By Steve McKenzie, (Unite Community member – Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley)
Over 150 years ago, Karl Marx explained that those trade unions who do not struggle against the ruling class, (the employers and the establishment), become weapons in the hands of the ruling class even against their own members.
A cursory glance at the conduct of some trade union leaders in the current round of industrial disputes, and even a limited knowledge of recent trade union history of this country, would tend to confirm this.
Let’s look at what has been happening over the last week in the NHS dispute.
RCN members have voted to reject the government’s totally inadequate wage offer. However, UNISON members have voted to accept it, reflecting a pragmatism based on financial desperation.
However, and very significantly, their acceptance is also based on a lack of confidence in an awful union leadership, that has failed to motivate the majority of its own members. It is a leadership that has failed to inspire or support their members in the NHS. The confidence to continue the struggle was just not there among the majority of UNISON members in the NHS.
The same lack of leadership has been obvious when looking at the Royal College of Nursing. No excuses can be made for the RCN leaders who have made mistake after mistake, calling off industrial action and recommending acceptance of this woeful deal.
The rejection of the deal by RCN members can lead to only one conclusion: that rank and file activists in that organisation are far more involved where it really matters, in the workplace.
The outcome of the votes from GMB and Unite members in the health service are still pending.
The cynicism of right wing union leaders, and their conscious policy of pouring cold water on a dispute, is clear to any genuine trade union activist, to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the real history of our movement.
At this moment in time, the RCN leadership appears to be more of an extreme case of naivety and incompetence, than calculated cynicism. ‘Pausing’ (calling off) strike action, and openly calling for a 10% ‘compromise’ offer from the government – in response a 19% claim – and then wondering why you only end up with a 5% offer, was just the start. Recommending a divisive, one-off non-consolidated payment and a below inflation 5% offer for next year, was the next major error.
Following the RCN members’ rejection of the offer, (which the leadership had recommended), the next blunder of the leadership was publicly stating that there would be no coordinated action with the junior doctors, a strategy that would have been obviously to the benefit of nurses and doctors.
On the positive side, the RCN announced that they will be taking strike action from April 30 until the May 2. They will then be re-balloting members because of the legal requirement to extend the mandate for industrial action for another six months.
This is the position as we are being told, but what is going on behind the scenes, behind closed doors, we can only speculate about, at this moment in time.
The establishment, that is the government, the NHS management and the mainstream media, are pinning their hopes on trying to isolate RCN members. With their mouthpieces among right-wing trade union leaders, (conscious of that fact or unconscious, cynical or naive), they will be hoping that members of the GMB and Unite vote to accept the NHS pay offer, and then that there is a ‘no’ vote against extending the mandate for strike action among RCN members.
