Time to defy anti-union laws

The High Court ruling against the planned British Airways cabin crew strike is not simply the outcome of a clearly partisan decision by Mr Justice McCombe. It is also the result of more than two decades of fearful inaction on the part of the trade union leaders.

Strike action did not become illegal only with yesterday’s ruling that a ballot of BA cabin crew was invalid because of failure to notify members about 13 spoiled ballot papers in an 81% vote in favour of action. For the abolition of the right to strike you have to go back to a series of anti-union laws passed by the 1979-1997 Tory government.

The law that was cited by the judge to block 20 days of planned strike action in defence of jobs and against victimisation was actually passed in 1992. And the union leaders have done nothing to challenge this or any other aspect of the anti-union legislation ever since. This is especially the case in relation to laws banning solidarity action as well as the requirement to hold a postal ballot.

As a result, strikes have often been ineffective and isolated with the union bureaucracy running scared of massive compensation claims by the employers. As it is, the Unite union could still face a £250,000 bill for strikes against BA in March as a result of yesterday’s judgement.

We mustn’t forget the legacy of the last 13 years of New Labour government either. Tony Blair once boasted that the laws restricting strike action were the toughest in Europe. So they were and that’s how they remained until Brown left Downing Street last week. And yet union leaders, especially Unite’s, continued to send the cheques through even though campaigns for the repeal of Tory anti-union laws fell on deaf ears.

There were, naturally, lots of fine words from the joint general secretaries of Unite, Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson outside the High Court. They said: "This judgment is an absolute disgrace and will rank as a landmark attack on free trade unionism and the right to take industrial action. Its implication is that it is now all but impossible to take legally protected strike action against any employer who wishes to seek an injunction on even the most trivial grounds."

Leaving aside the concessions Unite has offered BA in terms of reducing its wages bill and accepting a two-tier workforce, this statement would mean something more if it were a call to action to ignore a law that clearly denies cabin crew their human rights. Instead, Unite is relying on the Court of Appeal to find in their favour.

Even if the appeal is won, the employers will be back time and time again to frustrate workers (this is the second time BA alone has won in the courts). The technicalities of the postal ballot were largely ignored for a long period. But the recession has brought the employers out of the woodwork. Just before Christmas, the RMT rail union was prevented from going ahead with strikes over jobs.

After the BA ruling, Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said: "We warned after the [Easter] judgment that it bent the anti-trade union laws even further in favour of the employers and so it has proved. There is no doubt that this new Con-Dem government wants to effectively outlaw strikes in publicly used services before they swing the axe at our hospitals, schools and fire stations, and the courts are the battering ram to make that happen."

The trade unions were built in the face of laws that banned combinations, sent workers to prison, deported them to Australia and victimised activists. Protecting the funds of the unions such as they were was of secondary concern. Crow is right about what’s to come as the massive cuts programme bites. Workers cannot resist with one hand tied behind their backs by laws that prevent effective action. It’s time for union leaders to put up or shut up, to defy the anti-union laws or go meekly to the slaughter.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The stakes couldn't be higher

The stakes are being raised in the confrontation between BA management and cabin crew members of Unite who are fighting to protect jobs and conditions. Coming a quarter of a century after the end of the biggest confrontation between unions and the state when the miners fought pit closures in a struggle lasting a year, the company’s reaction to the strike means it is more than just another industrial dispute.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh has overt and covert backing from the state in the form of New Labour and all the major political parties as well as every single major media outlet that endlessly highlight the predicament of stranded passengers. Newspapers like the Daily Star and the Evening Standard spend large sums to dish up the dirt on union leaders like Derek Simpson and Bob Crow.

The cabin crew strike is, therefore, a crucial test case. From the employer’s and government’s point of view, any resurgent trade unionism must be nipped in the bud. That is why there is similar hostility to the plan by members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union to stage the first national strike for 16 years to block the loss of 1,500 jobs.

A few days ago, the BBC hosted a discussion on its “Moral Maze” programme in which it was said that the right to strike should not exist. This was supported by former Tory MP Michael Portillo. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated a similar view pontificating that “we cannot tolerate large-scale industrial disputes in this country, particularly at this time as the economy comes out of recession.”

While BA claims that the strike is costing the company £7 million per day, financial analysts in the City have estimated a daily loss of £15 to £20 million. Calling on BA to negotiate a “sensible” agreement, Unite estimates that seven days of strike will cost the company over £100m. When a company is prepared to sustain losses on this scale, Unite is right to say that BA “has embarked on an ambitious and expensive attempt to destroy trade unionism among its cabin crew”. But Unite leaders are failing to draw the key lessons from history and are pussy-footing around. We have been here before.

At “Digging the Seam”, a three-day conference held the University of Leeds last week, participants reflected on the consequences and legacy of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. The outcome of that year-long confrontation was that members of one of Britain’s most powerful unions, the National Union of Mineworkers were compelled to return to work. Thousands of its members ended up in jail and thousands more sustained injuries due to police violence. Within a decade the NUM was reduced to a shadow of its former self by the destruction of the coal industry. Pit village communities continue to suffer devastation.

