THE NEW SPECTRE HAUNTING EUROPE: THE ECJ, TRADE UNION RIGHTS AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

From the Institute of Employment Rights

The New Spectre Haunting Europe: The ECJ, Trade Union Rights and the British Government

A FREE conference, in association with SERTUC

Saturday 28th November 2009, 10:00am – 3:30pm, at the TUC Congress House, London

Please distribute this message to colleagues, activists, networks and members. The weblink where you can find out more and book places is here: http://www.ier.org.uk/node/408  

The New Spectre Haunting Europe: The ECJ, Trade Union Rights and the British Government

A free conference, Saturday 28th November 2009, 10:00am- 3:30pm, in the Main Hall, TUC Congress House

Organised by The Institute of Employment Rights in association with SERTUC

To book your free place, please book at office@ier.org.uk

This conference, organised around the 2nd anniversary of the initial ECJ decisions, aims to bring workers together with sympathetic academics and lawyers to share information, learn from each others’ experiences and plan for a better future.

So how should unions and their members respond? What are the political, legal and industrial options open to unions and their members? Unions are pushing politically for changes to EU and UK laws. Lawyers are looking at ways to challenge the direction of the ECJ through the ILO and the European Court of Human Rights. But can workers wait? Examples of workers ignoring restrictive laws and fighting back in defence of pay and jobs are already spreading – and winning.

Speakers include:- John Hendy QC; John Monks, ETUC; Sarah Veale, TUC; Prof Keith Ewing; Bob Crow, RMT; Barry Camfield, ODA; Steve Cottingham, O H Parsons; Richard Arthur, Thompsons Solicitors; Brian Caton, POA; Billy Hayes, CWU

Full programme here: http://www.ier.org.uk/node/408  

Phelim MacCafferty
Projects and Events Officer
Institute of Employment Rights
179 Preston Road
Brighton East Sussex
BN1 6AG
t: 01273 330819
e: phelim@ier.org.uk
http://www.ier.org.uk

This year is IER’s 20th anniversary. We are proud of what we have achieved but recognise more needs to be done. Show your continued support by taking a subscription and joining our debate. Go to http://www.ier.org.uk

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

by Alberto Durango, a Colombian cleaner activist whose involvement in militant organising initiatives has earned him the wrath of sub-contractor cleaning companies and the Unite union bureaucracy alike. Leerlo en castellano.

There are very few means by which the working class can arm itself with a political tool which educates the class and helps it fight the crooks who, disguised as its defenders, betray it, sell it out and make deals over its interests with the bosses. With this tribune I want to contribute something, so that those workers who come across this information might use it as a starting point for directing a discussion about the trade union bureaucracy, this great enemy of the working class, so that they can organise to combat it. First of all therefore we have to understand what characterises the trade union bureaucracy.

The trade union bureaucracy does not practice democracy among the workers. It does not consult the workers affiliated to the union, or those being represented, on its actions, attitudes and decisions, but always reaches deals with the bosses on the backs of the workers. The union bureaucracy conducts its discussions with the bosses and collective agreements without witnesses in flash restaurants: or for less important problems, in the bosses’ offices, behind closed doors. They sign deals and contracts without workers’ participation.

The trade union bureaucracy terrorises union members. When workers criticise them they are hounded, threatened and intimidated, and subjected to psychological terrorism: or else they make sure they are put out of work. The bureaucracy is the enemy of workers’ assemblies and participation on the part of the workers.

The trade union bureaucracy does not itself organise, nor does it allow the workers to fight, and when it does allow an action on the part of the workers it is because it feels pressured. When the demands are sufficiently justified and it fears the workers will supersede it, then it acts as a straitjacket. In other cases when the bureaucracy allows an action on the part of the workers it is simply to exact pressure on the boss so that the latter caves to the bureaucracy’s own desires. The bureaucracy always seeks to contain workers’ struggles, telling the workers not to fight and to maintain an atmosphere of peace and harmony, accepting the norms and conditions imposed by the bosses.

The trade union bureaucracy is demagogic, always offering things to the workers it never delivers on. It sells out the workers, as it is bought-off and corrupted by the privileges and bribes it receives in return. They also participate in labour inspectorates. If your union leaders behave in anyway like this, well, that is bureaucracy for you. The first task we as workers have is to fight them and kick them out of our unions. With this statement, we take sides with all workers ready to begin a fight to kick these parasites out of our unions.

Abandoning postal strikes in the run-up to Christmas is at best mistaken, writes Jim Moody

Did they jump or were they pushed? No doubt various factors exercised the leaders of the Communication Workers Union in deciding to abandon last week’s scheduled strike action.

As the CWU’s postal executive committee discussions and negotiations with Royal Mail were in closed sessions, we may never know the full facts. Nor is the CWU’s national executive committee forthcoming. But despite the pious promises made in return for the CWU calling off the strike action, postal workers have been placed in an impossible position, and their struggle to secure their long-term future has basically been abandoned by their so-called leaders.

Concessions by Royal Mail are minimal. Its promise to negotiate on job security is by no means a guarantee that there will be no redundancies or even no compulsory redundancies. It was certainly far from sufficient reason to call off a strike when the employer was at its most vulnerable, as Royal Mail was when faced with being unable to deliver a sizeable chunk of the Christmas post.

Worse, many unagreed changes locally imposed by management ‘executive action’ – enforced switches in shifts and delivery rounds, for example, not to mention the ‘temporary’ transfer of mail centre work to ‘out houses’ staffed by casual labour – remain in place. In response branch officers are talking about requesting authorisation for fresh local strikes.

