PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may/june 2012 :: RMTnews 23 President’s column DEFENDING TRADE UNION DEMOCRACY This month a very rich man called Adam Beecroft, who calls himself an ‘venture capitalist’, was invited by the government to propose changes to workplace rights. This is the same man who used to run a company called ‘First Care’ that provides “Absence Management from Day One” to NHS Trusts, train operating companies and utility companies. That’s right, you or someone you know has probably come across them bullying sick staff back to work, or terminating their contract of employment on ‘capability grounds’. One of Mr Beecroft’s proposals, which Tory spin-doctors cut out of the final report, was “to remove regulations surrounding employment of children”. Yes, that’s right. It does mean what you thought, Britain’s bosses want to deregulate child labour. You can understand their thinking. We live in an increasingly integrated global market where ‘UK plc’ competes with what we used to call ‘developing countries’. With the Olympics coming to London, why should we be at a competitive disadvantage in the thriving ‘Olympic merchandise spin-off’ industry? There are footballs to be stitched and T-shirts to be ironed. The devil finds work for idle hands. To quote comedian Jeremy Hardy, “My daughter asked me for a new pair of football boots. I told her, ‘You’re 12 years old. Can’t you make yourself a pair?’” But they’re not joking. A TUC report from 2007 - 'No Medal for the Olympics' - found evidence of 12-year olds making 2008 Beijing Olympics bags, headgear, stationery and other products. Adults were earning 14p per hour (half the legal minimum wage in China) and working up to 15 hours per day, seven days a week. Imagine the profits! Ironically, it was a Tory government that introduced the 1833 factory act first limiting employment of young people under eighteen, as well as children, banning night shifts and providing for factory inspectors. Of course, in those days the Tory party, representing mainly the ‘landed interest’, was keen to clip the wings of its Liberal political rivals representing industrial capitalists. Today, they’re all in it together and it looks like they want to turn the clock back for workers’ rights to the 19th century, or earlier. So what gives the likes of Beecroft the brass neck to imagine that we will allow the tiny group of plutocrats who he speaks for to turn us into ‘profit-making serfs’? Partly, it is the desperation of the uber-rich, who while they amass wealth at an ever-greater rate can see the global capitalist system is dying of financial sclerosis. Mainly however, the arrogance of super-rich, parasites comes from a conviction that democracy doesn’t matter any more, so why should they care what the rest of us think? No-one in Britain voted for a ConDem auterity coalition. No-one in Italy voted for Monti as prime minister. But if governments don’t do as the bankers tell them, Goldman Sachs and the EU can just replace them with ‘technocrats’. This also means relentless attacks on democratic workers’ rights across the EU. Before being crowned Italian prime minister last year, Sr Monti was commissioned by the European Commission to draw up Regulations on EU employment and trade union rights. His ‘Monti 2’ Regulations were published in March this year and put trade union rights in Europe back by over 100 years. The EU has simply regulated into law anti-trade union decisions made by EU judges – in a court with no jury – to ban strikes where they interfere with cross-border trade. This is an EU charter for strike breaking and social dumping. The response of trade unionists should be that democracy was always at the heart of our movement. In July we will celebrate the trade union roots of democracy at the Durham Miners Gala and the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. I look forward to seeing you there. Alex Gordon with human rights principles, and until the threat of unlimited damages is lifted from trade unions for exercising a fundamental social right,” Keith Ewing said. Carolyn Jones points out that the failure of the Regulation to correct the growing imbalance between the economic rights of employers and the human rights of workers highlighted the limitations of ‘Social Europe’ as presented by Delors and embraced by the labour movement in 1988. “The Treaty for Stability, Coordination and Governance signed by the Eurozone governments in March 2012 promises to take Europe still further down the path of austerity by imposing draconian cuts on nation states in the name of deficit reduction. “If unions continue to be restricted in how they can legally respond to those cuts, then perhaps alternative action is now required. “One such action that would help focus the minds of the EU would be to support calls across Europe for referendums on EU membership,” she said. RMT has long argued that the ‘Social Europe’ agenda has always been a smoke screen to absorb the organised working class into EU structures while delivering very little to workers. Speaking recently at a People’s Pledge meeting(2) calling for a referendum on EU membership Bob Crow warned that unelected EU institutions directly represented Europe’s biggest banks and their interests, removing elected governments and imposing mass unemployment, social dumping and unending austerity everywhere. “It is time that the trade union movement demanded a referendum in order to build resistance to capitalist greed and austerity whether it’s the EU or its junior partner, this rotten Con Dem government,” he said. 1. EUROPEAN COMMISSION, ‘Proposal for a COUNCIL REGULATION on the exercise of the right to take collective action within the context of the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services’ Brussels, 21.3.2012, COM (2012) 130 final 2012/0064 (APP), 2. www.peoplespledge.org