Just as then, the struggle being conducted by BA cabin crew and rail workers is more than just an industrial dispute. It is over rights to have a job and provide a service to their fellow human beings under terms which are not dictated by a management motivated solely by shareholder returns.

The history of a single union taking on a ruthless employer under conditions of economic and political crisis is highly relevant in today’s situation. Even more now than then, no single group of trade unionists in today’s globalised world and with a far smaller trade union movement, can take on and defeat a state-backed company.

These confrontations come as Alistair Darling admits that New Labour is preparing public spending cuts which will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s. Treasury cuts will add up to a staggering 25% of departmental budgets and will last until 2017, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It warns that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain”. The employers and the state have launched a war on several fronts. And Unite is funding New Labour’s attempt at re-election!

An increasing danger is that with the present bunch of union leaders patently incapable of learning from history and organising a co-ordinated resistance that defies laws banning solidarity strikes, groups of workers will be picked off one by one. Firm, decisive, bold leadership is key to the outcome of these struggles. At this point in time, its absence in the trade union and working class movement is there for all to see.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Don't let BA cabin crew fight alone

As New Labour ministers lined up with the right-wing press over the weekend to condemn the strike by British Airways cabin crew, you had to ask yourself what had the national leaders of the Unite trade union done to prepare for a confrontation that the company had clearly planned for some time. The answer is not very much.

While BA management implemented a systematic policy of bullying and harassment – suspending or disciplining 38 crew members, nearly half of them union reps – Unite joint leaders Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley were shocked by the turn of events. So much so that at a recent Unite national committee, they apparently turned on Len McCluskey, the assistant general secretary who was then in charge of the dispute.

Under marching orders from Gordon Brown to get the dispute settled, Woodley took over the talks and tried to broker a deal based on offering up more than £60 million in “savings” at the expense of the workforce. Finally, the penny dropped. Woodley announced that BA chief executive Willie Walsh was leading a war against Unite with the intention of undermining the union within the airlne.

Writing to striking cabin crew – who have defied vilification and slander to sustain their three-day strike against job and pay cuts – Woodley said: “I pledge that your union Unite is putting all its resources and strength into supporting your dispute and securing a decent agreement.”

If that were truly the case, then the cabin crew would not be left to fight alone. For it is clear that the strike-breaking operation mounted by BA can only be countered by solidarity action by other Unite members working for the airline. The future of the whole union is at stake and that is what the membership needs to be told.

That would require the union to defy the anti-union laws that ban solidarity action, legislation that was introduced by the Tories in the 1980s and retained by the present government. Cabin crew should demand that Unite’s leaders stop pussy-footing around and get serious if the union is to have a future.

It will be an uphill battle. Unite has given £11 million to keep New Labour afloat and is diverting huge resources in a bid to get Brown back into Downing Street. This is the same Brown whose foreign secretary David Miliband said yesterday: "We deplore the strike...the way to resolve these disputes is through negotiation. It's damaging for the company, it's damaging obviously for the crews and it's damaging for the country." From a strictly business point of view, you could say that Unite’s return on investment in New Labour is well below the bottom line.

BA’s problems are just one indication of the way the economic and financial system is taking its toll. The market for all sorts of goods and services, including flights, has plummeted in the recession. Capitalism has but one answer – cut wages, shed jobs and destroy capacity. And what does this do? It deepens the crisis and makes a full-blown recession a certainty. That’s how mad and bad this system is.

The assault on BA cabin crew is part of a general offensive by the employers – public as well as private – to destroy hard-won conditions like pensions and decent wages. Network Rail is doing the same to signal workers and the universities are planning large-scale sackings. And this is before the savage cuts in public spending that will follow the general election, whoever comes out on top.

Resistance to paying for the crisis is clearly building up. We urgently need a strategy that turns defensive action into an offensive that highlights the capitalist economic and political system itself as the problem. A good first step would be to “hang on to your vote” at the election and take part in building People’s Assemblies throughout the country.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

New Labour lines up with BA

There’s nothing like a looming national strike to bring out the true class credentials of the political parties, together with the baying hound-dogs of the media. The democratically-agreed industrial action by 12,000 BA’s cabin crew workers in defence of their jobs, pay and conditions is certainly having this effect.

Leaders of all the major parties are only too anxious to condemn BA workers. Leading the pack are New Labour’s Lord Mandelson and transport secretary Lord Adonis (NB: There are no elections to the Lords). Adonis said yesterday: “I absolutely deplore the strike… it’s totally unjustified.” Today Gordon Brown declared: “It's not in the company's interest, it's not in the workers' interest and it's certainly not in the national interest."

Never mind the fact that cabin crew staff have now voted twice for strike action with overwhelming majorities. In the latest ballot nearly 79% of the membership voted 80.7% for action. New Labour, you will recall, was elected with the support of 25% of all registered voters at the last election. As for turnout, the BA ballot is far higher than anything you can expect in the upcoming general election.

