The CBI issued a warning to the government to resist demands raised by the unions at this years TUC conference for improved workers' rights. They argued that they risked harming Britain's improved record on industrial relations.
Given the way New Labour have governed, it makes you wonder why they even bothered. They surely know that Labour poses no threat to the current serfdom of workers which the CBI euphemistically terms "the partnerships approach" adopted by employers. Strange sort of partnership, where one side gives the orders and the other obeys and where the former see their pensions and wages rise and rise while the other sees them be cut and stagnate.
John Cridland, the CBI deputy director general, said that "our message is that the sort of labour market we have today is giving employees what they want." In that case, why opposed increased rights for workers? If workers are happy, then they would not seek to use them. But talk of rights can be dangerous, it may give the plebs ideas that they are individuals and should have a say in what happens to them - and we cannot have that!
On the specific rights raised, the unions are perfectly right to seek to include them in negotiations. They are part and parcel of many employee's terms and conditions and workers pay into them, representing deferred income. That they have faced huge cuts in recent years shows why the bosses do not wish to see their workers take action over them.
Cridland unsurprisingly criticised union demands for Britain to adopt EU rules giving the country's 700,000 temporary workers the same pay and conditions as permanent staff after six weeks in the same post as well as removing the working-time opt-out which allows staff to work more than 48 hours a week. He argued that the latter was "a valued cornerstone of the UK's flexible labour market" and was a matter for individual choice - sure, the individual choice of the boss who knows that his workers' fear of unemployment will ensure they "consent." That the UK economy is so dependent on long wages shows that its "profitability" is simply the result of sweating an un-organised, insecure workforce.
And what of the Blair's speech to the TUC conference? Needless to say, he was defiant and angry. Strange how he is only defiant with the people he claims to represent. With the bosses he is always compliant, making the "difficult decisions" to do what they ask (they cannot be that difficult, given they are always some combination of private investment, markets, authoritarianism and bombs). At least some of the delegates made a protest, either walking out or heckling (sadly, Brown was applauded in spite of pursuing the same Thatcherite/Blairite agenda and repeatedly saying that was, and would remain, the case). Blair warned the unions to shut-up or see Labour back in opposition -- which assumes that New Labour is that different from the Tories.
Ironically, Blair demanded that the hecklers listen "for once." Why should they do what Blair does not? Equally ironically, he stated that "for years and years we had our debates and passed our resolutions and it never made the blindest bit of difference because we could not do anything about it. I want to see the Labour Party continue in government . . . government is a hard, tough business, but it is a darn site better than wasting our time in opposition. That is the brutal truth."
The real brutal truth is that Blair is more than happy to ignore any resolutions which he disagrees with, so the key difference seems to be that any passed resolutions will be ignored by Labour politicians rather than Conservative ones. As such, raising the bogeyman of 18 years of Conservative rule seems beside the point, given the Thatcherite policies of New Labour and the clear message that both Blair and Brown will ignore the unions they are meant to represent.
On the positive side, a CBI poll showed that one in five private firms and one in four public-sector organisations expected relations with unions to be "adversarial" in the next year. Let's hope that is under-estimate!
One question, though. Where have these union bureaucrats been for the last 9 years? Asking Blair's neo-liberal government to grant workers some rights shows a staggering lack of awareness. It also shows that the CBI's beloved slave mentality infects the union leadership. Even the most basic understanding of labour history shows that rights are not granted, they are won - usually by means of hard struggle. If workers assert themselves in their workplaces directly then legislation will follow, not before. And if they do, then such legislation will hardly matter. And if they do not, then it will remain a dead letter.
The need for anarchists to take an organised role in the labour movement is as pressing as ever.