The WSM and Anarchism: A Political Analysis – Thinking about the unions… August 21, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
A lot of the piece by James O’Brien on the WSM has resonated with me. And I hope to consider parts of the document over the next few weeks. Here to start off is a provocative, but I think accurate, point about unions. It’s really remarkable – though understandable – how central unions are to political practice on the left in this state. How could they not, one could ask, given that they seem to represent the largest bodies of organised labour in the state. And yet for those of us with more than a passing acquaintance with them there often seems to be more political weight, both in terms of meaning and expectation, loaded upon their broad but not particularly strong shoulders than the reality would suggest is possible.
We felt that criticising the union leadership or putting up posters calling for a general strike, which had been the pattern of our organisational intervention in the trade unions was pointless in and of itself. Radicalism only becomes meaningful if it reflects a real-world tendency beyond the rarefied numbers of the libertarian left. Following Alan MacSimoin, we certainly didn’t think that the union base was radical nor that the union leadership were selling them out. A union leadership reflects, in a general way, the opinions of the base, most of whom are, after all, voters for right-wing political parties. If anything, the leadership is substantially to the left of the base and if by some miracle they adopted Anarchist policies they would soon find themselves out of a job. While criticism of the leadership is fair enough, it’s very much a secondary consideration to influencing that base.
There are three or four thoughts in there that bear repeated consideration.
Firstly the idea that unions reflect their members – however imprecisely. This is central. In my own experience of organising a union in the private sector it was clear to me that the mountain of struggle necessary to unionise in the first place and to ensure that membership remained members was as nothing compared to the Everest that making a subsequent political linkage whether on class or party political grounds. The idea that union members would once union members become an homogenous and united body of people who could be channeled towards – say, SF or the SP or the WP, was simply inconceivable. There were lots of reasons for this, primarily because the local and immediate causes that impelled people however slowly towards union membership (and it took years in some cases) were simply not linked in their mind with broader societal concerns or potential solutions to those concerns. In other words resolving the situation they faced as regards pay and conditions was in and of itself sufficient and continued membership was predicated on it being in some sense a form of ‘insurance’ thereafter. A few months ago I met up with some of those I’d worked with in the early 2000s for a quiet pint and it was striking how – for example – attitudes to the CAHWT varied widely even amongst those of us who had been union activists. Some were strongly against the campaign and took the orthodox line. Others, one in particular was in favour in large part because he was retired and dependent upon the state pension. Which also points to another aspect of this, that some will be radicalised by their experience. Others not so much. I had no evidence that broader positions on politics had been shifted by union activity and membership though one important caveat, the attitude to unions themselves had softened, at least in terms of the concept though there was some derision as to the support the individual union full timers had given us. I don’t want to suggest for a moment that my experience reflects the totality of unions. But it is an example culled from the private sector where the majority of workers in this state work. My experience of unions in the public sector is somewhat different. On a rhetorical level their position seems better. More organised, deeper roots and so on. But in functional terms I’m not so sure. Again having been involved in activities and some activism my sense has been of members whose interests are broadly immediate.
Secondly, the idea that leaderships are substantially to the left. Substantially is a strong word but… even in the near Blairite orthodoxy that passes for some union leaderships and I’ve seen and heard a fair few of them in the past while it is true that they stand some paces leftwards of the bulk of their memberships. Obviously not in all unions – local conditions will be a determining factor too, but in many and I suspect in most. Accepting that FF supporters in the union structure existed in some numbers it is a curious but also telling thought that they too would broadly speaking be more left wing than their memberships.
Thirdly there’s more than a lot in what he writes about if by some miracle a union adopted Anarchist policies they would be out of a job. The same goes for much of what we would consider left or further left policies. It’s not, again, that individual unions in specific circumstances won’t be able to do so. Radicalisation is an interesting process, but it’s not unreasonable to suggest that it often works best in constrained environments, constrained both in numeric and other terms, so a smaller workforce may – stress on may – be radicalised to a greater degree than a larger one. And as he says while criticising a leadership is fair enough – it’s important not to forget the primary aim of influencing a base.
Fourthly there’s the question as to how to deal with this. His thoughts on general strikes are sensible. I’ve noted before about the thinness of the ‘general strike’ line. Even the most minimal general strike will not get anything near a majority of workers in the state. And the supposed exemplary effect of – say – a public sector led general strike, an experiment that given the morale of workers in that sector after five years of constant attack from the orthodoxy is not something I’d be tempted to try, is probably overstated even before the starker divisions between private and public that the media and political parties sought to play up. There’s also the Greek example which suggests that significant enough general strikes have less impact than might be expected.
There’s also the ever present issue of the dangers of making demands that reflect badly on those making them, or point up weakness rather than aid building strength.
None of this is to argue that unions aren’t a primary focus of engagement. They’re vital both as areas of activity and as importantly as bulwarks against neo-liberalism (indeed there’s an whole different post to be written on that function and why it demands that leftists engage with them). But it reminds me of activities in communities. The specific issues almost invariably assume a much greater prominence than broader societal concerns. I can guarantee you that if it were a question of cracks in houses on the road where I live from passing traffic it would be possible to get white line protests successive nights in a row for weeks. But linking that to how people vote? Shaping their perception of the world? Much much more difficult.
Any positive effects take years to manifest themselves and even then are far from inevitable. Otherwise we would see the ULA and other anti-CAHWT forces jump in terms of electoral support in the past year, and yet all the signs are that that hasn’t happened to any great extent. We have to take forces as they are and try to change them and that takes enormous amounts of energy and time. On another point that is worth considering again it is notable that he speaks in terms of fifteen year plans. That’s a long long time in personal terms – if we started today I’d be just past sixty one. But in political and economic terms it’s nothing. But it seems to me that sort of long term thinking and approach is absolutely necessary to produce the sort of outcomes we all want to see. All the above should be taken as just working around the topic. What though do others think?
working seven days a week right now and have to get to work early today for a health department inspection, but will most definitely take some time tonight to sit down and write a proper response.
