The anti-justice system and bullying managements

Network Rail has launched a legal challenge to try to get a national rail strike by the RMT and TSSA delayed. They are citing ‘irregularities’ in the strike ballot, which will be eerily familiar to BA cabin crew. According to the BBC, the legal challenge contains a written document which states:

“The strike will have the effect of preventing about 80% of all rail services in the UK, so causing immense damage to the economy, to businesses depending on rail for freight and/or transport of commuting workers, and to a great many individual rail users.”

I’m sorry, what? How does the potential effectiveness of any strike have any bearing on whether or not the ballot was legal? Would the supposed ballot ‘irregularities’ have ceased to exist if only 30% of rail services were being cancelled? What about 50%? Before Christmas, the BA strike was postponed by a court injunction. Similarly, Mrs Justice Cox said when making her ruling:

“A strike of this kind over the 12 days of Christmas is fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time of the year.”

So I suppose the ‘irregularities’ in the cabin crews’ strike ballot would have been less ‘illegal’ at a quieter time of year? All this begs the question, are strikes being ruled illegal because they might actually be effective? Do we now only have the right to withdraw our labour as long as no-one gets annoyed about it?

The complex anti-union laws that govern balloting, brought in by the Tories and maintained under 13 years of a Labour government, are designed to make it as difficult as possible for a group of workers to strike, and give managements enough time to prepare if a strike does go ahead.

Also this week, the cop who was up for assaulting a protester at last year’s G20 summit got off. He admitted to repeatedly striking her with a baton after mistaking her carton of orange juice for a weapon. It’s good to know police training doesn’t extend as far as being able to distinguish household objects from deadly weapons from a few feet away.

It has long been the case that in practice, the burden of proof falls a different way for police officers. If I beat someone repeatedly with a metal stick for threatening me with a dangerous Ribena, I would have to prove that I was acting in self-defence. The police officer got off because there was apparently no evidence that he wasn’t acting in self-defence.

Back to the strikes: Increasingly the justice system is being used as the first avenue of attack by bosses who are used to getting their own way. We shouldn’t be surprised. A common accusation in all the recent industrial disputes that have blown up into national stories has been that there exists a culture of bullying in the workplace. This was the case in the bus drivers’ dispute in South Yorkshire last year, where drivers actually voted ‘No’ to striking against a pay freeze, but overwhelmingly ‘Yes’ to striking against harsh disciplinary procedures. And just ask any BA picket what they think of their management. British Gas workers, too have voted overwhelmingly to strike, after the GMB union found that a staggering 85% of them regarded management bullying to be a problem.

Imagine, rolling out across every industry, every workplace, a generation of managers who walk straight into desk jobs, who have never done the same work as the people they are ‘in charge’ of, and who have no idea what to do when the tacky models they learned on their Management Studies courses encounter resistance when they try to force them on real people. Just like a schoolyard bully who can’t get what he wants, they throw a tantrum. Unlike the bully, though, they have powerful friends in positions of authority who will help them.

Imagine, in every industry and every workplace, a generation of workers entering jobs with no idea of what their rights are at work, with no union representation, who have had their expectations of what working life is going to be like lowered by their first experiences of service sector jobs where you have to smile while you’re treated like shit. Where the bosses expect you to stay late after your paid hours, just to help us finish something off, it’ll only take half an hour, maybe an hour, here’s a free phone in case we need to reach you at home…

People only have good working conditions because they stood up and fought for them. That’s why the whole of the working class can’t afford these strikes to fail.

Red Barons Ate My Baby

“Has your flight been cancelled? Are you stuck somewhere trying to get back to the UK? Send us your comments and pictures” pleads the BBC News website. “Have your say: Do Unions have too much power?” Well, do they? They do, don't they? Look at them! With their flags and placards and everything. Who do they think they are? Here's another story about the American Teamsters, who support the BA strike. Did you know their leadership had links with organised crime 35 years ago?

Yesterday's Sun gave a column to union-busting BA chief executive Willie Walsh. He feels sorry for the customers. He respects the cabin crew a great deal but is angry about their decision. Here are some pictures of pickets, smiling. How dare they have any fun on a picket line, while they're ruining your holiday. Why not ring us or email us if your family's hard earned holiday has been wrecked? We'd value your impartial judgement. Len McCluskey and Bob Crow make speeches that are “throwbacks” and “anachronisms” more suited to the 1970s and 1980s. And thus the media coverage of the BA strike goes on and on.

