I recently got into an argument on Facebook about the Tube workers' strike. Here is one of my messages. It's fairly self-explanatory even without the arguments I was replying to.
A lot of points; I'll try answer them all, if I have time.
1. My background is completely irrelevant (this is not said at all huffily). Would you prefer I got someone from a more working-class background, perhaps someone who works on the Tube, to post near-identical arguments to me? How about one of the cleaner activists we work with? Would you then change your mind? In fact you know very well that replying to an argument by referring to someone's background is no reply at all. (As an aside, it's not as if I haven't rebelled against that background - I'm hardly stockbroker by day, revolutionary by night.)
2. More important point: for me, class is defined by relationship to the means of production. For you, it seems, two people can do the same job, with the same boss, same pay, live on the same street in similar houses etc but one be working-class and one not because one *originally* came from a non-working-class background. The ridiculous but logical conclusion of this perspective is the occasionally heard view that Alan Sugar is a "working-class lad" despite his huge wealth generated by the exploitation of thousands of other people's labour, because of this working-class origin.
I'm not saying that origin, background, accent, cultural norms etc are irrelevant to class. Or denying that there are relatively privileged workers - though usually that 'privilege' has been won by struggle. But the central defining thing is whether you have to sell your labour power to live or not, and control or rather lack of it over your own work.
This, btw, is why Christi's claim that train drivers are bosses is so ridiculous. Christi, how do you think they got those high wages? By being well-organised and in a strong position to push their claims!
3. "There is such a lack of realism on the left about what it's actually like in the workplace at the moment". Yes, because obviously no left activists actually have jobs! This is just a bit bizarre.
4. "Bob Crow isn't 'working class'"; well no, not strictly speaking, he's an official of a workers' organisation, and a well-paid bureaucrat at that (see next para). But he certainly was a worker until he was elected, a track maintenance worker I believe (unlike many of the Blairite trade union leaders who never had a job in the industry they supposedly represent but climbed up while working for the union full-time). Not really sure what point is being made here.
Yes, Jack, Bob Crow's salary expenses are outrageous, as are those of the other unions leaders. But who is fighting to reduce them? Precisely the people who organised this strike, ie the left in the RMT, the people who are more radical and militant than Crow. For union officials to only take a worker's wage a long-standing demand among socialist activists in the unions. Eg see here.
That is crucially important, but it is not relevant to this dispute. Whether Bob Crow et al's privileges are cut back, as they should be, or not, it would not change the justice of the basic issues that RMT members are fighting over.
(See also below on the wages etc of TfL managers.) It's not the RMT membership that enjoys those privileges!
Similarly, perhaps Crow did "lord it up like a managerial gimp" at Glastonbury - what does that have to do with whether the strike is right or not?!
5. Sarah, I'm sorry, but when you say "this isn't about gay rights", I think you've missed my point (or perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying). I was making a methodological point, namely that just because most people think something (eg that the Tube strike is wrong, or in previous years that being gay should be a crime), doesn't mean that's the right point of view to adopt!
6. My point about 85 percent voting for a strike wasn't that, because a majority voted for it, it must be right (though obviously I do believe it's right, and my comrades on the Tube campaigned for a yes vote). It was that this is not, contrary to the slurs of the tabloid press, something was cooked up in Crow's brain and "ordered" by him. No, it was initiated by the elected representatives of Tube workers in the RMT London Transport Regional Council - many of them critics of Crow within the union - and then voted for *twice* in postal ballots by huge majorities. The turn out was relatively low in those ballots, as it usually is - because the anti-union laws ban workplace ballots, which unsurprisingly have higher turn outs - but the majority was still overwhelming.
It suits the bosses, the right wing and the press to present this as all cooked up and ordered by Crow. Fairly shocking and sad that you're ignorantly going along with this.
I say the anti-union law which forced RMT members to reballot is undemocratic not just because I don't agree with it, as you claim, but because it allows employers and the government to prevent workers who have voted democraticaly to strike from doing so on bureaucratic technicalities.
7. I find it strange that you feel such anger for Bob Crow, but apparently very little for the fat cat bosses who run LUL and TfL (and the government!) - bosses who, in addition to their behaviour during this strike and more generally, have used contractors to keep mostly migrant women cleaners on the minimum wage, harrass them and collaborate with immigration police to have many of these union activists deported. (Or perhaps you oppose the cleaners' struggle too?) Some facts:
844 LUL and TfL managers are on more than £60,000 a year; 123 are on more than £100,000 a year.
If each of those managers took a pay cut of on average £20,000, that would free up almost £20,000,000 - enough for every worker involved in this dispute to get a pay rise of almost £2,000 on average, which is more than 5%.
If the pay cuts for managers were progressively steeper at higher levels, it would free up a lot more.
So it depends what LUL spends the money on, doesn't it? I say: decent wages and rights for workers, cheap and reliable service for passengers - not fat cat pay outs for managers and bosses.
