What mak TUC tick?
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THE TRADES Union Congress always gets a lot of limelight in September, when its annual meetings are held at Blackpool, Brighton or Scarborough. This year, when many TUC mandarins — and most of Fleet Street — expected an imminent general election, was no exception. It was enlivened by the Prime Minister's rendering of a well known music hall song.
Tory leaders do not, I think, get a chance to talk to the thousand or so TUC delegates in conference; perhaps, if Mrs Thatcher gets to Number Ten, the TUC might give her a hearing on the promise of a vocal rejoinder to Jim Callaghan? "Drink to me only . ." would be a risky ploy for Maggie. It would certainly inspire a horselaugh.
The celebrated London Evening Standard cartoonist, David Low, in the thirties, depicted the TUC as a very ungainly old horse, sometimes an obstinately stupid animal, sometimes with a hint of impish mischief in his eyes. The TUC's offspring, the Labour Party, stems from the Labour Representation Committee set up by the TUC in 1899, when the TUC was a mere stripling of 31.
Of the Labour Party organisation, Sir Harold Wilson, then plain Mister, likened it in 1962 to a penny farthing, operating in a sophisticated, mobile society. The TUC has many critics, and I was inclined to condemn its administration in conference week 1978, when it was utterly impossible to get hold of a copy of its 1978 report to Congress without visiting Brighton to do so. No copies, I was assured, were at the TUC HQ in London.
For that matter, there was not even a Solitary Press officer on duty in London, though, to be fair, one or two of the Press liaison people were ill. The TUC in modern times has become an "Estate of the Realm", on a par with Parliament and the Judiciary for influence. When it began in 1868 its total membership, which also included members of Trades Councils, was a mere 118,367 trade unionists. Today its 115 affiliated trade unions embrace some 1 11/2m members.
Over the years the number of affiliated trade unions has fluctuated. In 1966, when the TUC submitted evidence to the Royal Commission on Trades Unions and Employers' Associations, it comprised 170 unions with a total membership of 8,867,522. To gain around 3m members of affiliated unions in 12 years reflects a huge effort in organisation. It also reflects the spate of industrial relations legislation — Employment Protection Act etc — which was pressed for by the TUC.
Understanding the spirit and the letter of labour legislation poses a huge problem to the 300,000 or so shop stewards who are the spearhead of the trade union movement. Managers frequently complain of the extent of legislation but the trade unions, too, have the responsibility of training their members, especially the shop stewards, to provide effective leadership and response to management.
The individual trade unions are seldom seen as separate "businesses", but in my view their problems in recruiting and holding membership, often in bitter competition with other unions who are also members of the TUC "Club", do not receive nearly enough attention.
Disputes between unions over their membership territories are supposed to be reconciled by recourse to what is termed the Bridlington agreement, calling for TUC resolution of membership territories. Recently, the Engineers and Managers Association has questioned the fairness of the Bridlington procedure and has instituted legal proceedings which are to be contested by the TUC.
The TUC suffers from mass coverage by the media and this tends to perpetuate a mythology about the business of trade unionism. If it was ever true that the TUC conference delegates are "horny-handed sons of toil", it has not been so for many years. Most conference delegates, I suspect, are virtually full-time activists, either shop stewards or paid officials or lay delegates to a variety of public and other committees..
A lot of the younger paid officers of trade unions, and of the TUC, are bright university graduates perfectly capable of serving as a Member of Parliament, as many do in the course of their career in "the movement". Jim Callaghan began his political career as a full-time trade union officer.
The General Council of the TUC consists of 41 seats comprising 19 industrial or pro fessional classifications. Railways, who used to have three seats, are down to two. Transport (other than railways) who also used to have three seats, now have five, reflecting the changes in modes, and numbers employed, in the past decade.
The General Council meets at least monthly to examine the detailed work of its specialist committees who deal with such subjects as: finance and general purposes, incomes policy, production, international, nationalised industries, economic, education, social insurance and industrial welfare, etc. There are a number of joint committees covering scientific developments, local government service, non-manual workers, women's employment, and Wages Councils.
To understand what the TUC represents in the life of Britain, it is necessary to realise that almost all the work of trade unions is done by volunteers. Behind the Alan Laws and other bogeymen who make so much news in their regular confrontations with employers and politicians, there is the army of volunteer shop stewards and committee people without whose constant dedication the trade union movement would cease to exist.
It is a major problem of trade unions that the number of good shop stewards is seldom equal to the demand. A lot creamed off by managemei poachers are turned gamekeepers! It is no wo that almost all shop steward politically motivated by dis. faction with society as it no for which the TUC would claim responsibility. .
Production for use and for profit, effective indus democracy, protective sr services from the cradle tc grave, are parrot cries employers, but genuinely by most active trade unionis articles of faith. They clE from the early history of t unionism.
What has complicated ters in recent years has beer determination of the pow, trade unions to win for 1 members what they feel to t adequate standard of liv using tactics which not employers, but also, prob: the great majority of the pu feel to be unfair.
