johninnit

Off to debate union blogging (amongst plenty of other stuff) with UNI’s Communicators’ Forum in their Asia Pacific region next week, so I’m sort of practicing what I preach and have made them a nice group live-blog for everyone who will be attending the conference (www.unicommunicators.org).

If you’re interested in what UNI-affiliated unions from other countries are up to online, then have a look from Wednesday-Friday next week, as I’ll be attempting to keep any interesting bits* of the dialogue reflected on the site for the folks back home.

* - Interesting for union geeks, that is. I admit this is stretching the usual definition of ‘interesting’ a little

Bonus joke:
My wife went to a very bad concert in South East Asia.
Singapore?
Terrible. And the rest of the band was even worse.

Congratulations to the drivers (though not the management by the sounds of it) of Eddie Stobart’s haulage firm. The Edinburgh Evening news reports that they refused extra payments of £500 each for a special assignment, when they found out that it was to strike-break against the UNITE-T&G distribution members at Tesco in Livingstone, Scotland.

UNITE-T&G’s Tony Trench said: “We think that this is an appalling way to do business - throwing large sums of money to get people to strike-break instead of sitting down and negotiating with us in an orderly fashion. We are humbly grateful to these guys who have turned down such large sums of money to support their comrades.”

Eddie Stobart always used to demand the highest standards of conduct from his drivers, wanting them to be ‘knights of the road’, to help him build a brand as industry leaders (and collect a huge fan club of strange people who like to count lorries along the way). It looks like they’ve passed the conduct test with flying colours, though maybe not in quite the way he intended.

All together now… “I want to be an Eddie Stobart driver…”

PS - Indisputedly the most useless bit of trivia I know (after ringing Stobarts’ unneccessarily helpful customer services for a bet 15 years ago) is the reason Stobart’s lorries display a small Italian flag on their side. Apparently, their main contract was an Irish run when they were a small firm, and they wanted to put an Irish flag on the side, but didn’t have any orange paint, so they used red, and stuck to the wrong colour ever since out of quirky tradition. There - now don’t go saying there’s no exclusives on this site…

Andy Stern
Free Press, 224 pages

America seems like a worrying place to be a leftie, and SEIU President Andy Stern lays out a formidable list of obstacles to progressive politics in this book. Global forces have changed the American economy to the point where the American dream that hard work can be valued and rewarded just isn’t a possibility any more. Income inequality has rocketed, job security is a distant memory, pensions and healthcare are imploding. Stern believes that the natural way to tackling this breach lies in trade unions, but that they will need to change themselves dramatically too in order to seize the opportunity.

Stern is well placed to tell us about change in unions. He talks at length about the transformation of SEIU from 7^th placed “SEIwho?” to become the largest AFL-CIO affiliate – a process started by his own mentor John Sweeney, now President of the AFL. The union was reorganised to focus on clear industries – transferring members in illogical sectors (such as utilities workers) into other unions that could better represent them. Coherent branding was adopted across a very diverse organisation. Union dues were ramped up to double, and staffing numbers in services provided to locals cut dramatically, building Stern a huge war chest to spend on growth - organising new workplaces and new sectors. Stern doesn’t flinch from detailing some of the difficulty of this process – including the protests of the large numbers of SEIU office staff he laid off. In the end though, the numbers tell the story, and SEIU’s rise (albeit aided by sectoral mergers) makes for a compelling case.

There’s a lot of detail about the logical conclusions of this - the labour movement split of 2005, when SEIU led other unions to break from the AFL-CIO and form the Change to Win Coalition. Stern is understandably rather anxious to justify his role in the process, and he doesn’t go too far into critiques of his actions, which would have been very interesting – though arguably outside the scope of this fairly slim volume.

The core of Stern’s position seems to be a serious swing towards partnership in industrial relations, albeit a version of partnership with very large teeth (in the form of major and very innovative shaming campaigns for employers who won’t play). To enable SEIU to organise new sectors, they have signed deals, which on the face of it run counter to the traditional union approach. Recognising that most employers won’t sign with them if it means they will become uncompetitive, SEIU offer no-bargaining deals. The union agrees not to bargain for increased pay until they have also signed up a majority of the rest of that sector. SEIU are clear from the outset that the union is seeking to raise the employer’s costs, but this way no employer opens themselves up unilaterally to undercutting from others if they do up their pay rates. SEIU have managed to cover huge numbers of staff in building services and healthcare who might never otherwise have been organised, but those members have needed to sustain the fight for years before they’ve seen much of the benefits.

Unions, Stern believes, need to change their image, and renounce the traditional class-based rhetoric, transforming themselves from organisations that are seen to create problems into organisations are seen by members and employers to be in the business of solving problems. A union really focused on developing new personal services will be able to support members in all areas of their working lives - with employers even potentially outsourcing benefits provision to the union, so that members will be able to get continuity of service.

Stern’s political strategy is expounded in some detail – breaking away from straight partisanship to endorse both Democrat and Republican candidates, based on their individual records on labour issues. Surprisingly, SEIU chuck a lot of money at the Republicans, and so far don’t seem to have anything to show for it (and the section about inspiration from Newt Gingrich will make many of us shudder). Also controversial have been Stern’s plans to get the membership more politically engaged in choosing the candidates they want to support – hence SEIU’s powerful drive behind the ill-fated Dean campaign (the only time I saw Stern, he was sporting an almost parodically huge Dean booster badge), and several state races where SEIU have backed other candidates against traditional labour movement favourites.

Cynics might wonder throughout how much ‘the interests of working Americans’ really means ‘the opinions of Andy Stern’. Indeed, the space devoted to his own biography and the fact that the book’s co-writer isn’t mentioned until after the end notes would seem to further suggest that this may be as much about the man as about the movement. I’m convinced though that much of the megalomania jibes are unfair, and he’s on the level with this serious attempt at a manifesto for labour – tackling questions head on that others would rather not think too hard about. This is very challenging but ultimately inspiring stuff, with its call for the labour movement to cast off the habits which have put it into decline and to ante up for some really big ideas. Some of it is certainly just for the US politics nerds amongst us, but there are a lot of challenges here for the UK too – especially as we seem to be only a little behind the States with some of the problems we’re facing.

You can buy it online from Amazon, through the tigmoo book club, which is trying to siphon off the anti-union bookmongers’ profits into promoting unions on their own doorstep.

More from Andy at www.acountrythatworks.com

A gift-horse “unions in political correctness gone mad” story for the tabloids today. Call centre staff will now no longer be obliged to issue a greeting in Welsh when they answer the phone for Vale of Glamorgan Council. Call me a linguo-fascist, but I think the CWU have a point here – though not just the one being made in the story.

Staff are understandably trying to cut down voice strain, and for some non-native speakers, the phlegmy rasp that is their best approximation of the lilting tones of their fathers is apparently doing their vocal chords no good at all. As a keyboard jockey, my 6 months of RSI a while back were only a small glimpse at the huge problems that damaging your voice could have for people who speak for a living.

Dave Joyce, CWU H&S officer, said: “Call centre work can be very intense and target driven and workers spend a large proportion of their day on the telephone. Vale of Glamorgan council call centre staff undoubtedly have a justified case which deserves support.”

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Society, are protesting the decision, as going against the council’s obligations. A spokesperson said (presumably in translation): “The Vale of Glamorgan council has a Welsh language scheme, which requires them to deal bilingually with any correspondence with the public.”

Except, how much help precisely is a chirpy “Bore da” going to be when a Welsh speaker wants to order a new hywellybin? Everyone likes a friendly greeting, but people don’t tend to ring the council to just say hello in passing. If the call centre staffer can’t actually deal with the whole enquiry in Welsh, isn’t it just a little bit (a rare bit even) of window dressing, and probably more likely to annoy than help?

The council’s proposed solution, to include Welsh in the normal recorded greeting people hear, would seem to make sense – Hopefully though also employing more Welsh-speaking CWU members to deal with the Welsh questions, and giving people a chance to press 1 for English, 2 for Welsh.

First outing for the Unite banners at the London May Day march - something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of these (more…)

As of this morning, the ZCTU are out on strike across Zimbabwe, in protest at Mugabe’s economic mismanagement. Inflation has risen to 1,700%, the highest in the world, meaning that people’s salaries have become worthless by the time of their next pay packet. Hunger is killing thousands, and reports suggest one third of the working age population have left to try to send home money from neighbouring countries.

Police turned over the union offices again yesterday to try to disrupt the strike and arrested more union staff. This is a very dangerous time to be a trade unionist, in one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a trade unionist.

Labour Minister Nicholas Goche has overruled normal labour law protections for striking workers, saying: “Employers are free to deal with workers who choose to deliberately stay away from work.”

