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Title: Red Flags Torn
Author: Ed Goddard
Date: 2010
Language: en
Topics: unions, critique, syndicalism, Black Flag, UK
Source: https://libcom.org/library/red-flags-torn-brief-sketch-some-problems-unions-ed-goddard
Notes: An article by Ed Goddard, that originally appeared in Black Flag, briefly explaining some of the problems inherent in the official trade unions and the need for workers to take control of their actions out of the hands union bureaucrats.

Ed Goddard

Red Flags Torn

The ’80s have been back in fashion for a while now. It started

ironically: a stonewashed denim jacket at a fancy dress party, a

“Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt. But like all ironic jokes, it’s been taken

too far.

As if getting an economy to match our shoes, we now have rising

unemployment, attacks on benefits, and public sector pay cuts. And as it

obviously didn’t matter who got in, we thought a Tory government would

complete the look with the Labour Party back as the defenders of the

poor, even using phrases like “working class” again.

We all know that any fightback will not come from the Labour Party (or

any other party); it’ll be from workers, public service users, parents,

pensioners, students, the unemployed. If we see a mass working class

fightback, we can expect the trade union leaders to be there, at the

rallies and demonstrations, urging us forward.

But looking at the struggles of the past few years, should this fill us

with confidence? Are these union leaders behind us?

Some recent defeats and ‘almosts’

In 2009, Visteon factories in London and Belfast were occupied. After

dragging its heels and giving poor legal advice, Unite encouraged

workers to leave the occupied factories.

Eventually a deal was done behind closed doors and the union recommended

acceptance of a partial offer that left the crucial issue of pensions

untouched.

In 2008, strikes were prepared across the public sector. Workers in

Unison, NUT and PCS all took action against the government’s 2% pay-cap,

sometimes even on the same day.

After only two days of strike action Unison, the biggest of the three

unions, took its dispute to ACAS.

The arbitrating body’s decision being legally binding, this effectively

removed its members from the dispute. The other unions soon followed

suit.

In 2007, as the government threatened 40,000 job cuts at Royal Mail and

attacked pay and pensions, wildcat strikes spread across Britain with

postal workers refusing to cross each others’ picket lines.

The CWU soon called off all action to enter ‘meaningful negotiations’

which lasted weeks and came to no firm conclusion.

Demoralised and demobilised posties accepted an agreement basically

unchanged from the first one.

But the CWU declared victory: they were guaranteed a ‘consultation’ role

in the cuts.

These are just some examples; you can pick many more from recent and

not- so-recent history. And they all raise the question: why are our

unions so bad at what we expect them to do? Not being a force for

revolution or anything, but bog-standard, Ronseal-advert,

doing-what-it-says-on-the-tin, fighting for their members’ interests.

Union troubles, outside and in..

Trade union officials will blame the membership, saying they don’t want

to fight. This might be true sometimes but didn’t the wildcatting

posties want to fight? The Visteon workers, after occupying their

factories, didn’t want to fight? There’s more going on than just the

‘workers aren’t up for it’...

It’s not all the unions’ fault. Since the Thatcher years we’ve seen so

many new laws restricting strike action that British industrial

relations legislation is amongst the most anti-worker in the developed

world.

Where once wildcat strikes and secondary picketing were common, now they

are a rarity. Even things like forcing ballots to be done in secret,

posted from home, where workers can’t sense the solidarity of their

workmates, is intended to discourage militant action.

But there’s a problem with this argument too. These laws were pushed

through as a result of working class defeat, a defeat that the unions

were complicit in. Unions had been disciplining their members for

decades before these laws were even a twinkle in Thatcher’s eye.

Whether it be NUM official Will Lawther’s 1947 call to prosecute

wildcatting miners “even if there are 50,000 or 100,000 of them” or the

UPW slapping members with fines totalling £1,000 and threatening

expulsion from the union (thus losing their jobs, as it was a closed

shop) for refusing to handle post during the 1977 Grunwick strike, one

thing seen time and again is union leaders moving against the militant

action of their members. Putting it down to legislation passed in the

last 20-30 years does nothing to explain such actions before then.

