STRONGER UNIONS

Yesterday was a quiet day…only 3 transactions to report.

1) Went to the Co-op to buy bread and the papers. You’d think the Co-op would be a safe best considering its history and the fact that it recognises several TUC unions. However, the GMB is currently in dispute with the Co-op over its decision to unilaterally de-recognise the GMB in its Funeral Care business. You can read more about the dispute, and the text of a GMB motion on the issue agreed at TUC Congress earlier this year here. The motion stopped short of calling for  consumer boycott of Co-op stores, but does ask unions and trades councils to re-consider banking with the Co-op bank.

GMB campaign in the Co-Op

2) Went to Wheildon’s our local butchers for bacon and eggs. They may not meet any formal ‘ethical’ criteria, but I reckon you can’t go far wrong by buying from Wheildon’s or most other local butchers. Nothing is shrink wrapped or comes in a polystyrene tray, and very little has been carted from one end of the country to another. Although most of their meat is not organic, its overwhelmingly local, reared by farmers that the two Wheildon’s brothers - Roy and Les - know and slaughtered locally.

3) A delivery van from Argos came, to drop off a couple of the kid’s Christmas presents (don’t worry about it ruining the surprise, they don’t tend to read TUC blogs). Both Argos stores and distribution centres are unionised. There is some debate about whether or not home delivery shopping is better for the environment than shoppers making individual trips to the supermarket or store. On the one hand, one vehicle making multiple deliveries must be better than multiple vehicles making multiple journeys. On the other hand one HGV can pump out a lot of carbon, and consumer-led delivery schedules can make delivery rounds incredibly energy inefficient.

Today, I’ve bought nothing accept a couple of drinks at a local sports club. In my quest to buy ‘less stuff I don’t need’, I’m going to read all of yesterday’s paper rather than buying a foot-thick wad of Sunday papers (half of which normally goes straight into the recycling without so much as a glance). I’ll guess I’ll have to read ‘Winner’s Dinners’, which is a guilty pleasure of mine, on-line!

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Yesterday was Day One in my attempt to evaluate - and hopefully shape - the ethical impact of going about my day to day business and, as Lawrence suggested I would in the comments section, I’m already finding things difficult.
In the morning I bought The Independent which came with free bottle of Buxton Spring Water. I wouldn’t normally buy the Independent (which has just announced massive job cuts - the NUJ’s response is here), but the water was FREE - except of course anything that increases the consumption of bottle water is a BAD THING. Environmentally, bottle water is a disaster, and I have no excuse other than it was very, very early, and I wasn’t really thinking straight. A quick trawl on the web also reveals that Buxton Spring Water is produced by…Nestle (unionised, but controversial to say the least and worth a thousand blogs on its own).
My journey to the Unions 2020 conference today was courtesy of Virgin Trains (unionised), and in terms of environmental impact the train is a far better bet than any other way of getting to and from London, so all in all the best choice I could have made.
Lunch was Pizza Express. Pizza Express were in the headlines some months back for sacking UNITE member Nabil Guisguis for speaking out on the company’s policy on tips (they skim off tips left by credit card). We left a cash tip, but although UNITE have not called for a boycott of Pizza Express, I reckon we should have eaten somewhere else. Part of the problem though is not knowing how other restaurants and cafes in the area deal with this issue, though I’m pretty sure Pizza Express aren’t the only culprits. All that said, their policy on ‘credit card’ tipping is scandalous – which is why UNITE’s excellent campaign for ‘fair tips’ deserves a name-check.
The final leg of my journey home from work was by Merseyrail, another unionised rail company. Being unionised doesn’t make any company perfect, but it does tend to make a difference, expecially in a safety critical industry like rail. Would you want to travel on the rail equivalent of Ryan Air?

Other transactions yesterday included:

• Costa Coffee at Chester train station (actually a franchise run by Caterleisure - not sure if they are unionised)
• Mersey Tunnels - run by the local transport authority MerseyTravel. Unionised.
• The ‘Raven’ pub, which is part of the Wetherspoons chain. As far as I am aware Wetherspoons does not recognise unions, but according to Ethical Consumer they score a quite good ‘7’ on their ethical league table (Pizza Express limped over the half-way mark on 5.5). I’m always a bit sniffy about Wetherspoons. By and large their pubs are always pretty decent, and the food and drink are well priced, but they always seem a bit soul-less to me.

All in all, an OK day, but by no means perfect. Lets see what tomorrow brings!

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Here’s my dilemma…

Yesterday we ran out of coffee in the office (well we ran out the proper stuff, I don’t count decaffeinated as coffee in the same way that Kaliber is not a lager), so I was forced to go out to a local coffee shop for my daily fix.

The nearest,and frankly best, coffee shop to the TUC’s Liverpool office is Starbucks. Now, already I know a few of you will be wincing…Starbucks has a pretty rotten reputation, and is the bete-noire of many left of centre activists. They don’t recognise unions; they dragged their feet on introducing fair trade products (which in and of themselves don’t do enough to guarantee workers rights); and for many they symbolise all that is wrong with bland, standardised consumer capitalism. Pretty much wherever you go in the world you’ll find a Starbucks -probably sitting next door to McDonalds, the Gap, Borders and a couple of dozen other global retail monoliths.

