Today's strike was historic – the first coordinated strike between Tube and national rail workers since 1989. And, with our strikes making up part of a – hopefully sustained – revival in the levels of industrial action across different sectors, we will have further opportunities coming up soon.
TSSA is balloting members in Network Rail and various TOCs, and Aslef has live mandates across a variety of TOCs, and on London Underground (although, on the latter at least, showing little sign of using it).
Perhaps most significant of the opportunities for coordination beyond our own industry will be with Communication Workers Union (CWU) members working in telecoms and the post for BT and Royal Mail. They are balloting for industrial action over pay, with the BT ballot having opened on 15 June, and the Royal Mail ballot opening on 28 June. Both are due to conclude in late July.
Coordinated strikes across transport, telecoms, and the post – three industries absolutely integral to the functioning of the capitalist economy – will shake the ruling class in a way it has not been shaken for a generation. Civil service union PCS will ballot its membership for action over cost-of-living issues in September. Workers in two other integral sectors, education and health, could also be balloted, with leaders of the National Education Union, the NASUWT, and Unison saying they are preparing to ballot their members in schools and NHS. Unions like Unite and GMB also have numerous live disputes across a variety of sectors.
Whilst it's good to avoid hyperbole, the significance of this developing picture should not be understated. The tide of the class struggle has flowed almost entirely in the bosses' favour since the mid-1980s. We now have a real chance to begin turning that tide.
Discussion about coordination will undoubtedly take place at “head office” level, with senior officials from the various unions communicating directly with each other. It's important rank-and-file members are also able to participate in discussions about coordination, and seek channels for local coordination if discussions at the top appear to stall.
Local Trades Councils, where they are active, can take the initiative to facilitate branch-level discussions between branches of different unions in dispute, to share ideas on strategy that reps and activists can then feed back into the democratic structures of their own unions. Such discussions could develop into city-wide strike committees that could coordinate joint rallies and assemblies on strike days.
The last time there was mass coordinated strike action involving multiple unions in Britain was the 2011 strikes over public sector pension cuts. Then, the bureaucracies of the unions remained fully in control, with the membership a largely passive element. We can't let that happen again.
Seeking opportunities to develop independent rank-and-file coordination and organisation isn't about pessimistically expecting a sell-out in advance, or maintaining a rose-tinted view that insists “the rank and file” is always desperate to take the most militant action possible if only it weren't being held back by treacherous bureaucrats. That's simply not the case in any of the unions striking, balloting, or preparing to ballot.
But the trade union bureaucracy is a layer within every union that, at the very least, has interests additional to winning a good deal for members: namely the interests of the union as an institution, its finances, property, and staff. This doesn't make bureaucrats “agents of the bosses” in any sense, but it does mean that, as struggles sharpen, they will come under material pressure to proceed with caution. If and when that happens, we will need rank-and-file organisation to pressure them from below and, if necessary, act independently of them.