When it comes down to it, general secretary Billy Hayes and deputy general secretary Dave Ward have achieved what they have been suggesting to management in speeches for months: we can call off the strikes if you give us something we can sell. One member of the NEC told me that there was a distinct lack of clarity within the union at all levels on the aims of the strike anyway.

Management has therefore not had to give very much away: Hayes and Ward declared themselves amenable to compromise if management would only show itself in similar colours. That is why some of the reasons put forward for the sell-out are more likely erroneous than not. For example, some have suggested that management might have threatened to press on immediately with derecognition of the union, something that a secret Royal Mail plan did envisage.

Or perhaps the Broad Left minority (eight out of 28 voting members on the NEC), the more rightwing Effective Left (dubbed ‘Defective Left’ by opponents), plus unorganised members – erstwhile militants almost to a man and woman – on leading CWU committees wanted to abase themselves before New Labour to bolster its fading electoral fortunes rather than do the job they were put in place to do: represent the interests of CWU members. As it happens, most of the Broad Left members of the NEC are on the telecoms side.

But neither of these two scenarios appears likely to union militants. They consider it much more probable that union leaders felt they risked losing control of the strikes if they continued with them. To get more than paper concessions from Royal Mail it would have been necessary to escalate the action, without doubt. This would have involved ceding control over the day-to-day running of the strikes to the mass of the members, who would have needed to organise picket rotas, solidarity appeals, etc. without the involvement of national bureaucrats.

Nonetheless, abandoning strikes in the run-up to Christmas, Royal Mail’s busiest time of the year, is at best mistaken and at worst a treacherous turn by CWU leaders. Both sides are well aware that comparatively few items of post are delivered in January, which is the earliest that the union’s leadership expects to contemplate further action, should it deem necessary. And why would it not be necessary, since management promises to negotiate can simply come down to reiterating previous positions on job losses and speed-ups? Having lost its purchase by abandoning strikes now, the union faces an uphill battle against a bellicose foe in the new year. Is it more likely that postal workers would rather fight now or after the Christmas break? No-one can in all seriousness suggest the second, if they want the workers to win.

One militant postal worker to whom I spoke told me that the mood in the workplace is roughly, “What the fuck are we going back to work for?” As days go by, this is settling into a ‘making the best of a bad job’ attitude. He said: “It’s a sell-out masquerading as something else” – an assessment that is still to be disproved. Nonetheless, postal workers do intend pushing the promises about local arrangements in the interim agreement as far as they can – and even further.

Of course, the biggest worry about the November 5 interim agreement among the membership is whether it represents a truce or a surrender. Many militants thought that involving the TUC would mean an immediate cave-in by the union; in the event, it took the CWU leaders a week to come up with the interim agreement with management.

Local industrial action by postal workers was the engine that propelled the union bureaucracy into calling national strikes: first one-day affairs, then a planned, but now aborted, couple of days as we started into November. The evident militancy fuelled by the mass of members’ anger over Royal Mail’s destruction of jobs and speed-ups (euphemistically labelled ‘pace’ in the recent agreement) now has nowhere to go, given the demoralising effect that the leadership’s action will inevitably have had.

Despite calls from some far-left groups for the union membership in the localities to restart the strike under its own control, the absence of rank and file organisation within the CWU means that such calls cannot be fleshed out in any meaningful way. There is no network and no organised debates at any level about the rights and wrongs of the action being taken. No-one, apart from those making the calls, sees this happening. This is a national issue.

The same goes for officially sanctioned local actions (which in any case will clearly not be approved by the NEC). At present, most lower-level union officials at the regional level fully support the interim agreement, so they form a barrier that extends down from national level to any attempt by local union organisations to take back the strike as their own on a large geographical base. Even cooperation across London, which led the way in militancy during the local strike wave earlier this year, is hampered by this regional lethargy.

While the sole Socialist Workers Party member of the national executive, vice-president Jane Loftus, has pitched up at meetings and in articles to promote the strike, there has been hardly a squeak out of the two national executive members who are members of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Gary Jones and Bernard Roome. But maybe their silence is because of the extreme compartmentalisation within the union that favours bureaucratic manoeuvring by full-time officials. Telecoms members of the NEC are, after all, not expected to interest themselves (or ‘interfere’) in disputes involving the postal side. On the face of it, this obstacle to internal solidarity is in massive contradiction to the solidarity in the rest of the working class movement that postal workers ought to expect as their right in their current struggle.

What the interim agreement does do is pass things back to the localities on a bad basis. They will be left to their own devices, rather than being part of a nationally organised dispute. Local negotiations may have been reinstated, which is all well and good, but how long will they continue and what can they achieve in terms of binding agreements? The interim agreement calls for fortnightly reviews of progress over the next five weeks. Of course, five weeks takes us close to the end of December, which is pretty convenient for management. If anything goes awry by the end of this period of the cessation of hostilities, then we shall be into a stage when Royal Mail is already breathing easier, having finagled a solution to its Christmas delivery problem.

As for the most important questions concerning job losses and speed-ups, the interim agreement has only platitudes to offer. One paragraph reads: “This agreement between Royal Mail and the CWU, reached under the auspices of the TUC, provides the basis for a ‘period of calm’ free of industrial action, during which the parties are firmly committed to work together intensively, to reach agreements that will enable further change and modernisation to be implemented from the beginning of 2010 onward.”

So “modernisation”, though given a different content by management and the CWU, is accepted by both sides. The words “change and modernisation” have a deadly ring about them for the mass of postal workers, however, for they have seen where they have already led: the loss of many thousands of jobs.

It is pretty clear that Royal Mail has sewn up what for it is a great deal in order to buy time – a most valued asset. Management must be cock-a-hoop. At the end of the local review discussions that the agreement document lays down management can quite easily revert to its former positions and again bully, victimise and call for ‘pace’.