“On another point that is worth considering again it is notable that he speaks in terms of fifteen year plans. That’s a long long time in personal terms – if we started today I’d be just past sixty one. But in political and economic terms it’s nothing. But it seems to me that sort of long term thinking and approach is absolutely necessary to produce the sort of outcomes we all want to see.”
I think this was one of the primary divisions in the WSM. There were those who thought revolution could be just around the corner (Andrew et al) and those who thought that it was unlikely we were anywhere near a revolutionary situation and had to be preparing for the long haul (Alan et al). By default, the revolutionists seemed to win a fair number of the votes on the grounds that it was ridiculous to assume you can predict these things.
I think the onus should be on those who see immediate revolution as on the cards for a number of reasons. First, the western democracies haven’t had any revolutions in yonks, I don’t see why they should start having them in the immediate future.
Secondly, even if it were true that it was just around the corner, what kind of impact can you have in a couple of years? You’d basically get a revolution driven with the general ideas that are already out there in the majority of the population – nationalism, liberalism various strains of populism etc. Socialists are not in much of a position to really get much influence in Ireland at the moment – the anarchists fraction still less so.
If, by contrast, you look at Russia 1917 or Spain 1936 you have a very long and slow arc building up a socialist ideas. They may have spread rapidly during the revolutionary upturn, but it spread from an extremely significant base – not a few hundred socialists.
15 years may seem like a long time, but as you say, in political/economic terms it’s not really a very long time. If we can’t build movements that can think on these sorts of time scales I fear we’ll always be chasing the latest thing to no avail.
Interesting article. It struck a chord with me as it was these kinds of arguments that were important in the “Discussion Group” (for those that know of that tiny UK Trotskysist grouplet in the 70s-80s) which came out of the International Socialist Group (now SWP). The arugument was taht we were in for probably a long haul. Also, that slagging off Labour and TU leaders as “selling out” assumed that the members were frustrated revolutionaries when in fact they were very largely not, rather thet shared the ideology of their leadership. So you had to grapple with that ideology and challenge it. Crying “sell out” is a bit of a cop out in a way.
Of course, in some individual TU struggles workers may well see their leaders as “sell outs”. Disenchantment with the leaders doesn’t always lead to radicalisation though. Some might just become disillusioned with the TU and Labour movement generally and become apathetic, even hostile.
Hmm an important correction to this presentation that I think revolution is just around the corner.
That is not my actual argument at all. Rather it is that revolution is not a particularly predictable thing in the medium to long term and the mass upsurges that we have seen in western and other societies in modern times have in fact arisen very, very quickly and were not forseen for years never mind decades in advance. The risings of 2011 were not even seen as possible by many in 2012. So I’ve tended to argue that revolutionary organisations should prepare for very sudden rapid shifts in the pace of struggle (which was in fact which happened in 2009, but only from a non-existent base to the low one of the public sector strike) and that long term preparation while necessary is important at the level of developing a mass voice that will give considerably more reach when those moments arise.
The position I tended to find myself arguing against was one of ‘there won’t be a revolution in our lifetime so there isn’t very much we can do now except keep the flame alive’. And the developing position of this text that is understated but appears to be that through clever methods we can slowly build towards revolution without objective circumstances being massively relevant. (At least in terms of the arguments advanced in 2010 – they may be more sophisticated today).
BTW on the union issue no one had the position that ICTU was selling out a combative working class that was desperate to fight as is clear enough if you read what we were writing at the time as a whole. We’d all have laughed at that concept. The debate was more about whether circumstances might push things towards rupture where that would become true and what small contribution we might make.
‘First, the western democracies haven’t had any revolutions in yonks, I don’t see why they should start having them in the immediate future.’
It’s almost as if the most significant economic and political crisis in decades may have had some impact on the perspectives for this. I don’t think it would be absurd, for example, to cite Greece as being in the middle of a revolutionary process.
Not absurd, no, but I think there’s very little chance of Greece seriously being close to a revolutionary moment (as distinct from a revolutionary process which is a bit harder to define). The cathartic aspect of the two recent elections (not dissimilar albeit in a much more minor way in Ireland last year) is very clear at this point. The question was raised with me today as to what is SYRIZA’s role in all this? Does that seem at this moment in time to be genuinely a revolutionary force (for all their virtues)? But more fundamentally there doesn’t, as GMG notes as well (below) to be a breach with the coercive arms of the state. It’s just not there.
I suspect that if push came to shove Greece would leave the Eurozone, there would be a devaluation and it might follow a course close enough to that taken by Argentina in the not too distant past. But that too doesn’t necessitate anything close to a revolutionary change in the nature of the society to do so, indeed it could process ahead under a right of centre govt. Now of course in Irish terms, and arguably in European terms, that’s catastrophic, but it doesn’t seem to me to present a definitively/or inevitably revolutionary moment.
There’s a bit of a confusion about the role of the trade union bureaucrats running through this discussion.
The important point is not whether the bureaucrats tend to be “to the left” of the members in an abstract political sense. Very often they are, indeed if you get them drunk enough, a bureaucrat may even slur something about being a socialist. By contrast, only a tiny minority of Irish people want socialism and that is reflected in the ranks of the unions, which are after all actual mass organisations. Now lets not exaggerate this. The average Irish union bureaucrat has always been a Fianna Fail or Labour voter, just like the average Irish trade union rank and filer. But the minority who have some ideological preference for socialism would be somewhat bigger amongst the bureaucracy.
This issue is quite distinct from the much more important one of the willingness or otherwise of the trade union rank and file to take action to defend their own, very practical, interests. And the role the bureaucracy plays in shaping that willingness, or otherwise. Mostly otherwise. These two issues are being conflated here.