If you haven’t already taken LabourStart’s online solidarity action, then please do. The strikers will need all the support they can get.

Conflicting reports in the expat ZimOnline and the Government controlled Herald. Who is telling the truth? Well, here’s a clue: Which one do you think publishes reader comments?

Slick YouTube-style campaiging from a Belgian union. Their Equal Pay Day (31 March was the second of these annual campaign days - bit late, sorry!) is similar to the UK Work Your Proper Hours Day in terms of using dates to really bring home work-related statistics to people who may be affected by them but not fully aware. In this case, it’s the end of March, as the average Belgian woman would need to work an extra 3 months of the year to earn the same as her male colleagues.

The online delivery may be cheap enough to do, but filming this and the other 3 slots they’ve done with a professional ad agency will have cost a fair bit (even on favour rates if they got them - unions don’t tend to in the UK!). Nice to see examples of unions really investing in online campaigning, and hope it did well for them.

Hat Tip: I’m sick of your insane demands

Last day’s work at the Burberry factory in the Rhondda. Good luck and best wishes to the GMB members there as they plan to march out of the factory after work today to a Welsh choir and with their banners and heads held high.

Even though it will be an extremely difficult day for the 300 workers and their families, I hope they can still manage to be very proud in what they achieved by standing together. A much better redundancy package, retraining opportunities, community investment, and the possibility of further smaller ventures are a lot more than they would have got without their campaign.

They’ve shown other unions the way for future actions too. Celebrity involvement, brand engagement, international links, and even blogging have pulled together in the hands of a strong community to make a positive, compelling, and modern campaign.

A very interesting project from the European Metalworkers’ Federation (though they’re a bit shy and you wouldn’t know it was them from looking at the site).

The General Motors Workers’ Blog lets workers at General Motors around the world sign up and add their own posts to a central news service of what GM management is up to in each others’ countries.

The idea is to beat divide-and-conquer management and deal more effectively with an employer who is able to move around the globe at will, and play country off against country and plant against plant.

It’s a bit clunky (as most things run by union federations tend to be - it’s always a huge pain co-ordinating people and sites in a second language, and on a limited budget), but I think it’s a pretty good idea, and I’ll be fascinated to see how it goes. My main concern would be that the lack of polish (as opposed to Polish - which is catered for!) and easy explanation of how to work with it may turn off those people who aren’t bloggers already (ie. most people).

Good luck to all the GM bloggers, and let’s hope this is the first of many.

I got a round robin email recently from Derek Blackadder, LabourStart’s man in Canada, drawing my attention to a new virtual international union network called New Unionism.

It looks quite interesting. They have a manifesto for the future of trade unionism, which seeks to unite the two schools of western unionism, Organising and Partnership. They contend that far from being opposites, if you want either of them done properly, they need to be done in conjunction with the other - two sides of the same coin.

We on the left are very fond of splitterism, and it’s easy for two groups who agree on 99% of something to be more concerned about the 1% where they differ in approach. Hence each technique’s camp tends to start to use the other word as shorthand to define that group rather than the technique itself, and we lose sight a bit maybe of the considerable benefits that both the techniques offer.

I like Derek so reckon anything he’s involved with must be pretty kosher. He and the others (including a good number from UK unions) who have signed up to this are being commendably open in signing up to a position which might see them shot at from both sides.

It seems to be a bit of a Euston Manifesto for unions (just without the pub). A statement which isn’t really that contentious to all but the most hardened splitters, focusing on the things we can agree on, and trying to reinvigorate the basic principles the movement, to make us more appropriate to the times.

The site’s a bit tricky to find your way around at first, and a lot of it is hidden for members only, but there is still quite a lot to take in there, including a very interesting summary of the UK’s attempts at New Unionism in the late 90’s - which has gathered some pretty illuminating comments (the kind of thing which suggests others are taking them seriously).

Less information on what they’ll actually be able to do though. This is maybe unfair, as they’ve only just started building a network, but as people are signing in a personal capacity, rather than on behalf of their unions, they’re not necessarily committing any organisations to put resources behind it. No bad thing maybe as they plan to work out a lot of what they will do democratically as they go along, using the strengths of the web to collaborate.

The idea is a nice one though - and I can agree with the principles behind their approach. Will have to think a bit more about it - Anyone else thinking of signing?