Which is the answer to where the money can come from. And there's more... Remember Transport Commissioner Bob Kiley being kept on £1 million a year to do nothing? That evidently doesn't bother you, while Tube workers demanding to keep their jobs and get a decent pay rise to keep up with the cost of living does. Weird.
8. Sarah, I find your attempt to distinguish between "sackings" and "redundancies" a bit sad, really.
TfL are talking about *compulsory redundancies* - and trying to tear up the existing contract which prevents this. If you don't want to call this sackings, fine. But that's what it is.
You say "no union in the world can safeguard people from losing their jobs in this current climate". True, union action in the workplace is not enough - see point 10 below - but in fact your statement shows woeful ignorance of the history of union struggles. You think workers have never successfully taken action to prevent sackings during an economic crisis? History if full of examples, for instance from the 1930s. Or what about now, for instance, workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, who were told to get out without any severance pay etc, but through their occupation won not only compensation but their jobs back? Similar struggle in Britain recently: Visteon, which I'm sure you heard about. They didn't keep their jobs, but they did win the benefits their bosses were planning to deny them. Did you support this struggle?
Or the recent strike at Doncaster College, which defeated all the planned job and course cuts and forced the head of the college to resign? How about the ongoing struggle by lecturers at London Met, a university serving some of the poorest communities in London, against massive job cuts? Do you think they just shouldn't bother? Perhaps they should stop being so selfish - loads of people are losing their jobs, so why shouldn't they lose theirs?!!
This is a recipe for *NO* workers to fight any attack, ever - because there will always be some group of workers relatively worse off than them (if not in Britain, then in another country). It is a recipe for us to be divided, the bosses to win every time and all of us to lose out.
Sarah, do you support any strike at the moment? Or for you does the economic crisis mean strikes in general are illegitimate?
The whole point is that the costs of this crisis are *not* being rationally shared out among the whole community, after some kind of reasonable discussion and democratic vote - the small group of people who control wealth and power in this society are trying to make the majority pay to sort things out. Even when a company goes bust, the bosses usually do fine - look at Fred Goodwin and his pension!!
"No one can be safe in their job the way things currently are and they have to accept that, nothing is guaranteed." But the rich are safe and guaranteed - their assets and standard of living are gold-plated, while the majority of people are made to suffer. Again you're looking at this as if we live in a democratic, rationally-run community where the cost/benefit analysis can be weighed up in friendly discussion. But we don't. We live in a capitalist society, where a minority exploit a majority. And that's why workers have to fight.
9. I don't know anything about your company, Sarah, but I bet you the people at the top who decided on the sackings - sorry, redundancies - are doing fine. And I bet that if it was taken out their hands and run democratically, it could be reordered so that things were done differently, were radically more equal and people didn't have to lose their jobs.
Don't you think it's odd that you feel angry not with the boss/es who sacked you, but with a union that is trying to stop thousands of its members being sacked?
10. There's a wider point. As I said, trade union action is not enough. But given the enormous wealth in society, why shouldn't we demand that society forces the rich and the bosses to pay for decent jobs for everyone? Minimally, they should be taxed to provide the resources to expand public services and create decent, socially useful work for everyone who needs it.
So, let's say, *for the sake of argument*, that there really was no alternative to you losing your job. Well, then the government should make a good job available to you. And the rich, those who created this crisis but are seeking to make everyone else pay to sort it out, should be made to pay for that (and the other things we need too eg a rebuilt health service, new homes, green energy - oh and expanded, cheap public transport).
Otherwise you're once again trapped into a divisive spiral - shit, can't demand more money for students, what about hospitals? Shit, can't demand money for the NHS, what about primary schools? Shit, forget about the kids, what about pensioners? No, we should demand decent services FOR ALL, on the same basis that we should support all workers fighting for their rights.
11. Lastly, Jack, you're absolutely right that Boris Johnson is "itching to play Thatcher and Scargill with Bob Crow". But you seem to welcome this: "Clearly, something has to be done about them as clearly as it had to be done about the NUM et al in the 70s." (You warn against a no strike agreement, but logically you should welcome this to 'sort out' the RMT.)
Sarah, do you support this? You would have backed Thatcher against the miners' strike? I am genuinely shocked by this. However, it's the logical conclusion of your argument against the RMT - after all, people also condemned Scargill in similar terms to those you are using against Crow, and the Tories argued that in a crisis the miners could not expect to keep their jobs. (There's an ecological argument about coal which complicates this, but I'll leave that for now.)
If you don't agree with Jack's bile against the NUM, then think about this!
The union does indeed need to win public opinion to its side; which is why I'd advocate much better publicity, leaflets etc and the use of tactics like 'revenue strikes' ie opening the gates for a day which hit the company while actually helping the public. I hope my comrades in the RMT will push for this.
But none of that is relevant to the basic argument which Jack himself hints at: the Tories (and New Labour, but the Tories are the cutting edge) want to smash up the unions as part of their assault on public services and working-class living standards; Boris Johnson is trying to be a trailblazer. The labour movement has to stop this, which is why the RMT needs our support.
