The contribution of the unions

By David Lammy MP / @DavidLammyMP

This morning, I spoke at the Unions 21 annual conference about the contribution made by trades unions to our society and our movement. I thought LabourList readers might be interested to read an abridged version of my speech.

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Intro – the contribution of unions

Unions are taking a lot of stick from some of our political opponents right now.

But that politically motivated criticism misses all the work that goes on day-in, day out in communities and workplaces across the country.

I’ve seen that in my own life. Some of you will have heard me say that pride of place in my mum’s kitchen, when I was growing up, was the basic skills certificate she had hanging on the wall.

That was a course she would never have started – and eventually a job she would never have got – without the support and encouragement of her local union rep who convinced her that she really could do it.

I’ve seen in my role as a minister. In my last job as Minister for Skills it was a particular privilege to work with UnionLearn representatives across Britain.

Thousands of men and women are playing the very same role my mum’s union rep played in her life – giving people the information, the advice and the confidence to learn a new trade or update their skills.

And we’ve seen it nationally, with the successes of campaigns for fair tips and more rights for agency workers. Both of those were big issues in Tottenham, the area that I grew up in and now represent.

Shift work and casual employment are big features of the local economy in our area and the people working in cafes, bars and restaurants need representation and collective action every bit as much their counterparts in factories and manufacturing jobs.

So while some will attack unions, hoping somehow to compare the contribution of millions of working people with a millionaire tax exile, bankrolling the Conservative Party, they couldn’t be wider of the mark.

I don’t say that unions and ministers will or can always agree on everything.

But we should and will defend the contribution of Unions not just to the Labour movement but to Britain.

Becoming a movement again

Two years ago I went out to America to learn from an insurgent campaign, led by an inexperienced Senator who had decided to take on Hilary and Bill Clinton, most of the Washington establishment and large parts of the American media.

The lesson I brought home with me, not just from the candidate himself, but from his web team, his organisers and his volunteers, was first that he was going to win. But just as importantly, that he was going to win by returning to the idea of movement politics.

Not the machine politics of backroom deals between a few insiders, but through millions of people finding their voice, playing their part and feeling ownership of a campaign.

‘Respect. Empower. Include’ was the motto they used inside the campaign. The comparison between this and the last twenty years in British politics was revealing.

It taught me that political parties have not just lost members, we have lost vibrancy, energy and idealism.

With the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, politicians and party managers became more comfortable paging out the ‘lines to take’ than in connecting people to speak for themselves and to one another.

All parties had become complacent about why and when and how people would want to get involved.

It became very clear to me that we had to start changing the way we do politics. That’s why I’ve been advocating much more imaginative use of the internet, helping people connect with one another.

It’s why I think the Labour Party should be electing candidates through open primaries, so people can get involved in more light-touch ways before perhaps becoming more involved in local party.

And it’s why I’ve been arguing that we need to think in terms of mass participation, not just mass communication.

Success for political parties and the union movement is no longer just measured in the realising of long term goals or the protection of sacrosanct rights and principles.

Success is also about motivating and mobilising in the campaign that allows the ordinary member, not just the activist or shop-steward, to feel ownership over that victory.

Success is finding the answer to how you enfranchise the ordinary member in the fight for more rights at the work place or how you engage the factory floor worker in standing for a safer working environment.

You have to offer the opportunity to participate and mobilise in a way that reflects each members’ willingness and ability to contribute effort and time to the common cause.

And those opportunities are now possible thanks to the online revolution. The internet lowers floors and raises ceilings for ordinary members.

It means members become activists and activists become chief organisers.

It means Union membership becomes more than just the weekly paper newsletter, it means it is about signing online petitions, it means making your own online poster, it means sending emails on to your friends and colleagues who may not even be union members in the first place.

These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas, these are real opportunities for members to become active and enfranchised and empowered within the Union movement that are going on as we speak.

New media and the internet are there to compliment the organising that you already do, not replace it.

It should not be understood as a means of just communicating with people, but to connect people.

