Over 50 trade union activists attended Workers’ Liberty “Marxism at Work” dayschool on Saturday 7 December.
The school, featuring both discussion-focused and more interactive workshops, was based on a six-part AWL educational series about Marxism and trade unionism, and included sessions on “our fantasy trade union”, the Marxist critique of current trade unions, understanding the bureaucracy, historical examples of the rank and file in action, and the role of Marxists in the workplace.
The aim of the day was to give participants a solid grounding in fundamental ideas about what a trade union is, the role of socialists in the workplace, and how to take industrial and political struggles at work forward.
In addition to the discussions and workshops, Workers’ Liberty presented an exhibition of our workplace and industrial bulletins, from The Hook, produced on the Manchester Ship Canal in the late 1960s, to our current publications such as Tubeworker, Lewisham Hospital Worker, and The Open Book.
During the first session, participants were paired together by union and had to place on a continuum, from “rubbish” to “brilliant”, how they thought their union measured up in six key areas: democracy, militancy and industrial effectiveness (which many participants noted are not always the same thing!), equalities, organising, politics, and one industry-one union-all grades industrial unionism.
The exercise helped move participants away from “union patriotism”, and identify strengths and weaknesses in the approaches of different unions. The RMT and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) were rated highly by members when it came to organising and militancy, but RMT activists scored their union much lower for “equalities”. Its current Council of Executives is entirely white and includes only one woman.
A follow-up exercise discussed different critiques of trade unions, from the right and the left, such as the claim that unions only represent the already-privileged sections of the working class, or the idea that, while trade unions and industrial organising may be worthy causes, there is no reason to make a special focus of them.
The school also included historical sessions on three movements of independent rank-and-file organising — the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation and its “green bans” of the early 1970s, the Sheffield Workers’ Committee during the First World War, and the National Minority Movement (NMM) of 1924-1929.
Discussions focused on how these inspirational rank-and-file workers’ movements can give us ideas for today. Seeing how class struggle was at a low ebb for the first years of the NMM, before the explosion of the general strike in 1926, reminds us how quickly things can turn, and how important independent rank-and-file organisation, and socialist organisation and education, is to prepare for when those turns occur.
Janine Booth, AWL member and outgoing RMT Executive member, headed up a brilliant session where participants were given statements on the aims and roles of Marxists in a workplace and asked to agree or disagree. The room agreed that aims of Marxists in the work place should include: helping workers fight the bosses more effectively, building unions to bring new working-class activists into struggle, convincing workers of, and educating workers about, Marxists ideas and helping them become convincers and educators, and fundamentally transforming our unions to make them more militant and radically-democratic.
The day finished with short presentations on three current struggles where Workers’ Liberty members are applying the approaches discussed during the school — the outsourced workers’ dispute for sick pay, holiday, and pension equality at the University of London, the Local Associations Network rank-and-file initiative in the National Union of Teachers, and the “Every Job Matters” campaign to stop job cuts and ticket office closures on London Underground.