The Turning Point

I thought I’d revive the old blog to share some experiences of organising at a telephone fundraising agency during my time there. I started as a Telephone Fundraiser there in 2005 and left in 2010. The union campaign really began in earnest in February 2006.

A major turning point in the union’s ability to defend workers came about when an experienced caller was marched off the premises and then sacked following a disciplinary hearing. Names have been changed to protect people’s future employment.

You could almost feel the shockwaves reverberate around the call-centre when it happened.

Sackings were not uncommon at the company.

When you started there, you were nominally on a three month agency contract until you proved yourself good enough to be taken on to their books.

But in reality, if you weren’t cutting the mustard within a few weeks, your days were likely to be numbered. Sometimes the managers told the caller that they had got the chop. And on other occasions, the agency rang the caller to tell them that they were no longer required. This happened to one of the first callers I recruited to the union. He was being bullied by a manager and he naively told her that he would be speaking with his union officer. Not a wise thing to do during probation. He got the call – ‘no reason, not obliged to give you one’ – the agency told him.

There were too many occasions when I had to help drown the sorrows of a former workmate in the pub across the road.

Management  probably wished that they could give Tim his cards with a similar lack of fuss.

But the Dubliner was one of their most experienced callers and his service with them meant that he was entitled to a disciplinary hearing.

I well remember the evening when Tim was accompanied from his desk by a campaign manager to be taken to an office and confronted by a group of senior managers.

Tim had already incurred their wrath.

He had a reputation for standing up for his fellow callers.

One example was when everyone was struggling to get pledges on one of those campaigns where those being called had last given a couple of quid to the charity as long as five years ago and fundraisers were expected to get at least a couple of people, the vast majority of which were struggling on a basic pension to disclose their bank details in order to set up a direct debit for £10, £8 or £5 per month.

It depended on the campaign manager, and some were understanding, but in those early days, there were a good few Alex Ferguson-style “hairdryer” blasts or cutting remarks, sarcastic comments and put-downs directed at callers for not producing the desired results.

Tim frequently took these managers to task in these pre-calling sessions appropriately called “kick-offs” and asserted that the managers needed to stop blaming the callers.

This kind of insubordination was not to be tolerated.

It is rare for experienced callers to be heavily monitored. And monitoring in a call-centre means having managers listening in to your calls. Due to the high turnover of staff, the resources of managers and coaches are directed into monitoring new callers and those that are struggling.

On the night that Tim was charged with gross misconduct and suspended pending his hearing, not only was his campaign manager monitoring his calls, but also the manager of the whole call-centre and their boss, the operations director had a listen in.

What Tim was accused of was “skipping calls” – ie – putting the phone down as someone picked up, recycling the call (recording it on the system as an answerphone meaning that they would be called in the next 4 hours or the next day) before moving on to the next call.

This was seen by the employer not just as mis-recording calls but defrauding the company and the client charity.

Tim came out of the meeting where the charge was made and the suspension confirmed with a swagger of defiance – “You’ll be dealing with my union”  he was heard to say as he was ushered toward the door.

The following weekend, loads of his workmates including a good number of campaign managers turned up at the pub for a gathering and all the talk was of a “stitch-up”.

At the disciplinary hearing, Tim proclaimed his innocence. He explained that the reason he had skipped calls was because of a system error that meant that although calls were coming through, the details of the supporter had not appeared on his screen.

The company sacked Tim following his hearing. The Head of HR dismissed his claim about the CRM maintaining that – “if it was happening to you, then everyone in the call-centre would have been affected”

When word got round about the sacking and particularly the HR boss’ “reasoning” behind the judgement – the initial response from callers was “that bloke does not have a clue about the computer system we use”

Every caller had experienced a some problems with the system.

And every caller knew that there were times when system failures affected the whole call-centre, just their campaign and sometimes just themselves.

Union activists got together and produced a survey about the system – see below

SURVEY FOR CALLERS REGARDING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS. 

A;  Do you from time to time experience problems like: computer freezing, stuck in wrap up, bank details disappearing, script and supporter information disappearing etc? 

Tick as appropriate; 

Yes

No

 B   Have you experienced these problems in any or all of the following ways? Only affecting you; affecting just my campaign; affecting entire call centre? Please tick as appropriate.

Always Sometimes Never

Only Affecting Me

NAME:

SIGNED:

Activists got busy getting these surveys filled in and signed by callers so that when at the appeal hearing, Tim handed them across the table to management, after viewing them, the CEO said that he would have to give Tim his job back.

