This article was first published by Green World on Thursday 11th August 2022. You can read the original here.

By Ben Gladwin

The July heatwave broke the record for being the hottest temperatures ever experienced in Britain. With temperatures having reached 40.2 degrees in Heathrow London, people were confronted with heat that was debilitating, dangerous, and even potentially deadly. Climate scientists have long predicted that Britain will experience more intense and frequent hot summers. In the immediate aftermath of the July 2022 heat wave they stated that, due to current models for climate change, the UK can no longer be considered a cold country, recommending that the Government set out a plan to adapt to the new reality of extreme heat. Despite this, our workplaces are still lacking when it comes to providing conducive and safe conditions for UK workers. 

The impact of the July heat wave on schools gives us an insight into how the increasing intensity of summer temperatures affects different workers in a close environment. Schools employ more than teachers; site management, caters, educational assistants and even construction workers are all part of the daily running of schools. Classrooms are spaces which can be quite confined, with up to 30 or more students plus education staff. In hot weather, and if they lack ventilation, classroom temperatures can reach high temperatures with consequences for students and staff. More than that, school catering staff working with hot implements can also add to the pressure of working in heat, and site management workers in outdoor settings also run a risk of exposure to heat and sun.

During the heat wave in July, head teachers and the National Education Union sent a warning to the Department for Education that many school buildings across the country weren’t fit for purpose for working in extreme temperatures due to lack of air conditioning and poor ventilation. 

Given the lack of existing framework, schools were left to their own discretion as to what measures to take such as stopping physical activities such as sports days, providing water for staff and students, and even school closures. For the schools that stayed open, the government inspection body Ofsted announced that inspections would still take place for schools scheduled for an inspection, which even at times of ‘normal’ temperatures add to the stress and workload of school staff. To be inspected in 40-degree heat puts schools under even greater pressure. Although Ofsted stated that schools could request to defer inspections, these requests would be considered they would not be deferred for certain.

All this left schools with a confusing framework with which to decide how to adapt to the heat wave. Some schools closed – the Telegraph reported 200 schools nationally – while others remained open. Perhaps predictably, student attendance dropped with roughly one-third of pupils not attending school. The impact of this on lessons and teachers’ planning would be to add stress as planning for a lesson for 30 pupils, and then only having half turn up means that activities need changing and the lesson needs adapting. 

Consideration needs to be taken too for pupils’ learning if they remain at home during extreme weather events. The pandemic saw schools close and online learning become a substitute for learning in the classroom – this is very difficult to adapt for short-term situations such as heat waves.     

Issues therefore arise around protection for workers in extreme weather – this is crucial, as various health problems can arise if people are exposed to heat for too long. Dizziness, fainting, confusion, and if blood temperature exceeds 39 degrees, there is a high risk of heat stroke. Given the increasing evidence that Britain will experience more extreme and more frequent heatwaves, it would seem logical that the Government puts in place a framework for adapting workplaces. 

Countries within the EU have taken measures – Germany has a defined maximum temperature of 26 degrees whereby the employer must take action such as providing drinking water, although this is not enshrined in law. Depending on the federal state in Germany, schools can close due to hot temperatures – called Hitzefrei, which translates as ‘heat free’ – but this is down to the discretion of the school. Spain has a legal requirement of physical work between 14 and 25 degrees, which, if not met by the employer, can lead to an official complaint by the workforce to the Labour and Security Inspection.

Currently, very few legal frameworks exist in the UK beyond the Government Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Workplace Regulations of 1992. The regulations state that workplace temperatures must be ‘reasonable’, without stating what a maximum temperature would be. Employers are also not legally obliged to send workers home if the workplace is too hot. The Government’s own website recommends a minimum temperature in the workplace where employees are engaged in physical work.

As the example of schools shows, workers will be faced with increasing temperatures and more extreme heat in the summer in the coming decades. Our current legislative framework doesn’t cover the reality of working in a world where summer temperatures can reach the mid to high 30s and, even as we saw in July, low 40s. 

Action needs to be taken to ensure that workers are safe to work in environments which are conducive to such extremes. This needs to include ventilation in areas such as classrooms, as well as a legal maximum temperature beyond which it is no longer considered reasonable to work. The TUC has already called for measures to be taken, but it is up to workers to organise if they want to protect themselves in an age of climate extremes.

The post UK Heatwave: How can we safeguard workers? appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

The Green Party Trade Union Group has noted the decision by the Labour Party leadership to sack Sam Tarry MP, their former shadow Transport Minister, following his appearance on an RMT picket line.

This is a disgraceful move by Keir Starmer’s Labour, that shows he is more willing to crack down on trade union solidarity in his own ranks than he is to crack down on the Tories.

The irony of dismissing someone from post for taking part in trade union activity appears to be lost on Keir Starmer. This is behaviour we expect from the worst of bosses, not someone who claims to lead the labour movement.

This episode provides yet more evidence that the Labour Party leadership is incapable of standing up for working people. The cost-of-living emergency is tearing up our collective living standards, and people will suffer and die as a result. Workers and the trade union movement need strong, consistent political leadership that understands the importance of collective action.

Labour’s diet of platitudes and posturing will not address the crisis. Only empowering workers to take on employers and the Government to demand better pay and conditions through their unions will do that.

If Labour will not provide the independent political leadership workers need, the Green Party will.

The Greens have been consistently supportive of RMT and CWU strike action to demand better pay and conditions. We support all workers taking strike action to defend our collective living standards in this crisis.

We urge trade unionists and socialists to join the Green Party and be in a party that understands solidarity and the importance of workplace collective action.

The post GPTU statement on Labour’s sacking of Sam Tarry appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

By Matthew Hull. Matthew is Chair of the Green Party Trade Union Group. This article was originally published on Bright Green, an independent outlet for radical, democratic green movements.

