anarchists should ask workers to form or join a syndicalist organisation - or even (and this would be really radical) an anarcho-syndicalist one. God forbid even that the anarchists should join such organisations themselves. No. Just leave everything to the spontaneous action of the workers. One day they'll/we'll all wake up and sort everything out - spontaneously!
Don't hold your breath.
H.
The current issue of World Revolution has reprinted one of the articles from Tea Break with the following introduction
We are reprinting here one of the articles from the first edition of Tea Break (July 2008). Tea Break, which was distributed at the time of the recent nation-wide strike by local government workers, describes itself as "an irregular workers' bulletin of users of libcom.org encouraging workers to take regular tea breaks, talk to their workmates and unwind from the working day". It's a revised form of the Dispatch bulletin which we commented on in WR 307 (‘Dispatch: Workers' groups and the potential for wider intervention and discussion').
The article in question offers a strong analysis of the way the large-scale public sector strikes of 2007 were dispersed by the trade unions, leaving the workers with little to show after returning to work. Although sometimes focusing on the problem of ‘union leaders' and their ties to the Labour party and the government, the bulletin rejects any idea of democratising the unions, which is the stock in trade of the leftist groups like the SWP. In a separate box, the bulletin places more emphasis on the need for the struggle to be controlled by mass meetings open to all workers regardless of union membership:
"What you can do...
• Vote for industrial action where possible and encourage others to do the same.
• Visit other workers' picket lines and discuss how you can help each other.
• Make links between workers. Invite all staff at your workplace to your pay dispute meetings whether temps, permanent, members of your union or not.
• Do not cross the picket lines of any group of workers.
• If you absolutely have to work, do not cover the work of any strikers and take on-the-job action like go-slows and work-to-rules. Don't forget to take regular breaks!
• Take control of the strike. Make decisions in open workplace meetings with as many people involved as possible rather than leaving it to union full-timers"
This is a promising initiative which should be repeated in future outbreaks of the class struggle. We think however that the initiative should move towards acting as a ‘physical' collective rather than a purely online one, which tends to reinforce the impression that the group is a rather ‘confidential' effort by people already involved in running the libcom forum. A group that advocates workers coming together in open-ended meetings to decide on the orientation of the struggle cannot shy away from functioning on the same basis.
Re: historyman's comments above, i helped produce Tea Break and i'm also a member of Solfed. I don't see anything in Tea Break which contradicts Solfed's industrial strategy (which stresses "rank and file control", "direct action" and "solidarity"), particularly point 1, which states:
Solfed Industrial Strategy
1. In a workplace with a recognised TUC union, an SF member would join the union but promote an anarcho-syndicalist strategy. This would involve organising workplace assemblies to make collective decisions on workplace issues. However, workers will still be likely to hold union cards here to avoid splits in the workplace between union members and non-union members.
This is surely what Tea Break advocates? (open workers' assemblies to control the struggle etc). Is the Solfed industrial strategy "pie in the sky"? As it happens, as a member of an anarcho-syndicalist organisation i don't see anything specifically anarcho-syndicalist about this approach - as evidenced by the majority of the contributors being non-syndicalists, and left-communists like the ICC (who are highly critical of all unions, a-s or not) reprinting the article. The objection then would seem to be that we didn't use a term from a specific tradition to describe practices that are not exclusive to it, which i don't think is much of a criticism. No more 'spontaneity' is required than for Solfed's own industrial strategy, we'd normally refer to it as self-organisation!
Hi comrades,
The SF strategy is aiming to create a viable alternative to the reformist TUC unions, a structure through which the above tactics can be discussed, developed, advertised and implemented; an organisation that people can join and which can promote the ideas and help co-ordinate action. Let's not leave things to individuals - let's have a vehicle which can take forward the ideas and the struggle. Individuals come and go. Organisations remain. It's unreasonable to expect spontaneous solidarity in each dispute and to have to re-learn the lessons, strategy, tactics and principles each time. That's what anarcho-syndicalist organisations are for - permanent repositories of experience and militancy - permanent educators and agitators. Tea Break is not calling for structure or permanence of any kind.
At a meeting in Manchester recently, the person distributing Tea Break was openly hostile to anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism and the SF.
Given that, how can anything but a basic opposition to the TUC unions ever be agreed upon? As soon as any more serious issue arises, which it will as soon as someone asks, 'so now what do we do?', there's going to be dissention among the ranks of the Tea Breakers, is there not? Can anything effective or lasting be created with individuals who are diametrically opposed politically and who are openly critical of the philosophy and organisations of others in an initiative?