But if Starbucks coffee leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, where else can you buy a decent cuppa without parking your ethics at the store door? As far as I know, none of the other local cafes or coffee shops recognise unions; few if any take fair trade seriously; and most probably provide staff terms and conditions that are worse than Starbucks. Is there an ‘ethical’ alternative to Starbucks?

Nicole Schulman designed this poster for the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. Photo from Labourstart Flickr group.

More broadly, is it realistic to only buy from shops - or eat at restaurants - that recognise unions, and have a modicum of ethical scruples? Where would you drink at night - how many bars and pubs in Liverpool or any other major UK city recognise unions - what hotels would you stay in, which airlines could you fly with? And how do you ‘balance’ a business’s ethical score-card? Back in the day the GMB used to keep a ‘fairs list’ of hotels which recognised a union. A 21st century equivalent would be useful, but would recognising a union be our only measure of fairness? What about a company’s environmental record, its supply chain policies, how it deals with the local community? Are these more or less important than union recognition?

Here’s a practical example. Many people would consider Marks and Spencer to be about as decent a high street store as you could wish for - certainly, they claim to lead the way on environmental issues. But they don’t recognise unions, and UNITE would question their commitment to ensuring their supply chains are ethically sound. ASDA is part of the Wal-Mart group - rightly criticised around the world for their stance on labour  and other issues. But in the UK they recognise unions. Does this make them a better or worse ethical bet than Waitrose - part of the John Lewis group - which doesn’t? Much has rightly been made about the human and environmental cost of cheap fashion, but Primark is a member of the Ethical Trading Initiaive, while the companies that own many of the high end fashion brands are not. Does all (or any) of that branded ‘mark-up’ find its way into the pockets of workers at the end of the luxury retailers supply chains, or do they just make more profit than their low-cost peers?

All of the above is a long-winded way of introducing a little experiment that I am going to carry out over the next week. Starting from tomorrow, I am going to log EVERY transaction I make, or interaction I have, as a consumer or service user. I’m then going to try and work out which of these transactions/interactions meet my completely un-scientific ‘ethical’ test. Key elements of this test will be:

• Does the company/organisation recognise unions?
• If they don’t have they got a track record of actively trying to prevent workers from organising?
• Is the company/organisation a member of any ‘ethical’ organisation, or signed up to any relevant ethical, environmental and/or labour standards, and are these standards worth the paper they’re written on?

I warned you it was unscientific! Readers of this blog can help by pointing out any mistakes I make in my balancing up of the score-card. If you know something  I don’t about a company or organisation that I mention, then please  let me know!

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Tomorrow I’m off to Coventry to speak at the 2008 NUS Activist Academy.  The NUS established their Activist Academy in 2007 (with the assistance of the TUC’s Organising Academy) to generate a new generation of student activists based on the principles and practices of union organising.

This is a continuation of work between the TUC and NUS since the 2006 Congress when a protocol between the trade union and student movements was signed.  In her speech to Congress that year, the then NUS National President Gemma Tummelty summed up the basis for the relationship by declaring;

An NUS that is serious about representation of our members on and off campus should work with trades unions; and trades unions who are serious about increasing membership and activism amongst young people should engage and target students and work with NUS because the people we represent on campus are the people you can represent at work

Since then joint work involving the TUC, NUS and unions has involved amongst others; projects in TUC regions aimed at building links between working students and trade unions, the establishment of union societies within student unions and this year we have a graduate from the NUS Activist Academy, Ryan Slaughter, on the Organising Academy working with Community.

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Today I’m sitting down and listening to other people speak for a change. I’m spending the day at Chain Reaction 08, where according to the organisers….

“…I will meet people from all walks of life, who are saying “we can build a better world”, shaping new ways of living and working and inspiring others through their ideas and their actions. Chain Reaction is the place to learn about HOW social change happens, and to get involved in developing new and exciting projects”

Now, I’m not the cynical type - well alright I am - but normally statements like the one above would have me rolling my eyes and looking for the nearest exit, but at first glances the event seems to be pretty much living up to its billing. This morning I sat in on a great session looking at sources of funding for ‘third-sector’ organisations. A lot of the discussion wasn’t directly relevant to me, but like all the best discussions its set a few more hares running in mind - though perhaps I don’t need any more!

This afternoon I’ll be sitting in on a session on ‘Campaigning for Social Change’ so hopefully there’ll be a few more ideas I can take from that. The event is pretty good for connecting with other like-minded people and organisations even if, like me, the thought of organised ‘networking’ fills you with a sense of dread…

Anyway you can follow the conference on the ‘Chain Reaction’  ‘twitter’ site here.

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Attendees at the recent Building Stronger Unions event held on October 14th got the chance to see a short play written especially for the occasion.  The play performed by the excellent Electric Picnic explored the challenges faced by a new union organiser who finds that that pre-conceptions are often mis-conceptions and that whilst both can be hard to dispel,  with a bit of effort (and the benefit of training from the Organising Academy) even the most sceptical workers can be convinced of the power to be found in a union.  Part One is below and Part Two can be seen here

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Today I spent the morning with this year’s TUC Academy Organisers talking about trends in union membership.

