Fellow greybeards will remember the seventies when it was said: “unions are running the country”.
The talk then was of union leaders traipsing into Downing Street to discuss (or dictate) economic policy over beer and sandwiches.
In some European countries, Germany being a prime example, unions play a significant, collaborative role in economic and industrial policy but in Britain collaboration has never seemed to be the way.
Mirroring, perhaps, Britain’s confrontational political set-up (the first past the post electoral system, the “you on your side, us on ours” layout of the House of Commons), industrial relations in Britain have more commonly been about tests of strength: “management’s right to manage” versus “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”.
Or, if you prefer, “management’s right to mismanage” versus “a fair day’s pay for a fair hour’s work”.
Tonight we're gonna strike like it's 1979
The governments of Margaret Thatcher and her successors – even the Labour ones – largely neutered the power of the unions and no one talks about them running the country anymore but based on the recent increase in union activity, we could soon see another hoary old cliché wheeled out about the country being held to ransom.
(The bad news for the unions is that the country is short of ransom money, having given most of it away willingly to well-connected companies that provided kit and services to combat the effects of the Covid pandemic)
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) is balloting its membership (around 40,000), seeking permission for a rail strike that could paralyse Britain’s rail network.
RMT argues that its members have not had a pay rise since 2020 and that with inflation soaring, the living standards of its workers are plunging.
The other side of the argument is that the rail industry was knocked for six by lockdowns and with working from home becoming an accepted practice, the commercial environment has changed substantially.
Another union, ASLEF (aka “the train drivers union”), has also warned it will not stand for a prolonged pay freeze. Meanwhile, the government has previously suggested it could bring in laws to ensure minimum service levels, which would be like the proverbial red rag to a bull (bulls are said to be partially colour blind but any brightly-coloured rag will do if jiggled energetically enough).
So, the stage is set, perhaps, for an old-fashioned 70s-style stand-off. The public will suffer and while suffering will be inclined to rail (pun intended) against the strikers; certainly there is unlikely to be much sympathy for the train drivers, who by most standards – except, perhaps, those of senior management in the rail industry – are well remunerated.
It’s all possible, however, that the story of pay rises failing to keep pace with inflation will resonate with the public. After all, it was only yesterday that the High Pay Centre think tank revealed that the average median pay of FTSE 350 chief executives is 63 times the median pay of rank and file workers at FTSE 350 companies.
Even the USA is getting twitchy
Even in the USA, the country that tolerated the violent and thuggish strike-breaking Pinkerton Detective Agency at the end of the 19th century has seen a resurgence in union activity, particularly in the video game business.
READ Activision Blizzard workers vote to unionise
The really big tech companies, however, such as Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) remain implacably opposed to unions.
Amazon, founded by one of the richest men in the world, reportedly hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency as recently as December 2020 to monitor European workers seeking to unionise. iI the reports are true, one hopes the Pinkertons have softened their anti-union methods.
The British magazine Private Eye recently reported that Amazon’s in-house communications app contains a list of banned words, including “union”, “grievance”, “pay raise”, “slave”, “master”, “fairness” and “ethics”.
Despite the company's intense animosity to unions, an Amazon warehouse on New York’s Staten Island voted to unionise last month – the first union ever formed at an Amazon warehouse.
Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
Elon Musk, meanwhile, the richest man in the world (or he was before the Tesla share price tanked after his bid for Twitter), has long been an opponent of unions. Last year, the National Labor Relations Board determined that Musk had violated Federal labour law with a tweet (see above) and also sacked an employee, Richard Ortiz, for trying to persuade Tesla workers to join a union.
Christ I had no idea you were like this - turns out Elon is just Bezos with a hipper hair weave
— Lance Dann (@LanceDann) May 22, 2018
Apple, for its part, has been accused of union-busting at its flagship World Trade Center store in New York and at another outlet in Atlanta.
The iPhone maker currently does not have any staff in the US that are members of retail unions.
All of this increased activity points to it being an opportune time for workers to tip the balance of labour versus capital back towards the rank and file.
As Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, discovered when he went up against a well-prepared and ruthless government in 1984 and called the union's members out on strike (without first holding a ballot), unions have to pick their moments to strike for better conditions, and ideally have the workforce and the public firmly on their side.
It’s just possible that one of those moments has arrived, at least in Britain.