Tim had decided that he had enough and told the CEO that he could keep his job. But word had got round. Collective action had saved a fellow worker’s job – if only he wanted it.

Industrial relations were never the same in that call-centre for years afterwards.

 

 

 

“The repression we suffered was the same as against ordinary people all over the world – as in Sharpeville, Tiananmen Square, Darfur, Fallujah and Gaza”

There are some days that not only leave a deep and dark imprint in the memories of a community or a nation or millions of people across the globe.

The oft-quoted and now clichéd example is how people a wee bit older than myself remember where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

In my lifetime, the events that seem to turn the world upside down seemed to happen within a few short months between November 1989 and March 1990. In that short space of time, the monolithic symbol of Stalinist tyranny in the east, the Berlin Wall was pulled apart brick by brick by a mass movement and  Nelson Mandela began his long walk to freedom and signalled the end of the seemingly impregnable apartheid system in South Africa. Closer to home, the last day of March in 1990, as the so-called community charge bills hit our doormats, Thatcher and her poll-tax were effectively finished off by riots in Trafalgar Square.

Such momentous days are not always so glorious and full of hope and joy. Some momentous days not only leave scars but seem to set history on a path that is dominated by bitterness and bloodshed.

For the 1.5 million inhabitants of Northern Ireland, Sunday 30 January 1972, forever after Bloody Sunday, was one such day.

Of course there were many other days. There is a whole history of struggles that marked turning points in the making of and sustenance of that sectarian state.

Michael Collins, the leading Irish revolutionary, who prophetically stated that he had signed his own death-warrant when he signed the treaty with Britain that gained independence for twenty-six counties of Ireland, but left the Catholics of the remaining six counties at the mercy of an in-built Protestant majority and no doubts to their fate when the Prime Minister of the new Northern state, Lord Craigavon, promised a “Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people”.

For more than four decades, it seemed for Catholics that everyday would be the same. The one-party state condemned them to second-class citizenship. Being born a Catholic meant that you couldn’t get a home, you get a job; even in Derry, which had a majority of Catholics (called Londonderry by the Loyalists that engineered electoral boundaries (gerrymandering) to ensure they controlled the council), no Catholic worked for their local council, would not even be able to get a job cleaning the toilets.

Eamonn McCann, the socialist and writer who was at the heart of the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s, described the attitude of the Nationalist politicians and leading figures that represented Catholics at the time:

“People in my area said ‘There is nothing to be done about this. As things are, so they ever shall be’ The Nationalist establishment said that things would only become different when we had a united Ireland”

The young generation of Catholics growing up in the 1960s were not having any of it. Rather look to the history of Irish struggle, their horizons were further, to Czechoslovakia, to Vietnam, to France but nore significantly the Civil Rights movement of black people in the United States.

The powers of the state in the six counties were the envy of dictatorships around the world, in 1963 when South African Justice Minister  Vorster was introducing new apartheid laws he remarked that he “ would be willing to exchange all the legislation of this sort for one clause of the Northern Ireland Special Powers Act”.

Powers to;  intern without trial for an unlimited period, to order that no inquest be held into deaths at the hands of the state, and later the notorious Diplock courts, where juries were made redundant and defendants were tried by a single judge.

As Civil Rights campaigners took to the streets and marched these powers were used by the Northern state against them. Not just the Northern state, but Protestants that felt their interests were under threat and better served by being loyal to the union with Britain, took up cudgels against them. They weren’t of course, as someone had characterised the relationship between Protestants and Catholics, it was “tuppence-ha’penny looking down on tuppence”.  Being born a Protestant meant that you were privileged compared to Catholics. Compared to workers on mainland Britain, less eager to show their allegiance to the Crown, they were worse off.

It was as the great anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Douglass once said about the fact that  poor Southern whites happened to be the most resistant to emancipation of black slaves, “They divide both to conquer each”

The campaign for jobs and homes and equality with Protestants was met with ferocity by the Loyalists. Those defending the status quo were well organised and armed. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was not open to many Catholics, and the notorious reserve force, the Ulster Special Constabulary (better known as the B-Specials) were brutal in their assaults on protestors.

In West Belfast, Catholics were burned  out of their homes as Loyalist gangs went on the rampage. The IRA had long given up the fight and local graffiti told the tale, “IRA = I Ran Away”.

