Though Cowards Flinch

"I say, brother can you testify?"

No doubt Paul or I shall have something more in depth to say about Tories and their plans to allow ‘co-ops’ in every public sector industry, from schools to job centres. A few thoughts occur to me right off the bat, however.

Most obviously, the key problem is that these plans are being enacted just when both Labour and the Tories are ready to indulge in swingeing cuts, laying off and not replacing staff, cutting operating budgets etc.

Touted as a measure to drive efficiency, as workers can ‘become their own boss’ and wages can go up if services are delivered cheaply, overall it’s not going to change the fact that some services are about to be lost.

As with outsourcing and privatisation, therefore, there is the worry that this is just one more mask for cheaper, sub-standard services, compared to what even the bureaucratic monster state can deliver.

Another concern is that a lot of the powers given to the co-ops will be relatively superficial. George Osborne, speaking on Radio 4 this morning, said that co-op schools would be able to fire their headmaster, which he re-iterated in the Telegraph. Which is great, I suppose, but rather moot since central funding will be set elsewhere.

Key issues like classroom sizes, staffing levels and so on would be prefigured.

I’m not a fan of Labour’s Academies, but at least there the government stumps up quite a large chunk of money to refurbish the school and to pay for increased numbers of staff and so on. With the Tory idea, it’s unclear who pays for what and which powers lie where.

Thirdly, though I’ve yet to take a look at the off-the-shelf models for ‘co-ops’, I wonder just how many of them place industrial democracy at the heart of what’s actually being done, and how much of them rely on the motivation of management types towards a bigger salary – which is rarely good news for workers’ terms and conditions.

Lastly, the notion of ‘successful’ co-ops being able to bid for other areas of government business is profoundly worrying. raising the spectre of every single public service provision becoming subject to a contract between government and a legally independent entity – initially co-ops, perhaps, but ultimately the private sector too.

Current Tory plans admit of co-ops contracting outside management experts in to help run things (continuing the “consultancy” boondoggle incidentally) or going in to joint partnerships with ‘outside organisations’. It’s only a short hop from there to abolishing the ‘co-op’ middle man, and the not-for-profit status while they’re at it.

This has ramifications for the collective bargaining agreements of virtually every single public sector union. There’s no indication (and I can’t find a relevant policy paper) that the Tories would set a benchmark minimum wage based on the national arrangements agreed with the unions.

Transferring employment contracts to these new entities, and letting them control the terms and conditions of their own staff, piecemeal undermining the unions, would be an ideal stealth measure, and would probably achieve some of the cost-cutting the Tories want to see in place – and might draw flak away from the government, at least allowing them to appear defenders of decentralization and local democracy against big union bureaucracies.

Tories could also say that unions should invest in the co-op movement themselves, and compete on a level playing field with other suppliers of services ‘if they think they can do better’. For this type of thing, the unions better gear up now.

If I find evidence that this is more than a stunt by Georgie Boy, there’ll be more to come on this, as soon as I can get my grubby paws on whatever rhetoric-laden policy document bilge the Tories have prepared. In the meantime, there’s some links provided by Chris Dillow to consider: Demos on mutualism in public services; James Crabtree at Prospect on Cameronian Co-ops and some stuff from James Macintyre on why Labour’s Right get woodies over co-ops.