Labour Leader: Keir Starmer V

[Cav]

I can understand how someone who has, I assume, spent a whole lifetime working in the public sector may think that.



Which trade union were you in at Armstrong and what exactly did they achieve for you?

PS For clarity: I have huge, huge respect for what unions achieved back in the days of dangerous mass labour in mills, mines, shipbuilding etc, especially from a health and safety/human rights perspective. These days I’m far more sceptical as to their scope beyond holding end-users to ransom in public sector roles (Tube drivers etc). I’d even be inclined to argue the lavish gold-plated pensions in unionised education roles were currently being offset against outrageous student fees! I obviously understand a lot of this is down to systemic political failure and the corruption of both main parties as is so much we face (education should absolutely be free to the end user at all ages and paid for by fair and well-implemented progressive taxation IMHO). I’m just calling things how I see it right now, and it smells a bit off from the perspective of someone who spent a lifetime in the private sector where you get to make whatever you can in a competitive environment. I also think the lack of engagement in unions these days speaks volumes, votes being “carried” by just a tiny percentage of members etc. If they mattered people would engage more. They have just become another bureaucracy/establishment institution. Another greasy pole for a certain type of person to climb.

Tony, you know nothing about organised labour as every post you make on Trades Union makes abundantly clear. It is also apparent that you have no desire to learn.

Not sure what your remark about my employment history is supposed to signify. I have made no secret of my employment nor my TU activism in it.

 

[ff1d1l]

Good riddance to Hodge.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...nd-corbyn-critic-margaret-hodge-to-stand-down

Stand Down Margaret.

 

[Tony L]

Tony, you know nothing about organised labour as every post you make on Trades Union makes abundantly clear.

Maybe true. Thankfully hardly anything I’ve ever done to make a living could be described as ‘labour’, let alone ‘organised’!

Trade unions just aren’t a thing in the world most people (77% of us) live in.

 

[ks.234]

I can understand how someone who has, I assume, spent a whole lifetime working in the public sector may think that.



Which trade union were you in at Armstrong and what exactly did they achieve for you?

PS For clarity: I have huge, huge respect for what unions achieved back in the days of dangerous mass labour in mills, mines, shipbuilding etc, especially from a health and safety/human rights perspective. These days I’m far more sceptical as to their scope beyond holding end-users to ransom in public sector roles (Tube drivers etc). I’d even be inclined to argue the lavish gold-plated pensions in unionised education roles were currently being offset against outrageous student fees! I obviously understand a lot of this is down to systemic political failure and the corruption of both main parties as is so much we face (education should absolutely be free to the end user at all ages and paid for by fair and well-implemented progressive taxation IMHO). I’m just calling things how I see it right now, and it smells a bit off from the perspective of someone who spent a lifetime in the private sector where you get to make whatever you can in a competitive environment. I also think the lack of engagement in unions these days speaks volumes, votes being “carried” by just a tiny percentage of members etc. If they mattered people would engage more. They have just become another bureaucracy/establishment institution. Another greasy pole for a certain type of person to climb.

Speaking as someone sitting here due on a so called lavish gold plated pension, I have to say, that I see very little of that gold you speak of. I have very little cash, but I am retired and secure for which I’m grateful but feel I have worked for this benefit with 20 years of crap pay and conditions doing a job to help others and one that many people would not be prepared to do.

Also, while I agree that we need a better education system, it does not need to be paid for with taxation. Tax does not fund education or anything else. Our underfunded education system is the product of political choice, not fictional financial constraint.

 

[lordsummit]

I seem to recall that far more has been paid into the teachers pension scheme by its members than has been paid out. It’s a little harsh to blame underfunding in that sector on paying for our pensions. Mine is far from gold plated. Currently if I was to retire I’d get just over 13k a year and a lump sum of around 27k. Obviously if I keep working for the required further 17 years it will increase, but really?

 

[Tony L]

I’m kind of playing devils advocate in a way, just drawing a comparison to the private sector where I suspect most people are less well paid than a high-ranking teacher or university lecturer and have nothing to look forward to aside from the state pension. I’ve certainly never worked anywhere long enough to have anything but that and some savings/assets.