Another Tory parliament, another anti-union law? Last Sunday’s issue of the Telegraph carried briefings from Government ministers threatening to impose ever tighter restrictions on trade unions in some of the UK’s biggest and most strategically significant industries.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi hinted at undermining the position of educators’ unions, by allowing non-union associations to represent teachers in disciplinary and grievance procedures. Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary, dusted off a 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge to introduce so-called ‘minimum service requirements’ across public transport: requiring a certain number of workers to continue staffing services during strike action, and therefore requiring workers to scab on each other or make their action unlawful.

These proposals have been floated before and come straight from the pages of the Tory anti-union playbook. Not only that, but they are of a piece with the tsunami of repressive legislation that Boris Johnson’s government has sent crashing against the UK public.

The Policing Act and coming Public Order Bill, the Elections Bill, the Nationality & Borders Bill and more. Each is designed in its own way to make effective lawful democratic resistance to the ruling Conservative Party more difficult and, in cases, impracticable for many people. Shrinking the space available to organisers and community activists in particular, these pieces of legislation constitute a centralisation of increased power in the hands of the Government at the expense of all of us.

Restricting the activity of trade unions and rank-and-file members fits this pattern. The Tory design is to keep unions down by limiting the scope of their actions within the law: making lawful strike action as ineffective as possible, while threatening noncompliant unions with suppression and sequestration if they fail to police their own members. It is the sick genius of the modern British anti-strike law that it recruits union bureaucracies to act as disciplinarians on the state’s behalf.

Beyond this general picture, the plans trailed in the Sunday Telegraph are specifically targeted at what the Government considers to be problematic areas of relative boldness.

Speaking to the paper, Shapps told railway workers’ unions to “wake up and smell the coffee.” While he did not say it, his comments were surely directed at the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT); they are in the late stages of a national ballot of workers involving 40,000 railways staff. An outpost of relatively high density and strike-readiness, in the strategically important transport sector, the RMT are a perfect example of the commendable militancy that the government wishes to supress. 

Zahawi’s encroachment on the position of education unions comes after two years where the National Education Union (NEU) in particular has grown more vocal and gained more members. The NEU’s creative invocation of health and safety protections in Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act to force a U-turn in Government policy during Covid lockdowns has neither been forgotten, nor forgiven by the minister. The broader weakening of democratic accountability in education, driven by academisation and free schools, would be consummated by depriving unions of a key institution role in defending members’ interests.

These are changes the Government has been dying to make. Incubated for years in the imaginations of the Right, they could have made an appearance at seemingly any time. So why now?

As mentioned, the RMT are approaching the end of a landmark ballot of railway workers that could see tens of thousands walk out. This is reason enough for a scare-story in the Government’s favourite receptacle for propaganda and puff pieces. In an exceedingly busy parliament, with the Government racing to push through the rest of its repressive agenda, it is not clear that the Conservative Party will prioritise giving these plans a high-profile hearing.

Given the broader economic context, however, it is equally if not more plausible that the Government is laying the groundwork for this assault on trade union rights to take place, albeit further down the line.

As the crisis in standards of living grows and grows, dissent and anger are only likely to grow. The Conservative government has shown that it has neither the ideas nor the commitment to provide a resolution to this crisis that would support working people and challenge corporate power. Selling “more work” as the way out of it, at a time when work is paying less and less by the week, is going to fool no-one. The Government’s best bet for maintaining their grip on power whatever the weather, is to increase their ability to repress organised dissent and prevent a coherent popular opposition from forming.

This is what makes keeping unions down, in a cost-of-living crisis, a political priority for the current Government.

In 2022, even in their comparatively diminished state, trade unions are positioned to do something that other institutions in British politics cannot. Unions have the ability to take ambitions, ideas, impulses, and feelings among the mass of working people and translate them into demands for progressive change. The student movement – another potential locus for the creation, popularisation and resourcing of such demands – is in a weakened state and without a genuinely engaged mass membership. The print and digital media are largely owned (and their agendas determined) by a right-wing billionaire clique, ably assisted by a narrow, isolated and upper-class journalists’ set. Put simply, if mass dissent is going to take political form at all, it is difficult to see how it will not come from or at least through the labour movement. 

There is ample historic precedent for trade unions playing this social role, as a vanguard of social change. Waves of popular industrial action throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries have resulted in sea-changes in Britain’s social contract. To put it another way: the worst outcome for the Conservatives isn’t just a successful RMT action on the railways, but an RMT action that gains broad sympathy and popularity across the UK. Not only are Tories aware of this, but it is the stuff of their most feverish nightmares. It fuels an obsession with imposing ever more restrictive anti-union laws, even though Britain already has the most oppressive in Western Europe.

This is how the Tories’ response to the cost-of-living crisis is shaping up to be a security state response, without a welfare-based response (and much less a democratic worker-led response). The game is insulating themselves and their base from the climbing costs of crisis, while suppressing the effects of working people’s resistance.

This is an incredibly dangerous road. The Conservatives’ agenda is already building the state’s capacity to repress resistance by the working class, and especially LGBT communities and people of colour. 

The strains on people’s ability to live are only likely to grow. Supply shocks in food and commodities, for example, amplified by an unstable financialised trading system; climate-induced instability and price fluctuations; the increasingly inability of the poorest to secure publicly accessible health services in good time if at all: each successive impact will prompt the state to react as it is accustomed to do, by containing the impacts and protecting the interests of owners and not workers.

In this context, attacks on trade unions’ ability to organise and strike freely should be interpreted as part of the broader attack on the people’s ability to struggle for and win justice for themselves and the planet. Even if the government is trailing these proposals primarily to test the waters, we need to be firm in our resistance.

The RMT has already committed in policy to flout any so-called ‘minimum service requirements’ should they be implemented, and to fight against their implementation tooth-and-nail; we must support them in this all the way. Unite’s General Secretary, Sharon Graham, has declared that “if the government forces our legitimate activities”, they “shouldn’t expect [Unite] to play by the rules.” Commitments like this should be commended, and Graham should be encouraged to make firm preparations to fight this fight. Support should be offered to unions that refuse meekly to accept these changes.

