Imagine you’re attending a union meeting in your workplace. Your workplace rep is reporting back from a meeting with management:
“Here’s the offer management has put on the table. There’s 6,300 members covered by the national collective bargaining agreement. Management is proposing to give the 500 of us here our own separate bargaining unit.
I think it’s a great offer. The last time we had a ballot on a pay deal, we got outvoted by the other 5,800 members down south. Now, if we get our own bargaining unit, we’ll always get the pay deal we want.
Of course, that doesn’t mean turning our backs on our fellow union members down south, even if most of them probably voted Tory in 2010. We’ll win better pay deals on our own, and this will set an example to the members down south.”
Furrowed brows, raised eyebrows and sharp intakes of breath run round the union members attending the meeting. One of them asks:
“But what are we actually being offered? A pay rise? A cut in the working week? Better terms and conditions? More jobs? What is it exactly that’s being offered if we go our own way?”
The workplace rep responds:
“Enough of this scaremongering! We’re perfectly capable of looking after ourselves here. We’ve done it before, before the merger (which we were never consulted about, by the way), and we can do it again.
Yes, it might be the case that a few jobs end up going down south. And maybe there won’t be much investment in the plant for a few years. But don’t be bullied into rejecting this offer, you verminous, spineless, gutless, scab-ridden brown-nose traitor to the working class!
Don’t forget: We’re a very productive factory. There’s a lot of energy resources and plenty of other natural resources around here. And lots of fish as well. And kelpie.
In fact, although it’s not a widely known fact, this factory is located on top of a massive oilfield! But there’s a Tory conspiracy to keep it a secret, backed up by the Bosses Broadcasting Corporation. With all that oil, we could go afford to go green virtually overnight.
And management has also promised to shift that toxic waste we store in the warehouse to somewhere else, although it might take a few years. Yes, I know we’ve been demanding that they scrap it completely. But at least it gets it off our soil.
In any case, we have to think of our children and their children. It might take 30 or 40 or 50 years before things work out. But it’s our children and their children we need to think about.”
Such exhortations do nothing to lift the mood of despondency descending on the meeting. So, the workplace rep continues:
“Look, things can’t get any worse. No, I haven’t forgotten what you told me saw when you went on holiday in Greece, Spain, Ireland and other foreign parts. But that doesn’t mean that things could get worse here as well. That argument isn’t even logical.
In fact, if we get our own bargaining unit, we could set an example to everyone else. Everyone would say: Well, if they can have their own bargaining unit, we can have our own one as well. It would give the bosses a bloody nose. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t?
That’s why I supported Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and the bloke who runs Iran with the foreign-sounding name. Whenever capitalism bears its imperialist teeth, you’ll find me on the side of the underdog.
And how would the bosses be able to keep control of things if every workplace in the combine was a separate bargaining unit? In fact, come to think of it, we could be a beacon to the world! It would be like Petrograd 1917 all over again.
Still not convinced? Well, read this week’s ‘Socialist Worker’. We’ve got a front page article explaining everything. Anyone want a copy? Anyone want to sign up to join? Now come on, surely one of you at least must want a copy. … …”
Would you buy a used car, never mind a socialist newspaper, from such a vanguard of the working class?
