Reject partnership with bosses and cuts politicians – A response to the STUC

By Socialist Party Scotland trade unionists

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the disastrous effects of a decade of austerity on public services in Scotland.

It has also brought to the surface the impact of neoliberal attacks on workers’ rights, mass casualisation of employment and the unending drive for profit by big business.

The resistance by many employers to basic health and safety advice in the wake of the pandemic has been striking.

This week has seen walkouts at Royal Mail and Parcelforce in Scotland over fears around social distancing.

The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) has fought tenaciously to force the employer to accept a swathe of new working practices, including one driver per van, staggering work starts to reduce the numbers of staff in the office/mail centres at one time and adequate protective equipment (PPE) and cleaning of workplaces.

Construction workers have also been taking action. In Dundee, a group of workers employed on a pub renovation job downed tools over coronavirus fears on Tuesday.

PCS members in the DWP in Glasgow threatened a walkout if they were transferred to a larger workplace where social distancing would not be possible.

There are many other examples including up to 1000 meat plant workers in Northern Ireland who walked out over a lack of social distancing measures and workplace practices.

The NHS is rife with the most shocking examples of staff working without proper PPE. Criminal lack of testing for Covid-19 in Scotland and across the UK, even for healthcare and social care staff, is a scandal.

As is the chronic lack of ventilators and intensive care beds for patients in the massively under-resourced NHS.

As we pointed out in a recent interview with the Glasgow and Dundee Unison leaders, council trade unions have also been firefighting over PPE as a lack of proper equipment is putting both workers and service users at risk.

One illustration of this, on the back of yet another cuts budget last month, is the SNP leadership of Glasgow council have been appealing to businesses to donate face masks, aprons and gloves for social care staff.

Not surprisingly trade unions have been inundated with appeals for help, advice, as well as a large number of requests to join, including in the most unorganised sectors of the economy.

This is not an accident. Governments, councils as well as bosses and employers in the private sector have been completely unprepared for the scale of the task.

Some are even taking every opportunity to cut costs during this crisis by laying off workers and imposing wage cuts.

Sports Direct demanding the right to stay open and Wetherspoons announcing they would lay off 40,000 of their staff – only to retreat under mass pressure – being some of the worst examples.

competing class interests

The first task of the trade unions is to protect its members so they can do their job and demand the resources for that from councils, governments and big business.

At the same time unions are quite entitled and are indeed obliged to point the finger at austerity and capitalist policies. Policies that have allowed this virus to have an even more devastating impact than would have been the case had the necessary steps been taken.

Trade unions should therefore reject the false idea that there is some sort of ‘national interest’ between workers and bosses. Or between workers and Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon.

The Tories record of attacking workers’ rights, privatisation and draconian anti-union laws is a disgrace. But the SNP-led government in Scotland have passed on Tory cuts for a decade, leaving the NHS and public services unprepared for an outbreak of this scale.

While there can be no ‘national interest’ between those who defend capitalism and the working class majority, there are of course clear competing class interests writ large during this crisis. 

The interests of the working class include demanding:

• The money and resources to protect us from the virus
• Full pay for all workers during the crisis
• Provide immediate and increased benefit payments to those who need them.
• Bring into public ownership companies threatening mass sackings as well as the pharmaceutical companies and big business.

Capitalist governments are primarily interested in maintaining their own power and wealth.

It was therefore a mistake for the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) to sign a joint letter with the Scottish government that claimed: “We need a partnership, working in the national interest, to get through the next few months”.

And that: “Scotland’s success as an economy is built on a shared endeavour between workers, unions and employers and this approach will help us get through the current health and economic crisis.”

The STUC letter comes on the back of the TUC statement that calls for: “a taskforce of unions and employers to help coordinate the national effort’.

In truth the Covid-19 pandemic has shown there is no ‘shared endeavour’ between workers and employers and indeed cuts-making politicians.

There is in fact the exact opposite; a clash of class interests between those demanding the full resources to fight this health emergency and the bosses and capitalist governments who are an obstacle to that.

How many times did we hear ‘we’re all in this together’ to justify savage austerity after the 2008 world economic crisis?

Yes the trade unions work with employers to deliver services for communities. But to do so effectively means fighting against all cases of austerity and profiteering, still going on even now during this crisis. 

That’s why it is correct to demand of the Scottish and Westminster governments that they carry out a programme of emergency and full funding for the NHS. 

That universal testing for Covid-19 be made available now. That they suspend all PFI/PPP payments to big business from health and council budgets.

That all workers continue to paid 100% of their wage during the crisis. That anyone on or applying for Universal Credit are paid immediately without having to wait weeks but at the level of the living wage.

To put it bluntly, all talk of ‘national interest’ from the bosses’ politicians will disappear like snow of a dyke when the coronavirus subsides. It will be back to “class war” that seeks to make the working class pay in the wake of a likely world economic crisis.

That’s why the trade unions need to reject any idea of ‘shared endeavour’ and ‘unity’ with the Tories, big business or any politician with a record of making cuts.

The trade unions need to strive to build in the workplaces and in society generally a political voice for the working class based on fighting socialist policies – a new mass workers’ party.

Above all the trade unions must, and at all times, be independent of the pro-capitalist parties.