Good for the left. Really, really bad for the UK. This is why the left has not had a sniff of power for a generation, and why it won’t ever again. Thanks, Dave for reminding us what a useless, spiteful, counterproductive bunch of gits the Trades union movement contains.

I can’t see this tactic winning many friends.

“I can’t see the tactic winning many friends”

Probably because the Thatcherite social settlement has shifted the terms of reference themselves so far to the right – and in favour of capital over labour – that any debate on this subject is riven by an assumption that organised labour is automatically bad.

Me, I have another thought. Namely, that ownership of the means of production and the power that confers in a society are incredibly important.

Then I have another thought: why is it so acceptable for a small group of financier, business-owners, lawyers and amenable politicians – namely, the forces that control capital – to have so much power, when the forces of labour – represented by organised trades unions – have so little?

Does it not strike people as a thoroughly dangerous – and slightly perverse – situation that power and ownsership of the means of production of the economy itself is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, protected by law and public opinion? For I’m not at all convined that this tiny minority acts in the interests of anybody but itself.

Let me stress: I am not a marxist. But I believe there’s an awful lot to the basic marxist analysis of the competing forces of capital and labour. I think those two need to be balanced if society is to be fair and stable. At present, those forces are not balanced in the right way.

(To head off an objection, the balance may well have been wrong in the 1970s, with labour – i.e. the unions – having too much power. But the pendulum has swung a long, long way since then).

While I can see that there can be an argument for strikes when all other avenues have been exhausted, I find illegal occupations to be harder to understand.

Especially when directed at a company that is about to close down.

Just what do they think will happen – that the management will suddenly find a couple of unpaid invoices and some extra unknown orders for wind turbines down the back of the proverbial sofa and save the factory?

The place is closing down – occupying the building wont change that. Probably just accelerate the process.

And then successive Tory governments launched a premeditated offensive that largely smashed trade unionism as a meaningful force in a series of key sectors

1) Did successive Tory governments largely smash private sector trade unionism? Yes, they did.

2) Was it this which killed workplace occupation in the private industrial sector? Debatable. The heyday of this kind of activity was the early-to-mid 1970s; by the late 1970s it had died down somewhat on the grounds that we were all economically utterly buggered anyway, and so ‘sharing the rewards of production between labour and capital’ was no longer the point. As Ian@4 says, if your employer’s going bust anyway, then they’re unlikely to give you a pay rise.

One of the reasons it’s a terrible shame Mrs Thatcher won in 1979 was because by that point, the Callaghan government was also taking steps to moderate union excesses – but would have done so without utterly ripping them to pieces.

Remember, these people are not Trots, Marxists, Maoists or anything else, they are just a workforce who are sick of being shat on, why is that so difficult to understand? As the OP says this isn’t some kind of tatic sprung onto an unsucspecting factory owners. This has been done out of sheer frustration and fear of losing their livelyhood and are forced to employ a desperate measure because no-one else will help them. Capital has spoken and the jobs are being relocated to a Country where workers have more protection.

What else can they do? No-one else will lift a finger to save their jobs. What are their options? Don’t get me wrong, of course it is going to fail, but at least these guys have balls.

This is bad for the Left as it shows up the entire weakness throughout the movement.

“Probably because the Thatcherite social settlement has shifted the terms of reference themselves so far to the right – and in favour of capital over labour – that any debate on this subject is riven by an assumption that organised labour is automatically bad.”

Alternatively it may be that people find such behaviour to be a nuisance – l myself get very cheesed off when tube workers are on strike.

David Osler. Just as the need for super tankers and large bulk carriers was taking off, Upper Clyde Ship Builders went on strike which finalised the move of shipbuilding to Japan. Tanker construction also moved to Germany. New techniques in ship design and construction enabled tankers to be increased in size from 50,000T to 500,000T . The risk to the tankers from going through the Suez Canal ( post 6 Day War) meant they had to travel via Soth Africa which increased costs. By constructing 500,000T ships costs were reduced making the trip via South Africa econmic. Super tankers and bulk carriers were the cheapest way of importing raw materials into Japan to supply it’s booming economy.

Once again, the left , ever ignorant of changing technologies,economic and political developments in the rest of the World, happily knocked nails into the coffin of British industry. Many of the strikes were demarcation ones i.e between unions. The best one I heard was two two unions, one dealt with metal , teh other worked with wood. The technique to mark a steel plate for cutting was to chalk a length of string to two wooden pegs and then ping it against the metal leaving a white line. The dispute wa between the two unios as to whether the metal working or wood working unions should ping the string against the steel plate.

When the left can develop an area such as Silicon Valley , providing well paid jobs, then it will prove to be of benefit to society. So if the Left claims to be able to run industry better, let it try- set up high tech organisations /companies and compete with Microsoft, Apple, Audi, BMW, Sony, Toyota , Nokia, Rolls Royce Aero Engines etc, etc .

