Workplace Notes
We begin a new series in Organise! where workers in different industries and enterprises give an account of the situation where they work. In this issue a railworker speaks.
I WORK IN the railway industry and right now is an interesting time for a revolutionary on the line on which I am based. We are among the first in the industry to undergo, as a result of privatisation, a scheme of total labour restructuring. The consortium which owns the line plans to replicate the strategy which they used following the deregulation of the buses, which is basically to buy a company, break the union, hammer the workers, so reducing their costs and making the firm a lot more attractive to prospective buyers. The end result is a vast increase the value of their shares. (Add to this share option schemes and they are forecast to make millions).
What this restructuring entails from the workers point of view is a massive drop in both pay and conditions - more unsociable hours, no weekend and bank holiday bonuses, very little paid overtime, huge variations in shifts from week to week, and every shift which we are to work being rostered to the minute a full year in advance. (While we cannot change our rosters at all management can change our hours and place of work at will, with very little notice to us).
So why, you may be asking, did workers accept this new deal, especially in a highly unionised industry like the railway?
The simply answer is that people never did. 85% rejected the scheme at ballot, but when management called a second ballot, and began threatening people, the advice of the union reps (ASLEF, RMT and TSSA) was to accept the deal as it was "the best that we can get". Tragically, just enough people's bottle went (largely due to the fact that they were so used to the union reps fighting for them that they had forgotten how to fight for themselves) for management to get the vote second time round. Restructuring was implemented.
So why did the union reps cave in to the wishes of the bosses? Why did they not encourage everyone to fight for what they have got, and more?
The first answer is that all this happened not long after New Labour won the General Election. No union leader in the country would have wanted to risk upsetting Tony Blair, and so the order to the reps from above would have been that industrial action was not an option. Hence "the best that we can get" means best through talking with management.
The second answer is that, as management were fully aware, the union hierarchy had become totally detached from its membership. The rot no doubt set in years ago with the same reps preferring to spend more time splitting hairs with the same bosses over details than talking to the people that they are supposed to be speaking for. This reached a climax with discussions about the content of restructuring, which saw them locked away together for days on end. When the new scheme was made public it was a case of management and the unions trying to sell us the deal.
Finally, as soon as restructuring was brought in the union reps were the first to be offered lucrative severance deals, which most shamelessly accepted.
So, where does this leave us all now ? Well, despite the scheme being bought in it has been far from accepted by the rank and file. One indicator of this is that absence through sickness is currently running at an incredible 20%. (This has made a poor service even worse, with the result of a 137% rise in written complaints by passengers). There is a lot of anger at the company's actions and the buying off of the unions means that the decades old buffer between them and us has disappeared Add to this the fact that the (relatively) high wages and comfortable conditions which made many people complacent have now gone for the majority of staff and there is a certain amount of new room for revolutionaries to exploit. The challenge is to focus this dissent more critically on the people who are the cause of it, the bosses, ideally by forming a new fighting workplace organisation which will look beyond the calming reformism of the unions.
There are three main obstacles to this. The first is the traditional hierarchy which exists among workers in the railway industry (drivers at the top, through guards and ticket office staff, to cleaners at he bottom - all in separate unions of course).
Any organisation will have to be formed by people who realise, as a start, that as our interests go beyond pay levels, they are the same for all workers in the company.
Secondly, attempts by the union to muscle their way back in must be resisted. This will not be too difficult. In discussions at work I usually have to wait my turn to slate them. However, the bosses, fearing the absence of a group of bureaucrats in place to contain rebellion, are busy setting up with them a talking shop called the 'Company Council'.
Thirdly, and most importantly, is the fact that a lot of people are angry but resigned to not being able to change things. Again the unions did a great job of hammering home to people that there were no other options other than the proposed deal. It is the task of all true revolutionaries to convince people that the power to change life for the better lies in their own hands.
Although the unions are dead and buried, the principle of union, of collective strength, is still very much alive. As one worker spat at a grovelling union rep "How exactly did the few people who own this line get so strong all of the sudden ? There are hundreds of us." The Independent newspaper (17/12/96) described the actions of the company's directors as "an example of unbridled corporate excess" and "an example of how to use the stock market to enrich yourself beyond the dreams of avarice". What they did not mention is what they cannot see. The seething discontent bubbling away beneath the surface which if used by people in a collective manner can really show the bosses, the union but most importantly all working class people what "the best that we can get" is.