[R-G] The UK Mine Workers, HEU, and the battle against privatization

[shniad at sfu.ca]

BC Federation of Labour Convention, November 2003: 

SEMINAR A
SOLIDARITY & BARGAINING

Guest panelist: Carolyn Leckie, Scottish Socialist Party, Scotland

I was asked to talk about solidarity and bargaining and work through the
whole question of privatization. Privatization, in my opinion, is
undoubtedly the biggest threat to solidarity and bargaining that there is.
In describing what privatization is rather than go into a complicated
explanation and analysis of the financial accounting, etc. It can actually
be summed up very easily.

There’s a sketch that quite a famous comedian Thatcherist and impressionist
from Britain did. This sketch involved a man going to the front door and
finding that his car has been stolen from under his nose. A few hours later,
there’s a chap at the back door, the thieves who had stolen his car are
offering to sell it back to him, for dearer than he paid for it in the first
place, but in a lot worst condition than it was a few hours previously. He
said that’s terrible because the thieves don’t even wear a mask and the
police said to him, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do about that, that’s
privatization.”

I do think that it’s important to set the scene for the mass privatization
that happens in Britain. In the 1970s the trade union movement in Britain
was at the absolute peak, strongest ever. Not the biggest, but the strongest
union was the National Union of Mine Workers and they were credited with
bringing down the Tories. When Thatcher came to power, Thatcher the milk
snatcher, she was absolutely determined and planned every step of the way to
take on the miners because she knew that if she defeated the miners, she
defeated the whole trade union movement with them. She set out to get them,
she set out to provoke them. The miners didn’t look for a fight, Thatcher
was spoiling for a fight. She put chess pieces in place, she put McGregor on
the callboard, she put her cronies of big business on the boards of all the
public utilities in Britain, gas, electricity, telecom, everything. She set
all her pieces up, she gave the police, the only public sector workers,
massive pay raises and she set about with the secret services to defeat the
miners. To get a full flavour of the state’s role and the defeat of the
miners, you should read the book called “The Enemy Within”.

There will be no doubt that the state was very heavily involved in that
defeat. One of the tactics that was deployed was to form a rival so-called
union, called the Union of Democratic Mine Workers in North Hampshire and
they were deliberately used to divide and conquer the miners. The response
of the trade union movement was support, absolutely, condemnation,
absolutely, given a number of one day strike, there was solidarity
picketing, flying picketing, it was physical, again provoked by the police
and it was horrendous. There was a media war by Thatcher’s friends, and I’m
sure Gordon Campbell knows them as well, Rupert Murdock, owner of the Sun
newspaper, and other newspapers in Britain, a whole smear campaign that was
directed by the state and by the government to do in the miners.

Unfortunately, the trade union movement, again probably not planning it,
again probably unwillingly, unwittingly, but they were put on at the back
foot. They were frightened at the unprecedented onslaught on workers’
rights. They were falsely reassured by promises from their own employers and
government that their sector and their industry would be okay. And they
thought that by keeping their heads down, that they would be okay.

The defeat of the miners opened up the floodgates for attacks in every
single sector of the economy, driving wages down to the lowest common
denominator, driving up mass unemployment deliberately and no sectors were
safe, with the result that 20 years later, the industrial base of the trade
union movement, the working class movement in Britain had been almost
decimated. Shipbuilding, steel, the mining industry, everything was
absolutely decimated. The public utilities, one after the other were sold
off for private profits. Gas, electricity, telecom, the railways, everything
and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown with derailments in the railway lines,
train crashes, people killed, salmonella outbreaks in hospitals, you name
it, it has happened. It is that experience of absolute disaster, that has
led to situations where the rest are recovery in the trade union movement in
Britain. But it’s been a hard lesson and the solidarity that was automatic
in the 1970s was like, living, breathing and eating and sleeping, you don’t
cross a picket line. You show solidarity. You walk out when your friends
have walked out. You walk out when your neighbours have walked out. That was
automatic in the 1970s and it had to be relearned all over again.