Is it good for the left?
Who cares?

Is it good for the workers themselves?
Well…that depends.

You know technology progresses and tastes change, so some industries and some companies will disappear, and the amount of labour required to produce any given output will fall over time.
This is known as progress.
It is why we are not all still working on the land, and why the buggy whip industry is no more.

The market is generally better at getting this process right than central planning.
(Note: better, not perfect. But history suggests far, far better.)

But there are obviously costs to those who for a period lose out.
These need to be mitigated.

But somehow “seizing” the means of production for the products of which there is falling demand and which can be produced better or more cheaply elsewhere…that is not a recipe for long term success.

@8
“So if the Left claims to be able to run industry better, let it try- set up high tech organisations /companies and compete with Microsoft, Apple, Audi, BMW, Sony, Toyota , Nokia, Rolls Royce Aero Engines etc, etc.”
Stop it, you’re killing me!

To take only two of your examples, Microsoft exists as it does only because its former CEO’s parents were product lawyers for IBM and were able to persuade IBM to take their son’s company’s product (itself a bastardised version of a product bought in from the Seattle Computer Company) over the standard Digital Research CP/M for the first IBM PC. And as for Rolls-Royce Aero Engines, you are aware that the only reason they still exist was because they were nationalised by Ted Heath’s government in 1971?

10. Blue pillnation. If the left know to do a better job, let them get on with it; what stopping them?

@12
The thing I’m loving is that you’re assuming that because these are private corporations, they must be of the right. The other thing I’m loving is that all of the corporations you’re mentioning, bar maybe a couple have taken government work and grants in the past, so if you’re assumnig that all private ventures are of the right and all government ventures are of the left, then the left have been “doing a better job” working with those corporations already.

In the case of Rolls-Royce, without government intervention there would have been no RB211, which means no global market dominance with Boeing’s 757, no RR-engined 747s for BA, and no Trents on the 777 or A380. Sometimes private industry alone just can’t cut it, and a lot of successful corporations have got where they are by not playing fair. The main problem with Tories and Libertarians when it comes to business is that they fail to acknowledge that fact, because to do so openly would hole their entire economic philosophy below the waterline.

Well I remember in the early 80s, a SOGAT boss in Scotland giving a factory owner a hard time telling him the workers owned his factory. The guy pulled the keys fro his jacket, threw them on the table and said ‘right you pay their wages’ and walked out.

It took all of 15 seconds for the SOGAT people to run out and beg the guy to come back. Reality bites.

Jimbo at #6 is spot on. Frankly the far-left isn’t strong enough to be able to provoke/organise these kinds of occupations; this is coming from the workers themselves. The problem is that the left doesn’t have very much in terms of influence or organisation to help transform these struggles into a genuine struggle for control over production. We can hope, but I doubt we’ll be able to do much more than flag up the situations and offer micro-targetted support to workers involved.

@6: “Don’t get me wrong, of course it is going to fail, but at least these guys have balls.”

We have a word for that. Pointless. Perhaps they could prove their cojones on their own property.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8628034

Kentron @15

What you mean like the fuel protesters? Driving up and down the M6 holding everyone else back? What about haulage firms who re-introduced illegal secondary picketing of oil refineries. Perhaps they should have stuck to their own yards.

Thatcher had her Calvary charge picketing miners and froze the union funds? Would you have supported similar actions against fuel protesters?

Shared ownership of the means of production – by which I mean ownership by the workers immediately involved, not the State, which is no less alienating and exploitative – is a necessary but not sufficient condition for socialism.

There has to be a devolution of power at every level. An expansion of involvement in politics at the local level will increase the expectation that workers should also have a democratic stake in the work place just as they should outside of work.

The idea that you should suspend your democratic rights at the office or factory doorstep should be an affront to anyone on the Left but nobody will demand those rights at work while they are so jaded with politics outside it.

Good luck to those who sieze the means of production and their micro-socialist enterprises in the meantime: everyone loves a pirate. They are a challenge to state socialism as much to capitalism. They’re a template for true revolution.

I don’t know which saddens me most – those who support the Tories against their self interest or those who knock the workers because of their self interest.

But – I must say that it won’t be a dumb shop steward who will organise workers – it will be workers themselves. As unions stand, mostly, at the minute they seem to me, just to be about the politics of it all.

What is the salaries of the top union men/women?

There are other reasons why people don’t join unions other than their boss saying they can’t.

Thatcher had her Calvary charge picketing miners and froze the union funds? Would you have supported similar actions against fuel protesters?

Damn right, far more deserved than against the miners. Note that in the 1970s blockades, hauliers and especially tanker drivers were at the forefront of those protests… they just knew when it was time to switch sides.

Asquith – I raise you@ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/13/explosive_redundancy_demand/

Good article Dave.