The tactics in Tea Break are good but they need to be accompanied by organisation and structure if they are ever to be more than libertarian sparks which appear in a dispute and which have to be re-kindled each time industrial action is mooted. Ideas are fine. We've got the ideas. We need the organisation to go with them. Perhaps Tea Break No. 2 could carry an advert for the SF?
H
historyman
an organisation that people can join and which can promote the ideas and help co-ordinate action. Let's not leave things to individuals - let's have a vehicle which can take forward the ideas and the struggle. Individuals come and go. Organisations remain... Tea Break is not calling for structure or permanence of any kind.
now i'm pro-organisation, of course, even if all the existing organisations are not ideal. the thing with Tea Break/Dispatch is the good reaction it got (i'm thinking of discussions with striking posties in brighton last year) was in large part because it offered analysis and tactics relevant to the struggle without ending with the standard leftie 'and that's why you should join our micro group' - they were very suspicious of SWP-types on a recruiting mission. of course when they asked who we were and why we were up at 5am to give out a bulletin, we were in a position to say we're a solfed local, and explain as much of what that means as they're interested in etc. of course if people hostile to solfed distro'd it in manchester, i don't doubt they put forward their own suggestions. but if people are hostile to our organisation while advocating the same analysis of events and tactics to carry the struggle forward, that isn't the worst thing in the world (sectarian as it may be).
Now i'm not saying we shouldn't recruit to our respective organisations - antipathy to trot party-building often leads anarchists to throw the baby out with the bathwater - but that i don't think something like Tea Break is a suitable medium, being aimed at workers in general rather than revolutionary minorities with the required theoretical-practical agreement - those curious are always in a position to enquire further, or contact us through the email/website.
This in turn raises questions about the nature of (pro-)revolutionary organisations. the appeal of anarcho-syndicalism is the unity of the economic and political, but i think in practice this is something that is only achieved at the height of struggle, when there is a mass of people with (pro-)revolutionary ideas. outside of that situation, attempts at permanent politicised economic organisation, supposing the unlikely required density, and if they can resist the recuperative pressure to become a mediator in the class struggle rather than one of our weapons in it, are going to be at best minority organisations within the class. Thus it seems to me the orientation of the organisation should be to act as an, ahem, catalyst to the struggles of the wider class, which are therefore primary and the specific organisational form of pro-revolutionary minorities secondary.
Another argument for the primacy of struggle is that the permanance of an organisation is also no defence against it moving from a catalyst to an inhibitor of struggle, as with the CNT joining the government in '36 for example. i've heard it said that the anarcho-syndicalist 'union' is the actual practice of workers uniting across boundries (as in the mass assemblies advocated in our industrial strategy), as opposed to the specific organisational form per se (of e.g. the classical CNT). While this formulation may be open to an anti-organisational interpretation, i think it has considerable merit in stressing the primacy of active struggle and solidarity against purely formal organisation. of course both form and content are required, but there is no reason to assume we possess the form adequate to the task ready-made from historical lessons (although of course i think the a-s tradition offers many of the best examples, hence i'm in solfed).
Thus i think as a priority recruitment does fall behind the offering of libertarian communist analysis and tactics to workers in struggle. We've had offers to help distro the next Tea Break incarnation from AF, IWW and solfed members, who of course can also distro their own materials at the same time for recruitment purposes, should they so wish. now i'm far from big tent/synthesist/'let's all merge and pretend we have no disagreements', but as i see the struggle as primary i think Tea Break's non-aligned character is essential to the project.
As I see it, there's no alternative to building an anarchist organisation on sound principles, and I haven't heard any non-syndicalist anarchists come up with anything sensible/workable/realistic when it comes to how to organise in the here and now and how to run the economy/society in a revolutionary situation or afterwards.
I'd much rather put our politics and organisation to people as they are, whether we're mistaken for party-builders on occasion or not, than go all around the houses - it's a long route to the creation of anarcho-syndicalist unions if we don't mention the term, or even the concept that we have to build permanent structures in opposition to the sellout unions and ideology of the TUC. It's an even longer road when we have to explain that half the people invovled in the publication we're trying to interest them in actually don't agree with us and a) would much rather leave it all to chance on the day of the revolution; b) are platformists or council communists who reject the idea of an anarcho-syndicalist union, or; c) don't mind the idea of a syndicalist union but who seem to baulk at the idea of being in an anarcho-syndicalist one. A very long road indeed!