In Derry, the local Nationalist community in the Bogside held the line under siege from local Loyalists, the B-Specials and the RUC for 3 nights and 2 days.  In 1969, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson sent the troops in to “restore order”.  The intervention meant the end of the siege and was initially welcomed by the Bogsiders, famously Derry women were pictured making tea for the soldiers.

But this was not to be just a temporary restoration of order. The last British troops left Northern Ireland in 2007, the longest continuous deployment in British military history.

The British Army were there to maintain the Northern state. In July 1970, the Army imposed an illegal curfew on the Catholic Falls Road in West Belfast.

The British forces were acting like any other occupying army and in response more young Catholics turned to the IRA.

It was not until 1971 that a British soldier was killed by the IRA.

Further fuelling the hatred of British occupation was the internment of 346 men, raided in a dawn swoop on Catholic areas in August 1971. Very few were IRA members, none were Loyalists and in the subsequent rioting, nine civilians were shot.

Twelve internees were guinea pigs for the army’s “sensory deprivation techniques”.

The British and Loyalist establishment wanted to crush the “no-go” areas of the Bogside and the Creggan and were prepared to do so by whatever means.

On 7 January 1972 General Robert Ford declared in a memo to the commander of the British Army in Northern Ireland, General Harry Tuzo, “I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary is to shoot selected ringleaders among the Derry young hooligans after clear warnings have been issued.”

A few weeks later, Ford had his opportunity as thousands joined the Civil Rights march through Derry against internment.

Lord Saville’s report published on Tuesday, 38 years after the event, vindicates the accounts of many of the demonstrators that day and contradicts Lord Widgery’s report that was published 11 weeks after the shootings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/15/bloody-sunday-inquiry-key-findings

That the 14 people that were killed as a result of the actions of British Paras on that day, were innocent, did not have nail bombs on them, nor did the Paras come under fire before they started shooting.

That judgement brought great joy to the masses gathered outside Guildhall in Derry on Tuesday.

As well it might. For the state murder that happened that day, and Widgery’s whitewash less than three months later, set Northern Ireland on a cycle of violence that lasted the best part of three decades and claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people. There were never so many new recruits and there were never so many people from the Nationalist areas that joined the IRA in that period. Bloody Sunday and Widgery’s Whitewash proved that the British state would murder civilians and lie to protect the sectarian state. Taking up the armed struggle seemed to be a rational strategy, there seemed to be no other alternative.

The problem was that it produced a long and bloody stalemate. The British and local states with all their might could not defeat a force that defended and was supported in most part by the Catholic population. Equally, a few hundred volunteers could not inflict a military defeat against the resources at the hands of the British state.

Peace was achieved after a recognition of these realities, mainly from those working-class communities, both Protestant and Catholic that suffered the most at the hands of this war.

But the process has the acceptance of a sectarian divide at its heart. This is at the behest of the political establishment, British, Loyalist and Nationalist. But as has been the pattern since the state was formed in 1921, neither Catholic workers nor Protestant workers will benefit.

 

 

 

sniffer diego’s up for the cup!

The World Cup begins today but we already have a winner: and it is…unfettered, free market hard-nosed neo-liberal capitalism.

A tournament of 64 matches, each probably best described by Charlie Brooker as “22 millionaires ruining a lawn”, played thousands of miles away, is seen by the entrepreneurial as the way to make some quick and easy profits and apologists for a system in chaos as some sort of respite from the recession

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jun/05/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-world-cup

Capitalists will dress up any old tat in a football shirt or the flag of your choice and demand that we buy it so that we can get behind our boys.

Its a fair point, I mean what self-respecting England fan would be without B&Q’s  England World Cup garden gnome, and for a mere £12.98 at that?

Gnome mistakes from the penalty spot...

http://www.hortweek.com/channel/GardenRetail/article/1008143/B-Q-reports-sales-fall-profits-rise-introduces-World-Cup-garden-gnome/

And since the Murdoch media empire has not as yet got a monopoly on transmitting World Cup matches, we don’t have to go the pub and pay inflated prices to watch the game, we can actually watch the games from the comfort of our own sofas.

This is a fact that has not been lost on the brewers, snack manufacturers, and major food retailers who have kicked off a whole number of World Cup promotions to entice the football couch potato

http://www.talkingretail.com/products/drinks-news/14035-heineken-uk-produces-perfect-match-for-world-cup-profit.html

It’s been said before and it’s worth making the point again, that if the England team consumed in any quantity the products that they endorse, such as the Mars Bars, the Big Macs, and the Carlsbergs, they would not have made it as professional footballers.