Bureaucrats

So the problems aren’t just external: we can’t just act like proud

parents and say they fell in with a bad crowd.

The fact is the unions have come to resemble the companies we expect

them to fight with highly paid executive decision makers, a downward

chain-of-command and a career ladder that goes beyond the union and into

the halls of social democratic governing institutions (think-tanks,

Labour Party etc). Such a structure needs people to fill it:

bureaucrats, who by definition are separate from the lives of the

workers they represent. This is true even of former shopfloor militants.

Having left the workplace, their everyday experiences are not the same

as those they used to work alongside. Their priorities and, more

importantly, their material interests are not the same.

A victory for a worker means an improvement in working conditions; a

victory for a bureaucrat means a seat at the negotiating table. But this

seat for the bureaucrat doesn’t necessarily mean any improvement for the

worker, as the CWU’s consultation ‘victory’ proves.

To say union bureaucrats have different priorities and interests is not

just spite. It’s to underline that it’s not about them being “baddies.”

Many committed militants become union officials because they want to be

employed spreading struggle rather than just working for some arsehole

boss. But the trouble is that ‘struggle’ and ‘the union’ are not the

same thing and spreading the latter does not mean encouraging the

former.

This has always been the case. The contradiction between workers and

union bureaucrats has been going on in the UK for over a century. One

such example was with the anarchist John Turner, an unpaid leader of the

United Shop Assistants Union for seven years who in 1898 became a paid

national organiser, travelling up and down the country recruiting to the

union.

Though it grew massively, Turner had also started to change his

approach. As conflicts flared up so would branches of the union; but as

conflicts died down so did the branches. To keep a stable membership, he

introduced sickness and unemployment benefits as perks of union

membership.

The plan worked. A stable membership was established and by 1910 the

Shop Assistants Union was the biggest in the London area. But the nature

of the union had changed.

And even if Turner couldn’t see it, the workers could. The union

bureaucracy became seen by many as an interference with local initiative

and in 1909 Turner was accused of playing the “role of one of the most

blatant reactionaries with which the Trades Union movement was ever

cursed” .

The tragedy of John Turner[1] is not as simple as him ‘selling out’; he

remained an anarchist to the day he died. But as a full-time organiser

paid by the union his priority began to be perpetuating the union rather

than organising conflicts and soon his union was no different from the

other unions.

This is because in the eyes of a trade union official, the union is not

just the means to encourage struggle but the means through which

struggle itself happens. Building the union is top priority and stopping

things which get the union in trouble (like unofficial action) take on

the utmost importance; after all, if the workers get the union into too

much trouble, how will struggle happen?

Of course, an individual can take on a full-time union job and

concentrate on organising conflicts rather than just recruitment.

But full-timers aren’t freelancers, their bosses (the union they work

for), like any other boss, needs to see results. And ‘results’ doesn’t

mean class conflict, it means membership recruitment and retention.

Because without members, official trade unionism can’t do what it most

needs to.

Meeting employers half-way

Criticisms of the bureaucratic nature of the trade unions are not

uncommon on the far-left. Many conclude that we need to democratise or

‘reclaim’ the existing unions, while others more radically conclude that

we need new unions, controlled by the rank and file.

However, this misses the point about what bureaucracies are and why they

happen. Unions don’t play this role because they’re bureaucratic,

they’re bureaucratic because of the role they play. That is, they try to

mediate the conflict between workers and their bosses. The primary way

this happens is through monopolising the right to negotiate conditions

on behalf of the workforce.

What is crucial when trying to do this is maintaining as high a

membership as possible, regardless of how detached from the workplace

such a union becomes. As union density drops generally, unions solve

this problem with endless mergers as high membership figures help

maintain their influence with management (not to mention the TUC and the

Labour Party).

If a union is to secure its place as the negotiator in the workplace, it

not only has to win the support of its members but also show bosses that

they can get the workforce back to work once an agreement is reached.

