Skip to main content

Voices Of Scotland Rebuilding class politics

The STUC and unions are building and renewing the trade union movement – but many challenges lie ahead, says GRAHAME SMITH

TOMORROW, the STUC general council will hold its annual post-congress strategy discussion and will determine its priorities for the period ahead. 

It will do so in the context of the current political, economic and industrial relations climate while reflecting on what it has achieved in recent years. 

The context in which unions are working is increasingly challenging. 

The impacts of the financial crisis in 2008, the subsequent great recession and a decade of austerity are still being felt in both economic and political terms. 

The crash has cast a very long shadow. Growth is slow and productivity rates low. While headline labour market indicators have been relatively positive, wages have stagnated and precarious and insecure work has increased. 

Poverty and inequality are rising. Child poverty is now set to hit 29 per cent in Scotland and 37 per cent across the UK by 2023. 

The majority of children in poverty have at least one adult in work and in many cases parents are working all the hours expected of them by the social security system. 

The introduction of universal credit and other welfare reforms are placing particular pressure on low-income households, whose incomes have fallen in real terms over the past year. 

However, at the same time, the incomes of households in the top 10 per cent have risen more quickly.

As a result, last year saw a marked return to growing inequality across Britain.

The consequences of the economic crash are now being felt politically. The rise of far-right populism across the developed world is an indicator of the distrust many people have in economic and political institutions and the way they have failed them. 

This is not just the product of the most recent financial crisis and its aftermath, but of four decades of deindustrialisation and free market, neo-liberal economic policy.

Despite the recent European Parliament election results, a significant electoral breakthrough for the far right still looks unlikely in the immediate future, particularly in Scotland.

However, the wider impact is toxic and divisive and there is no place for complacency. 

The far right’s influence on the Conservative Party has been increasing incrementally. It has forced the resignation of the Prime Minister and its new leader and Britain’s new prime minister will almost certainly be someone who is of the far right or will be beholden to it. 

Despite the view expressed by the Westminster Parliament, the likelihood a “no-deal” Brexit has increased markedly, as the remaining Tory leadership candidates court a party membership petrified by the spectre of the Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. 

Across Britain, the breakdown of the two-party system has been under way for some time as people have sought an alternative to the prevailing “political oligarchy” and the rise of constitutional or identity-based politics has gained pace.

There have been minority or coalition governments in power in Westminster in all but two years since 2010. 

Brexit and Scotland’s constitutional relationship with the rest of the UK has dominated the political agenda for the past 30 years and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

However the UK leaves the EU — and it’s not yet certain that it will — negotiations around a future trade agreement with the EU and with other countries will take years to resolve. 

Debates on greater powers for the Scottish Parliament will continue, particularly in light of the First Minister’s recent announcement on “Brexit and Scotland’s Future” and the Scottish government’s intention to instigate all-party discussions on enhanced powers for the Scottish Parliament and the creation of a citizen’s assembly.  

Working-class voters in Scotland hold a variety of constitutional perspectives and a number of recent elections have been fought along constitutional lines. 

While there appears to be growing cynicism with the established political system, there has been, in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain, a renewed political activism, particularly among the young, on issues like climate change, fair rents and housing, transport and precarious work, all of which have specific equality dimensions. 

While unions, particularly at branch level and through the likes of Unite’s community organising approach, are involved in activism on these issues, campaigns are often led by those who have little natural affinity to trade unions or often to a working-class identity. 

That is not to say that they are anti-union or that they are not of the working class. It is to say that they don’t identify as such. 

As a result, their analysis of the challenges they and their communities face in their everyday lives, including at the workplace, or the solutions appropriate to these challenges, are not shaped by the same appreciation that active trade unionists have of the nature of the capitalist society in which we live and work. 

Arguably, this is the crux of the challenge face by the STUC and unions in building and renew the trade union movement.     

