Manchester Conference

"It’s good to be here with so many friends and comrades from the co-operative movement and the trade unions. 

I’ve been asked to speak for a few minutes about ‘trade union challenges in a changing economy’.

 

There are few better venues than here in the Mechanics’ Institute, where the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was born in 1868. Thirty-four delegates met within these walls to bring together the trade unions which had emerged in every town and city in Britain.

 

The basic principle behind their decision to meet here was one familiar to co-operaters as well as trade unionists: solidarity. The idea that together we are strong, divided we are weak.

 

It was a visionary idea in 1868, because Victorian society was the most variegated and multi-layered in history. A few years earlier Marx & Engels had sat in Cheetham’s Library down the road, and stated that society comprised ‘two great camps: proletariat and bourgeoisie’.

 

But the reality of working people’s experience in Manchester and other industrial cities was one of fierce demarcation, dividing lines and differential status between different groups of workers.

 

Few spoke of the ‘working class’, they spoke of ‘the working classes’ and the trade unions reflected these divides.

 

They were mostly local, or regional, and based on a specific trade or craft.

 

I always reflect that when the Labour Party was founded down in London in 1900, the delegates came from a vast array of trade unions: not just weavers, miners, iron founders and ship-builders, but also sail makers, cigar rollers, chain-makers, waiters, even taxi-drivers.

 

So the idea that all of these different unions could create a shared platform and a single voice was nothing short of revolutionary. Yet they did it.

 

Unions have always reflected the shape of the economy itself.

 

The amalgamations of trade unions throughout the 20th century into ‘general unions’ like the Unison, GMB and T&G reflects the increased shared agenda of workers in the public and private sectors at a national level. The emergence of today’s super-unions, with international links across continents, reflects the realities of globalisation and the rise of multi-national corporations which are bigger and more powerful than nation states.

 

The challenges for tomorrow’s unions are contained within the developments of the world economy itself (a point Marx & Engels would have understood).

 

Workplaces are becoming smaller, and workers more scattered – a result of post-Fordism and the technological revolution.

 

Seventy-seven per cent of private sector workplaces have no union members at all.

 

Only 8 per cent have a union density of more than 50 per cent.

 

So in Britain, trade unionism is anchored in the public sector, whilst some of the most vulnerable workers in the private sector are not represented. And globalisation means that corporations can open and close their operations over a weekend on different continents, and so trade unions have to work internationally.

 

But there are opportunities too. I think one of the public reactions to the global recession is a drive for greater regulation, more control of free markets, more government protection of people’s jobs and homes.

 

That’s good news for collective institutions like unions, like co-operatives, like parties of the Left. It is one contributing factor in why Obama won in the US.

 

And it may not feel like it right now in the midst of the expenses scandal, but it is also the reason why we have a fighting chance at the next election if we frame the election in terms of policy.

 

The big questions of the age are about the role of the state in relation to the market. And the recession tips the balance in favour of the state.

 

But it is more complex than that. No-one wants a return to the overarching, clunking state, with monolithic state-owned industries, corporations and institutions. The modern age is characterised by people’s desire for control, choice, personalisation.

 

The success of a mass-market product like the i-pod is that the technology allows the user total choice and control. And that is increasingly what people want from their local services.

 

And they want to take control over their own lives. Take the issue of climate change. It is right that governments take tough action, and what a relief we’re seeing real progress at last from the USA. And it is right that individuals take action, with their lifestyle choices and personal behaviour.

 

But it is also crucial that we take neighbourhood and community-level action like locally-owned combined heat and power, composting, recycling, or fruit and vegetable growing: all projects which lend themselves to co-ops and mutuals, but crucially schemes which a canny local trade union branch could play an important role in.

 

To my mind, the current zeitgeist, with the emphasis on collective solutions, plays into the hands of the co-operative movement: institutions which are not-for-private-profit, controlled by their members, responsive to customer demands, environmental and ethical.

 

And crucially it plays into the hands of those trade unions like Community or my own union USDAW which are anchored in local communities, flexible and responsive, and dealing with issues of direct relevance to the workers.

 

So there is a shared agenda for unions and the co-operative movement which is part of the spirit of the times.

Protection for workers. Action on the environment. Fair trade. Equality for women and people from Black & Minority Ethnic backgrounds. Products which are produced ethically. Support for local manufacturers and growers. This is an agenda, long-championed by the co-op and the unions, which is now shared by the majority of people in Britain.

 

It is a tough agenda.

 

I know there are trade union suspicions about the role of social enterprises, co-ops and mutuals in providing services, for example in the NHS. There is sometimes a tension within social businesses when wages are low and hours are long. There can be conflicts, and this event today needs to address some of those conflicts head-on.

 

But the bottom line is that co-operators and trade unions share collective values, share a common approach to democracy and progressive politics, and share a vision for the future.

 

The reality is that any divide between these great movements does not serve the interests of either of them; it only serves the political Right. The historic challenge for us is to forge a new relationship, based on the values I described earlier.

 

I started out with the 34 people who sat where we sit and started the Trades Union Congress (TUC), because they were brave and visionary and had history of their side.

 

Is it too optimistic or fanciful to suggest that the small but dedicated band I see before me is similarly onto something just as important?"