You post raises an interesting point, Mark P. People obviously act to defend and advance their own interests, but, surely, socialism (at least to people who call themselves socialists) represents a huge advancement in the interests of workers/trade union members. So why is it that people have regard for their own interests but disregard ‘socialism’? Could it be that it is a failure of rhetoric and language or is it something more fundamental?
There is a distinction between immediate interests, which are often pretty clear to any observer, and the much more difficult, debatable, issue of ultimate interests. I do, of course, agree that a socialist society is in the interests of the working class and other oppressed groups, but it’s a lot more difficult to convince people of the somewhat abstract, complex and distant case for this than it is to convince them that a wage rise is in their interests.
That’s true what you say, but in a way that’s implicit in the original article’s argument, that if the rank and file are functionally to the right of the leaderships then it seems unlikely – and this is the point in the original article, that the leaderships can push them very far to the left both in terms of activity and orientation. And the article rightly notes that an even further left of whatever stripe leadership are likely to be jettisoned fairly sharpish (though it doesn’t say this explicitly it is worth exploring the reason for that, primarily because people perceive unions as political with small ‘p’s’ and as vehicles to ameliorate a local direct issue). Of course there will be exceptions to this. But in the main I suspect that’s the way it operates.
The willingness or otherwise you refer to is pretty much baked into the rank and file – and worth noting that in unions it is people in early middle years and over (for obvious workplace demographics) who tend to predominate as activists and those who are listened to and those people have already fairly clear cut world views (not to mention loans, mortgages, dependents, etc). In my own direct experience strikes are almost anathema to them. A union leadership that tries to push them to strikes is one that they will resile from.
RiZ… more fundamental in my opinion. Say you’re in your thirties, you’ve got children, a mortgage or rent to pay, loans, shopping to do, a car to run, or a bus to catch to work, and so on and so forth. You work in environments where there is a range of coerciveness (from minimal to considerable). You’re always aware you could lose your job. You need extra money – we all do, just to get by. Your horizons are limited by these factors. They have to be. Making common cause with nebulous abstractions such as class and society take second, third or whatever place to your individual position even if you are a member of a union. And it’s not that lessons can’t be drawn or learned, but you’ll know yourself, they aren’t necessarily at the tip of the tongue.
Though at the same time rhetoric and language, and your point about failures plays a part. I saw that in terms of how the union where I worked in the private sector in the early 2000s didn’t make any attempt at all to come in and talk directly with the workforce except about the specific issue rather than perhaps talking with them about the raison d’etre of the union, what supports it intended to give while they were there in the job and after and so on. That sort of effort alone would make a difference, small but not negligible.
I think referring to ‘rank and file’ as being more to the right and the leadership more ‘to the left’ tends to obscure the issue.
When you say the rank and file are ‘more to the right’ what does this mean exactly? Are they foregoing some personal interests because of a belief in an unfettered market and private property rights? If so, this does not entirely gel with Mark’s point that there is an almost exclusive focus on immediate interests.
I would also query whether one can neatly separate ‘immediate’ and ‘long-term’ interests. Those with children and mortgages want job security and some certainty that their income/purchasing power will rise or at least keep to an acceptable level. That is an interest that has both immediate and long-term implications. There are studies that people can be vey short-sighted when it comes to such economic decisions. This, of course, returns us to the vexed issue of rhetoric, language, and -dare I say it- educating people.
Tangentially, I have become curious about mass movements and interests ever since 4000 people held a rally for Sean Quinn. These people will march for a billionaire; would they not get out and march for themselves?
Again I’m taking my cues from the original article, but I mean more to the right in a number of ways. Their political orientation, ie how they are represented politically – votes largely for centre right parties inc the LP/FF/FG. Their analysis of the situation – a general agreement with orthodoxy and within orthodoxy. Of course it’s not a case of unfettered markets and private property rights, but it is one of a belief that orthodox arguments about the primacy of markets is unchallenged even when alternatives are raised.
Those arguments are, if you will internalised.
And also, and this is crucial, a sense that their interests, short and long term are best served within the orthodoxy albeit the flavour being possibly somewhat more leftish, ie LP as was, perhaps SF in the future, FF in its populist phase.
In a way I agree with you immediate and long-term interests are intertwined, but I was taking your lead a bit in talking about broad socio-political interests/expressions politically and the more immediate.
None of this is meant in the slightest to be patronising. To be honest voting for the above has made rational sense from short and long term goals to people. It’s not what I’d want to do but many many people hate instability, and political instability above all because they instinctively know it will impact upon employment etc. Small wonder theyoften tilt right to supposed law and order in such circumstances.
I think that you are still conflating the two issues. Whether workers are “militant” in the sense of being political radicals or “militant” in the sense of being willing to take action to pursue or defend their own interests are independent variables (or perhaps more accurately, loosely related variables).
The role played by the bureaucracy in the early part of the crisis here in Ireland is worth looking at in this regard. There was a genuine anger amongst many rank and file trade unionists at a series of significant attacks on their pay and conditions. The trade union bureaucrats did everything they possibly could to dowse that anger and replace it with a bewildered demoralisation.
They marched people up the hill and then back down it, over and over again, using their members as a stage army. They let people blow off steam, with the sole aim of using them to get back into some form of partnership talks. A decent leadership (whether politically leftist in the abstract sense or not) could have offered their members a useful lead. The partnership bureaucrats did, in fact, act as a brake to the very best of their ability – and given the corrosive effects of decades of partnership on the structures and ranks of the unions that ability was considerable amongst a workforce with little or no recent experience of taking any kind of action.
This does not mean that the rank and file are secret socialists (an absurdity). It also doesn’t mean that this relationship is constant and that the members are always champing at the bit for action. It means that the entire outlook of the bureaucrats is based around servicing members, demobilising them, and engaging in partnership discussions on their behalf.