And the notion peddled by the Tories that New Labour is “soft on the unions” is complete and utter hokum – and they know it. It is a fact that Britain’s biggest trade union, Unite, has paid a total of £11 million into the Blair and Brown’s coffers since 2007. It is the biggest single donor to New Labour. Without this support, New Labour would be unable to survive. The £11 million has brought Unite nothing in return.

Rather than making New Labour more pliable towards the interests of trade union members, the opposite is true. The rights of trade unions are perhaps even more restrictive than they were under the Tories. Secondary strikes and effective picketing remain illegal because this government retained all the anti-union laws introduced by Thatcher. Union leaders, with a few honourable exceptions, have fallen over backwards to comply with New Labour and its capitalist policies such as bailing out the banks.

Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, who is paid £735,000 a year, is determined to sack up to 2,000 staff and undermine the union Unite. The company has been running courses for strike breakers ever since the union’s first ballot showed a huge majority in favour of strike action. Walsh plans to use a 1,000-strong force of strike breakers to keep a skeleton service running and to defeat the strike.

Instead of getting ready to mobilise its membership at Heathrow and other airports against this threat, Unite leaders Len McCluskey and Tony Woodley have expressed shock at Adonis’ outright support for BA management. But this is a false naiveté. The real danger for BA cabin crew is that Unite leaders and the Trades Union Congress will quickly buckle under pressure and impose some rotten deal on their members. In any case, McCluskey and company certainly have no intention of defying the anti-union laws, which would be necessary to defeat BA’s strike-breaking actions with solidarity strikes.

British Airways, like the economy as a whole, in a major crisis. Walsh knows what is at stake. He needs to enfeeble the trade unions to save the airline for shareholder returns. Pretending that New Labour will broker a favourable compromise deal because it faces an election is living in a dangerous cloud cuckoo land. Precisely because of the election, Brown, Adonis and Mandelson will take the hard line. The future of a private corporation like BA is more important to them than the jobs and pay of the workforce.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Unite leaders scared of anti-union laws

British Airways cabin crew should not only be angry at the partisan decision of the courts to declare their planned strike illegal – they should also direct their rage at the way the leaders of the Unite union have conducted themselves.

Unite’s leaders spent months in negotiations with BA management only to stand by when contractual changes were suddenly introduced without agreement. BA then went ahead and reduced crew numbers on flights and imposed a pay freeze while new entrants begin on far worse conditions.

Any self-respecting union leadership would have called the 12,700 cabin crew out on strike there and then in response to BA’s provocation. But oh no, Unite’s leaders dillied and dallied out of sheer fear, not just at what BA’s response might be but at the consequences of defying the anti-trade union laws.

These laws, introduced by the Tories in the early 1990s, make it illegal to have a strike without a ballot. This is not aimed at enhancing democracy but at defusing workers’ anger while weeks are spent on an expensive ballot operation in place of the traditional show of hands at a mass meeting.

Even then, Unite’s officials couldn’t get it right. They opened the door to a BA challenge by balloting a small group of cabin crew who had taken voluntary redundancy. Of course, the 92% vote in favour of a strike on an 80% turnout easily outweighed those balloted in error. But with the media engaged in a ferocious witch-hunt, Mrs Justice Cox ruled that the ballot did not conform to the 1992 Trade Union Act.

As an official from Bassa, the branch of Unite that covers the cabin crew, is reported to have said: “"The decision questions your faith in the whole system. It makes you wonder if you have the right to strike any more.”

Precisely. The right to strike has long since disappeared in Britain and the union leadership has, by and large, gone along with this. After yesterday’s court ruling, the leaders of Unite declared it “a bad day for democracy”. Well, if they are so concerned about democracy, why didn’t just they simply defy the court and go ahead with the strike instead or planning another ballot? If they had done that, it would have been a blow for democracy against undemocratic laws.

At one time, union leaders were bold enough to defy the state and fight for their members. In 1972, the predecessors of Unite in the Transport and General Workers Union ignored anti-union laws brought in by the Heath Tory government. As a result, five dockers were jailed for contempt of court. This sparked moves towards a one-day General Strike and the ruling class quickly found a legal loophole to free the dockers within days. Within a few years, the unions compelled a Labour government to abolish the anti-union laws.

How things have changed! New Labour has retained virtually all the anti-union legislation passed by Thatcher. Former prime minister Tony Blair congratulated himself for declaring that Britain had the most draconian anti-union laws in Europe. And the union leaders have done nothing in 12 years of New Labour to change the position. Yet rank and file trade unionists like those who staged “unofficial” walkouts at the Lindsey oil refinery have demonstrated that the anti-union laws quickly disintegrate in the face of mass defiance.

The moral of this tale is that in order to defend jobs, wages and conditions in the midst of a capitalist slump, serious, dedicated, principled leaders, who are not frightened of the state, are absolutely essential. Hot air and bluster are well past their use-by date.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor