This weekend, the BNP’s trade union, Solidarity, gains its certificate of independence, and can practice as a union. It’s an interesting move, but I really can’t work out why they are trying to do this.
For starters, their members will never get the full benefits of being in a union. Crudely put, there are three levels of membership, with increasing benefits – first off being the only member in a workplace, where you can get advice from the national union and have someone represent you in disciplinaries, kind of like joining the AA for work. Second level is getting a good group of you, to get safety in numbers when dealing with management, which counts for a lot in enforcing your rights. Third level is recognition, with a properly established local base in the workplace, and rights to negotiate collectively with the employer.
No real company in the UK is going to recognise them voluntarily – the press would be horrendous, and an employer in such a situation would probably immediately voluntarily recognise any other union, as the ‘lesser of evils’. They’ll never get down the statutory route, as that’d involve getting over half the bargaining unit in the union. The BNP is an actively divisive force, so even if they do get a clique together, they will be severely handicapped in the majority numbers game if they’re alienating groups of potential members even before they start.
Unions are expensive to run if you want to do it at all properly. Even more so if you’re setting up and trying to build. In their case it’s more of a recipe for losing money than for making any to pass on to the BNP as a political fund. Now this is just wild speculation, but I think someone coming out as a BNP’er in a workplace is going to be stirring up a lot of trouble for themselves with management, and coupled with the unpleasant pasts of lots of their activists (probably their only members for a while), the union will probably end up fighting loads of expensive cases they can’t win, draining their cash and making themselves look impotent to prospective members.
Some people think it’s a way for the BNP to gain legitimacy, in being closely identified with a useful organ of mainstream civil society. Seems odd though that they’d choose a type of organ that their political platform seems fundamentally opposed to as ‘marxists’. If they want to build themsleves closer into their members’ communities, there are easier and cheaper ways – set up youth schemes, credit unions, neighbourhood watches. Hey, for the same money they could probably go for a city academy!
Only immediate benefit I see for them is that this is a potential way for them to try to keep some of their nastier people in jobs they might otherwise lose, as they wouldn’t be given the support of a proper union.
On top of all this, I love the fact they’ve ripped off the Solidarnosc logo for their own. Never guessed they’d be so mad keen on bringing all things Polish into the UK workplace.
First, let me say that your article is well researched and reasoned.
Second, I have to take issue with your assumption that our Union is limited to members of the BNP or even supporters of it. I’m sure that you must know that I am not a member of the BNP but of Third Way (www.thirdway.org). It may interest you to know that a number of people joining our Union list themselves as supporters of the Labour Party and that we are recruiting amongst all ethnic and faith communities.
Third, the question of recognition which you raise is an interesting one. We have not yet applied for a Certificate of Independence in fact. At this stage we are concentrating on building our infrastructure, training officials and recruiting. You must know that the ‘bargaining unit’ is defined by the Union calling the ballot and so winning support is not as difficult as you envisage. I am also not convinced that there are no employers who would not recognise without the need for a ballot. All this is in the future and only time will tell.
Thanks for your comments Patrick. My apologies for the blunder over your not yet having gained independent status – I must have been getting a bit previous there. But surely this will make it more difficult to practice as a union on behalf of your early-joiners? And at a time when you really need to be putting in a good service to them to get them to stay and recommend you to colleagues.
I’m also guilty of a bit of shorthand in referring to your members as declaring themselves to be ‘BNP’ers’, as you say, but I think that this is in practice what will happen. Even though BNP membership (or even support) is certainly no prerequisite to joining Solidarity, and you yourself have no direct connections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_–_The_Union_for_British_Workers), the union is already so closely identified with the party, and so many early members are likely to be BNP supporters, that I believe a lot of people who aren’t BNP (or at least other right nationalist) supporters will be extremely reluctant to have anything to do with it, for fear they will be assumed to be a supporter too.
Agreed that choice of bargaining unit to limit your attempts at recognition to certain groups where you can identify more support could indeed make it easier to gain a higher proportion of the workforce (identifying a regional division of a firm based in an area where the BNP are polling better for example). But even then bargaining units need to be chosen to make some kind of industrial sense and I think it’s still hard to see any legitimate division where this might give you an advantage big enough to counter the disadvantages I mentioned.