Slow march through the slump
Peter Paterson
For no apparent reason, except that they Must be seen to be doing something, the trade union movement has been marking this Week of Activities with marches; demonstrations, lobbies of Parliament and conferences up and down the country to draw attention to the wickedness of the Government's economic policy, as well as to present The Alternative. It has been tough going: they complain bitterly that the media has lost interest in unemPloyment. Last year, when the TUC organised a Day of Action which turned out to be a celebration of apathy by their Members, they blamed the media for writmg, and talking, the event down. It seems that the only point of contact between the union leaders and Mr Wedgwood Beni), of whom they are very frightened In their mutual detestation of the media: if he were to win the election for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, the unions would blame television and the newsPapers; if he loses, he can do the same. The Alternative, of course, is that the Government should start spending a great deal of money on such projects as the electrification of the railways, building the Channel Tunnel, restoring the housing programme and rebuilding the sewerage system, the which, alarmingly, is apparently on Po int of collapse. Privately, union leaders are pleased with Sir Keith Joseph for spending so much money bailing out British Leyland and British Steel and all the ,other financially shaky enterprises with British in their title (and some, like International Computers, without). They believe that the U-turn has taken place already, and that in pressing for the railways' spending programme, particularly, they are pushing at an open door. What the unions are also beginning to realise, with some sense of panic, is that When the recession ends unemployment is nlikely to subside very much. British industry has had the much-vaunted shakeout which Harold Wilson used to talk about, and what with the advent of microprocessors and industrial robots, is not likely to become overmanned again. Stories of astounding increases in productivity among the survivors of the streamlining process are beginning to circulate, not least from South Wales, where the steel industry is suddenly achieving European rates of productivity with an apparently happy labour force, after paying off some 30,000 workers.
What this may mean to the unions is beginning to be calculated. The General & Municipal Workers Union expects to lose 130,000 members by the autumn of 1982, assuming that the recession 'bottoms out' some time later this year — around 14 per cent of its 1979 strength. The Transport & General Workers Union is estimated to have lost 10 per cent of its membership already, and is financially less well able to ride the recession than the G & M, which has built up large reserves.
Other unions are also in trouble. Mr Clive Jenkins's ASTMS, in common with other unions in engineering such as the AUEW, the Boilermakers and the Draughtsmen, has also suffered losses. By contrast, the membership (with the exception of steel) of public sector unions — NUPE, the Civil Service unions, the Post Office unions, the railwaymen and the miners — have so far been little affected.
Some union treasurers are studying, with trepidation, what happened to their organisations during the slump years of the Thirties. Union membership dropped heavily and climbed back slowly, with complete recovery lagging behind that of the economy. This time, they are predicting that membership will go on falling for about a year after the economy begins to emerge from the recession, though they admit that it could be much longer.
Smaller wage rises and the fear of unemployment make neither for militancy, nor for a readiness to pay higher union subscriptions. The loss of 100,000 members to a big general workers' union means a loss of income of around £50,000 a year; among the other sufferers will be the Labour Party, which has already been reminded that union purses are no longer bottomless. Retrenchment also makes it difficult for unions to stay close to their unemployed members, although only last year elaborate plans for this kind of activity were being drawn up. Nevertheless, there have been enough unemployed to ensure a reasonable turnout for most of the events staged by the TUC — though, curiously, attendance was reported to have been poor at the demonstration in Cardiff last weekend. This time the TUC was not encouraging workers in jobs to walk out during working hours to swell the numbers.
Of course it is easy enough to scoff at the feebleness of the TUC's puny programme of events. Ignored by the Government and cynically used by the various factions in the Opposition, the trade unions are at a low ebb. They fear and dislike Mr Wedgwood Beim's campaign for Mr Denis Healey's job, which they interpret as an attack on themselves. (His timing is admired: next year would be too close to the general election and, besides, the Transport & General, which has a biennial conference, can be got at this year but not next. Mr Benn hopes to prise the members away from the leaders.) Psychologically, however, the unions maintain the impression of power. Much of the growth in union membership in the Sixties and Seventies, particularly among white collar workers, came because they offered regular inflation-beating wage and salary increases and a degree of job security. 'One out, all out' was a reassuring rallying cry for workers who traditionally depended upon whimsical 'merit' rises and a degree of status which put them above the manual workers, and who came to believe that they were being left behind if they were not unionised.
What price union protection now, either for the wage packet or the job itself? The prospect facing union executives is that they will have to resell themselves to the workers. With out-of-date services to offer, and a shortage of money, that will not be an easy task.
Some small and medium-sized unions could face bankruptcy, unless they can arrange mergers among themselves, or link up with one of the giant unions, (The National Union of Journalists, many of its members must have been surprised to learn, has managed to secure an interestfree loan of £50,000 from a Danish union. It is also hoping to merge with the National Graphical Association.) So a flurry of union amalgamations could be one of the consequences of the recession. Another will be a greater emphasis on the closed shop — conscription being cheaper than persuasion. The slow pace of James Prior's reforms has given the unions at least an interregnum in which to extend closed shops, especially through such devices as restrictive clauses in local authority contracts confining work to unionised firms.
Such questions, however, do not fit into the rhetoric of the Week of Activities. Mr Len Murray has been banging the drum as though this will conjure up the £6 billion he wants pumped into the economy. Mr Foot aids and abets. But their dwindling divisions do not look ready for war.
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