They would be like the rest of us, slumped on the sofa after a hard day’s work, marvelling at the skills or cursing the incompetence of guys that started their day at around 11am, knocked off around 3pm, were clueless as to what to with the rest of the day and their mountains of cash and hit the bookies or the boozer or both.

With the possible exception of Paul Gascoigne, that is. But then again, look what happened to him.

But despite all the ugliness, I love football.

I can remember when I first fell in love with the game. 

I was 9-years old, and it was the 1974 World Cup held in West Germany.  And the team in orange, played a brand of football that was as bright as their shirts. They were marshalled by Johann Cruyff, who seemed to be pulling all the strings on the field. But everyone in that side had the full range of skills, developed through a new philosophy invented by the Dutch coach Rinus Michels.

Each of those Dutch players were as proficient defensively as they were in attack, for instance Wim Suurbier was a left-winger who ended up nominally as Holland’s left-back. Total football began at Ajax of Amsterdam who won three European Cups in a row under Michels and the core of that side, Cruyff, Neeskens, Muhren and Rep, took the national side to the World Cup Final in 1974.

And with the balletic Cruyff at the centre of most moves, the Dutch were mesmirising.

They made short work of the Argentinians, brushing them aside 4-0. The World Champions Brazil, a pale imitation of the side with Pele and Gerson that had inspired millions four years earlier in Mexico, were also vanquished. Sublime goals by Cruyff and Neeskens sent them packing and set up a final with their “auld enemy”, West Germany.

The Dutch kicked the final off and the ball came to Cruyff. Not one  German got close to the ball that seemed to be glued to Cruyff’s foot as he weaved his way through white shirt after white shirt to the penalty area where he was hacked down by a German defender.

Within a minute, Neeskens blasted the ball past Sepp Maier and it seemed that the team of the tournament were destined for glory. Only Dutch arrogance changed the course of history. Instead of ploughing forward and finishing the Germans off whilst they were floored, they took their foot off the gas. The players in Orange chatted about the next step and they agreed that they would taunt Germany. Naturally, there was still a lot of bad feeling from the war. The Germans took the opportunity to get back into the game. By half-time, a Paul Breitner penalty and a typical penalty box poacher’s goal by the “Der Bomber”, Gerd Muller had put them in front. The Germans were now in control and the Dutch were in dissarray, and Franz Beckenbauer went on to lift the trophy in front of the home crowd in Munich.

And so it ended in glorious failure. But as myself and a friend were discussing recently, it left an indelible mark and seemed in a way that maybe previous generations were entranced and football had changed significantly after the Magnificent Magyars, the Hungarian team including Puskas and Kocsis of the 1950s or the 1970 Brazilian team.

I feel for later generations, the World Cups have not produced such teams: West Germany 1990, Brazil 1994 and Italy 2006 will be scarred by poor finals, the Argentinians bribed and bullied their way to victory in 1978 under a military dictatorship desperate for a home success. 1986 and 1998 were dominated by individuals, Maradona and Zidane.

1982 had two teams that got close to the Dutch Total Football mantle, the marvellous Brazilians with Eder, Zico and Falcao were mugged by match-fixer Rossi; whilst the perfect midfield trio of Giresse, Tigana and Platini were brutalised by the Germans before Italy beat Germany in the final.

So that is my hope for this year’s tournament in South Africa. The Dutch seemed to have come from nowhere. Johann Cruyff was the first Dutch player to become a professional.

An African side winning the World Cup playing attacking football would be the ideal.

Other than that, Messi scores a last minute goal with his hand against England in the final and Diego smears the World Cup in coke and invites his players over with a rolled up dollar bill.

Its The Real Thing.

Not All Of Us, John, Not All

“Labour MP John McDonnell has said he was “sorry” if he caused offence with his remarks about former Tory PM Margaret Thatcher.”

“I’m sorry if I have caused offence to anyone. It was a joke and in that audience it was taken as a joke… it was taken out of context, I can see if people are upset about that and if I have caused offence to anyone of course I apologise.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10263076.stm

Nile Gardiner – who worked as an aide to Lady Thatcher after she left office – wrote in his Telegraph blog that Mr McDonnell should apologise “for his disgusting, undignified and menacing words” and attacked them as “a sickening disgrace and a stain on his party”.

“It is vicious language of the lowest common denominator that would shame even the worst preacher of hate,” he wrote.

Really, Nile?