I hope Tea Break manages to change a few people's minds, but I feel that the bulk of our activity should be put into the SF and anarcho-syndicalism. I've said it before and I'll say it again - there are no short cuts to revolution!
H
Historyman, you seem to be arguing from the idea that this is an anarcho-syndicalist publication. I think that maybe you were wrong on your basic premise, and if that is so, then the idea that all that energy should be put into SolFed is a bit off the point really.
Devrim
Exactly, I'm one of the people who worked on Tea Break, and I'm not a solfed member (nor likely to be). I'd like it to continue, and get more people involved - and they only way that's likely to work is if it doesn't push a particular line on organisation - since in that case it'd immediately degenerate into discussions like this.
Now we are getting to the crux of things! I haven't mistaken Tea Break for an anarcho-syndicalist publication - I want it to develop into one. I think anarcho-syndicalism is the correct and, godammit, the only workable basis on which anarchists can organise a serious revolutionary movement. It embodies anarchist principles and gives them organisational form. I read the ideas of platformists, council communists and anarchists who do not define themselves further and I don't see a credible alternative to anarcho-syndicalism. This is not sectarianism. I genuinely don't see it.
I'm a bit long in the tooth and have seen many 'non-aligned' anarchist initiatves come and go. Some of them, like Tea Break, are based on sound tactics but don't go that step further and advocate the setting up of an organisation based upon the beliefs which underpin the ideas. This is usually because the anarchists involved don't share (or have) an organisational model. The initiative usually fails because when specific action or forms of organisation are called for these diverse coalitions can't agree.
Anarchism has to be more than a collection of things we can agree we oppose. It also has to be more than a range of actions or organisational forms (usually limited to the most basic network of contacts) we can currently agree on. Where anarchism has been effective it has been through permanent organisations which give a basis for the propagation of ideas, which can draw supporters to them and which can co-ordinate the actions of many. To my mind, these, for all their faults and errors, have been anarcho-syndicalist. Where anarchism has been weak, as in the Russian revolution, it has been due in no small part to a lack of revolutionary theory and a corresponding organisation. At some point, we in Britain are going to have to bite the bullet and come up with a set of ideas and an organisation to back them up if we are to advance beyond being a disparate fringe scene. "Discussions like this" are integral to that.
H
Well much less that 50% of the people who've worked on Tea Break are anarcho-syndicalists, and at least three of them wouldn't describe themselves as anarchists even - those three have all had a 10-20+ year relationship with anarchism and closely related schools of thought, and have very strong and well known criticisms of anarcho-syndicalism, so frankly you'll have trouble converting us ;) I for one have no interest in trying to set up 'alternative' or 'anarcho-syndicalist' unions (and in fact I'd say that's the case for some of the solfed members involved) - and that seems to be what you're driving at. I think you should look at why a publication which you clearly quite liked (or at least I assume why you're commenting here) was produced by people who don't share your exact frame of political reference - and then we should look at where the common ground actually is and use that as a basis to co-operate.
What do you mean by 'I want it to develop into one [an anarcho-syndicalist publication]' Historyman?
I think if SF feels it needs to produce a paper like this, it should just produce one.
Actually, I am constantly astounded by how the major anarchist federations in the UK fail to produce propaganda tailored towards specific strikes, events. I am not sure if it is a political, organisational, or financial problem (I would say they are all political problems).
This, however, was a publication brought out by a handful or so of people. If SF, with much greater numbers, can't manage to do the same thing there is really not much of a reason for its existence.
Devrim
Echoing JK, catch & Dev's comments; I originally suggested the idea, fwiw, that became Dispatch, Tea Break's precursor - all it took was the impulse coming from discussion, some writing, printing and distribution. It was never intended by anyone as an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda tool. Others are not as convinced as you of an-synd as the model of progress. If the purity of an-synd expression is so important to you, surely you and like minded an-synds could get a simple newsletter together yourselves rather than trying to convert existing ones?
It's not as if those involved are unaware of the an-synd idea and haven't made their minds up already about it. You are wasting time preaching to the deliberately unconverted. If you think one more ideologically pure an-synd newsletter will bring forth the great Union an-synd activity here has previously failed to, then go ahead. If you wish to take issue with the coherent, reasoned rejection of an-synd ideology/strategy, then I suggest you read some of the relevant threads where it's already been discussed at length.
