This is a year for unions to find the clout and relevance millions are relying on ? not feed the caricatures of Tory papers
Sedition! Treason! Infamy! When it comes to the royal wedding, according to a poll by ComRes, 59% of us couldn't care less or are "largely indifferent" ? but if you are planning communal revels, you should supposedly be ready to guard yourself against the wrecking tactics of the beastly Labour movement. "Union militants target Royal Wedding," howls the Mail; "Union boss threatens Prince William strike chaos," says the Sun.
The provenance of these stories looks fuzzy, to say the least. The train drivers' union Aslef is one of two unions accused of planning such mischief ? and though there is an ongoing disagreement with London Underground about bank holiday overtime payments, a union insider tells me the idea of a wedding-day stoppage is no less than "frogshit", and agrees a strike that day would demonstrate "a staggeringly pisspoor idea of public relations".
At the Public and Commercial Services Union accusations that members might purposely spoil the nuptials get short shrift: "It's a bank holiday," one press officer calmly points out, "so most of them won't be working anyway." Not that any of this will calm hysterical shrieking from the Conservative press: self-evidently, if 2011 looks set to see endless headlines about unions, absurd caricatures and non-stories will pile up.
Today I spent time among real-life trade unionists, and sampled a mood split between rising fear and defiance. At the TUC's London HQ Unite was launching Don't Break Britain, a campaign focused on the national TUC demonstration that will make its way through the capital on 26 March. There was optimistic talk of "the biggest march this country has ever seen", surpassing even the historic anti-war protest of February 2003.
Contrary to the usual cartoon of dinosaurs marooned in the analogue age, the day's proceedings were being streamed online, and Q&A sessions included questions sent in via the web. In the foyer, I met two young trailblazers from a company called Mass1, which is providing the union with a means of massed intelligence-gathering and dialogue, via text messaging: 140,000 Unite members have already signed up, and the numbers are rising. They not only take part in ongoing opinion polling, but serve notice of the kind of sharp-end developments that the government hopes the mainstream media will not notice, or ignore.
This pair showed me dozens of messages, the most interesting of which concerned under-the-radar news from people working in local government."Many, many jobs going at Knowsley council," went one. "Notices have been given out people asked to re-apply for their jobs which are now lower paid and called different titles." Another text ran: "Staff at my work don't get replaced ? their jobs are given to agency workers and contractors who have to work nights, 7 days a week, 52 wks a year. i know an agency worker who does 60-plus hours a week ? is this safe?"
Such is the reality of Eric Pickles's moronic insistence that councils can somehow do "more with less". As a Unite rep from Hull told me, the reality is redundancies, skyrocketing contracting-out, and determined attacks on salaries, hours, sick pay and overtime ? matched by under-reported moves in the private sector, where the fretful economic climate seems to be sparking a similar race to the bottom.
All of which underlines an inescapable fact: that those who dread the coming austerity will surely have to make common cause with the only organisations with the finances and capacity to make things happen. For sure, as the unions make their way into the political foreground Ed Miliband will probably be nowhere to be seen, but that is less about any kind of sellout than the realpolitik that faces any Labour leader. But for those of us who do not have to fret about swing voters and the like, the only option will be to set aside any differences of opinion, and get on with it.
There are, however, real problems. There was a troubling dissonance on display today, as the aforementioned digital innovations jarred against a disappointing sense of business as usual. Unite's outgoing general secretary, Tony Woodley, delivered the kind of speech that makes the Sun and Mail's attacks a cinch: he made repeated reference to "our class", and maligned the Tory frontbench as "Thatcher's bastards". In the hall there was a glaring lack of women, young people and anyone who wasn't white. The question would not go away: what of that great, quiet swath of public opinion that is fearful of austerity, but will not respond to the unions' time-honoured practice of appointing angry men to issue standard-issue rhetoric?
Which brings us to the small matter of strikes, and how badly they may play. The day began at 10am, and it took until 11:18 for Len McCluskey ? Unite's new general secretary, and a more nuanced and appealing operator than some might think ? to bow to the inevitable and mention "co-ordinated industrial action". In the Guardian Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union has held out the prospect of synchronised walkouts over cuts to public sector pensions, and he is not alone. Here, though, may lie the difference between public sympathy and hostility ? because to many egged on by the government, the packages the unions want to protect will look comfy and ripe for the chop, and industrial action in their defence will suggest sectional shouting rather than pursuit of any great cause.
That may not be fair ? but the circumstances with which even the most righteous movements are confronted rarely are. For now, surely, the imperative should not be playing to type, but devoting every ounce of energy to seizing on an increasingly anxious public mood, and decisively turning it.
Towards the end of this morning, Unite's activists heard from their assistant general secretary, Gail Cartmail, there to deliver a speech about the shrinking of the state. She spoke calmly, and sounded exactly the kind of note that had been lacking. "The much-maligned state is hot meals for old people," she said. "It's playgroups for parents who need a safe space. The state is the midwife, and the mortuary technician. It's our protection against crime and antisocial behaviour."
They were heart-stopping words, which only pointed up how much is at stake, in two rather different ways. 2011 may well decide the future of the welfare state, but it will also answer another question: as the government makes ever-louder noises about stifling them with new legislation, will the unions remain the prisoner of other people's caricatures ? or find the relevance and clout on which millions of us are counting?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/19/austerity-unions-hope-tory-caricature
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