Would it be the kind of joke that General Pinochet would find tasteless?

"And I murdered another political opponent like this..."

Remember General Pinochet, Nile?

You know, the former dictator of Chile who replaced the democratically-elected and popular Salvador Allende by coup, mass internment, mass torture and thousands of political assassinations.

You remember, Nile, the same man who often had tea with Thatcher and who Thatcher lobbied to have released when he was arrested for his crimes against humanity.

Maybe Nile Gardiner is more disgusted with people that make jokes about political assassinations. I mean, he has had tea with real assassins.

Picket Lines and Protest Signs

This was supposed to be a relaxing May Bank Holiday weekend.

Well, Sunday’s BA picket was fairly relaxed. 

The grounds and the clubhouse of Bedfont FC near Hatton Cross were the perfect venue for discussions with the strikers and their supporters in the trade union movement.

Delegations of teachers and civil servants brought hundreds of pounds in donations with them.

With an intransigent management led by Union-Buster General Willie Walsh, its  just as well that these workers are used to the long-haul.

At times the scenes were no different to my memories of local school and church fetes that bored me as a child: the smell of warm beer, the selection of homemade cakes, and the impromptu kickabout involving anyone between the ages of 2 and 52.

The only occasions I was reminded that I had not been transported back through time, was when an angry shout of “Scabbing Crew” went up as the odd plane flew over.

The BA dispute is currently the most important battle in the war against a class intent on making workers pay the high price of the recession.

Willie Walsh is intent on giving a lead to bosses everywhere in union-busting. Every boss will be looking on with interest so we need to get behind the strikers and get raising money in our workplaces, get down to picket-lines and get it raised in our union branches.

What is fascinating about the strike and has been touched on by others, is that the BA strikers neither fit the the Sun and the Mail’s  usual identikit stereotypes of union militants or trolley-dollys.

The determination, the vibrancy and the imagination of the BA cabin crew strikers in the face of the assault on their jobs and conditions is heart-warming.

A wee song-and-dance routine that broke out after a couple of lagers in the sunshine that wasn’t too complimentary of Walsh was enjoyed by their comrades looking on and reminded me of the karaoke that coach parties arriving at the Timex weekend mass pickets in Dundee in the early 90s.

The mass picket previously had seen many arrests, one for attempted murder by a picket who had nearly been mown down by a scab coach.

As Tommy Sherdian pointed out at the subsequent rally, the only murder that had taken place was of the classic tunes being crooned on the karaoke stage.

There is certainly something new about the struggle in 2010 and it’s the influx of new and wider layers of people.

Yesterday’s protest in London against Israel’s murderous assault on the aid flotilla for Gaza was made marvellous by the youngsters that were at the heart of the chanting – the militancy and the vibrancy never stopped.

I am reliably informed that this was repeated all over the country and in many other nations around the globe.

Special mention should go to the protestors in Manchester that gave BBC big-wigs a headache. The BBC deserve one. Their reports seemed to be dominated by Israeli officials and apologists,  just as they were a couple of years back when the siege on Gaza began in earnest. A few smashed windows is the least they deserve for failing to publicise the Disasters Emergency Committee call for humanitarian aid.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21375

The bullies of BA are the schoolboy variety when compared to the might of a Zionist state fed state-of-the-art weapon systems by the mightiest superpower on the planet.

But nevertheless both are bullies and my hopes that our side full of Davids can take them to task increased over the holiday weekend.

CWU Conference – Pay Fight On The Cards At BT?

For many years now, it was if the only workers that were members of the CWU were posties. Time and time again, most of the time the union was in the news when postal workers struck like lightning to defend jobs,  terms and conditions. The most spectacular example was in 2003 when the union’s national ballot on pay was defeated and bullying managers led by neo-Thatcherite Allan Leighton saw this as the green light to go on the offensive and finish off one of Britain’s strongest unions once and for all.

Postal workers hit the picket lines without a ballot, and beat that attack back. But the war of attrition continued unabated. Unmanageable workloads, threats to close mail centres, privatisation,  a pension holiday creating a massive deficit. Some won, some lost. And there seems to have been a slight pause in the battle since the strikes were called off at Christmas and the posties accepted the recent deal.

With the ConDems putting Royal Mail privatisation back on the agenda, the detente is not likely to last long.

But interestingly, the sleeping giant that is the potential collective strength of BT’s workers has been awoken.

In the two-and-a-half decades  since British Telecom was sold off, as with most privatisations, the drive for profit and the greed of shareholders has been at a high cost to the terms and conditions of their workers.