By settling for a period of no strikes on the basis of mere promises the union leadership has forfeited any real leverage. None of the CWU leaders who have spoken to meetings of union reps since the interim agreement was announced have dared to suggest that it has been accepted because of the union membership’s weakness or lack of resolve: this has clearly not been the case. There has been no trace of any drift back to work in the course of the strike.

It may not be exactly a perfidious leadership that has brought this dispute to the pretty pass it has, but the inability of rank and file members to bring leaders to heel by organising themselves independently has taken its toll in allowing the bureaucrats free rein. Unless postal workers organise themselves independently of their officials, they will be unable to change this state of affairs – or inspire other workers who, make no mistake, will also be in the firing line.



Abandoning postal strikes in the run-up to Christmas is at best mistaken, writes Jim Moody

Did they jump or were they pushed? No doubt various factors exercised the leaders of the Communication Workers Union in deciding to abandon last week’s scheduled strike action.

As the CWU’s postal executive committee discussions and negotiations with Royal Mail were in closed sessions, we may never know the full facts. Nor is the CWU’s national executive committee forthcoming. But despite the pious promises made in return for the CWU calling off the strike action, postal workers have been placed in an impossible position, and their struggle to secure their long-term future has basically been abandoned by their so-called leaders.

Concessions by Royal Mail are minimal. Its promise to negotiate on job security is by no means a guarantee that there will be no redundancies or even no compulsory redundancies. It was certainly far from sufficient reason to call off a strike when the employer was at its most vulnerable, as Royal Mail was when faced with being unable to deliver a sizeable chunk of the Christmas post.

Worse, many unagreed changes locally imposed by management ‘executive action’ – enforced switches in shifts and delivery rounds, for example, not to mention the ‘temporary’ transfer of mail centre work to ‘out houses’ staffed by casual labour – remain in place. In response branch officers are talking about requesting authorisation for fresh local strikes.

When it comes down to it, general secretary Billy Hayes and deputy general secretary Dave Ward have achieved what they have been suggesting to management in speeches for months: we can call off the strikes if you give us something we can sell. One member of the NEC told me that there was a distinct lack of clarity within the union at all levels on the aims of the strike anyway.

Management has therefore not had to give very much away: Hayes and Ward declared themselves amenable to compromise if management would only show itself in similar colours. That is why some of the reasons put forward for the sell-out are more likely erroneous than not. For example, some have suggested that management might have threatened to press on immediately with derecognition of the union, something that a secret Royal Mail plan did envisage.

Or perhaps the Broad Left minority (eight out of 28 voting members on the NEC), the more rightwing Effective Left (dubbed ‘Defective Left’ by opponents), plus unorganised members – erstwhile militants almost to a man and woman – on leading CWU committees wanted to abase themselves before New Labour to bolster its fading electoral fortunes rather than do the job they were put in place to do: represent the interests of CWU members. As it happens, most of the Broad Left members of the NEC are on the telecoms side.

But neither of these two scenarios appears likely to union militants. They consider it much more probable that union leaders felt they risked losing control of the strikes if they continued with them. To get more than paper concessions from Royal Mail it would have been necessary to escalate the action, without doubt. This would have involved ceding control over the day-to-day running of the strikes to the mass of the members, who would have needed to organise picket rotas, solidarity appeals, etc. without the involvement of national bureaucrats.

Nonetheless, abandoning strikes in the run-up to Christmas, Royal Mail’s busiest time of the year, is at best mistaken and at worst a treacherous turn by CWU leaders. Both sides are well aware that comparatively few items of post are delivered in January, which is the earliest that the union’s leadership expects to contemplate further action, should it deem necessary. And why would it not be necessary, since management promises to negotiate can simply come down to reiterating previous positions on job losses and speed-ups? Having lost its purchase by abandoning strikes now, the union faces an uphill battle against a bellicose foe in the new year. Is it more likely that postal workers would rather fight now or after the Christmas break? No-one can in all seriousness suggest the second, if they want the workers to win.

One militant postal worker to whom I spoke told me that the mood in the workplace is roughly, “What the fuck are we going back to work for?” As days go by, this is settling into a ‘making the best of a bad job’ attitude. He said: “It’s a sell-out masquerading as something else” – an assessment that is still to be disproved. Nonetheless, postal workers do intend pushing the promises about local arrangements in the interim agreement as far as they can – and even further.

Of course, the biggest worry about the November 5 interim agreement among the membership is whether it represents a truce or a surrender. Many militants thought that involving the TUC would mean an immediate cave-in by the union; in the event, it took the CWU leaders a week to come up with the interim agreement with management.

Local industrial action by postal workers was the engine that propelled the union bureaucracy into calling national strikes: first one-day affairs, then a planned, but now aborted, couple of days as we started into November. The evident militancy fuelled by the mass of members’ anger over Royal Mail’s destruction of jobs and speed-ups (euphemistically labelled ‘pace’ in the recent agreement) now has nowhere to go, given the demoralising effect that the leadership’s action will inevitably have had.

Despite calls from some far-left groups for the union membership in the localities to restart the strike under its own control, the absence of rank and file organisation within the CWU means that such calls cannot be fleshed out in any meaningful way. There is no network and no organised debates at any level about the rights and wrongs of the action being taken. No-one, apart from those making the calls, sees this happening. This is a national issue.

The same goes for officially sanctioned local actions (which in any case will clearly not be approved by the NEC). At present, most lower-level union officials at the regional level fully support the interim agreement, so they form a barrier that extends down from national level to any attempt by local union organisations to take back the strike as their own on a large geographical base. Even cooperation across London, which led the way in militancy during the local strike wave earlier this year, is hampered by this regional lethargy.