One of the great psychological victories of Thatcherism is that even among progressives, some have been primed to see union rights and workplace struggles as separate from wider democratic rights and struggles. History’s lesson that trade union rights and freedoms are the canary in the coalmine for civil liberties is a lesson that constantly needs revising. Too many people hope, without justification, that they can support and protect democratic rights in society without prioritising the sometimes-messy business of upholding the right to strike.

The supposed division between freedoms to organise and exercise democratic power in the workplace and outside of it, has always been artificial. Maintaining this artifice in a period when elites are threatening a total regression in rights and freedoms, however, could be nothing less than suicidal. The more and more our working lives resemble dictatorships, the more difficult and painful all democratic resistance will become.

The learned habit of tempering or moderating support for union actions must be set aside. Supporting such rights in principle, while avowedly criticising unions and industrial actions that apply them in practice, will be shown to be insufficient. Greens, progressives, socialists, social democrats, liberals too: it’s time to stand up and defend workers’ rights to organise. You might be next.

The post View: We All Need to Oppose Tory Anti-Union Laws appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

Dozens of Green Party candidates have taken the Trade Union Group’s pledge to support trade unions and workers’ rights if elected as local councillors on Thursday 5th May.

The news comes as the workers’ movement globally celebrates International Workers’ Day.

The ten-point pledge includes commitments to work closely with local unions and trades councils, as well as promote voluntary union recognition and fight to reverse outsourcing of council services.

Signers of the pledge include the former Health & Care spokesperson Larry Sanders, as well as sitting councillors in Oxford, Sheffield and London.

Chair of the Trade Union Group, Matthew Hull said:

“These elections could see more Greens elected to local office in England and Wales than ever before. It is heartening to see so many candidates pledge their commitment to the party’s most pro-worker and pro-union policies.

“After over a decade of Tory cuts to local services and ideological privatisation efforts, councils across the country need councillors with the determination to resist. By signing this pledge Green candidates have shown their dedication to amplifying the voices of workers in council services.”

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By Ellen Lees

This article was originally published on Green World on 23 March 2022. It is the third in a series of blogs exploring how Greens in local government and communities can work closely with trade unions.

You might not notice a lot of the services your local council provides. But you’d notice if they stopped! Local councils’ services keep our communities running.

Following successive brutal budget cuts, local councils are desperate to cut costs in any way. And due to the ideology of privatisation dominating public services since the 80s, services are now often outsourced to private companies in an attempt to save money. 

But these companies are selling a lie: that they can provide the same quality service as the council for a lower cost. The truth is that they waste money, quality drops, and the council loses all control and accountability over how the work is done. It’s a bad deal for councils and it’s a bad deal for all of us. 

Here are five reasons to end local outsourcing:

1. We’d save money

Outsourcing services is a waste of money. First, every private company has a cost attached that local councils don’t have. Private companies have to make a profit to appease their shareholders. That means cutting corners and shaving off the council’s money for service delivery.

Secondly, the cost of managing the contracts adds precious pounds to the council’s cost because whenever these contracts need to be changed, local councils have to shell out money to renegotiate and redraft. 

2. We’d be more resilient

Public services are essential – a lot of the time, they can’t afford to fail. So when a private company fails while delivering a public service, local councils have no choice but to step in and pick up the pieces. That’s what happened when Carillion collapsed in 2018 – the directors and shareholders made a profit and walked away, leaving local and national government to sort out the mess.

3. We’d get better terms and conditions 

One of the ways that outsourcing companies can save money compared to insourced services is by undermining workers. All workers deserve decent pay and conditions, but public service staff often do vital but thankless work for wages that are too low and in difficult situations. Local authorities are held to higher standards than private companies when it comes to treating their workers fairly, so by bringing services in house, workers get a better deal.

4. We can keep funds in the local economy

By bringing council services in house, we can keep wealth in the community instead of funnelling it out via shareholders of multinational private corporations. That means more money circulating in the local economy. 

5. We can hold our service providers accountable

People don’t trust outsourcing companies like G4S, Capita and Serco – and it’s no wonder! They’ve been caught up in scandal after scandal thanks to their dodgy business practices and corner-cutting. By bringing our services in house, we no longer have to rely on these companies and we will have democratic means of holding our service providers accountable.

Outsourcing has been failing for decades. It’s time we took control of the services that keep our communities running.

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This article was originally published on Green World on 16 February 2022. It is the second in a series of blogs exploring how Greens in local government and communities can work closely with trade unions. The first blog can be found here.

As with so many important issues, it is worth repeating: Greens don’t have to leave unions to Labour.

I have seen first-hand how working closely with unions can have a transformative impact, both on the ways we work and on the community around us.

In 2020, I met a group of care workers who had decided things had to change. They also realised that things wouldn’t change unless they changed them.

The workers at Sage Nursing Home in North London struggled with low pay, overwork, and mistreatment for years. But during the pandemic things got even worse, as stress levels increased and the residents of their home became increasingly vulnerable to Covid-19.

Some of the workers had been in trade unions before, but had never had the feeling of support they needed. This time they got together and joined United Voices of the World (UVW), a union predominantly made up of migrants and workers from ethnic minority communities.

They demanded an immediate pay rise to enable them to get by in an increasingly expensive city. At the height of the pandemic, they demanded real sick pay, to ensure they could afford to stay home when ill and keep their residents safe. These were just two of the improvements they identified and fought to secure.

I was fortunate enough to meet some of the workers on a Zoom call, and like so many others I was inspired. Over the following weeks and months, I had the privilege of assisting the workers and UVW in trying to increase pressure on the trustees of Sage to change course and improve things at the home.

The campaign at Sage grew and got lots of attention, including – unusually for an industrial dispute – some mainstream media coverage. This was in no small part due to the passion, dedication, hard work and charisma of the strike leaders, who spoke to hundreds of meetings and rallies to build support for their cause.