You can read union membership and density statistics in lots of different ways and depending on factors such as  what time-frame you use you can get them to say pretty much anything, proving the old line about ‘lies, damned lies’ and so on. One old chestnut (which usually accompanies any article about union membership) is that membership has been in decline for the last 25 or 30 years. Of course if you compare union membership to what it was in 1979 its pretty clear there has been a catastrophic decline, but the picture is not simple if you begin to disaggregate those 30 years. Between 1979 and 1998 unions in the UK lost the thick end of 5.5m members, but membership has been pretty stable since then. OK stability (particularly against the backdrop of, until recently, rising employment) is hardly cause for bringing out the party poppers and bunting, but it provides a different starting point for those of us trying to grapple with whether the proverbial pint pot is half full or half empty.

Half full?

During the discussion today I asked the Academy Organisers to agree which of the statements best summed up or most misrepresented the state of unions today and why. Use the comments section to have a go at this as well (clue: there is no right or wrong answer, but some answers are more right than others!)

1. Which ever way you look at it, union membership has been in decline for the best part of 30 years and there is little to suggest that we can expect growth in the coming period
2. Unions have stabilised their membership over the last 10 years. If they invest more in organising they can build on this growth
3. Unions have stabilised their membership over the last 10 years – they need to invest more in organising but this alone won’t increase membership significantly. So they need to do more…(what?)
4. Unions have struggled to organise successfully in the private sector – we need new models of unionism if we are to make inroads into the private service sector
5. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! 7 million people have decided unions are right for them, our job is to communicate the benefits of trade unionism to non-members, not ‘change the product’
6. ‘Organising’ hasn’t worked. We’ve done it for 10 years and at best we’ve stabilised membership. Its time to do something new.

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Founded in 1899 Ruskin College aimed to provide university-standard education for working class people so that they could act more effectively on behalf of working class communities and organisations - trade unions, political parties, co-operative societies, working men’s institutes and so on. One of the key fonding principles was that education is power; that it has the capacity to transform both individual lives and societies.

Now Ruskin College has a TUC Education programme, headed up by a former colleague of mine from TUC Learning Services, Nigel Williams.  Its great to report that the Ruskin TUC Education programme will be one of the Activist Academy Centres of Organising and Recruitment Excellence and will be delivering Activist Academy programmes for union reps and workplace activists.

I was at the college yesterday to discuss the Activist Academy with both Nigel and Rob Hancock the TUC Regional Education Officer.

Nigel is working to establish the TUC programme in the area and is offering a full range of courses, details of which can be found here. 

The Activist Academy programme at Ruskin will be delivered on the following dates; January 15 & 16, February 12 & 13 and March 12 & 13. 

Details of how to apply for all courses in the Ruskin TUC Education programme, including the Activist Academy are here.

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1888 Match workers

Don’t throw it all away
Today I was in a meeting with the women’s network at the TUC where we were given a presentation on the role of women in trade union history. It was fascinating to find out how much of labour history excluded women’s voices and yet, how vital a role, women played in industrialisation. We discussed some great examples of women’s organising, such as the 1888 match workers strike, and the work of the national federation of women workers. One of the message that came out of the meeting was that we have been rather sporadic in keeping records of a lot of trade union history. This recording would enable future generations to look back on our history and wander what we were doing.
At the end of the discussion I asked what we could do to ensure that labour history is recorded today? The answer ‘Don’t throw it away’, keep records of our time because one day this will be our history for others to marvel and learn from.
Footage such as video and photographs are great for bring history alive as you’ll be able to see from the archives at www.unionhistory.info
The equal pay footage at www.unionhistory.info/equalpay has gone some way to highlight women’s role in labour history.

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I’ve long been a believer that unions need to think about their members in the ’round’. Few people would define themselves purely as a worker or an employee or by their job-title. How would you describe yourself? For me being a union official is a key part of who I am - but I’m also a dad, a husband, an Evertonian, a socialist, a dog-owner, err I better stop there…the list could go on. And if we don’t simply define ourselves by the jobs we do, even fewer have us have such neat and ordered lives that our issues and concerns are nicely compartmentalised between what happens on one side of the office door or factory gate and ‘beyond’.

If this is true of our members and potential members, I think its also true of our reps. Many of our reps and activists are active beyond their workplace as well as within it. At work they may be a shop steward or a ULR - but the rest of the time they may be sitting on a school governing board, helping out at their church, helping run a kids sports team, playing a role in local politics or volunteering for a local charity. But what is the inter-relationship between this ‘community activism’ and their role as workplace rep?

Here’s an interesting graph taken from a presentation by David Peetz, an Australian academic, which was passed on to me by Jenny Evans who heads up the ACTU’s organising work. The slide clearly shows that reps who play an activist role in their local community are also likely to be more active workplace reps (or delegates in Aussie parlance). In some ways this seems a bit counter-intuitive - surely the more active you are outside of work, the more demands on your already stretched time, the less time you’ll have for other forms of activity, but this slide would suggest not. 

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