Report from Labor Notes conference and the Chicago Teachers' Strike

At the start of April I was lucky enough to be part of a small delegation from the UK to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago, which brought together over 2000 activists for an inspiring, stimulating and useful set of plenaries and workshops. The trip coincided with the 1 April strike by the Chicago teachers, which turned into a huge day of strikes, demonstrations and occupations involving dozens of unions and community organisations.

The first version of our report is now available here. So far it includes an overview of Labor Notes, reports from some workshops with really useful organising ideas, a report from the Chicago teachers' strike, and some background information about the US labour movement which might be helpful to readers.

Thanks to all the individuals and organisations who helped fund the delegation. Hopefully our report demonstrates that the trip was well worthwhile.

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UNITE GPM&IT National Industrial Sector Committee, January 2016

The committee, which covers the Graphical, Paper, Media & IT industries, met on Thursday and Friday. This is a summary of some key points. I’ve not included most of the industrial detail in my report because it isn’t appropriate to post publicly. For jargon, see here.

NISC members were very unhappy that there was still no representation from Wales. The original Welsh RISC meeting had been inquorate because the Welsh Regional Secretary had decided that two delegates were not allowed to be elected to the RISC from the same company even if this meant leaving places vacant, despite this being contrary to the Executive Council (EC) guidelines. The Wales Region had attempted to reconvene the conference, but this time that wasn’t quorate so no elections were possible. The situation is to be discussed at the Wales Regional Committee in the next few weeks. NISC members were keen for this to be resolved without further delay, seeing it as unacceptable for the members in a country to be unrepresented. The issue will be raised at the next EC meeting.

Funding for trade union education via the Skills Funding Agency, including reps training, faces a massive reduction in September 2016 as part of the government’s wider assault on Further Education. A report on how UNITE will respond to this will be discussed at the next Executive Council meeting.

Delegates were disappointed that Sharon Graham from the organising department was again unable to attend, after having been unable to attend conference for our sector in November, though she had led great sessions at the plenary and for many other sectors. At the GPM&IT conference delegates had agreed motions on organising, one of which set tasks for our Organising Strategy Subcommittee. This held an initial meeting on the Thursday evening and agreed some initial actions. A report will be circulated to all RISCs. The subcommittee plans to arrange its second meeting around Sharon’s availability to ensure that our sector’s plans complement what the organising department is doing rather than conflicting or duplicating it.

Under the EC report there was a wide ranging discussion including support for Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum; how to deal with bad Labour MPs; support for the student nurses and junior doctors’ disputes; Cameron’s racist nonsense about Muslims, learning English and terrorism; and our international work.

Raffiq Moosa was elected as our delegate to the Labour Party conference.

Bud Hudspith was unable to attend in person but provided a detailed written Health & Safety report which will be circulated electronically. In discussion it was clarified that though it is not a legal requirement for the HSE to contact union safety reps when they visit a workplace, it is their policy to do so.

The discussion on the report from the National Officer, Ian Tonks, included a lot of information about specific companies and workplaces which I have not included in this report for confidentiality reasons. An interesting point raised was how we turn increases to the National Minimum Wage (as it becomes Cameron’s National Living Wage) and the actual Living Wage, into wider rises to maintain differentials. Officers dealing with the GPM&IT sector will be meeting on 1-2 February. There was an interesting discussion about the benefits and dangers of national agreements and how they combined with uneven organisation and local bargaining. Sharing information between reps in competitor companies is a vital step.

On the Thursday evening NISC members attended an event to mark the 30^th anniversary of the bitter News International Wapping dispute with Rupert Murdoch, backed by Thatcher, the police and the leadership of the EETPU. This included a showing of the film Banging Out about Fleet Street and the Wapping dispute. The event had been funded by six branches in the sector.

Louisa Bull, one of the officers covering GPM&IT in London & Eastern, gave a wide ranging report which included new recognition agreements at Ambitions Personnel Limited and Pearson Education Limited. The agreement with Ambitions is particularly significant because it is an employment agency. With the support of the Printing Charity there is now a facility in England and Wales for UNITE officers to refer individual redundant members in the GPM&IT sector to Renovo who can provide outplacement services (CV writing, interview skills etc). Officers will also be able to access support from Renovo for larger redundancies where the employer is unable to fund outplacement support itself. The equivalent arrangement for Scotland is via Pace. Louisa will be speaking on equality and diversity at the London Book Fayre. A new toolkit for GPM&IT reps is finished and is currently being printed. It will also be available to reps and branch officers in the sector via on the sector pages on the Unite web site.

Rick Graham from the research department reported on his work. This included a survey of GPM&IT reps on the use of agency labour which he will be analysing shortly.

