The Socialist Party of Great Britain from our inception in 1904 has had many members who have held office and played an active part in trade unions. We recognise the importance of trade unions in the class struggle against employers. Trade unions can successfully bargain wage and salary increases when trade conditions allow and endeavour to restrict or even halt wage reductions when trade conditions deteriorate.
Trade unions can also improve the working condition for members. They are an essential feature of the capitalist system. In the S.P.G.B’s study of capitalism we have made a number of important contributions to the role of trade unions in the class struggle. We assert that the trade unions can only act as a defensive weapon to the exploitation of our class in the productive process.
The Conduct of Strikes, Democracy and Trade Unions
In the use of the strike weapon, workers must recognise that except on rare occasions, any government will enforce the law, and in the final analysis if the strike threatens the “national interest”, that is the capital interest, the police and the armed forces will be used to support the status quo.
When the employers consider the issue of sufficient importance to warrant all-out resistance, the trade union cannot hope to win – the disastrous strike by the miners in 1984 is a classic example. In all cases, strike action must be based on majority decision of the membership and the decision to return to work should likewise be a majority decision.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain only supports trade union action when it is in the interest of the working class as a whole. We do not support trade union action against other unions whether they are in this country or another, and vice versa.
Worker Directors
The danger of “Worker Directors” to the trade unions is obvious. In times of “laying-off” workers or compulsory redundancies, trade union representatives involved at board meetings of the company have to take decisions that can only lead to division within the trade union. “Worker Directors” is a contradiction in terms.
Directors of capitalist firms can only operate on behalf of the shareholders and not the workers. Workers have distinct and diametrically opposed interests to the capitalist class and their politicians, whether Tory, Labour or Liberal Democratic.
Trade Unions and Capitalist Political Parties
It is not in the workers’ interest that their unions should affiliate to or support the Labour Party and other similar political parties who are committed to the administration of capitalism. They must learn that no matter which party is in power, its might will be thrown in support of the employers in any struggle, as all past governments have demonstrated.
Trade Unions and the Minimum Wage
The S.P.G.B. has pointed out that the minimum wage legislation cannot be enforced and that many workers would rather put up with low wages than lose their jobs. Socialists counterpoise calls for low or high wages with a call for the abolition of the system of private ownership of the means of production and distribution by a minority class of parasites which gives rise to the exploitive wages system.
Trade unions and Social Security
Trade unions have supported Family Allowances in the misguided belief that the principal cause of poverty for many workers is the possession of young families. Socialists who have found themselves in Trade Unions which have supported this social reform, rigorously fought against it in formal adoption as trade union policy.
We argue that no scheme for social reform can remove the poverty endured by the working class under capitalism. Family Allowances were considered by the employers to be a contribution to the workers’ wages and were taken into account when engaged in settling wage claims on the basis that the children of the workers had been partially “provided” for by these allowances.
Family Allowance Provision was a reform reviewed by the last Labour Government as they struggled to cut the cost of social welfare in the interest of capitalism.
Trade Unions and the Failure of New Labour
Workers erroneously believe the Labour government; despite the failure of all past Labour governments can run society in their interests. Great hope was placed in Tony Blair and New Labour to end unemployment, poverty, insecurity and so on and dealing with Education and the Health Service. It was a false hope.
Labour governments used troops to break strikes and berated workers for low productivity. Labour, under Brown, claimed that there was to be no more “boom and bust” but there was. And the Labour government retained all of the Tories anti-trade union legislation. And, then there were the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which the Labour governments pursued with their US ally.
Politically, Labour governments can only run capitalism in the interest of the capitalist class who own and control the means of social wealth production and distribution.
In the words of Tony Blair, speaking in the United States, he wanted to make Labour a: “natural party of business…just as much the party of business as the Conservatives, if not more” (Daily Telegraph 24th June 1997).
And under Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband they have continued to be the “party of business”. Recently Labour has called for a “better and more responsible capitalism” (BBC News 7th January 2012”. Capitalism can only be capitalism; a system of class exploitation working against the interest of the working class.
Trade Unions and the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain entered the political field of the class struggle not to run capitalism and make it “better and more responsible” but to work for its abolition and its replacement with the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society. Our Socialist message to all workers, regardless of race or sex, is laid down in our Object and Declaration of Principles, and reproduced in each edition of Socialist Studies. It is a principled call to all workers to stop giving support to capitalist politicians like Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. We assert trade unions can only be defensive organisations. The answer to the problems facing the working class is political, not industrial; it requires the establishment of Socialism. Why not consider joining our Party and help create a society where production for need replaces production for profit and where we are freed from the servility of employment, class and the wages system.
Instead of the conservative motto: A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work…(workers) ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchwords…”Abolition of the wages system” (Karl Marx).