But the Sage dispute acquired prominence for another reason, too. For many people, the struggle at Sage reflected the wider struggle in the care industry as well as struggles with precarious, low-paid work across the economy.

Millions of people in the UK face similar struggles to the Sage Nursing Home workers. Low pay, overwork, little or no sick pay, precarity, mistreatment: these are woven into the fabric of daily life for the greater part of the UK’s working class. This never seemed clearer and more true than when Covid cases and casualties were mounting, and the Sage workers decided that enough was enough.

Now, in 2022, as the cost of living rises and the government puts super-profits before people’s wellbeing, these combined crises in living standards are only going to intensify. The deadly flaws in the UK’s political economy are still very much in evidence.

Most of the millions of daily struggles that people face getting food on the table do not become flashpoints or strikes or turning points in the scheme of things. They become so commonplace, so routine that they can fly under the radar of the UK mainstream.

Nonetheless, the campaign at Sage Nursing Home offers a glimpse of what can be achieved when workers are empowered to get together, identify the changes they need and fight for them.

By bringing attention to these struggles in our communities, and helping groups of workers to get together and win, we can build a broader consciousness of what needs to change to make life better for the majority. This is, in a small way, what I was privileged to be a part of when I lent a hand to the workers at Sage. And it’s something that I hope all Green candidates, councillors and party activists will feel empowered to do.

By working proactively with trade unions and other workers’ organisations, we can offer our expertise, our outspoken support and our time to groups in our community that really need it. This is something that Greens do so well, and many of our hundreds of Green councillors are already pioneering this work in their area.

Helping trade unions to build and grow in power is not just about supporting the particular group of workers in question. It is transformative for us, too, and how we think about things around us. But most of all it is a process of education and consciousness-raising for the whole community involved, helping previously unrelated and disconnected groups of people to recognise their common interests. The work we do with communities now will serve as the basis for future campaigns we haven’t even imagined yet.

It is through this hard, often slow, but vital process that we can really build power in our communities.

I’m pleased to be supporting the Green Party Trade Union Group’s pledge campaign, urging Green councillors and candidates to pledge their support for trade unions and their campaigns. If you haven’t already done so, please take the pledge today and share your support widely.

The post View: The importance of working with unions appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

This article was originally published on Green World on 8 February 2022. It is the first in a series of blogs exploring how Greens in local government and communities can work closely with trade unions.

On Thursday 5 May, millions of people across the UK will head to the polls to vote for their local councillors.

With turnout lower than in national or UK-wide elections, local contests receive less press attention and have lower prestige. For many pundits they are mid-term temperature tests, reflecting the health of a current administration vis-a-vis its closest national opposition. But we as Greens know that the impact of a shift in local politics can be transformative.

As Greens knock on doors, deliver leaflets, and engage in conversation up and down the country we do so in the knowledge that we are presenting a whole new way of taking and using local power. For many residents, the Green Party represents a break from an old paradigm involving parties they no longer trust. For others, the Greens are the only force that is challenging the local dominance of a single entrenched governing party.

Wherever Greens are standing, breaking this established system of power and handing power back to the people is what we are standing for. Expanding democratic power and growing confidence in our ability to build something better together is the objective.

Even following a decade of austerity, during which Conservative and Liberal Democrat governments have utterly decimated their budgets, local authorities have the ability to spur a transformation in how we look after our communities and each other. Local authorities deliver some of the most urgent services making a huge difference in people’s lives; they are some of the biggest employers in their areas. 

This is just one reason why I am proud to be a trade unionist backing Green candidates in May. With Greens at the helm, local authorities can pioneer new ways of bringing power back to working people locally by involving them in decision-making. Local authorities can put working people first: working closely with local trade union branches; working to end outsourcing, two-tier workforces, and insecure work in council services; committing to recognise and work with their own workers’ unions; prizing ethical procurement and buying union-made goods and services.

These are just some of the ways that Green councillors in office can push for more democratic, pro-worker policies that involve, empower and protect working people.

Our party and our movement can and should be the natural home for workers who demand better from local and municipal authorities. After all, we know that we cannot depend on other parties and officials to do the work for us.

To take an example from London, the city I call home: workers on London’s transport network know by now that they cannot depend on Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan to defend their jobs, pay, and conditions. Woolwich Ferry workers in South East London have seen victimisation of their reps, and a failure by Transport for London (TfL) to present a new pay deal. London Underground managers are threatening to cut 600 jobs and are trying to remove the Night Tube driver grade, which would ruin work-life balance for Night Tube drivers, instead of joining RMT members in a campaign for real government funding.

Where is Sadiq Khan in all this? As he has very clearly demonstrated, he is certainly not on the side of striking union members. It is clear that a Labour Mayor cannot be depended on to stand up for workers. Instead, it is Greens who must be the authentic voice of working people, who are being abandoned by an increasingly distant Labour leadership clique and who correctly see no hope in the Liberal Democrats.

The Green Party and the wider movement should be the natural home of working people and their organisations in trade and renters’ unions.  

During these local elections, the Green Party Trade Union Group will be taking up this task enthusiastically, highlighting some of the best of our party’s pro-worker policies. We have already published our ten-point pledge for Green local candidates, which we strongly encourage you to sign.

The post View: The power of local politics appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

Written by Lee Booker, a Green Party member and Health and Safety Rep for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw). The Green Party Trade Union Group publishes an array of different views and perspectives on both Green Party and labour movement topics, which represent the view of the writer and not necessarily GPTU. If you want to write for our blog, please contact us today.

