TUC must prepare union members for fight against Labour cuts

The National Shop Stewards Network is lobbying the TUC today to scrap the anti trade union laws

Trades Union Congress (TUC) meets 8-11 September, 65 days into the first 100 days of the new Labour government. It is an opportunity for the trade unions to draw a balance sheet of the first phase of Keir Starmer’s administration and prepare the 6.5 million-strong union movement for what comes next. However, the indications from many of the union leaderships over the last few months, reflected in a whole number of motions to Congress, point to the opposite, covering up of the shortcomings of Starmer’s Labour, leaving workers wholly unprepared.

Public sector pay

These union leaders point to the measures taken by Starmer, which they claim prove that he is ‘listening’ to them and acting in the interests of workers. Prime in this are the pay offers to public sector unions, which appear to range upwards from 5%. These offers have opened up a wide-ranging debate amongst reps and activists. While it is true that they are above the current rate of inflation, they go nowhere near recovering the vast amount lost during 14 years of savage real-terms pay cuts by the Tories, and pay freezes by New Labour before them.

And, on closer inspection, some workers such as those in local authorities could receive far less than the headline figure. In addition, there are at least some pay rises that will not be fully funded, raising the prospect of cuts to jobs, terms and conditions down the line.

Council funding

This is exacerbated by the growing funding crisis in local authorities where councils, including Labour-run ones, operating under Section 114 ‘bankruptcy’ notices, are pushing cuts on to workers, such as bin workers in Birmingham. Alongside taking strike action to defend jobs and services, unions should call on Labour councils to refuse to implement cuts. The demand should be put on Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves to recall unelected government-imposed commissioners and guarantee full funding. This funding crisis is mirrored in higher and further education, again threatening staff.

Despite these issues, Starmer has clearly sought to buy time by attempting to eliminate the possibility of a rash of public sector disputes. This isn’t out of solidarity with the workers that he previously refused to support – as he stated unapologetically to delegates at the last Brighton TUC Congress in 2022. As Reeves admitted before tabling her public sector pay offers in July: “There is a cost to not settling, a cost of further industrial action”. This is the priceless legacy of the strike wave of the last few years. The fighting capacity of workers is a factor in Starmer’s political calculations.

Trailing austerity budget

But his record on strikes, along with the cut to pensioners’ heating allowances and refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap, should caution the union leaders not to blanket welcome these concessions. The trailing of Reeves’ autumn budget, now enforced by Starmer, with warnings of public sector cuts, is a blunt warning that this is likely to be as good as it gets and the unions must prepare their members for a Labour austerity offensive.

Starmer hasn’t spent the last few years cozying up to big business to be a champion of the working class. His starting point, both at home and abroad, as his disgraceful position on Gaza shows, is to represent the interests of the capitalist establishment. But that doesn’t mean that the unions can’t force concessions out of this Labour government.

Special TUC

The role of the unions is to state clearly what the situation is rather than prettify it, the better to prepare for the action that can force gains from Starmer. Without such a statement of intent, Starmer will draw the conclusion that the union leaders are on board. TUC delegates should support PCS’s amendment (devised by the union’s new left NEC majority) to EIS’s Motion 01 entitled ‘End of the hostile environment towards workers’ – that if Starmer hasn’t delivered on the key workers’ rights promised in his New Deal for Workers “within the first hundred days of the new government, a special TUC Congress will be called to discuss next steps.”

This shows the role of the genuine left in the unions, with Socialist Party members prominent, who are demanding that unions fight for more, and ensure that all pay increases are fully funded. Also, while it is obviously welcome that Starmer appears to be intending to honour the commitments he made in his election manifesto to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act and 2016 Trade Union Act, it is essential that unions demand the repeal of all the Tory anti-union legislation, going all the way back to Thatcher, which scandalously Blair and Brown left intact after 13 years of New Labour governments. Congress should unanimously support the POA’s motion to restore the right to strike of their prison members and demand that Starmer carry it out.

Nationalisation

A number of Congress motions miss the opportunity to put demands on Labour, which is essential in protecting the interests of their members. For instance, it is a serious omission by the CWU leadership not to follow the union’s policy of demanding re-nationalisation of Royal Mail in its motion on the takeover by the new vulture capitalist. In contrast, PCS’s climate change motion 18 calls for “public ownership of key sectors such as energy, water, transport, mail, broadband, education, health, and social care” as the basis to protect workers’ jobs, wages and pensions.

Community correctly has a motion on the steel crisis, just as thousands of jobs in South Wales are under threat. Yet, true to form, the Community leadership refuses to raise nationalisation. It is a serious mistake of all the steel unions not to put this demand on the Labour governments in Westminster and Cardiff, as the unions engage in vital talks with Starmer’s ministers and Tata Steel management.

Unite’s motion ‘A workers’ transition for the North Sea’ should call for the oil and gas companies to be nationalised as the basis to protect workers’ jobs, pay and pensions for a real workers’ transition from fossil fuel industries. However, it is welcome that Unite’s amendment to GMB’s ‘Industrial strategy is national security’ motion does “support the public ownership of energy companies to end profiteering, reduce household bills and strengthen national security.”

Build fighting broad lefts

Even in the first stages of Starmer’s Labour government, two trends are emerging in the union movement. This is between those who are prepared to face up to the reality that exists and will further develop of a pro-capitalist government, whose first instinct will be to make workers pay for the crisis, and on the other, those union leaders and their backers who have no confidence that an alternative is possible, finding themselves as covers for what is to come.

This raises the need for the building of powerful left forces in all the unions, and across the union movement, that are prepared for the industrial action that will be necessary but also who see the need for the unions to build a political alternative that can fight for the interests of workers, their families and communities.