Last night my watching of the first Eurovision semi-final was rather interrupted with a Twitter storm created by Liberal Reform, or at least someone with access to its Twitter account. Liberal Reform is a group within the party which exists, according to its website, to
promote personal liberty and a fair society supported by free, open and competitive markets as the foundation of the party’s policy.
So what had they said that wound people up so much?
We need to have a rethink about how we regulate trade unions in the UK.
Far too often, rail union barons are able to cause economic damage
as they retweeted a post talking about the rail strikes this week.
When I was growing up in the 1970s, unions did seem pretty scary to me. My experience was watching mass meetings at car plants where they all voted to go on strike. Even then, I questioned how comfortable you would feel about disagreeing. But I was also mad keen on history, and learning about how important unions were in giving people better chances of making it out of their workplaces alive and in challenging abuse by employers put them in a much better light. There’s not a lot that the Thatcher government did that I like, but their legislation insisting on strike ballots was a good thing. Some of the other Conservative reforms since, including the bill passed last year, have gone way too far and I am glad that we didn’t vote for them.
Every day union reps fight for workers who are being treated unfairly. An effective union rep is one of the workplace’s most valuable assets.
Way back in the mists of time, I was also heavily attracted to the SDP’s policy on industrial democracy, giving people more say in their workplace and I also liked co-ownership models.
I think it is so important that we do all we can to improve workers’ rights, to make workplaces safer, more inclusive and work more enjoyable and fairly rewarded. Unions have a huge role to play in that. We should always be suspicious of and curious of any power imbalances, but it is clear that they often lie with employers.
In terms of the current ongoing strikes in healthcare and rail, I think that we should broadly be supporting the workers, whose requests are pretty reasonable. When you think how people’s earnings have shrunk because of inflation over the past few years, it is not surprising how many are struggling. Added to that, labour market shortages caused, among other things, by Brexit and people being too sick to work thanks to the state of the NHS, have made workplaces so much more stressful.
Our current policy on unions was passed in our Towards a Fairer Society paper in York last Spring. This snippet gives a much more collaborative flavour:
We will strengthen the ability of unions to represent workers
effectively in the modern economy by:
● Allowing unions to have access to workplaces, as has been shown
to work in New Zealand. This includes unions who have no
members in a workplace, where they receive consent from the
employer which cannot be unreasonably withheld or until two
working days have passed with no reply since the request was
made.
● Initially simplifying the rules and procedures around having a union
recognised by an employer then having a full Review into the ability
of unions to access workers across all businesses, but particularly
those that are complex or include remote work.
● Broadening the right to collective bargaining to all pay and
conditions, including pay and pensions, working time and holidays,
equality issues (including maternity and paternity rights), health
and safety, training and development, work organisation and the
nature and level of staffing.
● Ensuring that the right to collective bargaining does not include the
right to agree lesser rights than statutory protections in any area.
● Making discriminating against workers on the basis of their union
membership or activities (blacklisting) a criminal offence.
● Working with unions and industry to introduce sectoral collective
bargaining.
● Committing to reducing the unfair dismissal threshold back to one
year.
● Maintaining that there will be no deposit to fight an employment
tribunal.
The response to Liberal Reform’s tweet last night was not positive from Lib Dems.
An interesting observation from Stephen Richmond:
Not to labour (pun intended) the point but Gladstone, classical Liberal in chief, was the Prime Minister when the Liberals legalised unions in 1871 & he was incredibly popular with the working class.
So, sure, they were not always aligned, but classical Liberalism was pro-union.
Rebecca Jones, the Young Liberals brilliant policy officer and last week’s candidate for North East London said:
It is deeply illiberal for us to attack workers right to unionise. Striking is what led to us gaining so many of the rights we take for granted now.
I will always stand with unions
Frank Bowles from East Dunbartonshire added:
I’d go further and mandate worker and customer representatives on the boards of companies so they work for the people they serve rather than just those that just financially benefit
I don’t think that the view expressed by Liberal Reform is anywhere close to being the majority view in the party.
But what do you think?
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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28 Comments
I am glad that the Lib Dems are having a full honest debate regarding the unions. As a manager within the Rail industry, the current dispute has its origins pre COVID and should be recognised as such. But there can be no denial that Aslef reps do hold a lot of clout and TOC management has been weak as short term franchise and contracts mean that dealing with industrial relations has always been second to running the service. There have been issues when RMT and Aslef reps consider themselves management and that needs to be addressed.