I also thought the way things, including union demands, have arguably been balanced-out (by Labour just as much as the Tories) so that the higher education end-user (student) is now expected to rack up a personal debt of anything up to £30k for fees and then whatever loans they need to live on. I believe education at all levels should be free as wider society reaps the rewards of better knowledge and skills (and I say that as someone who was failed by the state education system). The two political parties responsible for this will have obviously costed it all, and I question their priorities here.

This whole post and the one upstream is a straw man to a large extent, I just thought it was a worthwhile tangent to throw at the pot (as one does when one is mixing metaphors). The point I was trying to make is this sort of thing just doesn’t exist in the private sector as that is based entirely on competition and productivity, and can only be so in a competitive global environment. If your costs are too high you go under.

My vote is for fair and progressive taxation that is properly implemented (i.e. no offshoring wealth for the richest, no pork-barrel politics for huge corporations etc). As such I would far prefer to see a state pension that is fit for purpose for all rather than seeing trade unions strong-arming the state into giving preferential treatment for public sector workers and then handing the rest of us, who very likely can’t afford anything similar for ourselves, the bill.

 

[ks.234]

I’m kind of playing devils advocate in a way, just drawing a comparison to the private sector where I suspect most people are less well paid than a high-ranking teacher or university lecturer and have nothing to look forward to aside from the state pension. I’ve certainly never worked anywhere long enough to have anything but that and some savings/assets.

I also thought the way things, including union demands, have arguably been balanced-out (by Labour just as much as the Tories) so that the higher education end-user (student) is now expected to rack up a personal debt of anything up to £30k for fees and then whatever loans they need to live on. I believe education at all levels should be free as wider society reaps the rewards of better knowledge and skills (and I say that as someone who was failed by the state education system). The two political parties responsible for this will have obviously costed it all and I question their priorities here.

This whole post and the one upstream is a straw man to a large extent, I just thought it was a worthwhile tangent to throw at the pot (as one does when one is mixing metaphors). The point I was trying to make is this sort of thing just doesn’t exist in the private sector as that is based entirely on competition and productivity, and can only be so in a competitive global environment. If your costs are too high you go under.

My vote is for fair and progressive taxation that is properly implemented (i.e. no offshoring wealth for the richest, no pork-barrel politics for huge corporations etc). As such I would far prefer to see a state pension that is fit for purpose for all rather than seeing trade unions strong-arming the state into giving preferential treatment for public sector workers and then handing the rest of us, who very likely can’t afford anything similar for ourselves, the bill.

The ‘handing the rest of us the bill’ is pure monetarist nonsense. Government spending does not have to be paid for with taxes, either before the spending event, or after.

If those working in the private sector have been pummelled into penury by the twin threats of unemployment and underemployment, that is a function of government decisions and policy making, it is not the consequence of public sector pensions, ‘union demands’ or anything external to government choices

 

[Seanm]

I’m kind of playing devils advocate in a way, just drawing a comparison to the private sector where I suspect most people are less well paid than a high-ranking teacher or university lecturer and have nothing to look forward to aside from the state pension. I’ve certainly never worked anywhere long enough to have anything but that and some savings/assets.

I also thought the way things, including union demands, have arguably been balanced-out (by Labour just as much as the Tories) so that the higher education end-user (student) is now expected to rack up a personal debt of anything up to £30k for fees and then whatever loans they need to live on. I believe education at all levels should be free as wider society reaps the rewards of better knowledge and skills (and I say that as someone who was failed by the state education system). The two political parties responsible for this will have obviously costed it all, and I question their priorities here.

This whole post and the one upstream is a straw man to a large extent, I just thought it was a worthwhile tangent to throw at the pot (as one does when one is mixing metaphors). The point I was trying to make is this sort of thing just doesn’t exist in the private sector as that is based entirely on competition and productivity, and can only be so in a competitive global environment. If your costs are too high you go under.