The assault on BT workers has intensified in the past few years as the recession and competition has seen a massive shedding of jobs, increased workloads, cuts in pay for new entrants and the increase of unsocial working hours.

Why the hell do you want to work at BT, you got an 'OLOGY for chrissakes!

Two tranches of 15,000 job cuts in 2009 and all of the above attacks have not been met with any response by the union.

So why the potential scrap over pay?

I think there are three

major reasons.

Firstly, the leadership of the telecoms side of the CWU have surrendered so much that the huge haemorrhaging of jobs has meant that precious facilities for local union officials is under threat. Also, continued capitulation has raised questions in the minds of BT Operate and BT Openreach workers, in particular, as to the value of their union subscription if the union keeps giving way on their terms and conditions.

Secondly, Labour has lost power. The CWU have always been strong supporters of the Labour Party. On the postal side, Mandelson’s privatisation bid created tensions and Billy Hayes has been critical of the Labour Party. No such criticisms were forthcoming from the Telecoms and Financial Services Executive. Just as with BT, the leadership at national and local level in telecoms has rolled over when confronted by any of the Labour policies that have affected jobs, pensions, etc. The parliamentary aspirations of these officials far outweighed the desperate needs of their members whose living standards were continually under threat. Being employees of a private concern rather than public servants also helped to ease any tensions, although any strikes or disruption tended to taint a Labour Government. Now that we don’t have such a Government, and such dreams of warm, cosy and honourable member seats have diminished for the time being, its safe to take the kid gloves off.

Thirdly, the BT workers themselves have been rendered powerless as wave of attacks has seen their jobs massacred (on one day it was reported that 10,000 redundancy parties took place in the UK for BT employees alone), and their pay and conditions cut to the bone. Being a BT engineer is not the plum job it used to be.

The anger amongst BT workers is tangible. The commentb below from a BT Openreach worker is typical of the mood of many workers.

“As an Openreach engineer for the last three and a half years, I am now sick to death of the way we are treated by BT – we have had a number of negative changes made to our working conditions and we work under the most unfair performance management scheme you could ever envisage. Many of us are fed up now at the lack of respect we receive from the top of the company.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10159149.stm

The top gaffer at BT, Ian Livingstone is on £860,000 a year and gets another £1.2m bonus on top.

Such numbers will rile BT workers that are being asked to work harder and swallow a 2% increase, when inflation is closer to 5%. In effect a pay cut.

The ballot can be won and can start to reinvigorate workplace organisation if the union taps into the anger not just around pay, but also the cuts and the attacks on conditions.

CWU Conference was the perfect place for the union to announce the intention to ballot. There was plenty of media coverage, sunny Bournemouth is not a bad place for a reporter to hang out and interview a union leader. Hundreds of activists are gathered in one place and battleplans can be drawn up.

Added to that is the political atmosphere.

The question for many of the delegates at the conference, both telecoms and postal was – what next for Labour?

Which of the candidates for leader would best serve the interests of CWU members?

Two emergency motions were passed on the Monday of the conference.

One committed the union to encouraging the debate and organising hustings without tying the union to a particular candidate. The second motion resolved that the union would only support a candidate that supported the aims and the policies of the CWU (ie – that they at least oppose the privatisation of Royal Mail).

The last time Billy Hayes and the National Executive recommended a candidate was during the last Deputy Leadership election and he backed former CWU leader and right-winger Alan Johnson. This was too much for the rank-and-file who had the CWU colours ripped from that particular mast at the 2007 conference.

It could be worse.

David Miliband eyes the crown...

He could have chosen to support either of the Blackadder twins.

Balls and Burnham are also tainted, no matter how hard they try to distance themselves, by their support and involvement in the Blair and Brown regimes.

Diane Abbott is the cuddly left choice.

But even then, too much cuddling with Miguel Portillo (the traitor to his family that fought so diligently and bravely against Franco and the right in Spain) and her insistence that her child should have a much better education than those of the working-class people she represents in Hackney, will not endear her to many.

How much is it to get my kid into Eton, Mick?

 

Then there is John McDonnell,  the only candidate that you could guarantee would support not just the anti-privatisation campaigns of the CWU, but has pretty much been an ever-present in the campaign against the war, anti-immigration policies, the fight against the Nazis and the supported workers rights to strike.

 His failure to appear on the ballot paper in 2007 ensured that Gordon Brown would enjoy a coronation.