The train drivers dispute is quite a difficult one. On my line, we used to have four trains an hour into London – we now have two. The last direct train out of London was after midnight, it’s now before 10.30. The cost of the rail fare is significantly more per mile than the equivalent journeys in other countries around the world. That’s not the train drivers’ fault – and it’s the union’s job to protect its members’ interests. But the underlying economics asks rail users to pay even more for a poorer service, reducing their income and quality of life, just so train drivers can protect theirs. It’s an even harder argument when many of the rail users asked to pay more already earn significantly less than the train drivers.
I was a union rep in my day (and I think I was covertly blacklisted), and I fully understand the importance of the unions in a modern economy. I also firmly support industrial democracy – there are various models, but what they have in common is the recognition that the workers are an integral part of the organisation and should be involved in decisions that affect them.
The result of the whole Liberal Reform debacle meant I resigned my (admittedly pretty passive 4 years) membership this morning. I won’t be contributing to any institution which attacks workers rights.
I also take exception to the framing of Guy’s above comment, which basically pits workers back against each other. The logic on offer seems to be that, one group of workers standing up for their own rights after 15 years of stagnant pay is an attack on those low paid who aren’t standing up for their current rights.
Train drivers standing up for their own economic situtation is, no matter how hard the right paint it, an attack on other low paid workers. It’s proof we need more union involvement, and employee representation in our workplace to ensure that our system can not starve workers again.
Caron, the notion of employee share ownership and co-ownership goes back many years before your SDP ‘mists of time’. It was practised by the Liberal MP Theodore Taylor in his textile mill in Birstall as long ago as 1900. Back in the 1930s my Dad worked there. Theodore lived to the grand old age of 102 in 1952.
And I believe LDV Contributor Peter Wrigley actually knew him.
It’s about time the Lib Dem’s rediscovered their Liberal heritage and radicalism.
“But the underlying economics asks rail users to pay even more for a poorer service, reducing their income and quality of life, just so train drivers can protect theirs.”
Consider why the economics of our rail system might be so poor. Perhaps because ministers and civil servants focussed on the cost of everything and the value of nothing?
So they cut out branch lines which individually might not have been well used but which fed customers into the main network? And without implementing the bus services needed to get those former branch line customers into the main network? And now leaving us in the situation of major climate change where it would be better if there was far less car travel – replaced by much more efficient rail travel?
Not the drivers’ fault. A train driver may be responsible of the safety of perhaps hundreds of people on one journey. And entitled to be paid accordingly.
And there seems to be a shortage of train drivers. Maybe it’s that concept called ‘market forces’? Oh I forgot – for our so-called government those don’t seem to apply to workers in our public services!
@David Raw. I can’t claim to have been on intimate nodding terms with Theodore Taylor, but I did “meet” him when he came to address us at Batley Grammar School on or around his hundredth birthday. He had a long white beard, which is what you would have expected of a centenarian in those days.
I think he told us to be good boys (it was an all-boys school then), work hard and virtue would be its own reward or similar.
The Taylor family owned a couple of textile mills and operated a profit-sharing scheme. Competition from Portugal and then India, along with the introduction of man-made fibres, put most of our textile mills out of business eventually, but Taylors’ lasted longer than most, and its workers, who had been allocated shares, received a nice little nest egg when they were finally forced to close.
I fought my first general election in Batley and Morley in 1970 and we highlighted our policies for industrial democracy and profit sharing where appropriate. I wish we were saying more about them today. We urgently need a reform of company law to remove “share-holder” interests as their primary objective and include responsibly to employees and the communities in which companies operate.
For a start, the rail network is a disaster with many (occasionally) moving parts, of which labour relations is just one. It’s a poor example to use as a basis for policy making.
My experience of union officials as an employer with a SME company was entirely positive. Of course they defended their members interests, but they were eminently sensible and weren’t in the business of either pricing their members out of jobs, or crippling the company.
Unions are an essential counterbalance to large corporations and abusive employers.
I believe firmly in having unions in all sectors but agree with Caron that some rules under which they operated needed the change that Margaret Thatcher introduced but the later changes go too far. I was on union committees but more than once stuck my neck out against strike action when seeing the effect on other people particularly those who worked hard for less pay than what we were getting.
We need to find a way of discouraging the union actions which benefit the strong but do not support the weak, but not sure how. Train drivers earn good salaries even compared to teachers at the moment.
Peter Wrigley, you are right to call for industrial democracy and profit-sharing together with representation on company boards from local communities; our party needs to propagate that.