@18: “What you mean like the fuel protesters? Driving up and down the M6 holding everyone else back? What about haulage firms who re-introduced illegal secondary picketing of oil refineries. Perhaps they should have stuck to their own yards.”

Perhaps they should have. There are some good reasons to go on strike, but a Government fulfilling a manifesto pledge to introduce a fuel duty escalator (which, imo, it should have stuck to) isn’t one of them.

“Thatcher had her Calvary charge picketing miners and froze the union funds? Would you have supported similar actions against fuel protesters?”

I doubt that a moving juggernaut has much to fear from a horse.

Rather than pointless and counterproductive strikes and occupations, why don’t trade unions and other worker groups offer to buy out workplaces threatened with closure, and run it themselves. Surely this is a more constuctive way for workers to control their own workplace than simply demanding that someone elses money is taken from them to subsidise their employment.

@24 hard to deal with IP rights though. It could work for a cement factory, but for someone like Vestas the value is added mostly by the people who invented the turbines (200 of whom will remain employed on the Isle of Wight site), not by manufacturing labour or even the factory’s capital. I can’t see the parent company being mad-keen to license the technology, nor a reason why they should be forced to.

I can’t see the point of the Prisme sit-in. The company is bust; there’s no money; it’s got no reputation to save; the workers aren’t being paid redundancy because there isn’t any cash. Utterly shit for them, but there *aren’t any* bosses to persuade.

For Visteon, the former company is high enough profile (and through its Ford connections, still linked by brand to someone who needs public support) that there’s a chance of better compo or even jobs being saved, so a sit-in makes sense.

Vestas is a bit different. It’s closing its UK site because turbines need to be built near where they’re used, they thought we’d be buying lots, but we aren’t. So the company’s actions aren’t exactly equivalent to what went on at Total (c’mon, if you’re doing something because it’s green, kicking off by shipping it from the IoW to the US or China is hardly a win), and there’s no suggestion they’ll be unable to pay proper redundancy.

However, the fact that the complete failure of anyone to invest in alternative energy is the cause of the closure could just about imply some chance of shaming the government into action… hopefully the kind that involves committing to buy some turbines rather than MG Rover-style sticking up cash that gets wasted because the underlying business still doesn’t stack up.

“Shared ownership of the means of production – by which I mean ownership by the workers immediately involved, not the State, which is no less alienating and exploitative – is a necessary but not sufficient condition for socialism.”

Sounds like syndicalism to me :p.

‘Soundslike syndicalism to me :p.’

Very much so. There’s certain provision – such as welfare and the health service – which requires State intervention but the idea that socialism requires micro-management by a centralised State is dead in the water.

The choice isn’t just between capitalism and State socialism, or even a Keynesian compromise, it’s about freedom from exploitation AND coercion.

Syndicalism allows self-determinism without exploitation but also market led drives towards efficiency prevented by state monopolies.

They’ve been sacked.

I believe the responses to industrial disputes generally fall into one of four broad groups. I can’t see many reasons for regularly holding position D beyond than Panglossian optimism, and C I will return to.

A) Management right, workers wrong.
B) Management wrong, workers right.
C) Management wrong, workers wrong.
D) Management right, workers right.

Both the right and the left will paint industrial disputes entirely as positions A and B respectively. For the right, any mention of “perhaps we should listen to these workers?” provokes an immediate accusation of dirty Communism, involving a hatred of anyone with the drive and talent to build up an enterprise. For the left, any mention of “perhaps the management have a point?” provokes an immediate accusation of dirty Capitalism/Corporatism, involving a hatred of the deserving proletariat.

Of course, both accusations require a deft bit of trickery: zero-sum theory. This posits that, if you support one side in any way, you must by definition detract from the other as the two are wholly and inherently opposite. For example, anyone who says “maybe the Palestinians have a point?” is automatically anti-Semitic, and anyone who says “maybe the Israelis have a point?” is automatically anti-Arab. This zero-sum thesis suits both sides, forcing anyone with an opinion beyond absolute ambivalence to ‘pick a side’. One could question the accuracy of zero-sum thinking, but neither side is interested in such nuance.

Personally, in most industrial disputes I examine, the most logical option is “A plague o’ both your houses”, i.e. C. Generally both sides are at fault, and lack the willingness to compromise which would save the situation for all. Of course, holding this position on a left- or right- leaning blog will see you flamed to high heaven; exactly the same view tarring you as an extreme Communist or Corporatist on different sites. But, after all, sometimes it’s worth taking the road less traveled.

Vauxhall, Cammell Laird, Massey Ferguson, Hawker-Siddeley, Plessey, Fisher-Bendix, British Leyland, Imperial Typewriters, Linpac Plastics and Coles Cranes

Can’t understand why the workplace occupation of Imperial Typewriters would have failed to resurrect the business.

Any ideas?