The fact that a socialist could not get on a Labour ballot in a twenty-first century already gripped by war and crisis was a shocking indictment on the party.

Aware that a repeat is likely, McDonnell’s strategy seems to be to ask his opponents to pass on their nominations to him  and Diane Abbott once they have received the requisite number of nominations.

McDonnell: Too left-wing to be included on the ballot?

This is hardly likely.

First, the left-wing candidate Jon Cruddas came far too close and won far too many votes in the Deputy Leadership as far as the Labour right were concerned.

With the Labour Party having a resurgence in membership (14,000 have joined since the election defeat), I suspect that the likes of the Milibands would be happy to keep McDonnell and if possible, Abbott out of the race.

Very Precarious

This is a report of the Precarious Workers Workshop held at the Right To Work Emergency Conference on 22nd May 2010:

The session was attended by around 50 delegates and was led off by a Glasgow supermarket worker and Tiago Gillot, a founding member of Portugal’s Precarious Workers movement.

 The supermarket worker said that he and a few of his workmates joined USDAW and set about organising their colleagues to improve the awful pay and conditions suffered by shop workers.

I'm All Lost In The Supermarket.

For instance, a TUC survey found that on average, shop workers put in at least 8 weeks unpaid overtime every year.

As well as poor pay, casual, lots of part-time workers, bullying managers were a problem as well.

They produced a newsletter – Shop Worker and the first issue led on sexism. Most of the check-out staff and shelf stackers are women and sexism means that their pay and conditions are worse than men’s, that they have to take part-time positions in order to take care of their children. They also have to put up with constant casual sexist remarks from customers, but mainly male managers.

Tiago Gillot from the Precarious Workers Organisation in Portugal told how their movement began in 2007, meeting up to rally under their banner on MayDay. He said that social blackmail by bosses made it  difficult for casual workers to break into the union movement.

The movement was formed to give confidence through unity to these workers.

In the discussion, an RMT activist talked about how Jarvis workers had been forced onto agency contracts. He also talked about the solidarity shown by Eurostar engineers with migrant cleaners who fought for the London Living Wage.

Can the Mitie (cleaning contractors) fall?

Another speaker talked about the fight by migrant cleaners around London’s universities and said that it was important for Right To Work to engage with migrant workers’ community organizations.

A London call-centre worker informed the workshop that 1000 call-centre workers had been sacked by Telegen in Brighton last week and he was looking to help organise a response.

A part-time agency worker said that she was sick of how union branch officials treated part-time and casual workers as second-class citizens.

A Camden trade unionist argued that casual workers needed to join the union and fight within the union to ensure that all workers are supported and defended.

Stress in the Call-Centre

Another trade unionist argued that organising temporary and casual workers was the job of all trade unionists. Every workplace had cleaners, security guards, catering staff that were agency or casual.

The workshop agreed the following proposals;

1. Link up the various precarious workers campaigns and seek to organise a conference by the end of 2010.
2. Organise local seminars on how to organise casual workers.
3. Produce a pamphlet on how to organise a union
4. Make links with Trades Councils and migrant workers communities.
5. Protest at Parliament at reading of the budget 

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.

The Harder They Come…

Over. Done and dusted. Thank fuck.

So the Lib-Dems didn’t do as well as expected but Clegg is still the Kingmaker and it seems that his suitor of choice will be Cameron.

Now I know that this will more than upset the Lib-Dem rank-and-file and many millions beyond that are crying out for electoral reform, but Clegg is no Charlie Kennedy. You won’t find Lib-Tory Nick within a borough of a Stop The War Coalition platform. His elevation to party leader, now with the crown in his hand walking away from Brown who has been begging him all night to place it on the bonce of the Eton trifle Cameron.

Tory Boys Dave and Boris: Eating Trifles?

This election was all about the Tories and Labour.  The closeness and the first past-post system did for the Lib-Dems as it did for the left (barring some notable decent results) and possibly put paid to the Nazis getting a foothold (although the size of their vote is worrying and needs to be addressed).

The real question is what now?

As has been said before, whoever’s head  Clegg lays the crown on, that alliance will be looking to give our class a kicking. But as Jimmy Cliff says:

Cliff - Harder They Come

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE4dnrPPZQ

Dope

The most exciting election since sliced fried bread… the closest finish since one bourgeois workers party beat the bourgeois bourgeois party…is Cameron really Obama…is Brown really fit for leadership…will Clegg have the casting vote…is proportional representation around the corner…blah blah fucking blah!