@Andrew Emmerson take exception by all means, but it still remains true that rail users, many of whom are relatively low paid, are being asked to pay more in fares for a poorer service. That’s not the drivers’ fault. Our funding model for rail means that any increase in train costs (including drivers’ salaries) comes from the pockets of rail users at a much higher proportion than other countries (including such hotbeds of socialism as Long Island, New York). That’s not an argument for or against trade unionism. It’s an argument for the economic treatment of public transport as a public good, so that rail employees can be compensated fairly without a corresponding increase in fares.
You are quite right to point out Gladstone’s role in helping place unions on a legal footing. The Liberal party was also responsible for the very important 1906 Trades Disputes Act that secured trade union rights after they were removed by the House of Lords. Liberals have always seen unions as having an essential role in providing workers with a voice.
I find Liberal Reform an odd organisation that seems to have a rather adolescent relish for causing controversy within the party for no good reason. There members post provocative tributes to a certain Facebook executive and are very selective when in comes to their belief in free markets. Apparently, they are against central planning and central targets, except when it comes to house building, when the central state should tell every local community what it should do.
It is one way to get noticed I suppose.
@Andrew Emmerson
I’m sorry you’ve given up your membership because of a twitter comments by a ginger group within the Party. You say you won’t be a member of an institution that attacks workers rights, but I don’t really think it is fair to say that about the Party as a whole – as the discussion on the thread clearly shows. Or have I misunderstood and you have just left Liberal Reform?
If we all left the party because of ginger group comments we didn’t like I doubt there would be any one left!
For what it’s worth there’s no commitment to trade unions in the pre-amble to the Party Constitution (and nor should there be in my view). The closest it gets is:
“We will foster a strong and sustainable economy which encourages the necessary wealth-creating processes, develops and uses the skills of the people and works to the benefit of all, with a just distribution of the rewards of success. We want to see democracy, participation and the co-operative principle in industry and commerce within a competitive environment in which the state allows the market to operate freely where possible but intervenes where necessary.”
I have been a trade union member since 1980 and an activist for most of my adult life. I was a local, area, regional and national representative of the postal workers union CWU. In addition I was for many years a delegate to the Reading TUC where I was the treasurer and later secretary.
As someone who came to Liberalism late I have changed my basic views on trade unions and workers rights. Namely that I am supportive of both. I want to see the repeal of anti trade union laws, improved rights at work and genuine industrial democracy.
However where I also want to focus is on trade union democracy. Thatchers reforms did not give the unions back to their members as she promised, union bureaucracies found ways to get round her legislative changes. Union hierachies thrive on the fact that tiny percentages of members participate in internal elections and many pay the political levy without realising it.
If a union member has a complaint which some have the government appointed regulator has very limited powers to intervene.
So let’s be in favour of strong unions and strengthen them even more by coming up with a Liberal plan to democratise them.
“So let’s be in favour of strong unions and strengthen them even more by coming up with a Liberal plan to democratise them.”
Writing as long-retired but been a member of several trades union – I’d agree with this.
@Noncomformistradical
Thanks.
I have worked up some proposals. If the party ever gets around to debating the issue I will attempt to feed them in.
The Gladstone government that has been mentioned based the Act on a minority report of a Royal Commission set up be the previous Tory Government. Brother William’s government also made picketing illegal.
When I fist campaigned as a Liberal in the 1960s we had quite detailed proposals for “industrial” (as much employment then was) Democracy. (Better now to talk about employee participation.) Broadly speaking we proposed that company boards should be composed of one third shareholder representative, one third employee reps and one third representatives of the wider community. The idea was that neither shareholders nor “workers” would hold automatic sway, but have to convince a majority of the “others.” The Labour Party were never very keen on this: if fact it’s probably not unfair to say that they actively opposed it. They preferred confrontation, “our lot” against “your lot,” as indeed did Mrs Thatcher. Hence the UK’s relative and considerable industrial decline since 1979. This preference for confrontation extends to parliament: hence their antipathy towards coalitions. That is why we need a Liberal party
I like Tristan Ward’s posts. I don’t see why Andrew has resigned his Party membership due the comments of a very small niche group thst has little or no influence within the Party. Unless Andrew’s post is a troll?
Tristan, for clarity, given up my membership of Liberal Reform, not the party.
@Peter Wrigley. That sounds an interesting idea about 1/3 shareholders, 1/3 employees, 1/3 wider community on the boards, but it begs a lot of questions. If I might ask (and if it’s not too much to remember from that long ago), how would you define ‘wider community’ and how you would you have those people selected? If – say – a company was based in Scotland but sold lots of its goods to the USA, would you consider the USA to be part of the community and therefore require USA reps? And which companies would you apply this rule to? I can see it making sense for a large publicly traded company, but it if someone has worked hard over many years to build a small business from scratch and therefore has full ownership, then it would seem unfair and wrong (as well as unnecessarily bureaucratic) to take control away from that person and hand it to complete strangers from the ‘community’. And how would you deal with the risk of companies going bust because possibly 2/3 of the board representatives have little idea about how to run a business and 1/3 (the community reps) might not even particularly care whether the business is profitable in the first place.