Image: Make Amazon Pay!’ Demonstration in Berlin 03.jpg” by Leonhard Lenz is marked with CC0 1.0

In the early hours of ‘Black Friday’ – 26^th November 2021 – Amazon distribution depots were hit by an unexpected delay. Extinction Rebellion (XR) set up blockades at various sites for 48 hours to try to interrupt Amazon’s well known run-up-to-Christmas Black Friday sales. Coincidentally, at four sites members of GMB Union supported by the TUC protested against Amazon’s exploitation of its workers and criticised its anti-union culture; the GMB protests took place as part of a global day of action under the banner of ‘Make Amazon Pay’, an initiative coordinated by the Progressive International. It is part of a much longer campaign spanning years by the unions to organise Amazon workers. However, as reported in the Guardian, the union and XR campaigns were separate. Visible GMB campaigning could be seen on only four sites, whereas XR hit thirteen. This piece will argue that the nature of such actions and the lack of collaboration with broader movements, such as the trade union movement, enable the media to spin a popular narrative against such protests.

Examples of this media phenomenon abound. Take right-winger Brendan O’Neill’s piece in the Spectator attacking Extinction Rebellion’s Amazon action, titled: “The snobbery of Extinction Rebellion’s Amazon blockade”. Without so much as a shred of irony writing for an avowedly capitalist magazine, O’Neill characterises the XR action as distinctly bourgeois; with this action, he claims, they were punishing the working class for its consumerism in the lead up to Christmas. He finishes the piece with the following summary:

“These eco-muppets occasionally don the garb of anti-capitalism and flirt with radical lingo. But strip that all away and you’ll find well-educated, often well-off people who are hell-bent on stopping the rest of us, the little people, from driving so much, flying so much and buying so much.

“Extinction Rebellion is fundamentally a movement for austerity. No wonder it is unpopular. We like our holidays, we like our comforts and we like our Black Friday bargains, so bugger off.”

Let us be perfectly clear: Brendan O’Neill; is a right-wing charlatan, and no ally at all in the fight against capitalism or ecological destruction. But strip away the fiery faux “everyday man” language and behind O’Neill’s clownish and bad faith provocations there hides a kernel of truth. One of the biggest problems that often haunts environmental movements time and again is its class composition. Take a look at Wales’ excellent Centre for Alternative Technology, whose own research has led them to formulate a strategy to broaden the environmental movement after recognising that “the environmental movement in the UK is dominated by a single demographic: the white middle class”.

When I heard XR had targeted the Rugeley Amazon site (which is relatively local to me) I felt excitement and a degree of support towards their direct action. Why? I know the site’s track record in terms of employee treatment, as well as its anti-union tactics because of my own lived experience. I have friends and colleagues who have worked there, and I have seen various large site demonstrations by unions at the site entrance.  However, I also expected anger from the many people locally and across the region who would likely be using the Black Friday sales to help get Christmas presents at cheaper-than-usual prices in these tough times. This feeling was weaponised by the media, as the Spectator piece shows.

Taking the Rugeley site as a focus point to analyse tactics will shine a light on the ways in which the ecological justice movement, in this case Extinction Rebellion, need to alter the ways in which they work if they are to gather broad appeal for real change.

Rugeley is part of Cannock Chase District. In 2017 this area was ranked (excluding Stoke on Trent) the most deprived local authority in Staffordshire, its rank pre-pandemic in 2019 was the 126^th out of the 317 most deprived local authorities in England. Amazon’s Rugeley site is now recognised as the largest business in the area and is located over the road from the now demolished power station, which once was the area’s largest employer. Stable long-term jobs, replaced by precarious employment. 

GMB union have been trying to unionise the Rugeley site for years, including well publicised demonstrations which have attracted support from some MPs. A major recurring issue on the Rugeley site has been its terrible health and safety record, leading to frequent call outs to ambulances for staff.  Whilst the district today may unfortunately elect Conservative MP Amanda Milling as its representative, Cannock Chase District has not shied away from class and ecological justice struggles in its history. From the striking Lea Hall miners in ‘84 and ‘85 to the recent opposition to the increased privatisation of Cannock Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Not far from Amazon, the area still retains the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club which has hosted post-demonstration socials for trade unionists picketing the amazon site in a show of solidarity a few times over the years. Many times I have driven past St John’s Church in nearby Heath Hayes and spotted banners and announcements that a church group is supporting extinction rebellion events and other earth strikes. Cannock Chase District, whilst once a majority Labour council area, now shares control between Labour and Conservative Parties; it also has one elected Green Party councillor (following the defection of three to an Independent group). A combination of multiple social, economic, culture and political potentialities exist and could be utilised, but so far have not been.

There exists here, as in most communities, the possibility of campaigns that could gather mass support. One problem, however, with Extinction Rebellion’s actions is that they act in isolation and ‘out of the blue’. The ability to put oneself in a position whereby deliberate arrest is sought, a common XR tactic, also comes from a position of privilege (albeit also one requiring courage, which is laudable). Many working class people could not necessarily risk arrest, the loss of wages and the impact this would have on future employment. While many working class movements and their campaign actions have resulted in mass arrests, these have been most successful when supported by a vibrant local support network and local trade union backing; with robust support and buoyed by the collective self-confidence it engenders, working class strikers and agitators have been able to defy the criminal justice system to advance their demands. But XR does not appear to have built the local infrastructure that could make judicious use of such unlawful tactics sustainable and successful. As a result, their tactics can appear alien to many but the most radical and ideologically committed.

Working with those employed on the Amazon site would mean reaching out to and coordinating both with the trade unions trying to organise there, and with ‘organic’ leaders among the workforce. It would mean working within those communities and involving them in the organising process. Until this approach is taken, XR will struggle to challenge hegemonic media narratives characterising them as out of touch; they will fail to represent the views and issues which concern working class communities. The exploitation that occurs in Amazon, as with most large industries, is so often hidden from view. With the general public often oblivious or misinformed as to the misery that has gone into getting the product to their front door, it is no wonder many do not speak up. This is one of the key difficulties when it comes to confronting capitalist relations of production, where the social relations between human beings and the producers of commodities are obscured by the production process itself.

