We argued in an editorial two weeks ago that only militant trade union action would save the 800 jobs after P&O ferries illegally sacked the workers. But at that time, we did not anticipate that the TUC would give up such an important fight with barely a whimper.
We didn’t expect much from the Johnson government, which promised everything on P&O jobs and delivered nothing. But workers were entitled to expect a lot more from a TUC leadership which still carries a huge authority among its six million affiliated members and in wider society.
In his letter to members, RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, accepts that P&O have got away with it. “The tactics of this company, under instruction from DP World” he wrote, “have left our members with no choice but to accept the severance package cynically offered to them by P&O”. It is an admission of defeat, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of sacked workers had by then reluctantly accepted a severance payment.
Lack of fight at the top of the TUC
That there appeared to be no fight among members of the RMT, especially when they were faced with a looming deadline to accept the severance, was due entirely to the lack of fight at the top of the trade union movement. That applies not the RMT itself, but to the TUC, which ought to have adopted an overarching responsibility to lead a fight and to support the RMT. No-one can blame P&O workers for giving up the ghost – which army wants to fight, when it sees the very top generals running for cover, or making heartfelt appeals to the better nature of their enemy?
It is precisely because the ramifications go so wide that it was not an issue that could have been taken up properly by small left-led unions like the CWU, the FBU or the RMT itself. Even Unite, the only large union with a more militant leadership, would have been in a difficult position to conduct a militant campaign when the tone set by the TUC leaders was so weak and pusillanimous.
Even though they are well aware that the repercussions of the P&O sackings go far wider than the ferry and maritime industries, the leadership from the TUC was abysmal. The sackings ought to have been taken up far more urgently and vigorously. The TUC, whatever their ‘constitutional’ position in relation to its component unions, should have called for all dockers, lorry drivers and service workers to boycott P&O ferries and terminals. The company did not sack their Dutch and French workers in the same manner, because they know that P&O would have been effectively barred from continental ports by militant trade union action.
A meaningless ‘line in the sand’
Instead, the TUC limited itself to heartfelt pleas to the government. They even produced an 8-page booklet subtitled A Line in the Sand. “The scandal shows”, it said in the first sentence, “the need for government to step in and act as the operator of last resort in the ferry industry”. And that was just about it. An article by Frances O’Grady in the Financial Times of all newspapers, was more or less in the same vein. Short of appeals to a right-wing bosses’ government, the TUC offered nothing. Workers will ask, what line? What sand?
A week ago, Johnson was telling Parliament that the government “…will take them to court, we will defend the rights of British workers … P&O plainly aren’t going to get away with it.” Ministers talked about legislation to make the National Minimum Wage compulsory for ferries operating out of UK ports. Within a few days, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary was admitting, “The government are not in a position to take court action.” Instead, they called on ports to enforce a NMW. The ports – the second and third biggest of which are owned by DP World who own P&O – said they couldn’t do it.
So now, the Tories have left it to the Insolvency Service to take action, which means nothing will happen. All the threats of “unlimited fines” on P&O were never more than hot air. The government, as we expected, promised everything, and gave nothing. The RMT letter to members, after listing the measures proposed by the government, even said “A lot of this is bluster…” And so it proved.
An abdication of leadership, to stake so much on appeals to government
What was an abdication of all responsibility to provide leadership was the TUC investing so much faith on appeals to the government; to have staked so much on the remote possibility that Tory ministers would do anything serious to defend P&O jobs.
The question is posed, what could the TUC have done? To begin with, they could have acted with more urgency and called on its affiliated membership to plan if necessary for industrial action in support of P&O workers. Rather appeals to ministers and readers of the Financial Times, TUC General Secretary, Frances O’Grady ought to have reminded P&O, and the government, that there is not a wheel that turns anywhere, not a light bulb that goes on and not a service provided, without the say-so of workers.
The constituent unions of the TUC have an immense amount of social weight and industrial muscle and if they were prepared to wield that power, under the auspices of a united TUC movement, nothing could stand in its way. If the TUC had issued a call for a total boycott of all goods, transport services and provisioning for P&O ferries, with secondary action in support, if necessary, then P&O Ferries would have become inoperable.
Even the raft of anti-union laws that have been introduced over the past twelve years would not stop a movement from below provided there was a call from above. As it was in 1972, when the then Tory government had five dockers arrested for ‘illegal’ picketing, a spontaneous wave of strikes forced the government to backtrack by finding a legal device – the ‘Official Solicitor’ – to get the dockers released.
