The strength of the union movement, historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote, cannot be fully understood by looking at the curves on a graph showing membership. Instead, there are “jumps”, “jumps” and “explosions” in the activity. For him, these unpredictable spikes and sudden surges are caused by “accumulations of flammable material that only periodically ignite, as if by compression.”
Britain is experiencing a moment of ignition at the moment. Welcome to what many have already dubbed the “hot summer strike.”
Clearly, what’s happening with our pay packages is a big part of the story. Allowing for inflation, wages will fall by £1,750 over the next two years. The only group of workers whose wages are rising in line with prices are those earning more than £170,000 a year.
But this is not all. For the first time since records began, a reduction in the labor force has meant that there are more job offers than unemployed people. Struggling to attract people to unfilled positions, some employers have tried to impose compulsory overtime on their current staff – this has been one of the contentious issues in the Caterpillar strike in Northern Ireland.
Then there is the pandemic. While it disrupted and rearranged our work patterns, Covid-19 was also laying the groundwork for an unexpected surge in worker self-reliance. Pandemic fights over fire and hiring tactics and reopening schools offered workers a chance to flex their muscles and build their collective confidence. The idea is a key point of leverage in many of the disputes we are seeing now: the Communications Workers Union action against Royal Mail and the BT Group, the RMT action against Network Rail or the number of actions of outsourced hospital cleaners and porters. of the “key worker”. Faced with excessive hours, pandemic work stress and rapidly eroding workplace conditions, those deemed “essential” were repeatedly told they deserved better. But as CWU deputy general secretary Terry Pullinger recently stated: “We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we bargain for.”
Industrial action is now at its highest level in five years, although the average over the past few decades is low in historical terms. RMT industrial action in June was the biggest on the rail network for more than 30 years. The CWU secured 97.6% of votes out of a 77% turnout in strike action against Royal Mail, making it the biggest mandate for strike action since the Act came into force union in 2016. In the 10 months since her election as Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham has overseen 63,000 Unite members entering into disputes. If workers are made to “pay the price of inflation”, he warned there could be hundreds more disputes.
Currently, industrial action is largely concentrated in the public sector. This is partly due to a discrepancy in average wage growth, which in the current year stands at 7.2% for the private sector and only 1.5% in the public sector. It is also due to an affiliation discrepancy: the most recent data shows that while 51.9% of public sector employees belonged to a union, only 12.9% of private sector employees did. But it has the effect of giving strikes an explicitly political dimension, since public sector pay is ultimately determined by elected representatives. Add to that the way the unions have been introducing analysis and ideas into the public discourse that the Labor party has largely shied away from – think of the calls for moderation in benefits to tackle inflation, rather than scrapping wages- and you can see why even relatively small ones. strike actions can have disproportionate influence.
But those who are excited about the current moment should be cautious. Where strike action exists in the private sector, it has not progressed much beyond previously nationalized industries, for example British Airways or the railways. And as feelings of injustice swell into feelings of militancy, it’s not clear that unions are up to the task of making them a reality. In June, when the RMT launched a defiant strike in response to Network Rail’s 2% pay rise, supermarket workers’ union Usdaw considered it a victory to have negotiated a 2% pay rise for Morrisons workers. When the pay deal, which one unionist called the “highest basic pay rate in the supermarket sector”, was put to a vote by Morrisons Usdaw members, they voted to reject it.
What we are facing now, in the words of American labor scholar Kim Moody, are “opportunities, not certainties.” While this year’s conflicts are impressive and significant, they are also defensive: the fight is largely to prevent conditions from worsening further, even if the rhetoric is more ambitious. The surprise arrival of workable economic circumstances (high inflation, tight labor markets and supply chain disruptions) can also bring the risk of complacency. There is much promise in the increased willingness to act from both the grassroots and the leaders, but circumstances, which can fluctuate, do not guarantee success.
As Hobsbawm pointed out, there is a difference between the accumulation of flammable materials and their ignition. But when workers see each other struggling, sparks can start to fly.
Polly Smythe is the labor movement correspondent for Novara Media