While the sole Socialist Workers Party member of the national executive, vice-president Jane Loftus, has pitched up at meetings and in articles to promote the strike, there has been hardly a squeak out of the two national executive members who are members of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Gary Jones and Bernard Roome. But maybe their silence is because of the extreme compartmentalisation within the union that favours bureaucratic manoeuvring by full-time officials. Telecoms members of the NEC are, after all, not expected to interest themselves (or ‘interfere’) in disputes involving the postal side. On the face of it, this obstacle to internal solidarity is in massive contradiction to the solidarity in the rest of the working class movement that postal workers ought to expect as their right in their current struggle.

What the interim agreement does do is pass things back to the localities on a bad basis. They will be left to their own devices, rather than being part of a nationally organised dispute. Local negotiations may have been reinstated, which is all well and good, but how long will they continue and what can they achieve in terms of binding agreements? The interim agreement calls for fortnightly reviews of progress over the next five weeks. Of course, five weeks takes us close to the end of December, which is pretty convenient for management. If anything goes awry by the end of this period of the cessation of hostilities, then we shall be into a stage when Royal Mail is already breathing easier, having finagled a solution to its Christmas delivery problem.

As for the most important questions concerning job losses and speed-ups, the interim agreement has only platitudes to offer. One paragraph reads: “This agreement between Royal Mail and the CWU, reached under the auspices of the TUC, provides the basis for a ‘period of calm’ free of industrial action, during which the parties are firmly committed to work together intensively, to reach agreements that will enable further change and modernisation to be implemented from the beginning of 2010 onward.”

So “modernisation”, though given a different content by management and the CWU, is accepted by both sides. The words “change and modernisation” have a deadly ring about them for the mass of postal workers, however, for they have seen where they have already led: the loss of many thousands of jobs.

It is pretty clear that Royal Mail has sewn up what for it is a great deal in order to buy time – a most valued asset. Management must be cock-a-hoop. At the end of the local review discussions that the agreement document lays down management can quite easily revert to its former positions and again bully, victimise and call for ‘pace’.

By settling for a period of no strikes on the basis of mere promises the union leadership has forfeited any real leverage. None of the CWU leaders who have spoken to meetings of union reps since the interim agreement was announced have dared to suggest that it has been accepted because of the union membership’s weakness or lack of resolve: this has clearly not been the case. There has been no trace of any drift back to work in the course of the strike.

It may not be exactly a perfidious leadership that has brought this dispute to the pretty pass it has, but the inability of rank and file members to bring leaders to heel by organising themselves independently has taken its toll in allowing the bureaucrats free rein. Unless postal workers organise themselves independently of their officials, they will be unable to change this state of affairs – or inspire other workers who, make no mistake, will also be in the firing line.

Today is Jennifer’s 12th birthday and it’s the first one I’ve not been there for her. I spoke to her on the phone and promised to bring her a present when I get home, but its not the same and I felt really depressed today. Sorry sweetheart, I really am!

Chris took me along to his record company, London records, so that the bands press officer, Eugene Manzi, could put together a press release about ‘The Tube’. It was a novel experience for me and I was surprised they could get a photo off tv to use with it. Best of all, I was allowed to help myself to as many records as I could carry. I got a pile of old Rolling Stones stuff, and some records I thought the girls might like, The Fine Young Cannibals and others. I think Chris was a bit embarrassed as we left with me struggling to carry my booty. It was excellent!

This afternoon a London comrade took me to a DHSS office in Harrow and the workers there have agreed to support the soup kitchen, which is brilliant.

Norman Willis, the new fat bastard in charge of the TUC, spoke at a miners rally in Wales and had the bloody nerve to condemn picket line violence! What planet are these people on? The miners responded by booing loudly until some enterprising lads lowered a noose in front of him. They should’ve lynched the fat bastard! I thought Len Murray was a disgrace but this bugger makes him seem militant.

The NCB have offered a £650 Christmas bonus to anyone who scabs before November ends. Bastards!

This looks to me like an almighty sell-out by the CWU leadership over the postal dispute. And I agree with David Semple when he writes, I’m also less than impressed by the role of the TUC, which has been seen to pressure the CWU into backing down. The TUC should be voicing full throated support of its member trades unions, not trying to act as some sort of arbiter. It’s not the bloody arbiters’ congress.

More bargain basement ACAS! Yes, you’d expect the TUC to throw itself behind the dispute at the forefront of workers’ solidarity…but hey, this is the TUC…long legacy of sell-outs and sell-outs and sell-outs…

Why suspend strike action now especially with the run up to Xmas? You build on that momentum by putting further pressure on management and Xmas is an apt time to do that!  Along with building solidarity and alliances which means not capitulating. And what has Royal Mail agreed to do exactly? And who are making the concessions?

And what the hell does this mean?

It guarantees that Royal Mail will agree change and that workers will get real benefits from the modernisation of the business.

And once Xmas is over, what then???

These are my initial thoughts but will wait and see what else CWU leadership comes out with.

Victory to the postal workers!!

A bulletin for postal workers: click here for PDF. Print some off and take them down to your local picket line (or if not, visit your local picket line and show your solidarity anyway…).  If you live in Stoke, Stockport or Plymouth, you might want to go down to the picket line at one of the three MDEC centres that are on strike tomorrow (Friday).  On Saturday, from between 6am and 10.30am, visit the picket line at your local delivery office.   That’s the place you might have been to pick up a parcel if it couldn’t be delivered.  If you aren’t sure where it is, call 08457 740740 (a Royal Mail helpline) and say you’d like to know where your delivery office is (perhaps you need to pick up a parcel, but lost the calling card).

- Management are feeling the heat

- Public support is on our side

- Step up the strikes: don’t break action for talks

The bold national strike by Royal Mail workers has lit up the headlines, showing that the recession does not mean we all have to glumly accept our fate and accept the bosses’ attacks. Millionaire RM chief Adam Crozier has called on the union to ‘shut up’ and to engage in ‘reasonable’ dialogue: because he is more afraid of the strike than he is troubled by negotiations with union chiefs.

Billy Hayes spoke of his willingness to go to ACAS ‘with no conditions’ and on the TV and radio has stressed a very ‘moderate’ position, for example weakly telling Sky News that the CWU is in favour of some form of ‘modernisation’, but does not want this to go ahead without proper consultation.

Accepting the general idea of ‘modernisation’ in part is a mistake because it is a term used by management to obscure the real issues and win public support: they want mass lay-offs, speed-ups and to crush the workforce’s power, laying the basis for further privatisation, not just to introduce some new machines. Being ‘consulted’ on attacks is no good: we need to stop them! Hayes is setting his sights too low, and given the current momentum of the strike it is no time to make a deal unless significant concessions are on the table.

Finding support

Picket lines last week were strong, and the strike, taking place as it does in a well-liked public service under sustained attack, has found significant levels of public support. Despite the constant media tales of public anger at the disruption, one opinion poll quoted on the CWU website displayed that 50% of people support for the strike and only 25% surveyed sympathising with management and the so-called ‘modernisation agenda’.

But management are fighting hard to undermine the strike with tens of thousands of agency staff. By all accounts they have done a rather botched job, but nonetheless are clearing much of the backlog. The union is right to challenge this in the courts: but we should also try and engage with these workers, explaining why they should join the strike. The CWU should allow them in on reduced dues in order to help undermine the scabbing operation.

Other activists in the workers’ movement are currently organising solidarity groups. These should be encouraged, and post workers should not be shy in demanding whatever material and political support they need: given the size of the strike and the issues involved, at a time when other attacks on the public sector workforce are in the offing, this is a vital struggle for our whole movement.

The ways forward

The TUC are of no use here: they have made much fuss of the ‘success’ of initial talks and tried to broker a peace deal between the CWU and management. Unmoved by attempts to crush the union (see reverse) they have done nothing to mobilise solidarity.

We are not saying that there should never be talks or that negotiation does not have its place.  But talks should be in maximum openness and subject to the control of the whole workforce on strike. Many days’ pay have been lost, invested in the strike, already and this cannot come to nothing. Being marched out for one day a week’s strike action followed by top-table negotiations is neither democratic nor an effective means of forcing a defeat on management: we need to escalate with longer walkouts and keep the strike going to maintain pressure during any talks.

It is the rank and file who must be in the driving seat, both in taking the initiative to win other workers’ support and in determining the outcome of the strike. Mass meetings and regional reps’ meetings should decide how action develops and if and when the dispute should be called off, and on what terms. Our strength comes from ourselves, not our leaders.

Bosses’ strategy exposed

A “top secret” Royal Mail management presentation on its strategic overview for the current dispute has been leaked, laying bare the bosses’ aims and tactics.

Beneath the management-speak twaddle, it stresses the need to ride roughshod over the workforce in a show of strength designed to enable further attacks. They plan “a programme involving not just deployment of operational changes but transforming the way we work and relate together—employer/employee/union”. Even more militantly they claim “a new relationship with our people is non-negotiable and will happen anyway, with or without union agreement”.

Management have a false sense of security that they have public backing “If [the union] refuse, we have positioned things in such a way as there is shareholder, customer and internal support for implementation of change without agreement”.

Although seemingly comfortable with the idea of making change without agreement “sufficiently credible and unattractive” that the union will simply knuckle under, management are afraid they cannot deal with sustained strike action, identifying as ‘key risks’ to their strategy, “Prolonged dispute leads to sense of management’s inability to control situation” or being felled by a “total ongoing London stoppage”.

Getting the message across

Polls of public opinion towards the strike have shown widespread sympathy towards post workers, much at odds with management’s belief that the public have are on their side.

The battle for public opinion is important to pile pressure on the employer and keep the strike solid. Across the country CWU members as well as workers in many other unions have already formed solidarity groups, raising money and holding meetings in support of the strike.

We also need to counter the message coming from government and the corporate media that the strike is a battle between a ‘dinosaur union’ in an ‘unprofitable nationalised industry’ and a ‘modernising’ management. Most people are unaware of the unfair terms on which Royal Mail competes with the likes of UKMail and the neo-liberal ideological agenda underlying the government’s attempts to wreck the post service.

So help us get the message out: write to us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com with your stories: what antics have management been getting up to during the strike?; what do you think of the CWU strategy?; what solidarity and support do you need from the rest of the workers’ movement?

- On our website we have published a ‘Letter from a postman’ and Sheila Cohen’s interview with two London CWU reps, both of them useful resources explaining to the public the speed-ups and extra demands on post workers which characterise ‘modernisation’.

CWU is right to make legal challenge to hiring of casuals:

2003 Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations

“Regulation 7(1) provides that an employment business may not supply a temporary worker to a hirer to replace an individual taking part in an official strike or any other official industrial dispute. In addition, an employment business must not introduce or supply a work-seeker to do the work of someone who has been transferred by the hirer to perform the duties of the person on strike or taking industrial action. An employment business will have a legal defence to having acted in breach of this regulation if it does not know, or has no reasonable grounds for knowing, that official strike action is in progress.

Break the link with Labour!