Extinction Rebellion is right to challenge business and government for leading the world into ecological catastrophe. It was right to challenge Amazon. However, to gather public support they need to work with the people of the areas they target. We cannot just be a photo and press opportunity for 48 hours of action, where our community has never had support from XR before and will likely not have it again. They will not win support this way.

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We must empower the unions to fight the climate crisis, writes Matthew Hull on the COP26 Coalition’s Day of Action. Matthew Hull is Chair of the Green Party Trade Union Group.

At the Green Party’s Autumn Conference in Birmingham, the Trade Union Group was joined by John – a workplace representative at GKN Driveline.

The GKN plant produces drivelines and other parts for the automotive industry, supplying various well-known industry names. Just a few miles from the Conference venue, in Erdington, it has been a feature of the local economy for decades, and the company has operated since the 19th century. But in the space of a few short years, it has been acquired and asset-stripped for sale by a venture capital firm.

The Erdington workers’ efforts to save the plant, their jobs, and the skills-base that has sustained a Birmingham community were extensive. Tactics included lobbying ministers, working through their local MP Jack Dromey, and public campaigning.

Perhaps most notably, for the purposes of this article at least, the GKN plant convener and reps produced a transition plan for GKN Driveline. In partnership with a consultancy and drawing on the expertise of their own engineers, they worked up a proposal for the GKN plant to retool itself for electric vehicle supply chains.

This was no revolutionary screed, but a business case. It included a comparative analysis arguing the GKN plant was competitive, both in the market and in comparison with other GKN plants (there are more than a dozen sites across Europe). Written to demonstrate the long-term viability of a plant plugged into the UK’s electric vehicle industry, it appealed directly both to GKN’s owners as business managers and to the Conservative government rhetoric of ‘levelling up’ and electrification.

GKN’s owners, however, are not interested in being business managers. The venture capitalist owners, Melrose, specialise in acquiring and ‘slim-lining’ manufacturing enterprises before selling them on at a profit. Having met the Unite plant conveners, Jack Dromey, and even government ministers Melrose acknowledged the plan and the claims the workers were making. Melrose then dismissed it out of hand.

The anti-union script running in the background

After months of campaigning, Unite’s representatives at the Erdington plant have negotiated an enhanced redundancy package for the workers set to lose their jobs. Unite’s members voted to accept the package, and the union is working with Jack Dromey and others to ensure the workers affected are best looked after. The transition plan fell on deaf ears.

It would not do to oversimplify the reasons behind what has been done to GKN workers in Erdington. John himself was clear that the eventual outcome was the result of a confluence of different factors: a generalised slowdown in auto manufacture reducing union leverage, and ministers’ unwillingness to match their ‘buy British’ rhetoric with interventions to defend the plant, featured heavily in his telling of the story.

It would be too easy to present the demise of GKN Erdington as a fait accompli, the inevitable result of the 2018 hostile takeover of GKN by the motivated re-sellers at Melrose plc. Unite was never going to win by speaking to the bosses’ hearts; but there can be no denying that the asset-stripping modus operandi practised by Melrose also restricted the union’s ability to speak to the owners’ pockets. A venture capital firm that is disinterested in the actual production of auto parts for a just transition will not be moved by proposals that complicate their project, which was and is to trim down GKN for resale.

There is however a missing piece in the puzzle. Speaking as a shop steward, John was very clear that among all GKN’s sites, the Erdington plant was a sitting duck because of Britain’s legal environment. The UK’s constellation of anti-union and anti-strike laws itself made the Erdington plant especially vulnerable. From the perspective of Melrose, the ease with which UK workers can be fired and the difficulty they have in resisting dismissal through legal means made Erdington a prime target in their project. Decisively pro-boss regulations make the messy and soulless business of axing jobs that much cheaper.

Melrose’s decisions, and the extent to which they were determined to pursue the demise of the Erdington plant, were shaped by Britain’s incredibly lopsided industrial relations architecture. This, at any rate, is the perspective of Unite representatives involved in negotiations to save it.

Not only did anti-union laws shape Melrose’s decision to enact a hostile takeover of GKN in 2018, and their subsequent behaviour, but they also critically limited Unite’s ability to resist. Ballots for industrial action, both consultative and legal, were hampered by restrictions on unions’ ability to operate freely. GKN’s management challenged the legality of strike action, exploiting the various opportunities given to them in UK law to stymie worker action. All in all, this compounded Unite’s inability to identify and use their leverage in a timely and effective fashion.

Many events in labour history are overdetermined. We do not make history in conditions of our own choosing, and the various conditions in which GKN’s workers found themselves made effective resistance critically difficult. It may be that the anti-union and anti-strike laws do not have to be adduced to explain what has happened. From another vantage point, however, the anti-union laws cannot neatly be separated from the various other factors explaining the how, the what, and the why of recent events.

The exact relative importance of the anti-union laws can be left to historians. But we can be sure that they are a script running in the background facilitating the damage that venture capitalists like Melrose do to communities.

This feature of the UK’s economy is not new, and will be familiar to almost everyone involved in the labour movement. Greens and environmentalists should make themselves increasingly familiar with these laws too. 

If the story of GKN teaches us anything – and having listened to John I am confident it can teach us a lot – it is that the anti-union laws considerably reduce our leverage to present and implement concrete plans for a just transition. An opportunity to retain skills and redirect them to more sustainable industry has been lost, in part because the workers and their union were constrained.

If we are to implement plans for a just transition to a zero-carbon economy, we must instead empower working people to develop their skills and enable them to work to transform society through dignified, well-rewarded work in the home, the office, the factory and elsewhere. It is hard to imagine doing this successfully without resisting and repealing the anti-union laws.

Changing models

There has been substantial opposition to the anti-union laws on the part of trade unions. This has taken various forms – in parliament, on the streets, in the workplace. But it is useful to dwell on the less obvious, and frequently less positive, reactions and adaptations to ever more restrictive anti-union laws on the level of union strategy and tactics.