My vote is for fair and progressive taxation that is properly implemented (i.e. no offshoring wealth for the richest, no pork-barrel politics for huge corporations etc). As such I would far prefer to see a state pension that is fit for purpose for all rather than seeing trade unions strong-arming the state into giving preferential treatment for public sector workers and then handing the rest of us, who very likely can’t afford anything similar for ourselves, the bill.

It’s a bit tortuous to accuse unions of demanding preferential treatment for public sector workers because of de-unionisation in the private sector. There’s a logic there of course but it’s Thatcherite and self-defeating. Standards in the private sector are not going to improve because those in the public sector fall - far from it. Working conditions across the board suffer when unions are weak. Following your logic, non-unionised private sector workers are actually freeloading on their fee-paying, striking public sector equivalents.

Something for nothing culture!

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Maybe true. Thankfully hardly anything I’ve ever done to make a living could be described as ‘labour’, let alone ‘organised’!

Trade unions just aren’t a thing in the world most people (77% of us) live in.

I've also mainly 'worked' at jobs I'd have done as hobbies if wealthy. Indeed, since retiring (sic) I *have* gone on doing them for 'free' - relying on a good pension that *my Union* at Uni had obtained for us. If anyone enjoys my webpages, thank my union as well as my Uni for allowing me the chance to generate and fund them so they are 'free' to use with no ads, tracking, etc. I'm lucky, I know, and I also know the Great British Public paid my wages + pension (indirectly) so want to give them something back.

TU's aren't a "thing" because they have been marginalised and weakened by the Tories over recent decades and are consistently misrepresented in much of the press. And many people also led to feel that their job may be at risk if the join one.

Do you think people become van drivers because they *like* to pee in a bottle and work all hours with no job security, etc?!

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

I also thought the way things, including union demands, have arguably been balanced-out (by Labour just as much as the Tories) so that the higher education end-user (student) is now expected to rack up a personal debt of anything up to £30k for fees and then whatever loans they need to live on. I believe education at all levels should be free as wider society reaps the rewards of better knowledge and skills

Note that *Blair* introduced the trend the Tories then gleefully extended for HE grants to become loans, and have the students pay fees. He put the camel's nose into that tent, so they just had to let the camel follow its nose.

And both parties new full well that much of those loans would end up being written off. But that it would deter some from poor backgrounds.

BTW Note also that when I went to Uni my local Council gave me not only a full Grant but a full *Living away from Home" one. Because my father was retired disabled on a state pension, my Mum stayed at home to look after him, and we lived in a council flat.

Even if the councils still had the power to do that, Governments since then have made damn sure they won't have the money! Just the blame and responsibility.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Oh, and Blair also introduced the idiocy of wanting 50% of people to go to HE whilst sharing the Tory distain for FE. The result is we have a serious shortage of properly trained tradespeople, but people with degrees in all kinds of odd topics where there are few jobs or enconomic output.

Brexit can be seen as a result of the "Rise of the Meritocracy" fantasy.

 

[Seanm]

Interview with Sharon Graham of *Unite* here: very encouraging and should allay concerns about unions only working for the public sector, or on the basis of feelings, or against the interests of members:

https://labourlist.org/2021/12/shar...get-what-we-do-politically-to-mean-something/

Since her election, Graham tells me she has “felt remarkably calm” because: “I know exactly what we need to do. The first 100 days has characterised a lot of that.” She has a detailed plan for reform, from collective bargaining to extending the use of leverage, which she started implementing immediately. “The first thing I did when I came in, within 48 hours, was bring all of the reps together in dispute. We enacted some of these things [from her 8,000-word manifesto]. We have won 26 out of 40 already of those disputes, and now there’s well over 100.

Starmer’s Labour supports sectoral collective bargaining, but while the party is locked out of power in Westminster, Graham is determined not to delay any plans. One of her key ideas is ‘combines’, which means setting up new structures that run along industrial rather than regional lines. For example, she looked at a range of disputes in the bus industry, and last Tuesday – in her “proudest moment” so far – combined them. “I sat in a room with all of the bus reps from the bus industry, practically all of them, from the seven major companies, and said to them, ‘look around you, look who’s in this room – this is the entire negotiating team for the bus industry’.” This strategy will allow them to secure not only pay deals collectively but also to agree their approach to automation long-term. “I get really excited about it,” says Graham.