At every turn the Labour government has demonstrated its total backing for the attacks on the Royal Mail workforce and attempts to crush the CWU.

They are not some neutral or impartial arbiter between bosses and workers: as in every dispute Brown and Mandelson’s calls for peace are a demand on the strikers to give in, not a demand on Adam Crozier.

And yet the CWU has funded the party to the tune of £6 million since 2001, with more than £400,000 of that in 2009 alone! Even without any better alternative to vote for, surely this has got to stop.

Last month 96% of the London membership voted to stop funding Labour in a ‘consultative ballot’. But consultation is not enough: it is high time the CWU let the membership have a vote with the power to shut off the taps.

Well, I will try and organise my thoughts later regarding the postal workers support meeting I attended this evening….too tired at moment. Very interesting meeting along with ideas and suggestions in building solidarity with the striking postal workers.

Had a lovely meal afterwards at a vegetarian Indian restaurant on Drummond Street by Euston Station (great veggie Indian restaurants which I have been frequenting  for years). Just thought I’d add that, like I said am tired.

One thing that made me chuckle before start of the meeting was a comrade who asked me where my camera was as, ‘you’ve always got your camera with you’. Well, I was giving it a day off….for once.

Oh, just finally with all the debate and arguments about no platform for fascists I remember this powerful song from mists of time and it had an impact on childhood/teenage years.

Tom Robinson – Winter of ‘79 from the excellent Power in the Darkness.

Corro praticamente al buio in una strada di campagna che mi fa paura sin da quando ero bambino. C’e’ sempre il rischio che un cane ringhioso t’insegua incazzato sbraitando come un deputato leghista alla festa padana di Arcade. 

Io corro e sto bene che  casa e’ vicina e mi aspettano per cena. Non ci sono lampioni, la notte e’ arrivata troppo veloce. Non vedo quasi niente, sento solo i miei passi. Non devo farmi prendere dal panico, la via sterrata non e’ infinita, prima o poi la luce arriva, la notte finisce,  bisogna solo cercare di non perdersi per strada, mantenere la calma e continuare ad andare avanti aspettando l’alba.  Pensieri profondi e puzza di merda. E’ la mia mano sinistra: merda e ortiche, una pausa nei campi non prevista a Ponzano dove hanno costruito un quartiere nuovo di abitazioni gialle.

Venexia, il tramonto verso marghera, la sabbia mossa nella deserta spiaggia del Lido. Tuc in treno e The alla pesca, al limone l’ho finito.

Finalmente casa, Milano. Il tassista mi guida per vie che conosco a memoria. I campi mi piacciono ma questa e’ la mia vita, e non e’ per niente male – penso - mentre aspetto la ricevuta. Dietro ci strombazzano nel culo.

“Spostati coglioooooneeee” grida un Suv nero con i vetri oscurati. “Un attimo” “coglioneeeeeeeeeeee spostati” “Ma va a cagare…” risponde alla fine il tassista. Dal suv nero esce un uomo grosso in camicia rosa completamente impazzito, sbatte il taxi come fosse una scatola di caramelle Valda. Il tassista accende e scappa. Lui lo insegue con il suo carroarmato e una donna vestita di nero. Lo affianca allo stop e gli sbarra la stranda. “Scendi coglioneeeeeee….” Apre la portiera, sbatte il povero tassista quasi pelato per terra. Mi avvicino, devo fare qualcosa. La donna vestita di nero grida, l’energumeno con la camicia rosa indubbiamente strafatto di cocaina grida. Il tassista riesce finalmente a scappare.

Io Rimango in mezzo alla via a tre metri dalla camicia rosa con le chiavi di casa infilate nella porta, ne ortica ne merda sulle mani.

Sábado dia 24 ainda tem RockaJenny no TUC – Teatro Universitário de Curitiba, na Galeria Julio Moreira – Largo da Ordem nº30, e o melhor ENTRADA FREE! Vê se não perde essa!

I think the speakers for me that were outstanding at today’s TUC – An Alternative Vision for the Welfare State were Mark Serwotka (PCS), Jeremy Dear (NUJ) and Richard Wilkinson (The Spirit Level).

I was unimpressed by Jonathan Rutherford (Compass) speech it was rather a convoluted high faultin’ exercise in intellectualism…nothing grounded about it, there was nothing I disagreed with but it lacked political clarity and activism…a way forward other than the usual shopping list of demands…Though to be fair he was the only one who mentioned neoliberalism. Less Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle…more Marx (well hey, I am biased!)

Richard Wilkinson was great (I was fascinated by the statistical analysis he was presenting and could listen to him all day as there is  so much data) he digs out the statistical data that can be used as political ammunition but overall Wilkinson and Pickett give people the intellectual self-confidence to argue that equality matters and it is fundamental to the make up of society.

Unequal rich societies creates a fractious, disjointed and fragmented society where isolation, oppression, atomisation and alienation are engendered. Consumerism and individualism reflect inequality. Inequality impacts on every aspect of society; political, personal, social and economic.

I really would recommend their  book The Spirit Level btw.

Wilkinson rightly pointed out that while David Cameron keeps arguing for economic growth when it is redistribution that is key. And that Cameron is wrong about the ‘broken society’..it is inequaliy that has broken society.

Actually, overall, I was unimpressed with the whole day. These are just my brief impressions but I always feel so utterly despondent after one of these TUC conferences regarding welfare reform/welfare state and the politics lacked dynamic…..and why can’t I listen to people who are experiencing the sharp end of this recession. People who are unemployed, on disability benefits, lone parents…people who are bearing the brunt of the economic meltdown and these vicious, punitive, punishing and hideous ideological attacks? I want to be part of a fight back, grassroots activism not events rubber stamped by the trade union bureaucracy. As I said there were good vibrant TU speakers who have positive things to say and a way forward…..