As historians Sundari Anitha and Ruth Pearson note in their book Striking Women, the growing list of restrictions on legal trade union action have caused a fundamental shift in the function of trade unions in the 21st century.

A series of five Trade Union Acts and Employment Acts between 1979 and 1990 imposed severe limitations on the ability of workers to stage walkouts. In 1984 secondary picketing was outlawed, banning one of the labour movement’s most powerful tools; new requirements for ballots, including postal balloting and minimum turnouts, ensured that industrial action would be slower and more difficult to organise. There are too many to cite in one piece. Each successive restriction had the effect of creating new spaces for employers to exploit, making challenges to the legality of workers’ actions and jamming the gears of collective action before they could really gather momentum.

In response to these growing legal obstacles, and in the aftermath of landmark defeats, Anitha and Pearson argue the trade union movement underwent a transformation in its organisational posture and behaviour. They chart the decline of industrial militancy, referring to the decline from over 29 million strike days in 1979 to just 273,000 days in 2018. They also chart signs that trade unions were beginning to assume the role of membership organisations, supporting workers increasingly as individuals and following new avenues to do so. For example, as strike days fall, submissions to the Employment Tribunal often with union assistance rise sharply from 40,000 in 1979 to 191,000 in 2013 (when the Coalition government’s punishing fee regime causes them to fall precipitously).

Anitha and Pearson identify an overall trajectory from unions as organs of collective action, towards organisations that provide specialised assistance and benefits to each member as an individual worker (sometimes described as a ‘servicing’ model of trade unionism). Political representation is achieved increasingly through the Labour Party and by lobbying at Westminster. There is space in this model for representation of the collective membership to the employer, but the union’s role is increasingly advisory and dependent on finding sympathetic listeners. While there are notable and proud exceptions to this trend, it is hard to deny that it exists.

It is clear how in the aftermath of historic defeat, and increasingly cut off from avenues for creative collective action, trade unions would in practice accommodate themselves to the new legal reality. In the scramble to survive amid what Tony Blair proudly called “the most restrictive [union laws] in the Western world”, with membership rolls shrinking, it is a shift accomplished easily.

But as experiences all across the movement show, this more bureaucratic form of trade unionism is unable to meet the demands of the climate and ecological emergency.

Changing mindsets

A labour movement in retreat will be prone to assume more defensive postures. Severe legal restrictions on the tactics available will only reinforce that tendency.

This vantage point is particularly helpful when considering why trade unions have previously adopted, and continue to adopt, climate wrecking policy positions. A dispositionally conservative union leadership that has internalised the logic of the anti-union laws will be less receptive to overtures promising greener grass in some distant promised land. It will be proportionately more likely to prioritise the narrow defence of its members’ interests, even as the ecological crisis threatens to envelop us all.

This is not just a question of officials and leaders. For many rank-and-file union members, and especially those whose jobs are exposed in a transition, the landmark defeats of yesteryear are only too recent. The fact that many such defeats involved the utter destruction and generational impoverishment of communities bound together by extractive and carbon-intensive industries, like coal mining, means the threat is very real and very much in living memory. The fact that many such communities were promised new and more sustainable jobs, opportunities, and support that never materialised adds to the malaise. If there is among such places and people a scepticism of grand designs from career politicians, that scepticism is well-earned.

None of this is to excuse those policies that pose a threat to our planet. Nor does it glorify or justify those who propose and defend them. But it does suggest the way to beat the trap is to break the mindset and organisational practice that the anti-union laws have served to embed in the movement.

Empowering workers through their unions to take ownership of and drive forward plans for a just transition is one way to set about this. By making resistance to the anti-union laws and their eventual replacement with positive union rights central to our organising and campaigning, we can plant the seeds of workers’ skills and creativity in better soil.

Empower the unions to defeat the climate crisis

This work is already ongoing. A rising general environmental consciousness, however shallow and flawed, has put a transition on every political party’s agenda. The notion that justice for working people must be served is hegemonic such that even the Conservative Party must imitate its rhetoric, even as they fail to match it with any substance.

As the experience at GKN Driveline suggests, workers and their unions are already exploring this political landscape and fashioning futures for themselves and others. At Rolls Royce, workers successfully defended one site and delayed any job losses at two others; together with their union and local MPs, they are developing transition plans and have already secured vital training to re-skill their members to produce greener technologies. Other unions, including the Bakers, Food & Allied Union (BFAWU), have made their workers’ exposure to the climate crisis a key plank of their policy alongside vigorous campaigns to defend jobs and conditions.

The experience at GKN also suggests, however, that something must change if we want workers’ plans to be implemented.

The labour movement is undertaking an orderly retreat. Unions are haemorrhaging their private sector membership: in 2020 private sector membership fell by 110,000, while rising public sector membership rescued overall union membership to bring it to 23.5%.

But if we are concerned with reviving the spirit and practice of collective action, then we must look beyond membership figures to evidence of willingness and capability to strike. And here the picture is even darker. In 2018, just 273,000 working days were lost to strike action, down from the postwar high at 29.5 million in 1979 (and in a workforce that has almost doubled in size).

Most of these strike days were undertaken in fortresses of the public sector. 68% of 2018 strike days were in the education sector, and most of those in a single dispute by the UCU. The highest annual figure since the millennium, 1.4 million days in 2011, was due principally to two huge public sector disputes. The overall prognosis for much of the private sector, which will be critical in any industrial transition to zero carbon, is poor indeed.

Recent developments suggest that union members are chafing against the limited ‘servicing’ model and the climbdown it represents. The election of Sharon Graham as Unite General Secretary in 2021, upsetting pundits’ predictions, signalled a shift towards an industrial approach and a willingness to revive the strike as a central tactic. Graham’s manifesto policy of approving strike ballots in far greater numbers is just one sign of this.