Cobamaron

You know how Lenin once said that a strike was worth ten elections? You don’t? Well he did say that. But how many elections is the Greek revolt worth?

I mean I’m fucked if I know who to vote for (might have to actually wipe me arse and vote Labour given the lack of choice in my constituency), but if tomorrow morning one of the leaders comes out in support of the Greek protests, I’ll vote for them.

I mean for all the ways that the media have described this election to get folk interested in the blimmin’ thing, I would say that the Sun’s attempt to make us believe that David Cameron and Barack Obama share anything more in common than an ‘O’ and an ‘M’ in their surnames, is so surreal I really did think it was a Chris Morris-cum-Leon Kuhn spoof.

http://yfrog.com/jncm8hj

“Bigotgate” has not pole-axed Brown in the way that the Tories planned, despite the heroine / villainess Gillian Duffy getting more coverage than Susan Boyle. Actually my money is on Duffy winning Britain’s Got Talent this season.

Duffy - More Bigoted Than A Labour Candidate?

If Brown is looking to direct his ire at bigots, all he has to do is speak to leading members in his own party. Why not start with Jack Straw, who, in 2006, blamed Muslim women that wore the niqab (a veil) for damaging community relations, or Jim Fitzpatrick, the Poplar, but not popular, MP who gets invited to a wedding and moans to the press that it was segregated by gender. Don’t bother turning up at my wedding, darling. Never mind segregation, I’ll put you and your noxious notions about Muslims in quarantine.

Then there’s the charming Manish Sood. A man who has brought a new meaning to the term “New Labour”.

Sood : New Labour For The 19th Century?

Now here’s a man that needs some PR. I mean, try on his size 9s for size. The guy has been given North West Norfolk, a seat only re-instated in 1974 after being abolished in 1918. Held by two Tories (apart when the sitting MP defected to the SDP in 1981) in all that time apart from the landslide in 1997, when the not even the bluest rinses could bring themselves to vote for their man Hooray Henry Bellingham in that election. They relented in 2001 to let him back though, and if he doesn’t win it tomorrow, then I’ll be taking BMWs out of the local showroom, turning them on their side and setting light to them. So, hopefully you can gauge Mr. Sood’s chances of realising his ambition of becoming an MP – No Hope and Bob Hope.

So why not make a splash and stick the boot into your Prime Minister nigh on the eve of the election?

And what does he say?

He says that Brown is a “disgrace” and should apologise to the people and the Queen. The Queen? What the fuck for? Did he start luncheon using the wrong fork? Of all the people that Brown needs to apologise to (and there are literally millions), the horse-loving, tax-grabbing, racist-loving parasite with a tiara ain’t one of them.

Oh yeah and of course, just in case we hadn’t noticed it was an issue that the British National Party (oh and by the way, my main election wish is that Nazi Nick Griffin is royally fucked in Barking) are hoping to capitalise on, he also says:

“Immigration has gone up which is creating friction within communities. The country is getting bigger and messier.”

How is it that the only people that get any decent coverage for sticking the boot into Brown are bigots? Where’s my prime-time opportunity? Why isn’t Brown caught on a radio mike moaning at his erstwhile aides about having to field a few questions from a Trot?

Who Will Eamonn Sell The Paper To In Parliament?

But there are some candidates worth the votes of decent working folk.

One candidate I would give my right arm to have on the ballot in my local constituency is the socialist, writer and Civil Rights legend Eamonn McCann. The people of Derry in the 6 counties will have that honour and will no doubt respond positively to his call to arms:

“In the words of the Beatles, ‘Come Together – right now’ – not in a passive way but to fight together for our common interests.”

Across the country Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidates are giving some an alternative to the vicious neo-liberal agenda that will rip into the heart of our schools, our hospitals and other public services as soon as we wake up on Monday morning.

Particular best wishes to Angela McCormack and Willie Black in Scotland, Karen Reissman in Manchester and Jenny Sutton in Tottenham.

I also hope that Labour left-wingers Corbyn and McDonnell hold their own and that Respect’s George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob convincingly trounce ex-Trot-turned-Blairite Fitzpatrick and right-wing trade union shitehawk Roger Godawful.

More than that I hope that our class has what it takes to defend ourselves from a violent assault on our interests. For inspiration, lets look to Greece. If we don’t manage that, we’ll have to make do with Manish Sood’s rendition of “Who’s Sorry Now” on Britain’s Got Talent.