And yet…and yet…

I get pissed off by the NGOs as who are they speaking for…precisely? As there were people there who support conditionality/sanctions though ‘not at the moment’ (they say) but if things were more equal.. Well things are not equal, far from it (did they listen to Richard Wilkinson’s talk?) so why bring up the case for conditionality and sanctions?

If we are talking about conditionality/sanctions as a ‘citizen’ then what about sanctioning rich people who fail to pay their tax? Criminal charges brought against capitalist corporations who dump toxic waste yet believe they have the right to gag the truth? What about penalising and sanctioning employers who run roughshod over the Disability Discrimination Act, along with tightening up the law? What about snappy and hard hitting legislation that makes employers accountable when it comes to corporate killings….where criminally negligent employers face the courts..real accountablity not the toothless pap of a law we have?

So when people talk about ‘rights and responsibilities’ in the same breath of sanctions and conditonality then they really should examine the unequal power relationships in this society….

There is an ideological consensus in the establishment when it comes to attacking the welfare state and the public sector and it is up to us to face down these attacks by working together in alliance and unity. But today…I just wasn’t sure of the purpose…

Here endeth the rant.

It's CrisisTime!

CRISIS WHAT CRISIS: FORWARD TO THE PAST?

 

 Critical Labour Studies: 6th Symposium 2009

Venue: The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Saturday 21st/Sunday 22nd November 2009

Statement of Intent
It is clear to researchers and activists, both in the trade union movement and universities, that global capitalism is increasingly shaping the worlds of work and employment. The imposition of this neo-liberal orthodoxy has many profound implications, not least that states seek to both de-legitimise workers’ opposition and marginalise their organisations. However, just as capitalism has embraced neo-liberal strategies, there has emerged a new politics of resistance that is varied and diverse, embracing: trade union and socialist organisations, green and ecological protest movements, anti-war activists, feminists, human rights campaigners and NGOs. It is against this background that the Critical Labour Studies (CLS) symposium has aimed to bring together researchers and activists to discuss key features of work and employment from a radical and labour-focused perspective. We recognise that while left academic researchers participate in the usual round of mainstream conferences, the scope for focused radical debate around these themes is actually quite limited. Through CLS we have developed an open working group and discussion forum that engages with many of the challenges facing researchers and trade unionists within the current environment of work and employment. By ‘labour’, we anticipate, in the traditions of radical researchers over the ages, a broad understanding of myriad social, economic and political agendas. To date, themes have included: race, identity and organising migrant workers, global unionism and organising internationally, the new politics of production, privatisation, outsourcing and offshoring. The list of themes and questions that concern us continues to develop over time, and the intention will be to reflect this evolving agenda at this year’s symposium. An ancillary objective is to engage in genuinely critical debate, rescuing this term from its co-option by mainstream agendas.

The Format of the Symposium
Building on the successes of the past five years, the forthcoming symposium will be structured as a series of plenary sessions. Each will be organised around a particular theme with speakers and discussants, followed by a broad discussion. It has been an important principle of CLS that the conference is not based on the convention of academic conferences with specific papers being presented in separate streams. Rather our intention has been to deepen discussion and debate, and to bring together researchers and labour/union movement activists (where possible) in joint sessions. All sessions are genuinely open and inclusive and involve a broad range of participants, from established academics to early-career researchers, and from established trade union officials to shop-floor representatives and grass-roots activists. The distinctive organising principles of CLS are, therefore, to assist unions and workers in dealing with the challenges faced in the neo-liberal world of work and employment. Ultimately, discussion of strategies and tactics are related to the broader aim of creating a socialist society.

*CLS PROGRAMME 2009*

VENUE: School of Oriental and African Studies
- Khalili Lecture Theater (KLT), University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG

DATES: 21st and 22nd of November

Organisers: Demet Dinler, Jane Holgate and Miguel Martinez Lucio

Saturday 21st

8.30-9.30 Registration (with coffee and tea)

9.30 Welcome and introduction

First Session – Work Intensification and Lean Production

10.00 – 11.00

‘Is that Banana Active?’ Lean and Mean in the Civil Service
Speaker from PCS, Bob Carter (de Montfort University), Andy Danford (University of West of England), Debra Howcroft (University of Manchester), Helen Richardson (University of Salford), Andrew Smith (University of East of London), Phil Taylor (University of Strathclyde)

11.00-11.30 tea and coffee

11.30-12.30

Challenging lean production in the car industry. The politics of developing critical research agenda in and beyond the shop floor.
Steve Craig (UCATT), Ken Murphy (UNITE and Paul Stewart (Strathclyde University)

12.30-1.00

Prospects for a Critical Labour Psychology
Thomas Ryan (Northumbria University)

1.00-2.00 Lunch

Second Session – Labour Markets, Migration and Labour

2.00-2.45

The growth of living wage campaigns across university campuses

Clare Soloman – SOAS coordinator of the campaign; Jose Stalin Bermudez – shop steward; Demet Dinler – SOAS

2.45-3.30

Adapt or Decline – A Trade Union Future for Black Workers

Jane Holgate (Working Lives Institute) and Wilf Sullivan (TUC)

3.30- 4.00 tea and coffee

4.00-4.30

Racism, Nationalism and the Labour Movement in Northern Ireland: Racist bigots; they haven’t gone away you know

Independent Workers Union (IWU) address to CLS – Tommy McKearney IWU

4.30-5.30 Towards a Critical approach to Migration and Labour

Migration research: Why theory and methodology matters
Jutta Moehrke, Stoke-on-Trent Citizens Advice Bureau
Steve French, Centre for Industrial Relations, Keele University