Morag Livingstone updated the NISC on a documentary she is making about the Grangemouth, Post Office (2007-9) and Wapping disputes. It is called “Belonging: the truth behind the headlines” and a short clip is available on the film’s web site. It is a feature length (90 minute) documentary which a number of union branches and regions have already contributed to funding. If a further £45K can be raised it will be possible to make it available free on YouTube for a period as part of its promotion. Further financial contributions are needed and Morag is happy to travel to speak at meetings.

I gave a short report from the IT & Comms Advisory Committee which had met on Wednesday. It had a first look at a survey of reps gathering information about workplaces, employers and issues. More work is required to go through it in detail to produce specific proposals for organising targets and opportunities to re-use materials when campaigning on issues affecting many employers. Discussion also included the more systematic recruitment of in-house or outsourced IT workers within unionised GPM workplaces, as a pilot that could be extended into other sectors.

The NISC was entitled to submit one motion to Policy Conference. I proposed the following motion:

Trident Replacement This conference welcomes the desire by Jeremy Corbyn not to spend replace the Trident nuclear weapons of mass destruction system, and to spend the money on more socially useful priorities. Conference welcomes Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to setting up a Defence Diversification Agency (DDA) to ensure those whose jobs and communities currently rely on Trident have good, well paid jobs in future. We welcome the commitment of the Aerospace and Shipbuilding sector to engage with the DDA.The question of the UK’s nuclear weapons is not primarily about employment. It is first of all a moral issue, then a strategic one concerning the UK’s place in the world and the international environment we wish to see, then one about spending priorities. Such weapons would, if used, constitute a mortal threat to humanity’s survival; they are massively expensive; senior military figures have described them as ‘militarily useless’ and said that they should be scrapped; and our possession of them encourages other countries to seek a similar arsenal. Conference does not accept the argument that the only alternative to the priorities of right wing governments is unemployment for our members. The threat of job losses has been used to oppose everything from health and safety, decent wages and conditions, sanctions against apartheid South Africa, ending the slave trade, or bans on the sale of weapons or torture equipment to brutal dictatorships. The election of Jeremy Corbyn presents an opportunity to fight for different priorities and a better society. As a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the UK should give a lead in discharging its obligations by not replacing Trident. Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has estimated the cost of Trident replacement at £167 billion, based on official figures. Money saved by ending the UK’s nuclear arsenal could generate far more jobs and be used for decommissioning, to sustain the process of defence diversification, vital to our manufacturing future, as well as other socially-useful forms of public spending. Conference resolves: 1.            That UNITE will support and participate in the Defence Diversification Agency 2.            To campaign to ensure there are good, socially useful, jobs for our members who might be affected by not replacing Trident 3.            To continue to support all members, including those currently working in Trident-related jobs, and to fight for continuity of employment 4.            To campaign against Trident replacement and for an end to UK weapons of mass destruction 5.            To support the work of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Another motion won the vote for submission instead:

Workers Uniting Conference recognises that our global union with the United Steel Workers, Workers Uniting, has been in existence since 2008. In that time the benefits of two similar Unions working in similar industries and for global corporations, have proved to be extremely beneficial, notably in papermaking and packaging, steel, oil and chemicals, transport, glass and other important sectors. This Conference believes that Unite members should be aware of the work of Workers Uniting and the support given to members of both Unite and the USW by the partner Unions. Therefore Conference calls upon the Executive Council to include news items and reports on Workers Uniting on both the Unite website, Unitelive and in the Unite printed magazine in order that the global solidarity work carried out can be understood by members.

The next NISC meeting will consider the motions agreed at the sector conference and how to progress them.

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Motions to Unite Policy Conference 2016

Every Unite branch and constitutional committee has until 15th February to submit one motion on general policy for consideration at the Unite Policy Conference which will take place in Brighton on 11-15 July 2016.

The paperwork circulated is here:

• Letter inviting motions
• How to write a motion
• Form for submitting motions

For recent conferences the number of branches submitting motions has dwindled, so it would be good to see more this year.

If you're drafting a motion, don't forget to check Unite's existing policies. There's no point submitting a motion that just repeats existing policy - it should either change policy or make new policy. It can't change the Rules of the union - that's for Rules Conference.

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Civil Rights and the Trade Union Bill

I've written a piece on the Tories' new Trade Union Bill and opposition to it, which has been published here.

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Stop the power grab at Unite Rules Conference

Unite's leadership is engaged in an anti-democratic power grab and delegates need to be ready to put a stop to it.

Unite's Rules Conference starts on Monday and delegates have been sent a 160 page book of motions to change our rule book.  The sheer number of motions from our Executive Council (EC) is striking.  I understand that all or nearly all of these motions were not in fact proposed to the EC by its elected lay members, but rather by the full-time "executive officers" - of which Len McCluskey is the only elected member.