Absolutely agree that they’re independent (to a degree). But the point in the original article was a political one about pushing rank and file to anarchist positions, not just militancy beyond political radicalism. That’s what my argument is based in relation to, though I’ve noted that militancy in respect of their own interests is easier to achieve, though still a mountain to climb.
Re the negative impact of the leadership. There was indeed a genuine anger but this was much more evident in the public sector than private sector amongst rank and file (or at least in the public sector the chances of making something of it were greater). And that was a significant problem in terms of a cleavage between the two sectors which the government and right media could use to exacerbate already existing divisions.
It’s true that there was a lot of marching up and down the hill. But… with union strength already concentrated in the public sector it meant that the scope for genuine widespread action private and public was probably nil. And that being the case all of this was a phoney war because all the govt. needed to do was sit back and make noises about ‘well paid/over paid, secure civil/public servants’ as against ‘hard pressed private sector workers’.
And I’d add that having been on the picket lines myself during the last few years the appetite amongst rank and file in the public sector for push back seemed and seems to me to be much less than I would have expected given what has been imposed.
You say that the workforces had ‘little or no recent experience of taking any kind of action’. That’s true, but that was an inevitable outworking of a period where wages were high and conditions were broadly speaking good. Short of calling strikes that workforces would simply not have supported in the 2000s and which would have delegitimised unions I can’t really see how that could have been different.
That said I’ve written before here that I do put a lot of blame on the union leaderships for not using social partnership to leverage greater union density in the private sector and evening up the balance much more so that when the inevitable down turn occurred they’d have more to call upon. But I’m deeply sceptical about the scope for a different path to the one that was followed, not in the sense that there weren’t alternatives but that the alternatives were probably unusuable in the given context.
“That’s true, but that was an inevitable outworking of a period where wages were high and conditions were broadly speaking good. Short of calling strikes that workforces would simply not have supported in the 2000s and which would have delegitimised unions I can’t really see how that could have been different.”
Partnership was not “an inevitable outworking of period when wages were high and conditions were broadly speaking good”. Partnership during that period was a way of enforcing wage restraint during a period when employers and the government feared that a competitive cycle of wage increases could be on the agenda.
In fact boom periods (leaving aside the substance or otherwise of Ireland’s boom for the moment) have very often led to increased militancy, as workers gain confidence in their position and employers find themselves competing for labour. That didn’t happen in Ireland, but not because of some inevitable ebbing of militancy. It happened because the unions moved heaven and earth to preventing local bargaining, and they gutted grassroots structures and membership involvement in the process. By the end of partnership, the unions were led by bureaucrats who knew nothing else, had an almost completely destroyed activist layer and had a membership who had been actively discouraged from doing anything themselves, as opposed to wating to be serviced, for decades.
The union bureaucrats signed up to wage restraint. And then, when partnership was jettisoned by their “partners”, they subordinated defending their members pay and conditions to doomed attempts to restart it. There was nothing unavoidable or inevitable about any of this.
Actually I didn’t reference partnership as the motive cause of that. Indeed I suspect partnership was largely irrelevant to it. Labour mobility was high in the private sector, we had effective full employment in economic terms and increasing wages for the most part (allied to tax cuts). I saw it myself across a range of private sector companies and at all levels. If people didn’t like a job, whether it was warehousing or sales or whatever they moved and there were alternatives for them to move to.
That’s the ground level aspect of all this.
And of course in the private sector unions were, as they had been, in the majority of cases irrelevant because union membership there was much lower than in the public sector. TBH I don’t think any of the ‘moving heaven and earth to prevent local bargaining, gutting grassroot structures etc…’ has much applicability to that sector because if they weren’t unionised in the first place they surely weren’t by the end of the period (again something I directly blame the unions for). And again it didn’t matter as much as you seem to suggest during that period because labour mobility and wages were increasing.
As for the public sector well there were significant wage increases etc so I’m not sure how applicable your points are there.
Just to add, none of it was nirvana, as I experienced myself there were significant pockets where dismal labour practices continued. And the lack of interest in private sector unionisation and extension of unions was a disaster.
WbS:
Yes, of course, the ability to move jobs was higher during the boom. It almost always is during a boom. However, the usual pattern in prolonged booms is for there to be considerable labour militancy, what right wing commentators decribe in horrified tones as competitive wage rises, within workplaces, within sectors and across both. This was, if you go back through the media coverage of the time, a major fear of our own indigenous elite.
That the Irish boom led to the nearly complete abolition of industrial militancy was not at all an inevitable result of better pay and better conditions. If that was so then it would be the universal result of booms and that has simply not been the case. Why the Irish boom had that effect has to be analysed, not wrongly treated as the product of some kind of universal law. And in my view, partnership, which dictated wage changes across the whole public sector, the whole semi-state sector and much of the private sector, and which acted as a nearly absolute fetter on action, was an absolutely key part of this.
I fully agree, by the way, that the lack of interest amongst our partnership bureaucrats in organising private sector workplaces, and in particular their absolute aversion to organising multinationals, was reprehensible and stupid. And again it wasn’t inevitable.
I’m interested where this pattern manifests itself of considerable labour militancy during booms. If you look here http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/1999/07/feature/uk9907215f.htm at stats from the UK from 1965 through to 1998 you’ll be hard pressed to see confirmation of that assertion in the period post 1980. Indeed since 1985 (and allowing for the notoriously unforgiving labour laws there) boom or bust strikes have fallen away (and additionally) one could posit that the high Thatcher period had a signficant exemplary effect with the Miners and Wapping strikes. According to that site incidence of industrial disputes ‘has declined across much of Europe in the last 20 years’ though it admits that the UK situation is exceptional. But it tends to the view that unofficial strikes were reduced by ‘institutional reforms’, altered structures of UK employment (and particularly sectoral, ie end of large scale public sector strikes/particular companies where employment has declined ‘most sharply). Increasing unemployment and falling trade union membership. Legal changes. Withering of the state (interesting one that). Partnership (though in this instance more at a local level to judge from the text). Change of government in 1997 with arrival of LP.