 

[droodzilla]

Poor union leaders, they can't win. Len McCluskey was widely crticised for donating too much to the Labour Party. Now Sharon's getting it in the neck for reducing donations to focus resources on the issues that matter to members.

In this week's reshuffle, Starmer abolished the shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights position. He's also has made it clear that he wants to cut reliance on union funding and and raise more from wealthy individuals and coroporate donor (the Mandelson model, essentially).

Sharon Graham's decision is a rational response to all of this (and more). She will use the Unite's considerable resources to fight for members in other ways, because the Labour Party offers little hope of progressive change now. I expect she will be monstered in the right wing press over the next few years, and that will be a sign that they're afraid of her.

More on the abolition of the shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights position, from NEC member Laura Pidcock:

The Shadow Cabinet position of the Minister of Labour (later Minister of Employment Rights) has essentially been deleted in the latest reshuffle. There are rumours that it will be replaced with a junior role, but that will still be unsatisfactory.

This is a brazen political move from this leadership, but I think it’s a monumental error. People might say some of the responsibilities could be subsumed into other Shadow Cabinet roles, but that fundamentally misses the whole point of the political project around this Department.

The Employment Rights brief was about a seat at the Cabinet table for workers. As we battle this pandemic and other crises facing working people, the Department would have been a basic but necessary addition to any progressive Government-in-waiting, a way to meaningfully show they understand the scale of what working class people are up against and an indication that Labour are prepared to do what is necessary to change the way our economy works and our society is run.

The development of the Employment Rights Department was also about the following:

- Trade union rights and freedoms, built through proper dialogue with the trade union movement
- Power: building on trade unions’ representative role by encouraging collective power, laying the groundwork for collective bargaining sector-by-sector.
- Enforcement: an entire Department dedicated to properly enforcing employment rights, so that those rights actually mean something
- Health and safety and a whole range of new individual rights such as a higher minimum hourly rate of pay, banning of zero hour contracts, day one rights for all and more.

All in all, this constitutes decades worth of work, hundreds of hours of dialogue between the trade union movement and the Labour Party and now it has been erased without a murmur.
We need to treat this with the seriousness it deserves. This amounts to an utter disregard for the trade union movement and the millions of workers it represents.

So, to reiterate the key points about Unite's decision to cut funding to the Labour Party:

1. The Labour Party has turned its back on unions, not vice versa. It's long been a dream of the Labour right to be unencumbered by historic ties to the unions and that's the path Starmer has chosen. Unite is pushing back.

2. Politics <> Westminster. Unite's Sharon Graham has calculated that she can achieve more for her members by directing the union's resources elsewhere. Given that the Labour Party is no longer a force for progressive change, I think she might be right.

It's a sad state of affairs, but I believe this is a rational response to the new political reality. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

[Tony L]

Note that *Blair* introduced the trend the Tories then gleefully extended for HE grants to become loans, and have the students pay fees. He put the camel's nose into that tent, so they just had to let the camel follow its nose.

I’m very aware of that. I make no secret that I have close to zero respect for the Labour Party within my voting lifetime and I’d argue aside from a four year blip for Attlee and Wilson’s first term it has been an catastrophic failure as a political force. It is the Stockholm Syndrome prisoner chained in the basement of centuries of elite Tory rule and to this day is too traumatised, dumb and slow-moving to even grasp that basic fact. It is a two-dimensional cartoon cutout of an “opposition” giving false legitimacy and fake counterpoint to a carefully crafted Tory illusion of democracy.