The recent work-to-rul French air traffic controllers perfect example of a si number of people in a key literally holding the holii making public — the airl and the tour operators — to som. There are, alas, ri examples nearer home in transport, railways, and doc similar methods which perience suggests are n likely to succeed than not.
It is a paradox that rr trade unions today, despite influence of the TUC on go% ments of both parties, are pared to use methods w their forbears would, in my have condemned. A pc strike which, continued for enough, would result in enc misery for everyone, and n avoidable deaths through ease, would scarcely have 1 conceivable when coal electricity were nationali The failure of Governme jointly with the TUC, to worl alternative ways of reconc pay disputes, is part of the mal history of this century.
If the TUC's dream Socialist Utopia ever co about it will not escape the of reconciling, jointly Government, the legitimate tics of workers in pressinc lproved wages and condiDns. Society, however conituted, cannot stand by while minority of determined people ireaten to bring the whole Mice down.
I suspect this is the motive of )1iti jans of all parties — so far ithout much support from the UC — in looking to the wedish example for thc 'gulation of pay. There, an anJai review takes place of what le ration can afford, and pay tticments should keep within is I mit.
Unfortunately, even a strictly
iaintained national guideline Des nothing to solve the vexed ues:ion of differentials, and the UC could rightly point out that ) long as the business cornunity demands the freedom to iaximise profits, it is no use sking the trade union movelent to attempt to arbitrate on ay differentials.
Pay differences — where you re in the pecking order — relate ) historical parities and cornarisons. They have no basis in itionality, and if pay was deirm ned, as some people urge, y public opinion polls, with a ee media, those unions would me off best which were most dept in putting a persuasive ase before the public.
In transport, so vital an eleleni in modern life, there is a lassic case for prohibiting crikes. The same could be said )r medical services, coal lining, and public services enerally. When I put the proosition to a class of transport tudents, some already in .lanagerial positions, everyone Jled out the idea of a prohibion, even if this were compenated by higher pay. Doctors nd surgeons, in the recent est, have shown similar despite centuries of ,ubl c trust and esteem.
The TUC is primarily a deN-isive body. It does not exist to iromote productivity, though a ligher standard of living would ie easier to obtain if we were as ompetitive, and productive, as lany other countries. Today, he TUC would probably welome a Common Market infiative to cut working hours to 15 a week and earlier retirement it 60.
With horrendous figures of unemployment predicted in Britain of three to five million within a decade or so, the market for productivity improvement, based on more efficient working methods, better designs, participation and all the rest, would seem to be poor.
Yet because trade unions are run by their members, all seeking to maximise incomes, we can observe the perpetuation of overtime coinciding with mass redundancies. This is another paradox of a movement claiming to believe in common sacrifice, sharing, and brotherly love.
Is the TUC, and the movement it personifies, short of ideas? A powerful editorial in, The Times newspaper recently said: "No human movement can survive for long without ideas; if the trade union movement offers no ideas it offers no hope; and if it offers no hope it is an institution manifestly in decline-.
It is a virtue of the TUC and of trade unionism generally. that it can, on occasion, be a fierce critic of itself, and of its leaders. In recent years, the moderates in trade unions have let some of the wild men "get away with murder", though there are signs — partly influenced by the increasing numbers of white collar trade unionists — that this is
changing, Hugh Scanlon was -succeeded by an archmoderate, Terry Duffy.
The consumer movement is beginning to take a welcome interest in trade unions, whose members are also consumers. The Social Audit pressure group which seeks to monitor the performance of big business in social, as well as financial, terms, argues that unions should press for better products and standards. Perhaps the TUC should argue its policies to representative consumer groups, as well as to Government?
Strikes are the bane of transport managers but even in a bad year for strikes, industrial accidents involve the loss of more days, and sickness and absenteeism from 20 to 40 times as much wasted time, as strikes. So in this vexatious subject a sense of proportion is called for.
Although TUC delegates do not need much persuasion to sing the Internationale or the Red Flag, they are much more patriotic than may appear. Certainly they belly-ache about the Common Market's unfeeling bureaucracy.
It was a Tory MP, Alan Clark, who wrote recently in The Guardian newspaper:" . . . old fashioned patriotism has become the almost exclusive property of
the working class, whose tribal loyalties are kept alive . . . on the football terraces. History is ordaining not that the workers of the world unite but that the executives, bankers and 'entrepreneurs' erase national differences to advance their own interests.'' Mr Clark was poking fun at the members of his party who overlap the Union Jack with the Euro-flag of nine stars on a blue background. TUC big-wigs liaise with colleagues in the Common Market but they also travel much further afield. They are a political force somewhat short of ideas of how to get from the present which they dislike — to the future, which could be better.
There are some 500 Trades Councils in Britain where industrial issues, and local public issues such as transport and hospitals, get well discussed. The TUC does not make enough use of its local organs. They could provide a better forum for the discussion of the national issues which trade union bosses and politicians of all parties tend to monopolise.
The Trades Councils, beefed up with better organisation, could hold joint meetings with local members of the CBI, Chamber of Commerce, etc. Local democracy would then get a shot in the arm.