Same site for Ireland suggests in a useful PDF that in the late 2000s:
In historical comparative terms, strikes remain at a very low level in Ireland, due to a range of factors. According to official CSO data, a total of 6,038 days were lost to industrial disputes in 2007, compared with 7,352 days in 2006. Overall, six industrial disputes occurred in 2007, compared with 10 in 2006. The six disputes in 2007 affected 1,436 workers and six companies. In 2007, the manufacturing sector accounted for 2,700 (45%) of the total days lost, while 2,315 (38%) were lost in the transport, storage and communication sector. Some 3,941 were days lost in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with 1,090 days lost in the same period of 2006. The three disputes in progress during the fourth quarter of 2007 involved 1,001 workers and three companies.
On another page from the 1990s it notes:
In recent years, the incidence of strike activity has been declining, and since 1986 in particular there has been a sharp reduction in the extent of strike activity, in terms of number of strikes and days lost. While the Government clearly felt that this decline was due to the impact of the Programme for National Recovery (since most strikes tend to be over pay, and this was not possible under the terms of the PNR), it was arguable how much of the downward trend was actually part of an international pattern. However, in 1990 the trend appeared to be reversing: the number of strikes increased from 38 in 1989 to 49 in 1990, and days lost due to strikes showed a five-fold increase (allowing however for the fact that the figure for 1989 was exceptionally low). Most of this very large increase in the number of days lost could be explained by the distorting effect of some lengthy strikes: 64 per cent. of the days lost were attributable to the Waterford Crystal strike, and a total of 84 per cent. of the days lost were accounted for by three strikes. Figures for 1991 show 52 strikes, but the figure for days lost has fallen to 85,300. This is a sharp reduction from the 1990 figure, but is still double the figure for 1989.
But those years were far from a boom and clearly in the boom period we had much lower levels of strike actions. And like the UK…
In terms of the division between public and private sector strike activity, the public sector has frequently been responsible for a disproportionate amount of strike activity. In the 1970s, for example, it was felt that the public sector was particularly strikeprone, and the phenomenon was particularly noticeable in the “market” sector of the public sector, for example, the former Department of Posts and Telegraphs. However, in the 1980s public sector strike activity began to decline, but the sheer size of many parts of the public sector can have the effect of distorting the figures. For example, in 1991 66 per cent. of days lost due to strike activity was attributable to public sector strikes, compared with 3 per cent. the previous year; however, this increase was due in part to a fairly lengthy dispute in the postal service.
On the PDF it notes that employment legislation, particularly that relating to the EU had a significant effect…
The problem facing trade unions is that the growth in employment legislation providing rights for individual employees has coincided with a decline in union density. In other words, trade unions are not present in many workplaces, especially in the private sector
I’d add that I think that to some extent we’re in uncharted territory both in this state and further afield in terms of the nature of the labour market and how that manifests itself. Only today I was discussing with a friend the whittling away of manufacturing in this state over the past twenty five years. That has to have impacts. The same with the whittling away of the public sector. And mapping union activities from periods and places with widely different employment contexts (as well as different socio-political traditions) may be misleading.
Did partnership play a role in all this? Absolutely, but looking at it from inside that process both in public and private sectors it still strikes me that pointing back at union leaderships while partly correct over-reifies both their potential and actual abilities to materially change the situation (and the international picture from the last twenty years suggests that that is a reasonable interpretation), that they could argue that through benchmarking they had materially improved the conditions of PS workers and through (though this was crazy on their part) tax cuts etc they’d done the same for private sector workers. Problem was that that worked as long as the boom lasted. Once it didn’t all those ‘gains’ went into reverse. But I think absent partnership the industrial environment would not have been significantly different – employers and the state would have bought off disputes piecemeal and short term. And disputes – and again the international data suggests this – would have declined one way or another.
That’s all very interesting WbS (and that really isn’t meant sarcastically) but I’m somewhat at a loss as to its relevance.
Yes, it is true that strikes have been generally at a long term low across the Western world, for a variety of reasons many of which also have relevance to Ireland. But this has nothing much to do with whether boom conditions automatically lead to the near abolition of industrial action.
For an overview of various models of strike patterns, I would suggest Franzosi’s “The Puzzle of Strikes” although most of it is taken up by the perhaps atypical case study of Post War Italy. There are arguments as to whether booms generally lead to a predictable increase in strikes, and the empirical data is messy, but very few scholars in the field suggest that booms generally lead to a decline in industrial action, and pretty much nobody argues that rising wages and better conditions automatically lead to a near abolition of strikes.
In so far as we want to find objective factors for the decline in industrial action in Ireland (and the related but not identical issue of the hollowing out of union structures) which go beyond the choices of the partnership bureaucrats, we aren’t going to find them in the mere fact of a boom.
Sorry, even with the caveat I added, the first part of that response comes across as dismissive.
I do see the relevance of the point you are making to a wider discussion of the atrophy of the labour movement in Ireland, the external factors as well as the internal factor of partnership. I just think it’s a mistake to see this in terms of the effects of the boom – (a) booms do not generally lead to a fall in industrial action and certainly don’t generally lead to it falling off a cliff as some kind of automatic consequence and (b) in so far as the international context is considered, the general fall in industrial action took place both where there were boom conditions and where there were not.
As I said a couple of posts ago, why the Irish boom coincided with or overlapped with the collapse of the labour movement as an active force here has to be analysed in some detail. I’m of the view that partnership was key, but there are other factors.