Migration and the Politics of Research: Comparisons and Stereotypes
Heather Connolly and Miguel Martinez Lucio (University of Manchester)

Social 7pm onwards Rugby Tavern, 9 Great James St London, WC1N 3ES

Sunday 22nd

Third Session: Politics and Unions: Class and Organising

9.30 tea and coffee

10.00-11.00

Organising and Class
Mel Simms (Warwick) and Martin Smith GMB

11.00-12.00

Towards a Typology of Alternative Trade Union Futures in Western Europe
Martin Upchurch (Middlesex University), Andy Mathers (University of the West of England), Graham Taylor (University of the West of England)

12.-12.30

Time for a different model of public sector trade unionism
Roger Kline (UCU)
12.30-1.30 – Lunch

1.30 -2.30 – Open Discussion: CLS and Future Developments
_______

Join the Critical Labour Studies Email List

If you would like to be added to the CLS email list, please go to:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=CRITICAL-LABOUR-STUDIES

Check out our website: http://criticallabourstudies.org.uk/site/

Registration and Contact for the Conference

• The sessions will be held at the Khalili Lecture Theater (KLT) and registration is at the entrance of this lecture theatre in SOAS.
• The registration fee for the weekend is £60.00 (unwaged or low waged £40). This will include food, tea/coffee and Saturday evening’s entertainment.
• For further information contact Demet Dinler dd1@soas.ac.uk, Jane Holgatej.holgate@londonmet.ac.uk, or Miguel Martinez Lucio Miguel.MartinezLucio@manchester.ac.uk.
• TO REGISTER AND SEND YOUR CHEQUE CONTACT Jane Holgatej.holgate@londonmet.ac.uk – Dr Jane Holgate, Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London EC3N 2EY – Make cheques payable to the ‘LONDON ORGANISERS NETWORK’.
• It is recommended that you register and confirm attendance in advance of the conference due to the restrictions on numbers.

This event is supported by Historical Materialism, Capital and Class, and the BUIRA Marxist Study Group

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Alistair Darling last week at his party conference revealed very little about his and Labour’s future financial plans for the UK. Gordon Brown alluded to savings that could be made in Whitehall weeks earlier at the TUC conference, however these savings would be miniscule in relation to the debt that has been racked up in the past years under Labour. Belatedly Darling announced a pay freeze for top public sector earners the night before George Osborne spoke to his party conference.

George Osborne outlined numerous ways in which the deficit could be brought under control, including a public sector pay freeze for one year for all those earning over £18000 a year, raising the pension age to sixty six from 2016, the scrapping of baby bonds for all but the poorest families and no child tax credit for those earning over £50,000. The reaction to the speech was very positive on the whole, with many pundits citing that although it was a risky strategy it was the right call to warn voters that cuts were going to affect the majority of working public.

So what does Darling do at the Pre-Budget Report? Does he remain aloof with the voters about where the cuts are going to be made and their severity? In my opinion this is the worst possible option as it makes him look indecisive compared to the Tories. Does he go into more detail and reveal deeper cuts than the Tories did this week? I doubt this would happen as Brown’s position has always been that the Tories would cut deeper than Labour and this approach would be the polar opposite of the message Brown is trying to drill home to the electorate. Does he state he is going to raise taxes? This in my opinion is the most plausible option although commentators would question why he did not outline such details at his party conference when he had the chance.

It’s clear to me that the Tories are trying to back Labour into a corner where they are seen as dishonest whatever they say on the economy. David Cameron knows that the economy will be the issue that defines the election and so will try to take the lead whenever he can to push home the message that the Conservatives are the only party that can be trusted after the General Election.

Postal workers outside Mount Pleasant

By Gurdeep Hundal

Industrial action by postal workers continues to soar, a union has warned as postal workers start a fresh wave of strikes after the TUC failed to deliver a deal.

Rodger Charles, the Branch secretary for Mount Pleasant and International Branch Communication Workers Union, said the “strikes will continue” until their demands are met.

“We want influence over our working lives, where we do it and how we do it.”

“This dictates the lives of a thousand Royal Mail workers. The last thing we want to do is take industrial action, but everyone has bills to pay,” he said.

Royal Mail fails to deliver

The Royal Mail and Post Union Bosses who have been meeting at TUC headquarters on Monday and Tuesday, failed to deliver an agreement, which has led to further strikes.

The second sequel of 24-hour strikes began at 4am today, with 43,700 postal members in mail centres, network drivers and garage staff. A further 77,000 delivery workers will be out on strike on Saturday.

Royal Mail said they will hire 33,00 agency workers to deal with the long delays of strikes as well as the Christmas peak to keep the postal service rolling, which has left current employers angry.

“At the moment Royal Mail thinks they can dictate the lives of 1,000 of workers,” Royal Mail lorry driver, 42, Pat Lovelock told Still News.

Lorry driver stands for postal workers rights

“I’m irreplaceable. I’ve worked 23 years for Royal Mail, there is no way hiring someone who is untrained, will be able to do my work. We are a dedicated service and it takes time to understand the system.”

He also said the The Communication Union are prepared to strike until Christmas.

“It’s for our future.”

“We do apologise to the general public. We all have family and friends who are currently involved in the strikes, but we hope the public will sympathise with our situation,” he said.

Further strikes

On Friday, 400 workers who read and enter mail addresses are due to strike at Plymouth, Stock and Stoke.

Then on Saturday, 77,000 delivery and collection staff will strike near Royal Mails headquarters in Mount Pleasant on Farringdon Street, East London and South London in Nine Elms.