Although the General Election was less than two months ago, it feels much longer since the Tories were decimated and Labour won a landslide election victory, albeit on a lower turnout than in 2019.
Within that period, we have seen a fascist and far right resurgence on our streets, the continuing slaughter of Palestinians and an assassination attempt on Trump that missed but, metaphorically speaking, hit Biden.
We are beginning to see, what many of us feared – a right-wing Labour government stubbornly sticking to the neoliberal consensus. Keir Starmer’s first act was to suspend seven Labour Party MPs, including former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell for daring to vote to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Yvette Cooper’s pledge to deport 14,000 refugees in attempt to prove that she is tougher on immigrants than the Tories will give succour to the far right and fascists.
There is not a cigarette paper between Starmer’s foreign policy and the Tories. The first world leader to contact Starmer to congratulate him on his victory was Biden who outlined all the areas of agreement they had between them which included – support for Israel, the Ukraine and the AUKUS agreement. This is a continuation of preparation for an escalation of military conflict across the globe.
But it has not all been one-way traffic. Whilst Labour under Starmer accept all the guiding principles of the market and competition, there are different pressures that he has to listen to because of Labour’s organic links to the working class via the trade union bureaucracy.
The right-wing media are full of articles about how Starmer is ‘caving in’ to the ‘union barons’ over pay, employment contracts and repealing some trade union laws – all leading to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970s. Whilst, unfortunately, this is extremely exaggerated there are moves afoot that will open up space for organised labour to exert its influence more easily.
Repealing Trade Union laws
It looks likely that within the first hundred days the Labour government will repeal the minimum service anti strike legislation and the ballot thresholds. Both, of course, are welcome.
The Minimum Service Levels was never going to work in practice, so this was an easy one to repeal. The repealing of the Trade Union thresholds, perhaps was a little more of a surprise, considering how so many TU leaders, despite their public denunciation of the 2016 Act, in private have found the thresholds useful.
Governments’ pass trade union laws not simply to make it more difficult for legal working-class resistance but also to give the trade union bureaucracy more power over the rank and file. Since the 2016 Act was passed TU leaders of all stripes have happily blamed the members for not reaching the thresholds and therefore not able to take national action because of members’ apathy.
Despite ballot after ballot showing 90% plus of members voting for action the focus was on the turnouts and not the vote for action. This became the test of appetite of members to fight. Often TU leaders went further to argue it would be dangerous to ballot members nationally because if the union did not reach the thresholds, it would expose the weakness of the union and give a green light to the employer to go on the offensive.
This would be true if members voted against action, however it is complete nonsense to argue this when members have voted by 90% to take action on a 45% turnout. Yes, action may not be able to go ahead legally but it is hardly a sign of weakness. In such circumstances, it is much more about the lack of leadership provided to motivate members to vote than any alleged apathy amongst members.
In the past few years as some unions have become successful in meeting the thresholds TU leaders have come up with a range of reasons why successful ballot results still can’t be implemented or only partially with limited action. Those excuses have ranged from ‘there was only a 51% turned out to vote’ or the turnout was ‘very uneven’ etc. etc…
Don’t be surprised to find that after the 2016 Act is repealed that some unions attempt to continue their own internal thresholds to maintain this control over when action can be taken.
But for now, there should be no argument. The legal thresholds are going. Those who have previously argued that they would love to see national action but that the union was not yet ready to beat thresholds, should now sleep easily. Sustained by the knowledge that now we will be able to get the vast majority of members to take action, beginning a meaningful campaign capable of applying pressure on Starmer’s government.
But the trade union movement needs to go further and campaign to repeal all the anti TU legislation that were brought in by Thatcher and Blair.
It is clear that the so called ‘summer of love’ between Starmer and the unions will be a short-lived thing. One Tory complained to the FT recently that there has been a lot of ‘quid’ by no ‘quo’. In the same article the author reports that Starmer is strongly in favour of ‘reforming’ public services. The use of the term ‘reform’ means more privatization and productivity deals.
In short Starmer will be telling the unions that you can’t have your cake and eat it. For modest pay increases, that fail to restore wage levels to pre austerity and inflation period and the repealing of some TU laws they will be coming for our conditions. Work harder for less.
Striking pays
The announcement that the government will agree to the STRB 5.5% recommendation for schools and health workers and agree a 22% pay award over two years for junior doctors demonstrates that striking pays. The government has made it clear that they want to avoid more industrial action and the only way to do this is to meet workers’ demands, at least to some degree.
Clearly 5.5% will not make up for the earnings lost over the past number of years where inflation reached 16% and more. We should not accept the first offer that comes along. We need to continue to apply the pressure to force the Labour government to find more money for public sector pay through taxing the rich rather than attempting to create divisions by cutting benefits or pensions to pay for public sector pay.
In FE we are not even going to be offered the 5.5%. This will mean that we will fall behind teachers’ pay by £11k.
This is clearly unacceptable and the union should be taken active steps to challenge this. Even the CEO’s/Principals at the 7 largest FE colleges recognize this to be “very unfair”, particularly as FE was reclassified into the public sector in 2022 and have written to the Secretary of State highlighting the disparity in funding.
The union has, at last, launched a campaign over binding national bargaining (well, they have sent posters out…) that has been demanded by successive FE sector conferences. It is possible that the Labour government and AOC employers’ body move towards agreeing a new national bargaining framework. But without any national action any agreement is likely to be one that favours the employers.
UCU FE has no strategy other than battling it out at a local level college by college. This is a disaster. There is a reason why the teachers have been offered an above inflation pay rise and FE lecturers haven’t – they fought at a national level and we didn’t. We need to rectify this problem now if we are going to be able shape the Autumn budget. With colleges experiencing significant recruitment problems we are in a good position to win a significant pay rise so that the sector can attract desperately needed new staff.
Seizing the opportunities that will open up
After 14 years of Tory government Post 16 education has been desperately underfunded, the curriculum narrowed and the market allowed to let rip. In HE job loses already hit many Universities at the end of the summer term and look set for even a bigger funding crisis in the new academic year.
Labour under Starmer will not budge from this model by virtue of their own ideological values – because their values have grown from the same family tree. But workers expectations and confidence has risen – they expect a different way of government from what we have experienced over the last 14 years.
Mild reforms like repealing TU laws, offering above inflation pay awards or agreeing new collective bargaining frameworks will not meet these expectations but they will open up spaces for resistance to win back what we have lost over those years and go forward to tip the balance in favour of working people.
Our task is to be alert to these new openings and fill these spaces with resistance to fight over pay and collective bargaining agreements as well as for a post 16 education system based on planning and not the rigors of the market.
86 colleges and universities took part in the Stop the War and PSC workplace days of action. We will need to continue to campaign to end the genocide in Gaza. We will need to organise in our colleges and universities anti-racist themed learning weeks to celebrate multiculturalism and push back the rising tide of the fascist and far right.
To do all this and more we need to get organised and share our experiences about what has worked and what hasn’t. This is why London Region UCU has initiated a conference and supported by over 20 colleges and universities, so far, from across the UK to come together to discuss how we are going to win under a Labour government.
Get your branch to back the conference and send a delegation. Registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/defending-post-16-education-under-starmer-austerity-palestine-racism-and-climate-chaos-tickets-961668044007?aff=oddtdtcreator&utm_campaign=postpublish&utm_medium=sparkpost&utm_source=email
Sean Vernell UCU NEC