I help with 'Education Worker'. It wants people to join a network which, when strong enough, can launch as a functioning union for all in the education sector. In the meantime, it and other SF publications advocate similar principles and tactics to Tea Break - direct action, direct democracy, solidarity, mutual aid. The difference is that there is something to join and something to aim for. Something to build.
I remain unconvinced that non-syndicalists have a viable alternative. When pressed to come up with a model, guess what? It usually equates to anarcho-syndicalism. Yes it does! Same values, same tactics, often the same organisational structure, often from anarchists who are already in a syndicalist organisation, but without the use of that pesky, behaviour-changing term! Anarchists who share so much melding together in a single organisation with a single strategy? Steady on, that might actually get us somewhere!
I'm still not seeing the alternative to the anarcho-syndicalist union. How exactly is change to come about? Ideas without organisation rely on spontaneity. Revolutions without an organisation and forward planning lead to the state, the left or the right stepping in and eliminating us. One newsletter may not "bring forth the great Union an-synd activity" but if it can tell people what it's aiming for, that's a start.
H
Historyman,
Your argument here seems to be that you are not convinced of non-anarcho syndicalist approaches therefore others shouldn't be.
It is the equivalent of me saying that I am not convinced by anarcho-syndicalism and because of that SolFed should give up on anarcho-syndicalism, and dissolve itself into my organisation. It is a bit of a weak argument.
Having said that, I think that there are some good ideas that come out of anarcho-syndicalism. In my opinion though yours represents the worst, a backward tendency that looks only to the past, and resurrecting an idea, mass anarcho-syndicalist unions, whose time has passed in a country where the idea never had any resonance anyway.
Devrim
Of course there are "good ideas to have come out of anarcho-syndicalism" - because it's the means to translate anarchist ideas into a viable revolutionary movement and run a society and an economy without a party or a state. Anarchists with plenty more experience than us realised that years ago and have given us the template. It's up to us to build a movement based on it today.
I'm still not hearing what the alternative form of organisation to the anarcho-syndicalist union is.
H
Historyman
Anarchists with plenty more experience than us realised that years ago and have given us the template... I'm still not hearing what the alternative form of organisation to the anarcho-syndicalist union is.
well it depends what you mean by the union. talking about a historical template, presumably the CNT of '36 seems to suggest you think we can transplant a (semi-) successful organisational form from one time and place to another with completely different conditions. with respect, this does appear somewhat dogmatic and backward-looking; we're not a historical recreation society!
however solfed's industrial strategy is far more open than this - stressing principles of self-organisation, solidarity etc but not putting too closed a notion on what organisational forms this should take (advocating mass assemblies to control the struggle etc). i read this as 'the union' being not so much the formal organisation per se but its content; 'union' as the actual living practice of workers in struggle uniting in solidarity. this way the horse is kept before the cart.
i realise the semantic dexterity involved in using the word union this way, perhaps similar to the contortions the notion of 'party' goes through by those who feel it neccessary to place themselves in one or other marxist tradition while breaking with leninism. however if anarcho-syndicalism is to have relevance to contempory struggle it has to be able to seek forms adequate to the struggle, not seek struggles adequate to its form.
I'm still not hearing what the alternative form of organisation to the anarcho-syndicalist union is.
It is not really the topic of this thread is it. If you really want to discuss it, I would start another one.
i realise the semantic dexterity involved in using the word union this way,
Yeah, I think it strips the word of all its meaning, Joseph.
Like many anarcho-syndicalists today I would argue for mass assemblies. I do it though thinking that the period of red unions has passed, and assembelies are the way forward. I think many of the anarcho-syndicalists are doing it as a tactic while they are unable to build their unions, and come a suitable upsurge in struggle will start to try to build red unions again.
Devrim
Devrim
Like many anarcho-syndicalists today I would argue for mass assemblies.
and i'm in an anarcho-syndicalist organisation because it advocates these tactics, which i agree are not specifically anarcho-syndicalist, but lessons drawn from the wider workers' movement of which anarcho-syndicalism has been a part, including at its high points.
Devrim
I think many of the anarcho-syndicalists are doing it as a tactic while they are unable to build their unions, and come a suitable upsurge in struggle will start to try to build red unions again.
as historyman suggests above talking about a "template," clearly this tendency exists.
Devrim
Yeah, I think it strips the word of all its meaning, Joseph.
i think there are probably better terms, but many anarcho-syndicalists use it this way. the problem is potential ambiguity on the question of trade unions - however as anarcho-syndicalists stress the difference between a-s unions and trade unions, and solfed stresses that 'the union' is not simply a workplace economic organisation but one also active in 'the community' (by which i take non-workplace class struggles etc), i don't think the ambiguity is terminal.