The trade union movement in that time, again because it wants to protect the
members, are faced with a massive onslaught adopted probably more of a
servicing model of trade unionism. Providing services, stepping into the
market in the 1980s of endowment insurance, life insurance, cheap mortgages,
even pet insurance and used that to try to attract members. Completely
missing the point of what a trade union is supposed to be all about. And
those traditions unfortunately were nearly lost altogether. The resistance
has grown under fragmentation that arose out of privatization and
dismantling of collective bargaining because it isn’t universal the recovery
in the trade union movement in Britain. It’s quite patchy, it’s quite uneven
and it’s like two steps forward and one step back.

I do want to tell you about two specific strikes that I’ve been involved in.
I was UNISON branch secretary at the time, representing 5,000 hospital
workers and the midwife of the elected leader representative with a branch
committee of similar views and instincts and principles. We set about
organizing work forces that had been privatized in two hospitals. Again the
trade union movement neglected those new workers that had come in on the
backs of privatization. And the first hospital we targeted there was
probably only about 20 percent union membership in that hospital. We set
about organizing it from the bottom up, and every single ward identifying
people, setting up communication with them, involving them in every day
decision-making, representing them in grievances, representing them in
health and safety and showing by our actions that they could have some
confidence in their trade union. Low-paid women, single parents, etc, slowly
began to have a bit of confidence and concerns about not being able to feed
the children, about not being able to provide for them at Christmas. Why did
we need to organize and why did we need to build for a strike? Because
privatization had taken away their sick pay, their pensions, adjusted their
annual leave entitlement, their overtime rate, everything to the extent that
these workers and there are lots of different methods these big
multinationals use, that was Compass bribery who had taken over two previous
companies that had been privatized.

One of the methods that you use to save money is employment. The same person
on a secondary contract, a third contract, working Monday to Friday on one
contract, working Saturday to Sunday on the other contract, and working the
night shift under a third contract to be able to scrape a living wage which
wasn’t even a living wage because some of them were working 50, 60 and 70
hours a week and barely clearing 200 pounds or $400 a week at that time.
There’s no set pay and one woman just before we started the organizing
campaign, just after I got elected branch secretary, had been going to her
work and attending chemotherapy in the same hospital because she could not
afford to take time off. She worked right up until four weeks before she
died. Too late we did achieve some compensation for her family from Compass,
they were shamed into doing that.

In the first wave of privatization that was contracted out, in the health
service in Scotland and Britain, these contractors entered into with the
health boards and the companies, nobody else sees them so there are no means
of holding them accountable. People on the wards, the nurses, sisters, even
the floor managers don’t know what is supposed to be on the contract. They
don’t know how many times the showers are suppose to be cleaned, they don’t
know how many times the beds are supposed to be filled out, they don’t know
how many times the lockers are supposed to be cleaned, so how can you hold
it accountable? So naturally, quality falls, salmonella outbreaks,
complaints, etc. The health board goes to the companies and says this is a
problem, they haven’t monitored it properly. They aren’t able to fine them
and hold them to account. The company says, you want us to do more, you need
to pay more money.

Over 500 variations to that contract that Compass were negotiated over the
period at the time of the contract. All the time Compass is able to put more
profits in their back pocket, but they don’t employ more people, they put
more pressure on the existing staff to work harder, to do things more often,
to work longer, to take more pressure, to cut corners. They encourage them
to cut corners, so much so, the domestics were having to bring their own
cleaning materials, mop heads, whatever.

One of the variations that was negotiated in the contract was for laundry.
It was for washing laboratory courts. We found out that variation to that
contract, which was no doubt worth a packet to Compass was actually one
supervisor who was supposed to do it, two domestic washing machines and a
patient’s meal table as an ironing board. It was through exposing these
practices and the public through patients, relatives, some friends in media
consistently embarrassing them as well as organizing the workforce that we
were then in a position where we were going to strike action to win back the
sick pay, the overtime, etc. etc. by putting pressure on the NHS board to
kick the private contractors out. Such was the campaign at that stage that
we got to the brink of strike action and Compass caved in. They got their
sector pay, they got their overtime, they got their holidays and six months
later, Compass were marching out of that hospital and the contractors
brought back in house.

But it’s an ongoing battle with Sodexho, another name you might be familiar
with. Sodexho have got to be the most vicious, brittle, conniving, deceitful
multinational I have ever come across. Using captive meetings, intimidation,
bullying, lies, deceits, smears, you name it they use it.