But we're not in the 1980s. OK, there are similarities: all the music is shitty electro-pop and nobody has a job. But I'm pretty sure it's 2010. Perhaps union leaders still make speeches about striking to defend members' conditions because it's still relevant. For the mainstream media, strikes and union militancy are both “a thing of the past,” and no matter how many strikes there are they will still be “a thing of the past.” No-one does it these days. The cabin crew are just an exception. Oh, and so are those railway signallers. And those others ones, the civil servants. And when our own reporters walkout against the job cuts we will make, they will be an exceptional case too.

All this works against producing a picture of a general, albeit still small, upsurge of industrial activism among many different sections of the working class, for similar reasons. The only possible effect of a strike is that more “passengers face travel chaos.” In this narrative, a victory for the employers will not give a green light for others to behave the same way. A victory for the workers will not inspire others to take a stand. Painting a dispute as an isolated, self-contained event means it is just a nuisance, the workforce are selfish no matter what their actual grievances are, the management may be incompetent but are not malicious.

Anyone who wants an alternative view of the dispute, including more extensive interviews with the strikers themselves, can check out Air Strike, a blog run by Socialist Party supporters.

Lords, Vice-Chancellors, and Democracy

Why are we so willing to put up with such a lack of democracy in so many areas of our life?

Our political system is a democracy, but our society is far from democratic. Most people have very little power over most aspects of our lives. Three incidents from recent days have got me thinking about this.

Beckham's Green and Gold scarf
Manchester United's comfortable thrashing of AC Milan in the Champions League was somewhat eclipsed by their former captain's donning of a Green and Gold protest scarf after the match. It was great to hear, on the radio, the anti-Glazer chants in Old Trafford for the whole of the last half hour of the match. Fans at Old Trafford seem to be waiting until United are comfortably in the lead, then turning the game into a demonstration.

However, they have no recourse, no democratic method of removing the Glazers from ownership. The fans' best option currently seems to be the so-called Red Knights, a group of (rich) investors who have expressed an interest in the club. Portsmouth fans and staff have seen their club kicked around between rich owners for months, and now have to pay for the incompetence of others with relegation and job losses. The choice of one rich owner over another doesn't solve the problem.

Corpus Christi Protest
This week, students at Corpus Christi College staged a protest picnic against the college authorities' mismanagement. Students are having to bear the burden of increased costs in a college that is rumoured to be one of the wealthiest in town. Emphasis on the word “rumoured”, of course no college finances are transparent enough for us to know how rich they are, or exactly what it is they do with our money. For all we know, they could be bathing in it at weekends.

Corpus spent one million pounds on a stupid clock that doesn't even tell the time properly, as a gimmick to attract tourists. Perhaps there should have been a democratic decision to spend this money on something that would actually be useful?

Colleges lie about tiny things because they assume they can get away with it. The political memory of students is so short that they can safely misrepresent what the Kitchen Fixed Charge or cost of laundry was five years ago, in order to justify raising it. Student union reps on committees get fobbed off, lied to, or ignored. After a year they are frustrated enough to start getting pissed off, but then they have to step down in favour of some new, bright-eyed reps, who know that of course the college is an academic community and only wants what's best for its members.

The executive body of our university, the University Council, lacks even official Student Union, or staff union, representation. The university refuses to allow online voting, which would increase turnout. College JCRs are given the responsibility for running the ballot, which means that if they don't, there is no way for people to vote. There are three student representatives on a body of twenty-one, and no representation for non-academic staff. The heads of colleges and Professors could push through as many Golden Clocks as they like, and make everyone else pay for it.

Lord Adonis and the BA strikes
Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has strongly condemned British Airways cabin crews' decision to take strike action. Let's leave aside for a second the condescending language which treats people like children (decisions to strike are always “unacceptable” and “irresponsible). Let's ask the question, in whose name is Adonis speaking?

The cabin crew have voted by 80% on a 77% turnout to take this strike action. Lord Adonis has been elected by 0% of anyone, on a 0% turnout. He was made a Lord so that he could sit in the cabinet. He has no democratic mandate whatsoever. He once won a ward in a town council election. For the Liberal Democrats. Twenty years ago. But he can go on TV and, with the full authority of an elected government, condemn a group of people who have made the collective, democratic decision to defend their working conditions.

Putting a cross in a box every year is no democracy, as long as the Lords, Vice-Chancellors and union busting bosses retain all the power.