I don't think the ambiguity is terminal, but I do agree that there are better terms, and I also think that this one is particularly confusing. I know people who are in SolFed who joined believing it was a union.
The tendency of 'build syndicalist unions' does exist and will in the future as it has in the past be opposed to the views that you put forward.
Devrim
Like many anarcho-syndicalists today I would argue for mass assemblies. I do it though thinking that the period of red unions has passed, and assembelies are the way forward. I think many of the anarcho-syndicalists are doing it as a tactic while they are unable to build their unions, and come a suitable upsurge in struggle will start to try to build red unions again.
Examples, please. Anarcho-syndicalist are course attempting to build their unions, but we clearly see the assemblies as the decision making bodies in workers struggle.
Here is a clear example of our practice here
Examples of what, Jason?
I don't quite understand your position either. If you are saying that the assembly is the way forward, and 'the decision making bodies of the workers in struggle', what exactly is the function of the union?
Devrim
I also wonder where the various actions noted lead us. So, people went on strike and demanded better pay, or conditions: great. How does this help us on the road to escaping the clutches of capitalism or government? I don't see that it does: it's just a negotiation within the existing system, surely?
it's a negotiation within the existing system, but so is me and my workmates taking our breaks when we're told to work through, or leaving on time when we are told to work late. these are not revolutionary acts. nonetheless, they do constitute us as workers imposing our needs against the needs of the economy/the bosses/capital. since ultimately the imperitives of capital are incompatible with our needs, a practice of asserting them has revolutionary implications - in principle and in history. 'from each according to their ability, to each according to our needs' has to start somewhere, so class struggle is both a material neccessity in the here and now and also the only conceivable way for a revolutionary break with capitalist social relations in the future.
approvingly, the ICC
In a separate box, the bulletin places more emphasis on the need for the struggle to be controlled by mass meetings open to all workers regardless of union membership
in light of some of the discussion on this thread, i've just realised this is basically word-for-word from the solfed industrial strategy. Are the ICC closet anarcho-syndicalists? Are solfed closet left communists? It's all so confusing.
Inflation: rising prices and the 2% pay ceiling
An analysis of the use of inflation to attack workers' conditions.
If the government were to announce that it was cutting the wages of all workers - public and private sector - there would presumably be uproar. And yet this is exactly what they have done by calling for ‘pay restraint’ and insisting all wage rises are capped at 2%. Make no mistake, a sub-inflation pay ‘rise’ is a pay cut. No amount of statistical trickery changes this simple fact.
The government’s own favoured measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is currently running around 3.3%. However, this measure excludes mortgage repayments. Does that mean we don’t have to pay them back out of our falling wages? No such luck. The inflation measure that does include these payments is called the Retail Price Index (RPI). It is currently running at around 4.3%. So by the government’s own figures they are imposing a pay cut of over 2%.
However, the official figures don’t tell the whole story. Inflation is calculated by taking the average prices of a ‘typical basket of goods,’ including items from literally bread and butter through to digital radios and flat screen TVs. However, if prices of essentials are rising while prices of gadgets are falling – which they are at the moment, we simply spend more on essentials and less on luxuries, and our standard of living falls even though overall prices may appear quite stable. An attempt by The Telegraph to calculate a ‘Real Cost of Living Index’ (RCLI) taking into account rocketing food and energy costs puts cost of living inflation at 9.5%.
Of course, inflation is already being blamed on ‘greedy’ workers demanding they maintain – or heaven forbid improve! – their standards of living. This is despite the government and unions succeeding in holding down public sector pay claims last year (see Tea Break), and wages in the economy as a whole frequently failing to keep up with inflation over the past decade.
There is an irony here. Gordon Brown built his ‘prudent’ reputation by keeping wages down – and therefore profits up – while the economy grew. But a growing economy requires growing consumption. How are we to consume more if our wages aren’t keeping up? The ‘answer’ was cheap credit for all to plug the gap; essentially a pyramid scheme reliant on rising house prices. The government and employers were having their cake and eating it, while we got geared up to our eyeballs in credit card debt.
But now that the housing market has begun to fall and credit is beginning to dry up, their attempt to cheat at their own game has faltered and they’ve gone on the attack. But not daring to do this openly, they try to hide behind statistics and let inflation do their dirty work. Ultimately however, behind all the talk of the ‘credit crunch’ and rising oil prices, inflation is just the latest means being used to pursue a familiar end – employers always want us to do as much work as possible for as little pay as they can get away with (just consider unpaid overtime, understaffing, increasing workloads...).Therefore the only way to fight the current pay cuts is to fight for our own interests against theirs; regardless of the state of the economy our standard of living is only ever as low as we let them push it or as high as we can win through collective action.
