A-Infos (en) Ireland, Anarchist journal Red and Black Revolution #11 - Organising with the T&G, and beyond? by Dean (Wombles, UK) - Red & Black Revolution 11 - October 2006

Focus on precarity - UK --- In the UK union membership has been in 
steady decline for the past 25 years, not least due to how people are 
being employed - casualised labour, increased imposition of agency work, 
temporary, short term contracts & contracts of ‘self-employment’, along 
with the general lack of confidence in unions after years of 
complacency, compromises and defeats. One of the UK’s ‘big four’ unions, 
the Transport and General Workers Union (T & G), has sought to address 
this by adopting the model created by the American Service Employees 
International Union (SEIU) with its strategy of a national unit of 
professional ‘union organisers’ to target traditionally untouched areas 
of unionisation (precarious work in fragmented workplaces - most 
significantly in the UK Polish immigrant labour in the north & cleaners 
on London Underground and in the City). A lot of finances and resources 
have gone into ensuring this experiment is a ‘success’. The model is on 
a 3 year probationary period and for this year the organising unit 
should have recruited 10,000 new members.

On the surface this looks an impressive undertaking, especially the work 
done around the Polish workers in Crewe, yet we need to look closely 
just how they are operating and how much they encourage solidarity and 
militancy rather than compliance and acceptance of union leadership.

An organising team is typically made up of a team leader, an organiser 
and an organiser in training. These teams are usually from an activist 
or academic backgrounds (“because of their political commitment & 
willingness to work extra hours”) who go to workplaces to talk to and 
encourage workers to join the union. The more militant workers are 
encouraged to become organisers themselves who in turn organise in their 
respective workplaces.

The problem with this imposed structure is it is geared towards getting 
results. Essentially your energy and responsibility goes into meeting 
targets rather than meeting the needs of the workers (this is amplified 
when you do not share the same common conditions and problems at work). 
In effect organisers become the tools of the union teaching workers how 
to organise rather than being the delegates of workers in the workplace. 
It is an artificially informal hierarchy that re-imposes the formal 
hierarchy of the leadership, although a lot of effort is done on the 
ground to alleviate the impression the members answer to the union.

What is retained though is the leadership speaking on behalf of the 
workers, as evidenced with workplace grievances being dealt with 
directly by the ‘representation team’, sidelining any progressive 
dialogue between organisers and the people they’ve unionised, indicating 
the primary objective of ‘union organisers’ is to simply recruit new 
members. Plus this doesn’t bode well if we look at way the T & G handled 
the Gate Gourmet dispute, where the union stepped in to negotiate to get 
all the sacked workers reinstated only to sell them out in a compromised 
deal. Ironically the evening of a tube cleaners’ organisers meeting at T 
& G headquarters there was a picket outside by Gate Gourmet workers 
demanding their hardship pay be reinstated, having been withdrawn by the 
union. Despite all the fine words, activist commitment and workers’ 
militancy the union leadership will always have the last say.

The question then is can there be a genuine model for grassroots rank 
and file political activity and organising within a union setting, and 
if not what are the alternatives?

One initiative has emerged, on the back of the T & G tube cleaners 
campaign, called The Solidarity Collective – a group set up by people 
involved in the IWW, the Wombles, T & G organisers and other left groups 
to support ongoing workplace struggles independently of union hierarchy. 
How this develops is dependent on those involved but the intention is to 
link up with, and support the development of, autonomous and self 
organised workers struggles (not reliant on unions or political parties) 
as a means to foster forms of solidarity and collective strategies sadly 
missing in this current political climate. What is paramount is the 
recognition that we must work together in creating methods of 
confronting capital together. These are our collective struggles and we 
all have a part to play in them.
======================================
*This article is from Red and Black Revolution 11
<http://www.wsm.ie/story/1321>,
published October 2006*
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