No worries, didn’t take it as dismissive. All I’m saying is that you proposed a boom /= lower industrial action model. I’ve looked at the ROI and UK experience across 30 plus years and can’t see it myself. I don’t think in fairness the post war situation in Italy, an highly industrialised country with at the time a radical (arguably the most radical) left right split in Western Europe as was, is the equivalent of this state in the period I’ve pointed too, either in terms of economy or political dynamics. All I am suggesting is that the contemporary era is different, the dynamics are different and to place the blame almost entirely at the door of union leaderships is to misunderstand the totality of forces at work. Apart from which I’m dubious that – given my experience of union members and organising in the private sector – they can be pushed to militancy in the way you do or whether given the differences between public and private sectors that would lead to positive outcomes in the way you appear to think.
Btw that’s a fair point re falls in labour militancy in states where booms occurred or didn’t but that too, given the relaively low base of RoI militancy in the first place suggests outcomes would be lower again ( and here we could toy with the idea that partnership in a de facto sense due to FF infiltration of unions, a term I use quite deliberately, meant that long before the late 80s there was a ‘partnership process’, for all the good it did ).
“Hmm an important correction to this presentation that I think revolution is just around the corner.” – Andrew
I don’t think I misrepresented your position. I used the conditional “could be just around the corner” and stated that those who supported the position believed that it was a mistake to believe we can predict when it will occur, which is pretty much what you restated.
“It’s almost as if the most significant economic and political crisis in decades may have had some impact on the perspectives for this. I don’t think it would be absurd, for example, to cite Greece as being in the middle of a revolutionary process.” – combatliberalism
I think it would be a mistake to assume so. In order to truly be in a revolutionary situation you have to have some hope of the deterioration of the coercive arm of the state. The most likely outcome in Greece seems much worse, with a fairly high likelihood of the police, who are currently voting at 50% for Golden Dawn, going along with a reactionary force.
We can play with some of the best / worst case scenarios here and I think that might be fruitful, but I’m curious what type of revolution you see on the cards? It’s not enough for their to be an economic crisis that impacts the working class. There has to be more than that. You need a change in support from the intelligentsia towards a new idea and a deterioration of the coercive arm of the state. I see some evidence of the former in Greece, but no evidence of the later.
Even if Greece did attempt some sort of “insurrection” even in the metaphorical sense of telling Brussel’s to suck it, where could it go? It would quickly find itself in a massive investment strike, and highly isolated. The situation would deteriorate fairly rapidly and any progressive forces would be hard pressed to sustain anything useful out of it. The freedom of movement is exceptionally small for a state like Greece.
Now, I should say, I think a revolution might be on the cards for the next 50 years, as I think that capitalism is suffering from some really fundamental internal contradictions which the ruling class seems unable and/or unwilling to overcome as they have created an ideology which hems them in, and they do not have proper states on the scale which would be necessary to a return to a Keynesian compromise. They may, however, overcome this problem in the future if they are forced to by an insurgent population.
However, for a positive outcome of any sort of revolutionary turmoil we would need to be organised on a scale at least the size of Europe. Individual European states having revolutions at this stage would be futile unless they were quickly followed by a spreading revolution. As we saw in 1917 this can be a very dangerous gambit.
I think we should be careful not to divide this argument too starkly between ‘just around the corner / not in my lifetime’. May 68 is one of the examples always cited by people who say ‘you never know what’s going to happen’ etc (I heard this a lot when I was a member of the SWP, ten years or so ago, when they were very much in a ‘just around the corner’ mode). It’s true that nobody saw it coming, nobody predicted it, but that doesn’t mean it came out of nowhere—if you look carefully, there had been several years of hard, patient work by groups to the left of the French CP to prepare the way (one thing that was crucial was that the far left had captured the leadership of the main student and lecturers’ unions before May 68, so they were ready to intervene when things kicked off).
So far as Greece is concerned, a few things worth noting. First of all, they’re way ahead of the rest of Europe at the moment—not just Ireland, where the Left has always been weaker, but countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy, which have traditionally had much stronger left-wing movements. So this puts Greek radicals in a difficult position: how far can they hope to go without support from other European countries? Secondly, while things have developed very quickly in Greece over the last couple of years, it didn’t come out of nowhere—before the crisis began, Greece had probably the strongest radical left in Europe, way in advance of Ireland (as far as I can gather, ANTARSYA, which is one of the smaller radical groups, would be about the same size as the SP or the SWP in Ireland). Thirdly, events in Greece so far haven’t reached the level of what anarchists or Leninists have traditionally defined as a revolutionary situation: we’ve seen a lot of very militant strikes and demonstrations, and a big surge in electoral support for a left-wing party with a fairly radical but not revolutionary programme. But we haven’t seen ‘dual power’ developing; we haven’t seen large numbers of people transferring their loyalty from parliament to workers’ councils and community councils.
Now this could mean that we need to think again about models of what a revolution would look like in an industrialised capitalist democracy. I could certainly imagine the following scenario taking shape over the next couple of years: the ND-PASOK-DIMAR coalition presses on with the Troika policies, pushing the Greek economy further into a hole and causing enormous social suffering; they become more and more unpopular, mobilisation against the government increases, the response of the state becomes more and more repressive; the opposition demand new elections, the government refuses, and then the workers’ movement calls an open-ended general strike to force the government to resign. That’s not inconceivable by any means. Whether that led to a positive outcome or not would depend on all sorts of things—not least whether the rest of Europe had begun to catch up with the radicalisation in Greece.
But this would still be a long way from the traditional anarchist or Leninist models of revolution; and it wouldn’t be something that happened virtually overnight either, it would be a crisis that had matured over a period of 4-5 years. With all the necessary caveats about not being able to predict the future and having to be ready for the unexpected, I think this would probably be the minimum time needed—even in a country like Greece where the militant left was already strong (in Ireland, you would expect things to take longer).