Not only that, but there is a growing awareness that confronting the arbitrary and undemocratic restrictions of the anti-union and anti-strike laws, as well as the mindset they have embedded, is essential to the movement’s health. At Unite’s 2021 policy conference the union reiterated opposition to the anti-union laws, and indicated their willingness to campaign on the issue. The RMT’s recent AGM produced a resolution to oppose the laws, including any attempt to impose further restrictions on transport workers through so-called ‘minimum service levels’.

There are other, perhaps less obvious signs too. Sharon Graham’s insistence on revisiting union structure to bring reps together across each industry (creating ‘combines’), a seemingly strictly bureaucratic move, could implicitly challenge the logic of the anti-union laws that rigidly keep workers apart and prevent action in solidarity with others.

Fighting back and repealing the anti-union laws, to replace them with a positive charter of trade union rights, will depend on our collective ability to make the current legal framework unstable and unenforceable. Considering where we are, the scale of this work should not be underestimated. But as consciousness of the problem grows among trade unionists we can be more confident that we have a basis to push forward. Rising anger among workers in particular sectors – including health and social care – offers hope that a collective spirit is not yet dead.

Understanding this, Greens have an opportunity not just to acknowledge but to embrace the developing environmental and climate consciousness of workers, like those at GKN, Rolls Royce, and elsewhere. We can work to turn this ripple into a wave of transition plans sweeping sectors like manufacturing and beyond into all sectors of the economy.

But doing this requires a commitment to actively resisting, in speech and action, those laws that critically limit democratic space to take control of our working lives.

The recent launch statement of Empower the Unions, a joint project of Earth Strike UK and Free Our Unions, expressed this desire and recognised the necessity of solidarity action to win climate justice. This is the spirit of democratic industrial militancy Greens and the movement for climate justice must assume, recognising that our plans will wither away without the power to implement them. The Green Party Trade Union Group has been joined by Caroline Lucas MP and representatives of the Young Greens in supporting the campaign.

If we want to see more GKN plans not just emerge but emerge triumphant, we must examine the laws that prevent such workers from transforming their working lives. And then we must fight to change them.

The post View: Empower the unions to fight the climate crisis appeared first on Green Party Trade Union Group.

Written by Lee Booker, a Green Party member and Health and Safety Rep for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw). The Green Party Trade Union Group publishes an array of different views and perspectives on both Green Party and labour movement topics, which represent the view of the writer and not necessarily GPTU. If you want to write for our blog, please contact us today.

The most recent Labour Party conference saw 80% of its Constituency Labour Party delegates vote in support of adopting Proportional Representation (PR) as a future campaign pledge.  Yet affiliated trade union delegates used their powerful votes to vote in opposition to the majority of CLP delegates and ultimately see off the popular motion.

From a Green Party member’s perspective, and from that of a trade union member, it could not be clearer what we must argue for and where we must organise.

All political parties except the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are committed to campaigning for PR and to replace the undemocratic First-Past-the-Post system (FPTP) that Britain currently operates for parliamentary elections. The Labour Party, historically, was formed by the trade unions as a representative political party for their interests. However, since the Labour Party’s formation in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee, this historic link has often frayed and on occasions broken down. Today the Labour Party is down by an astonishing 430,000 members since Keir Starmer took over. Not only that, but its links with trade unions are being tested after decades of broken promises, most notably the failure to repeal the restrictive trade union laws during the Blair and Brown era.

Take one of the largest affiliated general unions and Labour’s biggest donor, Unite the union. The Labour Party has faced harsh criticism from its former General Secretary, Len McCluskey, who stated recently that it would be “almost impossible” for Labour to win an outright majority at the next general election. Speaking during her successful leadership campaign to the Green Party Trade Union Group, its newly elected General Secretary Sharon Graham pledged to reorient Unite away from Labour Party internal affairs. While Graham has since taken pains to clarify that a substantial break with Labour is not on the cards, her campaign and conduct since have been characterised by a outward disdain for Westminster politics. Graham seized the opportunity to demonstrate her preference for industrial matters by conspicuously declining to attend the Labour Party’s 2021 Conference – choosing to spend her week on picket lines instead.

In other unions, the breakdown of relations with the Labour Party leadership has been more complete. The party’s recent conference saw the disaffiliation of Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) from Labour after months of outspoken disagreement with Keir Starmer’s behaviour. The BFAWU’s General Decretary Sarah Woolley announced the end of a 119-year affiliation between the union and the party writing that “the decision taken by delegates who predominantly live in what’s regarded as Labour red wall seats shows how far the Labour party has travelled away from the aims and hopes of working class organisations like ours“.

Just as members within the Unite voted for a General Secretary who campaigned to put distance between their union and Labour Party obsessions, and BFAWU delegates voted to disaffiliate from The Labour Party, members can also campaign inside their union to adopt a position of supporting Proportional Representation at union conferences.

It is clear now, that without solid campaigning across the country in our trade union branches and workplaces, the adoption of proportional representation will continue to be blocked and a major barrier for The Green Party to break through in Parliament will be upheld. Many unions are still affiliated to the Labour Party, but many also are not. It is of absolute necessity that Green Party members who are members of their trade unions work to push the rank and file of the trade union movement to vote to support of proportional representation.

We cannot ignore the importance of workplace democracy: after all, it is one of the key areas where we meet and work with people who are not Green Party members. It is an area where we must make the case for proportional representation, ecological justice policies and green transitional programs if we are to create a necessary left-wing alliance in this country that could remove the Conservative Party from power.

For Green Party trade unionists, it is important to seek out and join organised left-wing coalition groups inside their trade unions. These groups often consist of members of various left parties, and members of none; from the Labour Party through to to smaller parties, with members of the Green Party being represented in all of them. They include Usdaw Broad Left, in my union, to Unite’s United Left, and many more besides in all different unions.

Through such groups, many candidates are selected democratically to stand for positions in the unions to represent our shared interests; many proposals to union conferences are drafted and submitted by such groups, to be debated in branches across the country.  If Green Party engage heartily in this key area, we will advance the cause of greater democracy and make PR harder to block in the future.

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