TRADE UNIONISM
RESTRICTIVE PRACTISES
An ex-member of our Party once said
that we had an attitude to things but not a policy. He was expressing
a similar idea to those who say that we make comprehensive
generalisations but stumble over details. There is much truth in
that.
To reason from the particular to the
general is faulty. To generalise and ignore the particular is worse.
Those who see the wood but not the trees are just as handicapped as
those who cannot see the wood for the trees.
On our broad generalisations—on our
attitude to institutions and events—we are mostly agreed. It is
when we come to define the limits and the details that we start to
argue. It is simple to say to a fellow worker, " Along this
path, brother, lies the way, and the only way to your emancipation."
It is not so simple to explain to him how to overcome the many
obstacles that lie in that path.
We can say quite boldly, and in
concert, as we said in the July, 1952, issue of the S.S., " We
support Trade Union activity that is genuinely in the interests of
the working class." When we are called upon to define whether a
certain line of activity is genuinely in the interest of the working
class we get at loggerheads.
During the past few years we have
heatedly debated such issues as, the closed shop; craft, trade, or
industrial organisation; the political levy; breakaway unions;
restrictive practices, and others. The 1951 London bus strike over
the employment of women conductors gave impetus to the arguments over
restrictive practices. It is still one of the best examples to use in
these discussions.
Capitalism is a competitive system.
Capitalist competes with capitalist to capture and to keep markets.
Worker must compete with worker to get and to hold a job. No matter
how comradely the workers may be, capitalism forces them to push and
jostle one another in the struggle to get a living. The competition
does not cease when the worker gets a job, he must still compete to
keep it. He also needs to guard his wage rates and working
conditions, which usually means that he must get into a Trade Union
and continue the pushing and jostling in an organised manner. Out of
this come the so-called restrictive practices that some members of
the Party condemn as not being in the interest of the workers and
claim, in consequence, that the workers should not indulge in them.
We recognise that the competitive
struggle amongst workers for a limited number of jobs is a result of
the capitalist system. To tell them to give up struggling amongst
themselves is equivalent to telling some of them to resign themselves
to hunger and unemployment. Capitalism will not be destroyed that
way. As soon as a worker gets a job and takes competitive steps to
keep it, it would seem that he is acting in a manner detrimental to
his class interests.
I claim that if workers make no effort
to resist dilution and if they allow employers to move other workers
into jobs just as and when it suits the employers, they will not only
sacrifice the wage levels and working conditions of the particular
job concerned, but they will also help to reduce the general wage
level of the working class as a whole. That certainly cannot be
claimed to be in the interests of the working class.
It has always been our case that
variations in supply and demand cause fluctuations in prices and we
do not exempt the price of labour-power. Following from this we argue
that it is invariably a bad time to make wage increase demands when
there is considerable unemployment. The supply of labour-power
exceeds the demand and the tendency is to press wages down. Workers
in some jobs resist the easy importation of other workers because
they know that the employers' object is to keep wage rates low or
force them lower. No harm is caused to working class interests by
this resistance. On the contrary, without some resistance the
employers could, by astute manoeuvring of the reserve army of
labourers between one job and another, even between one country and
another, could depress the general level of workers living standards
to the detriment of the whole class.
It is in that light that the 1951 bus
strike must be regarded. We can dismiss the superficial idea that
busmen opposed
the entrance of women into the
passenger transport industry purely out: of an anti-feminist bias.
London busmen, like all workers, but more so than most, were
suffering a wage reduction, not by having their pay reduced, but by
having their living costs increased without a corresponding increase
in their pay. They were trying to resist this wage decrease. The
London Transport Executive was short of staff and the bus men
considered, having a mind to the supply and demand factor, that the
time was favourable to, at least, maintain their real wage by seeking
an increase in pay. If the L.T.E. had not wished to force wage rates
down, it could have increased the weekly pay, thus attracting more
workers to the industry land solving the staff shortage problem. But
the L.T.E. chose to draw from the reserve army of female labourers at
a real wage that was daily declining, with the obvious intention of
keeping the level of money wages paid constant whilsl the cost of
living soared higher and higher.
Once the L.T.E. was allowed to draw on
this reserve army, the favourable position of demand exceeding supply
was lost to the London busmen. So they said, in effect, to the
L.T.E., Restore the wage decrease that we have suffered by paying us
an additional £1 a week and then you can employ as many women as you
please, but, if we do not get that £1 a week, we will resist the
employment of any more women in the industry. That, we are told by
some Party members, is a restrictive practice. I consider that it was
a very sensible practice and one which, had it been successful in its
object (it was sabotaged by the Busmen's Union), would have been in
the interests of busmen, of the women who could eventually become,
conductors of a higher rate of pay, and of the working class in
general.
It is not beyond the bounds of
possibility that female bus conductors will, in time, completely
replace the men conductors, leaving the men to wander off in search
of other employment, and, possibly, to be rounded up and used by some
other employer in the same manner that the L.T.E. is using the women,
to the detriment of other workers' pay and conditions. So the
process can go on.
I know that if the working class was
class-conscious it would not tolerate such things. But workers can
only stop these things from happening by abolishing capitalism. Until
they do that they must protect themselves from the the capitalist
class even at the expense of shoving one another about. We shall not
be assisting them by telling them not to compete with one another
whilst they still accept wage labour, any more than the pacifists
assist them by telling them to refuse to fight in war-time whilst
they are still imbued with nationalist ideas.
I make no defence of any line of
working class action that sets out purposely to harm or hinder some
other section of the working class. But, any action aimed at
resisting or opposing the capitalist class, even though it may result
in a temporary disadvantage to some other section of the working
class, that action I will invariably support. In a class war of this
nature a sectional gain by one side can be considered a gain to the
side as a whole. Nothing is lost if, in advancing one section,
another section is kept at a standstill. It has been argued that the
workers can strike in support of their demands instead of employing
these restrictive practices. The strike is a double-edged weapon,
both costly and dangerous. Very sensibly, workers only resort to it
when other avenues have failed. Even where strike action is
contemplated it would be foolish to welcome dilutees into an
industry, under the conditions of the London busmen's example,
immediately before the time of the proposed strike. Dilutees are
usually non-union elements and it takes time to organise them. Once
they are admitted to an industry, as the women were admitted to the
passenger transport industry, they arc a danger to any attempted
strike action until they are organised and have the sa.me outlook as
the older workers in the industry. Having but recently obtained the
job they are opposed to losing any working time and will usually vote
against strike action. With that outlook they are, of course,
potential blacklegs and a menace to strikers.
To generalise on restrictive practices
and say that they are harmful to working class interests, then to
stretch the generalisation to cover every issue that
arises, gives rise to the claim that we
have an attitude to things but not a policy. It makes us look a bit
sheepish when we are called upon to define our position in relation
to some particular issue and we can only reiterate our
generalisation, -frequently knowing, even though vaguely, that it
does not suit the case in court.
There is one argument advanced against
my point of view that I think is nonsensical. It is claimed that this
competitive pushing, jostling and shoving amongst the workers
prevents them from clearly seeing their common class interests.
Workers do not compete with one another with anything like the same
ferocity that capitalists do. But does the spiteful unscrupulous
competition within the capitalist class prevent the capitalists from
recognising their class interests? Class consciousness can grow
amongst the workers out of a loathing for the system that makes them
push one another around.
W. WATERS.