There’s a lot we can learn from what’s happened in Greece since 2010. For one thing, it’s a hammer-blow against people who claimed that class politics was a thing of the past; just look at the breakdown of support between ND-PASOK and SYRIZA in the two elections this year:
http://www.publicissue.gr/en/1673/greek-elections-2012-voter-demographics/
http://www.publicissue.gr/en/1689/greek-elections-6-2012-voter-demographics/
But I don’t think it proves that anything could happen in a very short space of time. That’s also true of a movement which has often been referred to by people on the libertarian left as a positive example, the Zapatistas. Whatever else can be said about them, nobody could argue that the EZLN insurrection in 1994 sprang up out of nowhere—there had been several years of hard, patient organising work by EZLN members in Chiapas to create the conditions where the uprising would be possible.
Thanks for the useful analysis Ed.
There is an audio recording of a WSM debate, between Andrew Flood and myself, a couple of years ago about whether we are likely to see a revolution in the near future at
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/apr2010/revolutioninourlifetime.mp3
And another thing about the WSM. They were always out front in the use of new technology and the new ways it allowed accessability to and from its audience and periphery. The ‘Struggle’ suite of sites, for example, was a pioneer.
+1
This is an interesting conversation, and there’s a lot to think about here, but I’ve got to say that any attempt at “thinking about the unions” that doesn’t include a serious discussion of non-unionised workplaces is a non-starter. I’m not an expert on Irish union density, but a quick bit of searching seems to suggest that it’s around a third. What are revolutionaries in the other two-thirds of the workforce meant to do, other than wait around and offer support to the chosen few who are members of the sacred mass organisations? That may sound a bit sarky, but I’m genuinely curious to hear what people – especially current or former WSMers – have to say on the subject. I agree that frantic activism for activism’s sake is a bit pointless, but for those of us outside of unionised workplaces – and I just want to stress I’m not just talking about a handful of jobless crusties, but the majority of the working class – “a long-term focus on winning a base in the unions” isn’t a particularly workable alternative.
That’s very much my sense of it too nothingiseverlost from my own experience organising in the private sector. The balance is just wrong if that isn’t dealt with. The orthodoxy in its media and political incarnations has very very seriously divided workers between sectors. But this has been built on a pre-existing antipathy. It really concerns me when I see over emphasis on union members when in truth they’re dispersed so unequally. And even where there are significant concentrations they’re tending to be overwhelmingly in the public sector.
So the calls for general strikes are effectively calls for PS general strikes with a smattering of private sector employments. That isn’t going to work.
There is no exemplary effect at work there – private sector non-unionised workers simply dismiss (for the most part) public sector strikes and are going to continue to do so and increasingly vehmently as long as density is so low in the private sector and that’s a nettle that has to be grasped (again this is why I’m so bitter at the partnership process because the opportunity was there to go for extension of union rights of organisation in the private sector but it was fluffed in favour of lower taxes there and bench marking in the PS which was SFA good when the boom crashed).
I should add as well that even in the public sector the appetite for action is very low. That’s a long term issue. And of course the PS is a different PS now with the hiving off of some of the semi-states across the past two/three decades. So although density is good there, even on paper very good, it’s actual weight strikes me as being probably lower than ever before.
I’d agree with pretty much all of that. It’s not even a two-way division, since – at least in the UK where I’m writing from, although I imagine it must be quite similar in Ireland – both public and private sector workers are encouraged to demonise claimants as well.
That’s a great point. It’s like now the name of the game is getting everyone at each others throats and it’s bloody succeeding.
That’s the name of the game alright Wbs, made all the more pernicious by the frequent exhortations to let those actually to blame for the current crisis off the hook by ‘not playing the blame game.’
This is a really important point. I don’t have any inside knowledge of the debates in the WSM, but I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that the only worthwhile place to be is in the unions. I think the members of a radical-left group should go wherever the action is – at the best of times, that’ll be in the unions, or in community-based campaigns, but when you don’t have mass working-class struggles going on, there will still usually be plenty of campaigns and social movements that people can get involved in, feminist, anti-racist, ecologist or anti-imperialist.
It would be quite wrong to see those kinds of activity as a diversion from class politics, because they usually overlap quite directly. Working-class women are most affected by the abortion laws in Ireland. Solidarity with immigrants means standing up for the most impoverished and downtrodden part of the working class. An environmental campaign like Shell 2 Sea can raise questions about corporate power and the class nature of the Irish state more bluntly than many strikes. So for left activists to be involved in campaigns like these is not a detour from class struggle by any means.
It can sometimes even lead back to the unions in surprising ways – I’ve been involved with the Palestine and Colombia solidarity groups, and they’ve both done a lot of work with trade unions, especially the IPSC. Obviously the trade union members they’ve worked with are a small minority, but in a small way they’re promoting internationalism in the workers’ movement, promoting the idea that unions aren’t just about defending wages and working conditions in Ireland (not that there’s anything ignoble about the latter).
I guess what distinguishes this sort of activism from the ‘lifestylism’ being criticised is that it still have an orientation towards the rest of the population, it involves getting out beyond the cohort of left activists, trying to engage with people. But Ciaran made a good point earlier that activities sometimes dismissed as ‘lifestylism’ don’t always have to mean dropping out from society and isolating yourself in a fringe ghetto. The mass left-wing parties of the early to mid 20th century often got involved in running canteens, sports clubs, all kinds of things like that. It was a complement to political activity, not a diversion away from it:
“As [Lucio] Magri explains, the Italian Communist Party incubated a social movement and a real community:
“In the evening you went to a meeting on your bicycle or moped, where you would discuss the newspaper articles or membership campaigns; then you came back late to eat a plate of tripe or have a drink or two at the cafe attached to the House of Labor.”
“The web of solidarity made it possible for the unemployed to get by with no income and to feel a sense of belonging and power, whatever their personal ability or status. It was similar to the way the early German Social Democratic Party earned the loyalty of workers by filling the holes in the Bismarckian welfare state. Late night dances and sporting events were just as important as propagandizing.
