How should the left approach the Union Modernisation Fund?
On the surface, the Telegraph reports of £18 million in state funds going to Unite, and its predecessors Amicus and TGWU, from the Labour government seem pretty damning. I was outraged; unions are not there to be funded by the State, and taking such funding compromises unions. Their bureaucracies could thence rely on State aid as insulation from having to fight for and fight to keep members’ dues.
There is also the question as to whether or not the unions like Unite have been feeding this money back into the Labour Party. If that could be proved to be the case, then it’s all the more reason to get rid of the current morons at the top of the Labour Party; first the scandal of private donations from millionaires, and cash for peerages, now this.
Lest people forget, if any of this were true, the government was not just using State money to stay in government through a funded political machine. They were using it to retain control of the Labour Party, which is a much greater offence, so far as I and many other socialists would be concerned.
Reality is not so simple, however. There are several funds which have channelled money to the unions, (e.g. Partnership at Work, the Union Modernisation Fund and the Union Learning Fund) and none of them are to do with political donations. The amount gathered from each member for a political fund must be stipulated, only money from the political fund may be used for political activities and money from other accounts may not be used.
That is the law. No one has said that the law has been broken, and the Guardian’s disingenuous chart (shown right, courtesy of Iain Dale) is simply a case of attempting to secure a guilty verdict by very dodgy inferences. All the accusations of money laundering – of this money passing through Unite or the other unions en route to Labour – are silly.
A fair contention, however, is that there is a moral case to answer. A Labour government is channelling money directly to the unions – for admittedly benevolent, non-political purposes. But presumably – as well as reaching difficult to organise workers, and coaching people to get qualifications and training – this bolsters the prestige and attraction of the trades unions. Union Learning Fund projects, for example, seem open only to union members.
Higher union membership means more money for the Labour Party. Or does it?
Actually I don’t think this moral case holds up. Since every member of a union chooses whether or not to pay into the political fund, people who don’t want to support Labour can benefit from these programmes. There’s also the numerous cases of unions which have political funds that don’t contribute to Labour – such as the National Union of Teachers, the RMT, University and Colleges Union or the Fire Brigades Union.
The actual programmes involved, through which all this money is channelled, break down the moral case further still.
On a political level, programmes like Partnership at Work were not designed as vehicles for left-wing policy – they were the opposite. Their whole purpose was to suppress open conflict in the workplace. It’s my view that this type of thing directly led to a harmful increase in the pressure put on staff, in an environment free of the danger of industrial unrest.
On a practical level, programmes like Dignity at Work had the support of employers, employees, unions and the State – and these channelled large sums to educate on and prevent workplace bullying and other issues which are not just Left issues, since bullying affects productivity. Similarly with the Union Learning and Union Modernisation Funds.
Far from being bungs to union allies, this money was to serve a purpose that was not so crassly ‘political’ as is being made out and which gave little succour to “the Left”, unless we’re to recycle and adjust Harold Wilson, “Socialism is what unions do”, regardless of what they actually do.
By all means, people should object to unions being used as the vehicle for such policies – and I haven’t made up my mind yet, though I’m leaning towards a separation of unions as agitational bodies of workers from educative and training bodies paid for by the State. They can object to the specific policies as being inefficient or poor uses of money. But they can’t reasonably object that this money is a bung to union allies of a Labour Party.
The last refuge for such an accusation is whether all the money allocated for these purposes was spent on what it was supposed to have been spent on. The suggestive comments in the media – and the near-hysterical comments in the Right-blogosphere – betray ignorance over just this. So audits should be done, and we should see how it was spent.
None of it will have found its way into the political funds; I take that as a given. If it has, an offence has been committed and the guilty individuals responsible should be punished – but I doubt union officials are so stupid.
It is more believable that money left over may have been spent on more general concerns or union administration not necessarily relating to the projects mandated by the specific aims of these funds. To allay concerns, turn over the books. Open government is our friend. What is not acceptable is the high pitched screeching before any facts are known.
You are living in cloud cuckoo land. This fund is for this and this fund is for that and therefore the Labour Party couldn’t have possibly benefited from government spending.
Ever considered becoming a lawyer Dave?
I think this is a very good analysis. Well done. I ‘d thought I should do something on this too, but didn’t quite get round to it. I hope this gets the coverage it needs/deserves.
“The last refuge for such an accusation is whether all the money allocated for these purposes was spent on what it was supposed to have been spent on. The suggestive comments in the media – and the near-hysterical comments in the Right-blogosphere – betray ignorance over just this. So audits should be done, and we should see how it was spent.”