Trade unions have immense social and industrial weight
Despite the deindustrialisation of the last fifty years, and the numerical decline of trade union membership, the TUC still has immense social power. Led from the top by the TUC, RMT members alone could have brought London to a standstill and no threats of legal sanctions would have changed that. But that would not happen without the perception among Tube and train drivers that the TUC was genuinely leading the charge.
Sequestration of union assets is perceived as a particularly serious threat to the leaderships of unions, standing as they do at the head of large bureaucracies. It was a measure used against the National Union of Miners in December 1984, but it was not in the end the decisive factor that ended the miners’ strike three months later. Ultimately, it is the industrial power and mutual solidarity of the trade union movement that wins battles of this kind, and not barristers in a courtroom.
Unfortunately, the Labour leadership are little better. Although the shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, correctly said that P&O escaping without consequences would “give the green light to bad bosses across the country” the Labour leadership has offered no serious commitment to correct the imbalance between workers’ and employers’ rights.
Labour’s Shadow Minister for Employment Rights, Justin Madders, has written that a Labour government would strengthen rights at work, end fire and rehire and ban zero-hours contracts. But hidden among all of these fine words, and in fact the centre-piece of Labour’s industrial relations strategy, are so-called “Fair Pay Agreements”, which will establish pay, terms and conditions of work in key sectors.
Labour should be committed to repeal all anti-union laws
The point of these is that having been set under government auspices, such agreements will be binding including on the trade unions involved. It is a policy that marks a return to the failed incomes policies of past Labour governments, in which trade unions were pilloried by Labour ministers if they so much as dared to dissent from what were seen as imposed pay agreements.
It would be a far more meaningful measure of support for workers’ rights if Labour Shadow ministers would simply give a firm commitment to repeal all the anti-union laws that have hamstrung the trade unions and tied them up in legal knots. Disgracefully, the repeal of anti-union legislation is nowhere on the radar of the Labour leadership.
So what is likely to happen as a result of the P&O surrender? In the short term, the answer might be nothing much. But longer term, the P&O surrender sets a benchmark for cutting workers’ pay and conditions. The freeports being set up – including Southampton and London Gateway, owned by the P&O parent company – are precisely designed to undermine the wages and conditions of workers.
Freeports will not only encompass ports as such, but much of the local area within a large radius. Freeports will mean the relocation onshore of offshore wages and conditions. With incentives to dodge taxes and ‘red tape’ – by which the Tories include workers’ rights – it will mean the migration of investment and jobs from other places where wages and conditions are at least based on a legal minimum.
P&O has set a very low bar for fire and rehire. It might be more difficult for employers to draft in workers from overseas to employ them on a pittance – that is an advantage that a shipping company has that is not available to other industries – but the bussing-in of scab labour and the use of security guards to escort out other workers has set a precedent that other bosses will follow. In freeports, where trade unions might dare to resist fire and rehire, it could become the norm.
The task of rebuilding strong broad lefts in all the unions
Trade unions should still, as far as possible, maintain a boycott of P&O. Other demands, such as calls for government contracts to be cancelled, are unlikely to have any effect. In accepting defeat, the NEC of the RMT union has decided to launch a “Fair Ferries” campaign, to re-establish “collectively bargained terms and conditions agreed with the RMT as the minimum employment standard for Ratings on international ferry routes from UK ports”.
This is a campaign that all trade union members should support. But it is no more than a rear-guard action, the battle for the 800 jobs at P&O being lost. It was the very tops of the trade union movement, the TUC, who left the field of battle without firing a shot.
In the longer run, as the RMT letter to members has said, “this rank injustice will not be brushed under the carpet”. It is a defeat that will need to be redressed in the future. But that will not be a task for a Tory government, nor yet for a Labour government that lacks any serious commitment to trade union rights. It will be a task for the trade unions themselves, and principally its rank and file membership, mobilised and motivated to defend jobs, conditions and livelihoods, and in the process democratising the unions to make them more responsive to the needs of the moment.
In the past there were a variety of ‘broad left’ movements in the trade unions, often encompassing tens of thousands of shop stewards and union reps right across the TUC. Such organisations played a crucial part in inter-union solidarity actions in the past, in large measure compensating for the weakness of leadership at the top. But unfortunately, extensive broad lefts no longer exist, so one of the key tasks for socialists and activists today is to rebuild them, in preparation for the inevitable industrial battles that lie ahead.
