As the Guardian notes this morning:
The Labour party could lose as much as 90% of its annual income from the unions, the GMB general secretary, Paul Kenny, has said in the wake of Ed Miliband's reform plans.
Kenny said he will be balloting his union members in the autumn about whether they should retain an affiliation to the party, or to see if they individually wanted to affiliate. He said he would be lucky if more than 10% of his membership said they wanted to be affiliated to the party individually.
As a result, the union's annual donation to the party could cut from around £1.5m a year to less than £200,000. Kenny said "the consequences of this are very far-reaching."
I don't know if this is scare-mongering, or not. The rules are not clear yet. Some suggest the changes leave the unions with more funding over which they have discretion: I do not think anyone knows the answer to that yet.
But what dopes seem clear is that resolution to this issue has a massive impact on Labour's capacity to spend. Three questions follow. The first is can it survive without that money? It's been presumed not - but does anyone know, for sure? Second, will this change the whole political system? I suspect not because whilst Tory funding is much more abusive opaque and therefore corrosive than most Labour arrangements I can't see them giving up naked competitive advantage at present. Third, and intriguingly, what do the unions then do with the money? What if they funded alternatives? What then?
There are no doubt more questions. And even more answers.
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While national politics is shaking itself to pieces, isn’t now the time to be encouraging the development and use of local currencies and food supplies? We should all be going into survival mode as increasingly it looks like help from central government won’t be forthcoming.
I’m confused. I was heartened yesterday when I read the statement on the Unite website http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/uniteandthepoliticallevy/). I translate this to mean that the ‘opt-in’ which is being discussed here requires legislation (and may never happen). The ‘opt in’ which McCluskey agrees is to do with Labour Party access to those who have not ‘opted out’ of the political levy.
The Labour Party have nothing to say about housing, a liveable wage, and the loss of benefits; as far as I can see they are entirely in agreement with the Conservative Party and will continue these policies if elected to power.
Liveable wages are a concern for some unions, but not all. Likewise, the damaging effect of coerced labour, supplied free-of-charge by the government’s Workfare schemes to unscrupulous and exploitative employers – and Workfare was brought in by the last Labour government, its official Labour Party policy, and the Front Bench are fully engaged in the media campaigns to promote it.
I’ve heard more from back-bench Labour MPs about the erosion of employment rights – that’s a major issue for all trade unions – but very little from the front bench; and there’s nothing resembling an opposing policy or a campaign.
Bluntly, I think that the party’s leadership can get more donations in from employers who want to reintroduce dismissal ‘at will’ and abolish the HSE, than they’ll lose in financial support from unions who want us all to keep those rights and protections.
I choose to say nothing of lucrative directorships and holidays on yachts, other than to say that the unions need to move with the times if they are to be a force for workers’ rights in Parliamentary politics.
Meanwhile, the swing voters who matter are the suburban middle classes; and they are saturated in effective anti-union propaganda; and they have no media source on employment rights – they have no idea and no interest in knowing why they, too, might have as much of a stake in the matter as the stereotypical union memberhip of factory workers train drivers and council employees.
Wake me from my slumbering engagement with party politics when you hear about the Labour Party or the unions making an *effective* campaign about that middle-class disinterest.