My experience (with many charitable bodies) of using government/public funding for specific purposes is that this income will always be treated as ‘restricted income’ in the accounts. The accountants I use (as treasurer to charities) always check the link between the spending of public money and the terms of the grant agreement/contract under which it was made, and that is perfectly normal practice.
It is, in the same, the responsibility of the accountants within Unite, and their external accountants and auditors to check that such income has indeed been used in accordance with the purpose for which it is allocated. I would be very suprised if anythin untoward showed up as the union will be very aware of the issue. This would also make it pretty well impossible to spend ‘remaining’ monies on anything other than what it is contracted for, although of course there is always an accountany/audit judgment to be made when it comes to the appropriate allocation of oncosts.
Private-Sector Collective Bargaining as a Free Legal Service
“Free administration of justice and free legal assistance. Administration of the law by judges elected by the people. Appeal in criminal cases. Compensation for individuals unjustly accused, imprisoned, or sentenced. Abolition of capital punishment.” (Eduard Bernstein)
In the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, trade unions were in fact alliances of employed workers and otherwise (unemployed workers, retired workers, and so on), provided social services, showed a lot less hesitance towards calling strikes, and sometimes posed political questions. Out of these came the One Big Union and Socialist Industrial Union concepts, neither of which united workers on merely a sectional basis.
Contrast the above to a modern, “yellow” tred-iunion, which caters only to its particular section of the working class (such as public-sector workers), doesn’t provide social services (except perhaps entertainment for the tred-iunionisty who control the union bureaucracy), pays lip service to the very concept of strikes to the point of signing no-strike deals, never poses political questions (as demonstrated clearly by United Steelworkers of America’s approach to workers’ cooperatives), and even organizes sometimes on the basis of craft and not trade (as is the case in the airline industry). As mentioned earlier, the modern tred-iunion also does not perform the functions of “workers’ statistical commissions” to audit the business figures of employers.
All in all, what is to be learned from these trends is that the collective bargaining function itself goes against politico-ideological independence for the working class. Amongst the various forms of dispute resolution in civil law – negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and litigation – tred-iunion careerists perform not just negotiation on the formal behalf of employees, but also (and in practice) mediation between employers and employees. The old Western European corporatist model best exemplifies this, whereby representatives of government, businesses, and unions met together on a regular basis and jointly determined economic policy.
Looming over this lesson and the trends is the difficulty of mobilizing clerical workers (who are mistaken for the entire “service worker” population, which includes professional workers). While the comprehensive reform outlined in the previous section – for living wages, non-deflationary cost-of-living adjustments based on reliable inflation figures, and similar application towards unemployment insurance and voluntary workface benefits – would indeed render collective bargaining for those wage increases for mere cost-of-living adjustments practically obsolete, the overall problem of collective bargaining would still remain, such as in the obvious topics of working conditions and wage increases well above mere cost-of-living adjustments.
The immediate solution once more lies in the Erfurt Program, this time in its demand for free legal assistance. However, what should be pursued here is the wholesale absorption of all private-sector collective bargaining into free legal services by independent government agencies acting in good faith. Significant parts of the administrative apparatus required for the complete provision of labour dispute resolution by such agencies and their plethora of lawyers are already in place in developed capitalist countries, and happen to be called “labour courts” or “labour relations boards.” Public-sector collective bargaining is not addressed, given the sensitivity of public-sector workers towards their government employers.
It should be noted that the collective bargaining function is different from the strike function, the latter of which should naturally remain the function of whatever unions remain, including “red” unions. In terms of facilitating the issuance of intermediate or threshold demands, there would be emancipatory demands later on pertaining to potential restrictions on the activities of these unions, which should be able to perform all the class solidarity and statistical functions mentioned earlier.
In terms of this reform enabling the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view,” politico-ideological independence for the working class, as well as exposition of the bourgeois-capitalist nature of the modern state (hence the cynicism behind “acting in good faith”) and other aspects of class strugglism, is upheld by this radical departure from traditional views on collective bargaining. This demand illustrates the false nature of the alleged dichotomy between building union-based labour parties on the one hand – a notoriously strong phenomenon on the British left-of-Labour scene, such as the left-nationalist No2EU project – and building cross-class, left-populist parties such as Respect on the other; neither option has the potential to mobilize private-sector clerical workers like this demand does.
Furthermore, this absorption, if not enacted by the bourgeoisie due to class-strugglist pressure from the workers, would have to be enacted by the latter during the early transitional period – before dissolving the businesses of the former. Meanwhile, any “workers’ statistical commission” functions arising from this reform could in fact play an important control function for social labour in this period.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/private-sector-collective-t124045/index.html?t=124045
The link above gives a better rendition of what I’ve said above, with bold emphasis and references.