Andrew Rawnsley argues in the Observer tomorrow that Ed Miliband can't retreat from his battle with the union bosses.
I'd point in response to the same paper's editorial for tomorrow's edition, just out on the web:
In 1978, the typical male US worker was making $48,000 (£30,700) a year (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, the average person in the top 1% was making $390,000. By 2010, the median wage was $33,000, but at the top it had risen to $1m. This level of unfairness, as Reich points out, is not just a threat to the economy but to democracy.
Reich points out that this imbalance, and unfairness, stems precisely from the point where anti-union legislation was enacted in the US.
Of course neoliberalism can beat the unions through the hegemony of thinking it has created in our major political parties. But if it does so let's be clear it will beat democracy at the same time.
I am a democrat.
I believe in our unions and proud to work with and for them on occasion.
I do not believe democracy has any hope of surviving without a strong union moment - which has a strong input into a political system where the voice of ordinary people challenges the voice of the power of capital - which none of our major political parties are doing at present.
So of course Labour can beat the unions. But we need to ask at what cost to it and to us all.
And we have to ask what outcome it is seeking - because right now it is hard to see any strategy in this policy. I just hope there is - simply because this is too important for opportunism to be the guiding principle, as looks all too possible.
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I genuinely don’t know what is to be done.
My understanding is that after the wars it was accepted that the completely unequal society wasn’t viable. Partly because, morally, it was understood that what was done after WW1 was unacceptable, where men who’d risked their lives over years of service, some being wounded or damaged, would come home & be made to stand in a queue for hours in the hope of a labouring job. More importantly, however, it was accepted that there was a v real risk of revolution at a time when Communist parties were enjoying electoral success throughout Europe.
Hence there was a general agreement to the Welfare State &, from 1946-1979 it was agreed. The only difference from Tory to Labour was tinkering… how much should be taken from the rich for the poor etc. Waugh fumed in ‘Brideshead revisited’.
That all changed with Thatcher & its remained changed. Partly, I think, because of the influence of the “economics nerds” who dominate a lot of discussion & really shouldn’t because they know nothing of life outside an Economics textbook. Their economics doesn’t see an efficiency in a transfer of wealth from rich to poor, morality can’t be built into an algorithm & hence must be ignored as irrelevant, the threat of revolution is dismissed as minimal. From their perspective, there is NO reason for the rich not to own everything & for the poor to return to their position at the beginning of the industrial revolution when a man made but 3 journeys: work to home, home to work, home to grave.
How can plutonomy be compatible with democracy? Nobody has an answer to this question and yet so many so-called ‘democrats’ embrace the former with all the enthusiasm in the world. It’s sickening.
Goodness knows what Ed M is doing or thinks he’s doing, but my view is the Tories laid a trap, and he didn’t just fall into it – he ran headlong into it!
Instead of turning round and attacking the way the Tories have taken Danegeld from some odious business magnates, and in return put them in the Lords in the Cabinet, and passed the legislation their tainted money purchased for them, in stark contrast to the democratic basis of the money from the Unions – all subject to Conference voting, and individual member choice – Ed blunders and blusters, dancing to the corrupt tune of Progress and the Blairites, who ALWAYS wanted to sever the link.
A Labour Party without the Unions isn’t Hamlet without the ghost – it’s Hamlet without either the ghost OR Hamlet – to quote another Shakespeare play “a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing”. Hamlet needs both Prince and ghost to drive forward the drama and meaning of the play. So it is with Labour and the Unions – an essential dramatic interplay, driving forward progress (usually in a different direction fron the neo-liberal Progress).
If Labour breaks the link, or even weakens it, that’s it for me. The middle class have NEVER acknowledged how much they owe to working class sacrifice, and especially to Unions e.g. all the employment rights currently being torn uo by the Tories. Is it any wonder that Trade Unionists featured so prominently in Pastor Niemoller’s famous “first they came for ….” list?
Neuter the Unions, and tyranny will follow – and how the new serfs will come blubbing then: “why didn’t anyone tell us?” “Because you refused to listen!”, will be the only reply.
Union leaders are clearly angry, and rightly so
The portrayal of unions, including now by Labour, is consistently wrong
At the very least they are the essential countervailing power needed to protect some very basic rights
At best they give those without the power capital provides and essential voice
Labour ignores them at risk of becoming the SDP
@ Richard M – And we ALL know what happened to the SDP: the main Party swallowed up into the Lickspittles (as one of your posters calls them), while the rump withered away until its candidate was beaten in one by-election by the Monster Raving Loony Party, leaving David Owen Leader of a Party with about 1 member!