In order to sustain a level of membership, the experience of being a Union has to change from being a transactional relationship to a transformative one.

Unions, and political parties for that matter, have to provide opportunities for members to campaign on a level and in a medium that they are willing to engage with.

Future – the recovery

So there’s a big organisational challenge here.

I would summarise it as working out how to reinvent unionism, using twenty-first century tools without losing the values and the ethic that first brought working people together over a century ago.

That in itself is a big challenge.

But I want to end also with a couple of thoughts on what the issues are that might animate a revitalised union movement in the coming years.

Because while the potential of new media is exciting, unionism (like politics) doesn’t take place in a vacuum.

Clearly in the short to medium term we are coping with the aftermath of a serious recession.

So while the same people who argued against the fiscal stimulus now want to make immediate, swingeing cuts, we need to address the recovery and deficit on our own terms.

That means as many voices as possible making the argument that savings need to be made at the right time – and in ways that protect front-line services the very best we can.

I understand from my own role as a minister that this isn’t easy. We have had to plan for savings in the Higher Education budget that some have been unhappy with.

But whatever these disagreements I want a party in government after the next election that values our public services and wants to do all it can to protect them.

Longer-term

In the longer-term I think the big challenge for both unions and political parties is to get to grips with the changing nature of work itself.

Unions were formed in an era in which a homogenous working class went to work together in factories and down mines.

The workplace was itself a focal point for communities.

People clocked in together in the morning and out again together in the evening.

These working men – and they were predominantly men – looked like one another, lived near one another and would often socialise with one another in pubs and working men’s clubs.

In this sense, unions often reflected a strong working class identity.

Of course this was not the whole story – professional groups also recognised the value of unionising, particularly in the public sector.

But my point is that such a thing as a typical union member existed – and he probably had a strong sense of connection to other men like him.

Today we live in a world where work is very different, where the working population is very different and where the issues that arise are, in turn, different too.

Most obviously, millions of women have entered the labour market. Nearly half the labour force is now made up of women, while the number of mothers in employment has tripled since 1951.

The population is ageing rapidly. We now have more pensioners than children for the first time in our history – raising questions about how workplaces accommodate those who are still have more to contribute after the traditional retirement age.

We have a much more diverse working population, with the free movement of people in the European Union in particular. There are now more people living abroad that at any time in history. So bringing people together around common causes has its own challenges in this century.

Some people imagined that the working class had somehow disappeared when the mines shut down and people bought their own council houses.

But we have millions of people working in the service sector, whether they are waiting on tables in restaurants, or answering phones. Many of these are my own constituents and they need unions representing them as well as politicians.

So these sweeping changes bring new questions for all of us.

In particular I think we need more friendly workplaces that meet the needs not just of shareholders but also of mothers and fathers. With two thirds of mothers in employment we can’t rely on the old models of the family or the workplace. Parenting isn’t split half-and-half any more, with one parent at work and the other in the home.

Both working mothers and fathers need flexibility and the right support.

We also need to work out how best we bring together a disparate working class around some common goals. Not least the quality of their working lives. In a recession there is an understandable focus on employment – but there is big question we need to start asking about what a good working day looks like.

Work is important to who we are: it’s why we explain who we are through our jobs – why we say “I am an accountant” or “I am a plumber” when we meet someone. We spend a quarter of our lives at work so the nature of that experience has to be an issue we start to talk about more.

That’s partly a policy question, but it’s also a conversation for unions to be having with employers up and down the country

That doesn’t mean bargaining for proper training, fair pay and good pensions are going to go away – they are not. But the quality of the working experience and the relationship between work and family life are two big issues I see.

Conclusion

So armed with the right issues and organisational models I think unionism can be a real force for progressive change this century.

It’s never easy for organisations to adapt and change – that’s why there is an army of management consultants out there making money from courses in ‘change management’.

But this document, launched today, proves that there is an appetite for new thinking within this organisation.

Set alongside the innovative work already going on in unions across the country, I find that hugely encouraging – and I wish you all the best.

Thank you.