It was a struggle organizing that workforce. This was a demoralized,
disillusioned workforce who had lost confidence in the trade unions,
predominantly women, again working two contracts, different shifts, some of
them working in isolation, they were able to be picked off by supervisors,
really tough battles. Probably we only had only about 10 percent of the
membership when we started, but by the time we had organizing campaigns,
took strike action, we had almost 100 percent of them, predominately women.
That strike was definitely the most challenging and brutal strike that I’ve
been involved in.

This is a multinational company who built the multinational company on the
back of health service privatization in Britain and Europe. They were a
small French company before privatization. They hadn’t been challenged in
Britain before and they were determined that they were going to beat us. How
dare 350 of the most vulnerable down-trodden workers think that they could
take them on.

They mounted all the stops, they mounted a stabbing altercation across the
whole of Britain and indeed Ireland. They flew in managers from every single
corner. They got young workers completely unwittingly on temporary contracts
from army barracks catering contracts from England just outside Newcastle.
They said to them, you’re working in Glasgow today, you need to get on a
bus. Didn’t tell them they were being sent to break a strike. They arrived
on the buses, most curious looking people that you could ever see in a
developed country. We managed to turn away quite a number of those buses. It
got quite physical that strike. We had to conduct a 24-hour picket around 17
entrances. Sodexho pulled out all the stops to get supplies in, to get linen
in, everything. People having to physically obstruct. We had to blockade a
big linen truck. Police were involved. It got really physical. We needed
solidarity from all over.

We broke probably just about every Thatcherist anti-union law in the book,
and we got away with it. And I’ll tell you, it was necessary because if we
had abided by those bad laws, we would not have won. And only five days
later, despite the mobilization of a massive multinational, we went in to
negotiations the day before the next wave of strike action was supposed to
start in the morning. The members were waiting in a meeting and the
electricity put in the hospital for the outcome of that meeting, very good
bargaining strategy. Keep them in the meeting. It wasn’t supposed to be a
strike date, but that’s how it worked. While they’re negotiating under
pressure, I have to say that we were lay members, elected members but
conducting all of our negotiations and everything up to this point. After
time officers arrived at the last minute to try to take over the
negotiations because they thought it needed a professional. The first offer
that was put on the table – he said to me, you’ve won a watch and I said you
can keep the watch. Four offers later with the members still waiting in the
electric theatre for the outcome of the meeting, we did get a deal and we
ran to that electric theatre and the euphoria was tangible and absolutely
amazing and the victory of that was 350 of the lowest paid workers, women,
single parents, defeating a massive multinational in only five days.

And better still, Sodexho weren’t happy. Four of the managers who we had
real confrontations with on those picket lines who were determined they were
scabbing. It was quite funny actually to see them try to push laundry and
all that sort of stuff in their 50,000-100,000 pounds a year jobs and they
didn’t do it very well, which is partly why we won because they didn’t have
a clue. Four of them lost their jobs after that strike because Sodexho
weren’t happy. What we didn’t know was the work we were implementing was an
organizing model of trade unionism. We didn’t give it a name at that time,
we were working on our instincts, we were working on our principles, we were
working on our anger and what we knew to be right. That was the same time
our union was formally adopting the organizing model and trying to move away
from the servicing model of house insurance, pet insurance and whatever sort
of insurance that there is. But I have to say that sort of democracy in
action on the ground, including the physical battles that were necessary and
got me in your border to win that Sodexho strike. It was a wee bit scary for
some and I think that’s definitely a challenge for the trade union movement
in the western world across the whole spectrum. I focused on health and I
focused on our activities. What happens in health through privatization in
Britain was quite gradual in terms of the impact.

Definite employment legislation. I have to say what is being planned here
and what has already happened here since I visited in January, takes my
breath away. I was saying at the rally earlier that Gordon Campbell’s
actions makes Thatcher look like a poodle. Gordon Campbell represents
Margaret Thatcher’s dark side. The concentrated unprecedented nature of
these attacks in a developed capitalist country probably the second most
developed in the whole world or something thereabouts with a wealth that is
dripping off the buildings surrounding us here. To find people having wage
cuts of 30 percent, losing all their benefits, being tossed out into the
street, legislating for 12 year olds to be able to work with a note from
their mother – that’s almost third world. It takes my breath away. And the
scale of those attacks for me represents the scale of the response that must
be necessary to defeat it.

