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It was apt that Sir Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, staged his Labour government’s December ‘relaunch’ at Pinewood Studios, where the old comedy ‘Carry On’ movies were filmed. Starmer was hoping to breathe new life into his fledgling administration after finding the first period of office to be, to say the least, pretty challenging.
But it is clear that what isn’t going to change is his ‘partnership’ agenda, aiming to bring together the unions with the employers and Starmer’s government. This was the big idea that Starmer announced at September’s Trades Union Congress (TUC). The ‘P’ word littered his speech to delegates, alongside warnings of difficult choices that he and his chancellor Rachel Reeves would have to make. These were soon outlined in Labour’s first Budget at the end of October, which set the scene for the continuation of Tory austerity.
This is the context of Starmer’s appeal for partnership. As The Socialist warned after the TUC: “Starmer is clear: he accepts the limitations of the sick state of British capitalism, including Tory spending plans, and is trying to neuter the workers’ movement by advocating partnership between unions and rabid big-business bosses.”
Strike wave
After 14 years of brutal Tory austerity and the escalation of anti-union legislation, the gap between rich and poor has soared to historic levels. This was one of the spurs of the 2022-24 strike wave, the highest level of sustained industrial action over three decades. Yet Starmer and his supporting union leaders talk about ‘shared interests’ with so-called ‘reasonable employers’.
The first sign of this partnership agenda is the ‘Improving Education Together’ (IET) joint agreement between education unions and employers, which includes academy trusts. The first meeting of the IET ‘board’ was publicly announced on 20 January.
Socialist Party members on the National Education Union (NEU) Executive and our allies were alone in voting against this proposal at the November meeting (see article opposite).
This wasn’t because we are opposed to collective bargaining procedures and meetings. Quite the contrary, we fight for the ability of unions to bargain and negotiate with the employers, as long as they retain their independence.
The NEU leadership has hailed the IET as restoring collective bargaining to education. However, in fact it enshrines partnership, embroiling unions in the developing and recommending of proposals. A point made very clear in a statement published by the leadership of the NASUWT teaching union, welcoming the IET and describing it as “a milestone in developing an approach to improving education that is based on government, employers and trade unions working together in partnership”.
Not bargaining but partnership
In the very first part, it says: “We will come together to agree policy proposals that will draw on all of our disparate perspectives to improve education for all.” This principle is spelled out further in the document:
Maintain privacy and confidentiality of what is shared under the terms of the agreement, while supporting transparency and engagement,
Take collaborative, constructive, and consensual approach to co-determine goals that all members of their IET board can support and promote,
Achieve consensus wherever possible in making recommendations and implementing policies that further those goals in order that all members of their IET board can support and promote the outcomes,
Take responsibility for ensuring that consensus positions have regard to empirical evidence wherever possible, and
Agree to disagree where necessary and seek to resolve tensions without undermining the work of their IET board(s).
No shared interest
But how is it possible to have shared interests or ‘resolve tensions’ with employers who have a diametrically opposed view of education and how workers are treated – such as the vicious academy trusts, which sit outside of any democratic accountability and control?
Teachers and education staff have far more in common with their students, yet they aren’t represented in the IET. They face the prospect of increased tuition fees from Starmer’s government.
While union leaders will argue that the IET doesn’t include – at this stage at least – pay, pensions and contracts, it is nonetheless designed to develop a collaborative relationship with employers, losing a big part of union independence to shared responsibility.
The government wants the IET to set the precedent for other sectors. There have already been examples of attempts to form partnership agreements, both historic and current.
Starmer’s agenda follows on from the social partnership model that was brought in by the Welsh Labour government. And the Labour government of 1974-79 instituted the ‘Social Contract’ in agreement with the TUC.
Also, during the Covid pandemic, a whole number of union leaders, including some who claimed to be on the left, capitulated to the idea that there was a ‘national unity’ of interest with the bosses and Boris Johnson’s Tory government. Socialist Party members on union national executives stood out, often alone, against this pressure.
Limits
But the 1970s Social Contract also showed the limitations of partnership, as the ‘incomes policy’ of wage restraint at a time of high inflation couldn’t maintain industrial peace. It was challenged and ultimately defeated by workers’ struggle, including in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79. And in Wales, notwithstanding social partnership, workers took action during the recent strike wave.
In reality, both these instances didn’t involve legally binding procedures and agreements or no-strike limitations, but they were used by the union leaders to subordinate themselves, in order to engender and justify a partnership approach, at the expense of workers.
Labour try to neuter unions
And the bases for these agreements show what Starmer’s objectives are now. Social partnership in Wales is an attempt to sign up unions to Labour-imposed austerity, rather than challenging the cuts of Tory and now Starmer’s Labour from Westminster. The 1970s Social Contract was designed to make workers pay for the first major post-war economic crisis.
Just days after the NEU exec agreed to partnership, the Labour government announced an insulting 2.8% pay increase for teachers. So much for ‘shared interests’.
Starmer and Reeves have set out the spending straitjacket for their government, dutifully adhering to the limits afforded by crisis-ridden British capitalism. They want to neuter the independence of the unions and their power to take action, which has been shown so effectivity over the last three years.
Therefore, any attempt to build such partnership must be opposed and fought, defending the right of unions to act independently of the employers and the government.
However, as the workers have shown historically, while social partnership would represent an unnecessary barrier for workers to overcome, it will not stop workers’ struggle, particularly at a time of crisis. That is why it is vital that union members fight for the leadership of their respective unions, making the upcoming elections across a number of unions even more important.
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