What Labour can learn from the dockers who sent Russian gas shipments packing

The amoral and illegal sacking of 800 workers by P&O bosses this month captured the public and political imagination in a way rarely seen in the world of industrial relations. But in reality it is only the latest in a series of incidents and unfolding events bringing to light the labour conditions that underpin the movement of goods and people in recent years.

Centres of transportation and logistics like ports and ferry terminals have become flashpoints in a new frontier of workplace conflict and labour market change. Covid exposed the previously hidden work that continued to circulate commodities around our economy as society shut down. Subsequently, a combination of Brexit and the pandemic sparked a supply chain crisis focused in part on the desperate need for lorry drivers and other essential workers employed on the frontline of delivery and fulfilment.

Most recently, the robust Western sanctions enforced in response to Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine saw more disruption to the movement of things, and in particular fuel and natural resources. Workers at British ports showed spontaneous solidarity with the struggle of the Ukrainian people by refusing to unload Russian gas from ships coming into dock. Supported by their unions, the workers turned the ships around, accomplishing what the government’s sanctions regime has so far been unwilling to do.

This shows not only the leverage and power workers command where they play a pivotal role in logistics and supply chains, but also the interconnection of the workplace with the great-power rivalries and geopolitical transformations that are set to characterise a coming age of hot and cold war.

Work is not a four-letter word

Our new paper for Progressive Britain launches a programme of events and contributions in conjunction with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. We locate the development of a new politics of work under Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party within these wider global dynamics, calling for the party to go further and faster in providing a positive vision for the future of work and workers. For progressives and the left in the UK and elsewhere, work has the capacity to become a golden thread running through a new agenda for rebuilding a political, social and economic contract in both a post-pandemic and polarised world.

Workers are at the forefront of digital and technological shifts transforming the world economy and challenging existing ethical notions of privacy and human rights. Connectivity is replacing traditional assets such as fossil fuels or metals. Trade, defence and foreign policy all promise to reshape the kinds of workplaces our country is home to, with a resulting new economy constructed around new skills, new industries and a new productivity effort. Systemic competition between rival powers will combine economic, political and technological aspects as never before, reshaping the relationship between the state, business and workers.

The government has joined the dots on some of this, weaving themes of industrial renewal and ‘levelling up’ through its ‘global Britain’ agenda and new ‘integrated’ approach to defence, security and foreign policy. Covid and the development of the furlough scheme demonstrated the capacity of the Conservative government to play more of a coordinating role in the economy, convening bargaining and collaboration between unions and business.

In scenes reminiscent of the mid-twentieth century industrial compromise, we even saw a Tory chancellor on the steps of Number 11 Downing Street flanked by representatives from the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry. But, as things settled down with the pandemic on the wane, the Conservatives quietly discarded the industrial strategy developed by previous governments, and last week’s Spring Statement had little to support workers facing rising bills and falling incomes.

In much of the Tory rhetoric and policymaking on all these fronts, ‘work’ still represents something of a four-letter word – an everyday fact of life for most people, but rarely heard before the watershed. Where work and workers are addressed, they are concealed behind the language of ‘business’ and ‘jobs’, neglecting the human core of why, how and under what conditions we work.

A new politics of work

The new project we have launched will look at the practical solutions and opportunities for progressives in putting good and rewarding work at the heart of its mission. We aim to do three things: to draw lessons from Labour’s own history of mediating and representing the ‘labour interest’ at past points of national and global upheaval, in order to set out how a new world of work can be brought into being today from within the cracks of the current crisis; to learn directly from progressive and centre-left governments elsewhere in the world already tackling these same challenges; and to show what these mean in practical terms as part of an everyday economy.

Making good and rewarding work central to the UK’s success is a key task for progressives, including a greater role for workers and unions in economic decisions. Labour has already made a start with Keir Starmer making work and security key themes in his September conference speech. Angela Rayner also outlined plans for setting minimum standards in key industrial sectors last autumn. These Fair Pay Agreements borrow from legislation introduced this month by the Ardern government in New Zealand, which aims to ‘lift incomes and improve working conditions of everyday kiwis’.

In the face of its frayed relationship with its working-class heartlands, Labour’s new politics of work represents more than an electoral gambit. It also provides a perspective on the real policy problems the country faces. It builds on the ambitions of the trade union, labour and co-operative movements to lift our expectations beyond simply fixing the problems with work, to making good and rewarding work a foundation for fairness, security and improving life chances. That ambition should be to help people get on at work, not just get even against injustice.

The Conservatives lack such a perspective. Through its new politics of work, Labour can learn from the unionised dock workers who forced Russian gas shipments into retreat last month – promising to use the power at its disposal to accomplish what the government cannot.

Labour and the past, present and future of work, published by Progressive Britain on March 30th, kicks off a series of events and articles in the run-up to Labour conference.