So far, so typically top-down.  But things get rapidly worse when you see the draft Standing Orders that the EC intends to propose to the Rules Conference.  There's a shiny new Standing Order 8.2 which we've never needed before.  It says:

"Should a Motion to amend the Rules submitted by the Executive Council be included in any grouping of Motions it shall be voted upon first and, if carried, all other Motions in that group shall fall. In any reply, the EC speaker shall speak at the conclusion of the debate." [my emphasis]

As the EC have submitted motions to loads of the groups, this means that unless conference rejects this Standing Order or votes down most of the EC's rules motions (most of which are harmless enough) then most of the motions from branches and constitutional committees will be tossed out without conference having the chance to vote on them.

It's worth being clear that this proposed new approach is far worse than the (bad enough) "Executive Statement" ruse that has become so popular for dodging contentious issues at Policy Conference.  In the past conferences still got the chance to vote on motions even if they passed an EC statement, unless the SOC and Chair decided that the subject matter of the motion was completely covered by the statement.  The old approach already gave the EC massive power over conference, as they can submit EC statements after seeing all the motions, where other bodies have to do it months in advance, and they get the last right of reply and the first vote.  The proposed new approach would give the EC the right to knock out motions which are unrelated to their own, as long as they are in the same grouping.

Rule 12.10 gives the EC the right to "draft the standing orders".  Delegates will be presented with a draft.  If they value their right to decide on motions for themselves rather than having them tossed out by the EC (which all too often means unelected executive officers), delegates should not accept the proposed standing orders without a change.  Better still, lobby your EC members to fix this before it is presented to conference.  Don't rely on any message to EC members sent via the General Secretary ever reaching them - you need to contact them directly.  Does our leadership really want to start conference by getting into a fight with delegates?

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Officer accountability

Executive Council (EC) members have now been sent a list of UNITE officers and which lay committees they are accountable to, in line with the new rule introduced at the 2011 Rules Conference, which gave the EC the power to:

14.8.5 Determine one or more constitutional committees of lay members to which
each officer employed by the Union shall report and be accountable and
ensure that the list of these allocation sis available to members.

I'll happily send the full list to UNITE members on request, but here are the ones for the IT & Comms sector Regional Industrial Sector Committees (RISCs):

1. East Midlands: Nigel Hadfield
2. Ireland: G Scott (Northern Ireland), D Mahon (Republic of Ireland)
3. London & Eastern: Mike Eatwell
4. North East, Yorkshire & Humberside: Christian Ratcliffe
5. North West: Phil Allman
6. Scotland: Gillian McKay
7. South East: Colin Rose
8. South West: C Starling
9. Wales: Bryan Apsley
10. West Midlands: R Storry

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Private Equity v Democracy

When most of us have such a low opinion of the vast majority of politicians, it's easy to lose sight of why democracy has always been a central plank of the labour movement agenda.

Before working people got the vote, parliament was simply a club for the rich and powerful to sort out their affairs - almost invariably at our expense.

Previous generations of working people fought to gain more power by both winning the vote. The rich and powerful sought to safeguard their interests by moving lots of decisions out of parliament, to prevent us getting our grubby hands on them.

The push for nationalisation in the early and mid 20th century was an attempt to counter this by bringing more of the economy under democratic control. However, in many cases the extent of democracy actually achieved in state-owned industries was extremely limited.

Since the 1980s the rich and powerful have been on the offensive, trying to roll back what limited democratic say we've had. Think about a few examples:

• Privatisation
• Stopping council house building in favour of property speculation
  
• "Independence" of the Bank of England (from democratic control)
• The World Trade Organisation (WTO) imposing rules which over-ride national laws, so that taking account of labour standards, health & safety or the environment in trade is banned
  
• The rise of QUANGOs
• Chopping up public services into "trusts", "foundations" etc
• Government accepting "commercial confidentiality" to stop voters knowing how our money is being spent with private companies

If the people we elect go along with declining influence over our lives, is it any wonder that voters take a decreasing interest in who is elected?

Another factor is the international nature of business undermining the national nature of democracy. For example, companies play governments off against each other for tax-breaks and grants.

The TUPE legistation has given us some limited protection when our jobs are bought and sold between different companies. But the "share purchase" method of takeover completely bypasses this protection. You can be working for company X, all its shares are bought by company Y, which may have a radical impact on your future, and you currently have no say at all.

This is becoming a bigger issue at the moment because of the rise of Private Equity companies. Not only do they buy business through share purchase, avoiding TUPE, but they are not publicly listed companies, so are even more secretive than your normal PLC.

In it's campaign to give working people more say over private equity, UNITE is focussing on the example of Telent (formerly Marconi, GEC etc) in our sector, which was bought by the Pensions Corporation. There's more information about the general issue on both the Amicus and TGWU web sites. Why we don't have the same information on both is a mystery to me!

If you're interested in the wider issues about democracy, there's a brilliant book by the late Paul Foot "The Vote - How It Was Won and How It Was Undermined".

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