And the final irony is that we now have a Monster Raving Loony Party Government – at least in terms of its grasp on rational thought. For Cameron’s administration is driven by prejudices and grudges and desire for revenge (hence the policy botches of eg Duncan Smith), with its sole rationality deriving from the logic of money. Not the market – no, that’s for us poor dopes = stripping out labour from privatised public services – but money for their chums.
They won’t leave THAT to the market – far too important: that will be driven through by diktat and gerrymandering, as we’re seeing in the wholesale dismantling of the NHS, which is being transformed into a massive tax farm for Tory business interests. WHEN will the British public wake up? And WHY is Milliband letting himself get tied up in this side-show about the Unions?
I wish I knew the answers to all that
Mr. M., another one I doubt you’ll print but maybe read so here goes…..
The issue is I think of the divide between public and private sector.
The TU I’m in is quite moderate but operates in the private sector – if we aren’t moderate and deal with management sensibly, then TU members and management are all up the road. We’ll all be out of a job – its as simple as that, we have to work to work together or we’re all sunk.
Compare that to some like Mark Serwotka – chief of a TU in the public sector – always demanding more money, more rights, more everything for all his members regardless of cost or impact on the rest of us – for example his members get way more in pensions than they ever get near paying for.
We in the private sector have to pay for that via higher taxes. Please can you explain to me why someone in the private sector should have to pay higher taxes for a ‘pen pushers’ really solid gold pension in the public sector when the same private sector worker – thanks to higher taxes and higher costs of living due to Green policies – can’t afford one of their own.
I say ‘solid gold’ not in terms of amounts – very nice amounts all the same – but the fact that such pensions are ultimately underwritten by HMG i.e us the taxpayers.
It’s people like MS that bring disrepute on the TUs and Len M. too – demanding ever more expensive deals for his members were apparently even the smallest change to numbers or working practices will cause the world to stop spinning.
You clearly do not understand tax or macroeconomics
And candidly I don’t have all day to answer points that are so riddled with basic errors that come down to prejudicial thinking
But let me make one point: the private sector does not pay for the public sector. It is quite likely the other way round
Surely, in this computer age, it would not be beyond the wit of man for unions to organise individual membership of the Labour party for their members on behalf of the party. Union members could (a) decline to pay a political levy, (b) pay a political levy but decline to join Labour, (c) request individual membership of Labour from their levy, or (d) request individual membership of Labour and mandate the union to exercise a proxy vote on their behalf.
There is still a problem that active members of other political parties, via the union movement, can have more influence than individual party members.
But you are right, that without a stronger union movement, the future for my grandchildren is bleak.
Labour ignores them at the risk of being bankrupt.
Perhaps Big Ed thinks individual members will transfer to being members of the Labour party instead of having their contribution paid to the party; Dream-on Ed.
Maybe the fool thinks that the Conservatives will view their bankrupcy and then give state funding ?
Truly, there is one born every minute.
My contribution to labour is voluntary, my union was forced to ask each member, by the tories, if that was to continue.
If you start attacking my union, you attack me.
This is what you get with silver-spoon politicians, their heads are firmly inserted into their own rectums.
In my opinion it all depends on what kind of Unions one has. If we are talking about
say the German model with constructive participation and board representation, then that seems the right direction. If we are talking about the destructive class warriors on the UK 1970’s model then I welcome the decline of Unions. The acid test for Unions is whether their members believe they act in the members best interests, and not say those of Union officers carrying their own personal or political agendas.
Stephen
Equally, will the unions be allowed constructive participation and boardroom representation? Aren’t some employers stuck with 1920s exploitive attitudes?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/workers-of-amazon-divergent.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I would imagine that most UK unions and union members envy their German counterparts.
Constructive participation ?
In the UK ?
The vast majority of companies are small companies, which are SO well known for union membership, and employee consultation: Not.
Being in a union, in a small company, is like wearing a bullseye on your back in an archery tournament.
Every country, even Germany, is trying to dump organised labour. Organised labour is expensive labour, compared to that in competitor countries. The attack on unions is incidental to the attack on wages.
Low wages, high hours, lower employment costs (removal of H&S requirements)……of course, some are protected via EU directives….but where there’s a will….
Even labour, led by Ed-onkey, can obviously see that….hence the “reform the link with unions” kamikaze policy.
Here’s a laugh: Eds advisors are doubtless paid by Conservative central office.
Even the Democrats in the US are getting up the unions noses:
http://freebeacon.com/labor-unions-turning-on-democrats/
Now if they could just arrange a low-wage-low-debt-high-productivity economy……but we can rest secure that in the UK they couldn’t arrange a high-alcohol-consumption-in-an-alcoholic-drinks-production-unit outing……