It's a sad state of affairs, but I believe this is a rational response to the new political reality. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I can fully understand the Trade Unions coming to the conclusion that the party they birthed has turned out to be such a disappointment to them (and the rest of us). Whilst I am far too much the outsider to ever be a Trade Unionist I can fully understand them cutting ties, and I view them as having the moral high-ground in this response. Labour is by design the political wing of the Trade Union movement and a Labour Party that took that role seriously inside a functioning proportional democracy would be a useful tool. As ever we are dealing with systemic failure here. It can not possibly be fixed until we implement a democracy.

 

[Cav]

Maybe true. Thankfully hardly anything I’ve ever done to make a living could be described as ‘labour’, let alone ‘organised’!

Trade unions just aren’t a thing in the world most people (77% of us) live in.

The world most people live in and the benefits and freedoms they enjoy were hard won by Trades Union, not some gift of generous bosses or benevolent Governments.

 

[Cav]

As such I would far prefer to see a state pension that is fit for purpose for all rather than seeing trade unions strong-arming the state into giving preferential treatment for public sector workers and then handing the rest of us, who very likely can’t afford anything similar for ourselves, the bill.

I would like to see any evidence you have for the assertion that Trades Union (and specifically public sector Unions) have reduced the State Pension for everyone else.

Unions strong-arming Government? Since Thatcher? Love to see that evidenced.

 

[Tony L]

The world most people live in and the benefits and freedoms they enjoy were hard won by Trades Union, not some gift of generous bosses or benevolent Governments.

Again only 23% of working people are members of trade unions, and the overwhelming majority of those are in public sector roles.

I’ve no idea how old you are, but I’m guessing a decade or two older than me, so likely with an entirely different work/life experience. I left school straight onto the dole in 1979 and lived through the period where the political right happily sacrificed the UK’s industrial base to remove Trade Unions from the map. They succeeded. Aside from the public sector this situation remains true to this day. This wipe-out was so complete, so absolute, that Labour, the party that was actually the political wing of the Trade Union movement, is now floundering around totally unable to articulate what it stands for or what it believes in. What is left of the Trade Union movement now appears to be distancing itself from its now dead party.

Regardless it all looks pretty irrelevant from my perspective. They are Trade Unicorns as far as 77% of us are concerned. We’ve never seen one. We wouldn’t know what to do if we did. We just don’t live in the 19th or 20th century any more. I’m not saying that is good or bad. It just is what it is.

 

[ks.234]

Again only 23% of working people are members of trade unions, and the overwhelming majority of those are in public sector roles.

I’ve no idea how old you are, but I’m guessing a decade or two older than me, so likely with an entirely different work/life experience. I left school straight onto the dole in 1979 and lived through the period where the political right happily sacrificed the UK’s industrial base to remove Trade Unions from the map. They succeeded. Aside from the public sector this situation remains true to this day. This wipe-out was so complete, so absolute, that Labour, the party that was actually the political wing of the Trade Union movement, is now floundering around totally unable to articulate what it stands for or what it believes in. What is left of the Trade Union movement now appears to be distancing itself from its now dead party.

Regardless it all looks pretty irrelevant from my perspective. They are Trade Unicorns as far as 77% of us are concerned. We’ve never seen one. We wouldn’t know what to do if we did. We just don’t live in the 19th or 20th century any more. I’m not saying that is good or bad. It just is what it is.

If membership of a trade Union is so low in the private sector, you can hardly blame the unions for the poor pay and pensions in the private sector. Further, you cannot blame the better pensions in the public sector for poor pensions in the private sector.

Poor pay and conditions in the private sector is a consequence of trade union demise. Trade unions did not create those poor pay and condition.

 

[Tony L]

Poor pay and conditions in the private sector is a consequence of trade union demise. Trade unions did not create those poor pay and condition.

I’m obviously not blaming them for this. Everything I’ve written in relation to Trade Unions (and for that matter Labour) is just observation based on experience, or lack thereof due to their simply not being on the map. They no longer exist in most folk’s timeframe.

 

[Enfield boy]

They no longer exist because of press misrepresentation of legitimate Union activities, management theft and incompetence (Lord and Lady Docker, Lord Stokes etc) and the jealousy of those without representation of any meaningful kind. But hey, zero hours, gig McJobs works dunnit?