“So you have this weird dicothomy between a Party-centric social movement doing something plenty of anarchists are good at—the food co-ops and urban gardens stuff—in the grassroots, just on a mass scale, while still being grey and bureaucratic up top.”
http://jacobinmag.com/blog/2012/07/party-like-its-1969/
An interesting discussion to follow for sure – but I do think James is probably fairly wrong in splintering arguments in the WSM into two camps, one focusing on building from the activist milieu and the other being a minority that wanted to build within or develop relationships with the unions in a long drawn out strategy of engagement.
There’s no mention of the IWU strategy that was pursued in order to develop a dual carding network of militants across the unions, and what problems may have arose as event that rather radical sounding entity became embroiled in service provision. There was plenty of problemitisation of the notion of precarity when it arose as a theme in the movement, mostly from younger members that were relating it to their own experiences of the labour market. People might have scorned the horrible importation of a french/italian intellectual term, but bizarrely even Mandate are talking about “the precariat” in their paper now (See: http://issuu.com/mandate/docs/webshopfloormay2012lo_res/search?q=PRECARIOUS ).
Anyway, in terms of what other models or paths are out there I wrote an article for the first edition of Irish Anarchist Review a few years ago that probably started off with a ready acceptance of many of the objective conditions most people are flagging as problematic for union activity here, but then at the end tried to sketch some fairly basic and core notions of what might useful as markers to start talking about labour movement renewal outside the rather static “mass” organisation and the doldrums it finds itself in now.
Its a while since I wrote it, but in short what I might have been angling at was that confusing the labour movement, SOLELY with organisations like trade unions and ignoring other avenues that can build class strength is short sighted.
http://www.wsm.ie/c/unions-after-celtic-tiger
James your thoughts in the last paragraph really ring true to me.
Things are very comfortable in the upper echelons of the trade union movement and no efforts will be made to upset things. 2009 was the critical year for the public sector unions when an appetite was there, I believe, for action but the union leaders got over that little problem and now have, from their perspective, a win-win situation where you have a cowed workforce in the PS who are, notwithstanding this, terrified to leave their unions, thus keeping unions afloat financially. From my experience of PS union work the union leaders know they have a good thing going there and they’re not, crisis or no crisis, going to step outside their comfort zone. PS workplaces are often large, settled workforces, no major IR issues beyond ongoing bread-and-butter issues. The unions can get the few lefties working their to do most of the donkey work alongside the organiser and, bob’s yer uncle, the subs keep flowing in.
My views of the way unions operate in the PS is that from the union leaders perspective what matters, above all else, is the relationship with the employer. The members themselves, and the local committees etc are transitory but the focus is on maintaining the relationship with the employer and that means heading off major trouble for the employer when it appears on the horizon, like in 2009. If members get uppity in a way that threatens the union/employer relation they are dealt with.
The tragedy is that there are possibly tens of thousands in the public sector who are union members, who don’t really need to be. Like it’s handy if you have a problem and everything but not really all that relevant to the job, and sure when was the last time you had a problem? While there are hundreds of thousands in the private sector who urgently need organising and who need to be organised. But, it seems to me, that would require a radical re-direction of union resources and the whole mental outlook of union leaders. Something that’s not going to happen as long as the unions have a nice steady earner in the public sector. The recent REA/JLC changes should have been a springboard for a massive union response in areas where there are tens of thousands would, I think, would have been receptive. What did we get? A bit o bluster and it’s all died a death while the employers agenda had advanced enormously.
What I think will happen is that there will be a general disillusion with unions across all sectors while the leadership remains locked into its reactive, conservative, ‘we hold what we have’ mentality. Without organising the private sector in areas like logistics, catering, call centres, IT, back office for financial services etc the union movement will die off. That level of organising will involve conflict and struggle and taking on very powerful forces who will resist to the last, there’s no sign of any appetite for that in the union leadership. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of non-union private sector workers will struggle to get by on the median wage or less, never encountering a union organiser, and the media will work away on the pay differential to reduce pay across the economy until it snaps, if it ever does.
In a way I think you point to the only way forward for them if it’s not to die a death. Start organising properly in every possible workplace and if and when and as that’s achieved start to broaden the engagement.
Your point re ‘never meeting an union organiser’ is spot on. Madness.
There was a large piece of work by John Molyneux in the first issue of the SWP’s journal, ‘Irish Marxist Review’, on ‘Marxism and Trade Unionism’. It is certainly relevant to these debates. I have not re-read it recently; a quick scan shows some dismaying stumbles in relation to Irish practicalities.
He is entirely right to say that “socialists absolutely have to be present and actively engaged in the unions”. When he contines that this “means that in their union work they need to develop rank-and-file networks such as SIPTU for Change”, I have to part ways with his critical faculties. He even get the name wrong, as he does for the other SWP-backed ‘rank and file group’ he cites.
John’s article cannot, for some reason, be downloaded from the IMR site at the moment, but it is available at his own (always interesting) blog, at:
http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.ie/2012/04/marxism-and-trade-unionism.html
One thing that needs to be included in any analysis of the unions is the fundamental shift in western economies since the second world war – away from manufacturing and towards distributed production and fulfillment that WBS mentions. In many ways this weakens the potential strength of the industrial proletariat. Combine this with a culture which has stressed individualism over collectivism (obviously since the late 1980s although I think the growth of identity politics in the 1970s was part of a long trend).
This is not to excuse the disastrous tactics of the Irish TU movement. My own union (ATGWU now Unite) opposed partnership in part because of what it would do to the movement. We now have been 25 years since there has been substantial local collective bargaining – meaning very few trade unionists under 50 have ever really led and won a local struggle.
There are other avenues where we can build strength – but even a left union leadership, left in place by a membership which could be radicalised by a deepening recession would have limited traditional weapons available – where is the industrial muscle?