It took us nearly 20 years to recover from their attacks on the miners, to
recover from mistakes that were undoubtedly made. After the benefit of
hindsight, and we’re by no means fully recovered in Britain. Two steps
forward, one step back, it’s uneven and we’ve got a long, long way to go but
we have had to in some instances learn from scratch, how to do it all again.
The solidarity, the instinct, the principles, learn from scratch.

I wish we could go back 20 years and not have to have gone through that
experience, to be in a position now, where we are fighting back but that’s
the way it is. But we’ve won a number of victories, we’ve stopped more
privatization in Scotland, we’ve stopped housing transfers in some areas in
Britain, we have driven out private contractors in the health services in
Scotland by all but two. PPP, PFI, the sentence we have for privatization,
but even within that we’ve won some concessions from the government in that
terms and conditions are protected. That does nothing about the wholesale
transfer of public assets and to the private sector for profits, it does
nothing about the transfer of what were services under democratic control
and the control of multinational corporation, it does nothing about that and
it’s nowhere bad enough but its because of the fightback and the pressure
that we’ve been able to achieve some meagre concessions. PPP and PFI is like
buying your house with a credit card. Just last week and the effect of the
profit margins mean that the revenue costs for PPP and PFI drive down
staffing levels. Edinburgh Oil is a PPP and PFI - staffing levels went down
30 percent as a result of that PPP and PFI in the funding pressures. That
means that patients don’t get the same quality of care. That, in my opinion,
has led to situations a couple of weeks ago where an elderly woman in a ward
that was understaffed, fell out of bed, a new electronic bed, onto the
electronic foot pedal, the bed came down on top of her, crushed her skull
and she died with nobody there to save her. That’s only one death that has
been a direct result of privatization in Britain. There have been many in
the train crashes. There have been many in relation to salmonella outbreaks
because of poor quality food handling through privatization. That is
depressing, but it is possible to defeat them as we have shown.

Sodexho, I’m going to finish on this. It’s clear from my visit here to me
that Sodexho feel able to bare their teeth here. They change like a
chameleon depending on the circumstances that they’re in. They have a
contract in the Scottish Parliament. They feed members of the Scottish
Parliament fairly well. They use it as a lost leader. But as soon as I go
back, I will be making sure that that Parliament knows exactly what Sodexho
is up to even in British Columbia and I will be demanding that that contract
is reviewed and that Sodexho are sent marching from the Scottish Parliament.


I was here in January, visiting HEU members across all of the hospitals in
this area and it saddens me to have met quite a few of them since I came
back here to speak to find that they have lost their jobs or have suffered
wage cuts that have put them back to an hourly wage level of only $1.00 hour
more than they were earning 28 years ago. I am absolutely appalled and I
feel personally involved and there is no doubt in my mind what I said back
in January the way that the Campbell government was targeting HEU that I
thought that HEU was British Columbia’s miners and I do think that HEU
deserves and needs 100 percent solidarity across the board because if HEU
goes down, it’s just the start.

As I said, after the benefit of hindsight and you get the challenge of
having some foresight, your enemy is not always clearly your enemy. You have
to know your enemy and understand your enemy and understand that they are
planning your demise, every minute of every day, every week of every year,
when they’re closing one hospital they’ve got their eye on the next target.
They’re planning their strategies for however many different angles and
that’s exactly what is necessary to defeat them. Always two steps ahead,
always planning the next strategy, standing up and fighting and recognizing
when the line has been drawn and sticking to your guns. Somebody once said
if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything and I think that
is applicable to us all.

It’s been an absolute privilege and an honour to have been asked to come and
speak to you. I don’t have solutions, I do have a wee bit of more experience
and I have a bit of determination that I do hope to convey and I will take
my experience through speaking to you and your solidarity, your enthusiasm,
your determination, the unbelievable self-confidence that certainly
definitely from the Scottish society, that I’ve encountered here. I will
take that back and I’ve learned loads of lessons from you because we have
got a lot to do back home and I hope that we continue to speak to each
other, to help each other and I wish you all the very best in defeating the
brutal cuts and attacks by people who are no less that murderers sitting in
that BC government. All the very best. It is you I see such power out here,
it is you and your members in every workplace and in your communities, every
train passenger, every horsebook person, every relative, you need to
understand the scale of this fight and I’m sure they will and you people in
here are the people who can mobilize them, who can organize them to win.
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