Written for the Tea Break bulletin in July 2008.
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Pay: what went wrong in 2007?
Libcom's analysis of what went wrong with the industrial disputes over the rising cost of living in 2007, and how to do things better in 2008.
A 'Summer of Discontent', Gordon Brown preaching pay restraint, union leaders talking about 'co-ordinated strike action', sound familiar? It should, because exactly the same things were being said last year. Despite some brave attempts in 2007, the working class suffered yet another profound defeat, unable to assert its own interests against both the bosses and their own trade unions - who did deals behind closed doors, ignored strike votes and dragged on consultations and negotiations for months.
Just like this year, 2007 started with a 2% cap on public sector pay rises This led to a wave of strikes, which while some were impressive, many were stopped before they even got started and most failed to make any gains on either pay or other issues. To reverse this trend, we need to understand previous failures and learn from them in order not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
In Royal Mail, strikes got off to a good start in July, rolling strikes and a work to rule caused a massive backlog, then later sparking wildcat strikes across Scotland and the North of England. As the second wave of official strikes was due to start, they were called off by the CWU leadership, entering 'meaningful negotiations' with Royal Mail management. These 'meaningful negotiations' lasted for weeks, came to no firm conclusion (except that measures would be forced through at a local level where it's easier to divide the workforce), and prepared the stage for a fresh assault on pensions this year. Strikers in Liverpool who had continued with unofficial action were left out on a limb - spending many days without pay as the CWU refused to release details of deals done for fear of a massive negative reaction from elsewhere - with the workforce in most places demobilised by a slow and agonising wait.
There were also strikes by 200,000 civil servants, significant local strikes by health and local government workers in Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham, and in the public sector, official and unofficial strikes by thousands of workers at Grampian foods, Coca Cola, Heinz and smaller workplaces.
So with hundreds of thousands out on strike, and workers taking their own initiative in some sectors - how come this didn't lead to the 'pay inflation' we were warned about and so desperately need? Let's face it, pay inflation's about the only kind of inflation we don't have at the moment.
First we need to look at what was promised - coordinated strike action between public sector unions, 'prolonged and sustained strike action' on ballot literature. And what we got - strikes cancelled at the slightest hint of a deal, strike votes of 51% being rejected as not enough of a mandate (while this year 54% is a resounding mandate, maybe 3% really does make a big difference!), pay deals of 2.5% over one year being magicked into 5% over two years (or even less) - oh great! Despite all of us facing the same attacks on our wages, on our working conditions, on our weekly shopping bills - we're sliced up into a million separate issues, ballots and campaigns.
So how do we respond to this? Certainly not by appealing to the union leadership or the government! While the right wing press (pretty much all of the press), complains about Labour's close ties to the unions, they fail to mention the unions' close ties to labour - it's a short jump from trade union leader to cushy ministerial position or a fat pay check sitting on a QUANGO, and that's where their interests lie (since their wages go up regardless of whether ours do). Trying to replace leaders or 'democratise' the unions is another old game that was bankrupt even when union membership was a lot higher and a lot more militant - it either burns people out or catapults them into the same positions and compromises they attacked moments before.
What's needed is independent activity outside these structures - co-operation of workers across the boundaries of union, sector and the public/private divide. The bosses are simply continuing a coordinated attack that's been going on for decades - they're quite able to put on a united front when it comes to keeping wages down, hours long and prices high. But they're met with piecemeal resistance by workers divided by artificial boundaries and operating within a framework set entirely by the opposing side. Even a small number of workers can have a big effect if they're able to break out of these restrictions - taking their breaks, leaving on time, organising go-slows, producing leaflets, walking out in defence of colleagues who are being victimised - without waiting for people who've got no interest in our situation except its continuation to give them permission.
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Tea Break 3 - oil refinery strikes, February 2009
A PDF of the February 2009 issue of the irregular workers' bulletin Tea Break, written and designed by users of libcom.org, for general distribution. The freesheet focuses on wildcat strikes at refineries across the country, addressing issues raised by the conflict.
Attachments
Tea Break - On Oil.pdf
(1.91 MB)
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This is missing a Tea Break tag, no? Looks great, reads well. Nice work to all involved.
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