Whaddya Want? Your P45 Or A Promotion

As Cleggie ponders over the choice of who he would like the working class to be fucked by, we need a few moments to take stock of the balance of class forces and how we can rebuild a labour movement that can stop them fucking us. 

Give Us A Kiss, Tory Boy

 

There are some hazards involved in rebuilding or in some places building organisation from scratch. 

I was once told, by someone who knows about these things, that part of the IRA’s induction training included a tour of the Six Counties darkest spots. 

The new volunteer was taken to just two places. 

The first was the Maze prison (aka Long Kesh or the H-Blocks) which until it was shut down for business in 2000, housed paramilitaries from Republican and Loyalist prisoners. 

The next and final stop was Milltown Cemetry in Belfast, notorious for Loyalist assassin Michael Stone’s deadly assault on the funeral procession of three Republicans gunned down in cold blood by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988. 

The new recruit is then told by his mentor that his membership of the IRA guarantees him a place in one if not both of these places. 

There is no such induction for new union reps and activists. 

But if a union rep is effective then two options hover into view: 

1. Promotion 

Stop saying No, man and become a Yes Man. 

You know what they are up to when they ask if you are interested in a promotion. 

But you think to yourself: “Less grief, less pressure, more control, more money… 

And you know what, I could do that job better than anyone in post now. And I’ll be nicer than the current crop of bastards running the show.” 

So you take the manager’s job and like so many before you with the same inclinations, the position stays the same but it changes you. 

The workmates you shared a laugh with on the shopfloor view you with suspicion. You view them as workshy fops. You report them for pissing about laughing when they should be working. Before you know it, you have your first scalp. A bit of cheek from a former workmate, you’ve reported it, they’re on a charge and they’re heading for the dole queue. 

Don’t believe me? 

Hark the story of one of the best militants that ever stamped on frightened bosses’ toes in a small Government department in the late 70s and early 80s. 

Long-haired and rebellious, Seamus read Socialist Worker and the uncivil servants’ rank-and-file paper Redder Tape. 

 

Any problem a worker had, Seamus would have the miscreant manager for his breakfast and the worker would be well pleased. 

Seamus resigned his union post when he got promoted. Following a hiatus of a few years, he returned as the Chair for all the unions in the department. One of his first acts was to present a paper for a bonus scheme. 

This was strange. 

The unions had long opposed management’s attempts to introduce iniquitous performance-related pay and bonus schemes. 

The paper was thrown out and soon after Seamus stood down from his union position when he was offered another promotion. 

Now he was head of a whole division. And his new objective was to cut 100 posts from his new division. 

When the cuts were announced, the unions organised an all members meeting to plan action against the cuts. Seamus used all the knowledge  he’d learned and all the favours he’d gained from his time as a union rep to get a motion on the agenda that congratulated management for avoiding any compulsory redundancies. No matter that a few years earlier, the union had fought for and concluded a “No Compulsory Redundancy” agreement. In fact soon after Seamus had pushed through the cuts, unsurprisingly, management tried to wriggle out of the agreement. 

Seamus then cut his long locks, traded his t-shirt and jeans for a sharp suit and set out to impress any boss that fancied a poacher-turned-gamekeeper. 

Seamus prepares to turn his gun on his former poacher friends.

  

The cuts and further restructuring made his division and others that soon followed his example very attractive to potential bidders, who with Thatcher’s blessing were now permitted to buy Government work. 

A Dutch company bought the parts that were profitable and left the taxpayer with the riskiest portion. Seamus became (and I think he still is) a Vice-President and right-hand man to the Chief Executive of the Dutch buyer. 

Having told this depressing story,  there’s worse to follow. The next post will be about victimisation, the other method management use to keep unions at bay.