By having membership figures which they can point at to make sure

management recognise them as the body able to negotiate wages and

conditions, unions are also able to use this position to retain and

attract members.

Equally, this influence with the workforce is what’s useful to

management. Union bureaucrats offer stability in the workplace,

diverting workers’ anger into a complex world of employment law,

grievance procedures and casework forms.

As Buzz Hargrove, leader of the militant Canadian Auto Workers union,

wrote in his autobiography:

“Good unions work to defuse [workers’] anger – and they do it

effectively. Without unions, there would be anarchy in the workplace.

Strikes would be commonplace, and confrontation and violence would

increase. Poor-quality workmanship, low productivity, increased sick

time, and absenteeism would be the preferred form of worker protest.

“By and large, unions deflect those damaging and costly forms of worker

resistance. If our critics understood what really goes on behind the

labour scenes, they would be thankful that union leaders are as

effective as they are in averting strikes.”

The legal restrictions on unions mentioned earlier are often called

“anti-union” laws. However when looked at like this, it becomes apparent

that these laws are not so much anti-union as anti-worker.

If anything, it strengthens the union’s hand by giving it a total

monopoly on all legally recognised (and therefore protected) forms of

action.

The same laws which help employers maintain order in the workplace can

also be seen helping the union maintain its half of the bargain with the

employers.

As a result, pro-union radicals often propose the ‘wink and nod’

strategy: that is, the union officially saying “come on, back to work,

the union doesn’t condone this...” while giving a sly little wink while

the boss isn’t looking.

But if bosses don’t think a union can keep up its end of the bargain

then they won’t recognise them as negotiating “partners.” Why would

they? Why would anyone repeatedly reach an agreement with someone else

if they knew that person wouldn’t uphold their side of the bargain?

In order to function as representatives of the workforce, unions have to

play by the rules including, where necessary, policing the workforce and

directing militancy into the “proper channels.” The anti-strike laws

reinforce this pressure by threatening unions with financial ruin if

they don’t rein in legally unprotected actions.

This is where the pressure to discipline members comes from. It’s not a

question of the right leaders with the right politics or of having the

right principles written down in a constitution. It’s not about

individuals, it’s about how structures work to fulfill their needs.

From John Turner through to today via the French CGT, American CIO,

Polish Solidarnosc and countless others, unions have turned, through

their role as mediators, away from their origins as expressions of class

anger and into organisations disciplining the working class against its

own interests.

Notably, the unions that avoided this fate are those that adopted

explicitly revolutionary perspectives and consciously refused to play a

mediating role, such as the Spanish CNT’s refusal to participate in

works councils and union elections[2].

So what then?

This article is just the start of a wider criticism of unions. But where

unions seek to act as mediators and representatives they necessitate the

creation of bureaucracies to take on this task and bureaucrats,

separated as they are from workers’ lives, have different interests from

them. They need primarily to maintain their seat at the negotiating

table.

Therefore it’s no surprise that where gains have been made (even within

a union framework) it has been through the threat or actuality of

unmediated direct action: from the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes to the

wildcat-prone refuse workers of Brighton to the solidarity of truck

drivers not crossing Shell truckers’ picket lines.

These strikes, which ended in unqualified victories for the workers,

pushed the boundaries of trade union action, breaking anti-strike laws

and taking place outside the official union structures (even if

organised by lay-reps at local union level).

Our task is to encourage this sort of independent activity, to encourage

the control of struggles through workplace meetings of all workers

affected (regardless of union affiliation) and to encourage the use of

direct action to get results.

These should be the guiding principles for us in workplace organising.

Leave ‘reclaiming the unions’ to the Trots, they can build career

ladders for bureaucrats. If union density is what creates militancy then

the UK (at 27%) would be far more militant than France (8%). Clearly

this is not the case.

We’re done building new bureaucracies; we need to take action without

them.

[1] More on John Turner can be found in The slow burning fuse - the lost

history of the British anarchists by John Quail, some of which is online

on libcom.org

[2] There is of course much to be said about the representative role

which the leadership of the CNT took in the Spanish Civil War and the

negative effects which this had