Liberal Reform state: “We need to have a rethink about how we regulate trade unions in the UK.”
Caron points out a policy was debated and voted on at York conference.
Perhaps some one from Liberal Reform could write an article in why they think the policy was wrong and how they would change it.
I note most of the comments on their Twitter post including two from me were rather hostile.
@ Simon R. T hanks for raising these interesting points. I can’t remember the full details (maybe David Raw can, or they are hidden away in the party’s archives if anyone cares to look).
I think we tried not to be too prescriptive, but to experiment to see what worked.
The full policy wold only apply once firms had reached a certain size, defined by number of employees plus turnover, so go-getting entrepreneurs would still have their fling with SMEs. There would need to be different models of public services
There were several models in existence. Jo Grimond was very keen on a Spanish scheme called Mondragon (qv) in which ,among other things, workers “bought” their jobs. It was and still is very successful.
The Labour Party’s official policy was expressed in their famous Clause IV, which called for “common ownership” but didn’t specify how. In practice it was Herbert Morrison’s rather distant and bureaucratic public corporation. The Labour left followed Tony Benn in advocating “workers’ control.” The then highly successful co-operative retail movement said “customer control” with “power” determined by how much the customer spent. Sadly as a model that one now seems to be struggling.
We tried to find a model that would encourage co-operation rather than confrontation. Hence the “third” representing the “community”: customers, manufacturers in the supply chain, local authorities in the catchment area of operation. . . . .? There’s plenty of room for experiment.
@David Warren
As a trade union member I find one of the biggest barriers to union democracy and causes of largely unwanted centralisation of power at the top is precisely Thatcher’s reforms (and subsequent ones mainly by later Conservative governments). My own national union has plenty of internal democracy on paper (everyone likes a good 25-candidate STV ballot paper, right?) but nevertheless candidates of all types including those whose instincts are to decentralise find themselves working within a legal framework which enforces hyper-centralisation … while my local branch holds regular meetings and discussions, all-member ballots on the most important issues, and very much has an “everyone should get involved” attitude … but lacks the power to implement all of what it would like without head office’s agreement.
A general simplification of the legal requirements around trade unions to the extent where local branch volunteers could straightforwardly manage them themselves rather than having to rely on a central head office to manage (and pay for!) most of them would do a lot to move the power within TUs out to the members. (All postal ballots with Civica’s de facto monopoly as independent scrutineer being a really obvious one to scrap, of course)
Just to note, for the record, that the tweet in question was deleted following a vote of the LR board.
Suffice to say it was controversial within the LR board as well as outside, and I wish it had been possible to get it taken down faster.
There was a time back in the 1970s where there was a lot wrong with the Trade Union movement. Those on the left of the movement wanted to fulfil a Marxist vision of a workers uprising that would overthrow the state and bring socialism leading to communism. It sounds absurd today, although some Trotskyite groups probably still subscribe to this vision.
This dream all came to an end during the miners strike in 1984 led by NUM president Arthur Scargill, who we now know is openly a supporter of Stalinism, although today he is a harmless recluse. Scargill and his supporters believed that once the Trade Union movement as a whole organise a general strike in support of the miners, that would be it for capitalism. It didn’t happen of course.
A lot of activists on the rights are still hoping to demonise the Trade Union movement today to hark back to the confrontations in the past. But they are the ones who are out of date.
The heavy industries; coal, steel, shipbuilding etc, have all gone. Marxist hopes for a class war leading to socialism have gone with them. The trade union movement today has a lot more general public support. Liberal Reform need to keep up with the times we live in. People are being exploited in the workplace and need the unions to help them.
What concerns me is the confrontational nature of much union activity. Putting workers on boards gives an opportunity for each to learn from the other. Both sides have legitimate concerns and understanding these better is the way forward. What is not acceptable is the huge wage differentials in many areas where those at the lower end of them are taken advantage of. We need effective management and leadership in industry but some of the rewards far outstrip what is reasonable.
Peter, you make an excellent general comment, but improving the situation should surely include workers representatives on the boards of every company and every organisation. In some cases, though, that will include provision of training for the workers reps. I have seen in the public sector, people elected to voice the concerns of the workforce who had little clue and ended up unable to challenge the ruling managers.