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.

Green Party members came together at their Autumn Conference in support of the private members’ bill to stop ‘fire and rehire’.

The bill would make the practice, in which workers are dismissed and rehired on worse terms, illegal in the UK. It is proposed by Labour MP Barry Gardiner and supported by a cross party group including Green MP Caroline Lucas.

Greens congregated as the bill was being heard in the House of Commons, in a show of support and solidarity with workers fighting the abhorrent practice.

But despite widespread condemnation of the practice the government whipped its MPs to oppose the private members bill by denying a vote on the practice.

Speaking after the demo, Trade Union Group Communications Officer Martin Francis said:

“I’m proud that the Green Party stands against the practice of fire-and-rehire, and express my full support for Barry Gardiner’s bill in parliament today.

“This struggle will continue beyond today, and it is vital that the labour movement and its allies remain steadfast in the fight to eliminate the abhorrent practice of fire-and-rehire once and for all.”

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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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The Green Party Trade Union Group extended its solidarity to the Bakers’, Food & Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) as it took the momentous decision to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.

Chair of the Green Party Trade Union Group, Matthew Hull said:

“The decision by BFAWU delegates to disaffiliate from the Labour Party is a momentous one, and shows how far the party’s current leadership has gone to alienate working class supporters. This is a brave move by a union determined to put its members and the working class first.

“We also recognise how difficult this decision must have been for BFAWU members and officials who have given so much to the Labour Party over decades, only for the party to be taken in a direction they simply cannot support. We salute this decision to put independence and principle first, and we look forward to working with the BFAWU to advance their vital campaigns including the Right to Food, £15 and a union, and for climate justice.”

Billy Wassell, a young McDonald’s worker and BFAWU member said:

“Workers in the food industry have worked through the pandemic to feed the nation, but this past year so many of us have struggled to feed ourselves. Our union takes orders from no-one, and the Labour Party leadership has shown that it will not value our voices or fight our corner. As a McDonald’s worker, I feel especially betrayed by Keir Starmer, who stood with my colleagues on the picket line when he was seeking election but now seemingly doesn’t want to know us.

“Food workers are also highly exposed to the effects of the climate crisis, and building a just and sustainable food supply chain is critical to tackling the climate emergency. BFAWU has led on this issue for years, in 2017 proposing a successful TUC motion calling for a just transition to a renewable energy industry, energy democracy and recognition of environmental reps.

“As a Green member of BFAWU, I’m proud that my union and my party both recognise the scale of the ecological crisis. I hope that we can work together more in future to achieve our shared aims of ecological justice.”

The BFAWU was founded in 1847, and has been affiliated to the Labour Party for 119 years. The decision to disaffiliate comes amid growing anger at the direction taken by the Labour leadership under Keir Starmer, including a failure to offer clear political leadership. A survey of the BFAWU membership earlier in the year returned a majority for disaffiliation.

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We are extremely disheartened that the motion to Labour Party conference backing proportional representation in government has failed. We are confident that the ‘no’ votes cast by trade union delegates do not reflect the principles or considered beliefs of the movement rank-and-file.

The labour movement has a proud history of originating struggles for greater democracy – in the workplace, in the community, and in society at large. From the Chartists to universal suffrage, the tradition of organised labour is a tradition of growing popular power.

This growth of popular power has never been linear, and it is so far from complete. Millions still live in this country without the vote. All of us labour in a bourgeois democracy that restricts our right to organise and strike. The list could go on.

Nonetheless, driving that arc of growth onwards is our task. This will sometimes challenge particular institutions and organisations within our movement, and their particular interests. Progress is not simple.

But it is in the general interest of our class that limitations on the ability of working people to organise and attain political representation be removed. We believe rejecting this motion fails to serve that interest.

We will continue in this fight and we are confident that we will prevail. We recognise that this task is huge, and that we won’t win unless we organise to hold our leaders and representatives accountable.

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