Perhaps the critical question that needs to be answered and that our general council will be exploring is how does the STUC and unions rebuild their traditional strength by coalescing around a shared vision for the future shaped by a perspective drawn from class-based experience? In other words, how do we rebuild class politics?   

There is undoubtedly an urgent need for change in how our economy and society is shaped and how wealth and power is distributed. 

We know that the need for trade unions has been greater. We also know that our values and key demands are widely supported in working-class communities, something confirmed by recent TUC research.

The trade union brand is still trusted by many, but for others it is seen as negative or old-fashioned and for an increasing number of workers it is simply unknown. 

Union membership is concentrated in professional and semi-professional occupations. The trade union movement is increasingly a movement for the low-paid and dispossessed but not a movement of the low-paid and the dispossessed.

Unionised sectors or unionised workplaces within sectors are under pressure, while jobs grow in non-unionised areas, often with lower-quality work and lower wages.   

Increasing labour market insecurity, the growth in atypical contacts and the prevalence of low-wage work create organising challenges that are difficult for unions to overcome.

Automation is changing the nature of work with the potential to affect all sectors and jobs both positively and negatively.

While the impact of Brexit is still unknown, the evidence suggests that certain sectors where unions are organised will face real difficulties, including manufacturing, the NHS, transport and logistics.   

The leverage unions hold over the decisions of multinational companies or in constitutional or trade deals where negotiations are held in private, is limited, yet this is what will drive the future shape and structure of the economy.

Demographic pressures within unions continue to increase and the long-term trend is reducing union density and falling collective bargaining coverage.

Austerity and the Trade Union Act have squeezed union resources and reduced facility time for activists. 

None of this is new. These are trends we have been aware of and seeking responses to for some time.  

In recent years our general council has placed a particular focus on the dual approach of supporting union organising while pursuing political influencing strategies and ensuring that the perspective of workers is heard in the wider political debate.  

This approach has achieved some successes and gives the general council a strong foundation on which to build future activity.

However, if unions are to be relevant to workers in addressing a range of disruptive factors, Brexit; automation; climate change; the rise of the populist far right, etc, if membership is to grow and bargaining coverage increase, collectively, the trade union movement needs to present a renewed vision and offer for workers that addresses these disrupters. 

This must sit alongside enhanced union capacity to recruit and organise and campaign, in a sympathetic policy environment. 

There are opportunities for that to be done in Scotland. Without overstating the point, the fact that, in Scotland, a more enlightened and progressive approach is being taken than is arguably the case at Westminster in a number of important areas: migration; taxation; climate change; equality; inclusive growth; fair work; to name but a few, is, in some respects a consequence of the willingness of government, minsters and officials to respond positively to the perspective that the trade union movement has to offer on economic and social issues. 

The trade union movement has exerted considerable influence on the public policy debate in Scotland and in shaping the political and economic environment. 

Unions are recognised as legitimate and valued social partners. There exists a relatively sympathetic policy environment. Government listens and responds to the STUC and unions more often than not in a positive way. 

There are many examples of the influence that has been exerted through the extensive political engagement arrangements the STUC has established. 

However, that influence relies first and foremost on the organisation and representation of workers in workplaces.  

The Fair Work agenda that the general council has been responsible for shaping offers an opportunity for unions to build, but needs to be resourced at a workplace level and needs sustained political pressure at a national level to optimise the potential benefits it offers.

There is a compelling need to continue to emphasise that union recognition and collective bargaining, the effective voice dimension of the Fair Work Framework, is key to delivering fair work. 

Government and its agencies may say they are committed to fair work, as will employers in order to secure government funding or contracts. 

However, without full union involvement, fair work will be defined in their terms and the priorities for action will be theirs and not those of unions and workers.

While progress has been made and the general council has developed a capability and a record of delivery in supporting union organising and individual union campaigns, it is not gone far enough nor has it been fast enough. 

While there are opportunities and foundations to build on, there is no room for complacency. The challenges faced by unions and workers are too great for that. 

Grahame Smith is general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today