Introduction
The
Covid-19 pandemic is the latest crisis to expose western economic and
social orthodoxies as wholly inadequate for meeting modern global
challenges which also include climate change, poverty, war and the
mass displacement of people. In the UK, massive state intervention
has been necessary, not least to ameliorate some of the effects of 40
years of austerity which intensified following the 2008 global
financial crash. Our population has been exposed, not just to a
deadly virus, but also to the importance of key - previously
undervalued - workers (producers) and the impotence of markets.
The
government’s initial laissez-fair response which sought to develop
a Darwinian “herd immunity” has been forced to evolve quickly,
take heed of progressive voices such as the TUC and now includes
measures to underwrite the incomes of tens of millions of people –
not out of benevolence but in order to maintain consumer demand and
the stability of financial institutions in the short-term.
When
organs of monopoly capital such as the Financial Times1
begin speculating about a post-pandemic economy requiring “radical
reform” in which “public services [are] investments rather than
liabilities… [when we must] look for ways to make labour markets
less insecure” and “redistribution” is necessary, it becomes
obvious that conditions are ripe for fundamental change. Things
probably will never be the same again but our movement needs to be
clear that minor reforms do not represent the sum total of our
ambitions – even if, in the early days of an anticipated backlash
or intensified class conflict, they appear to represent a welcome
alternative to the default prospect of a period of much longer and
much harsher austerity.
Aims
for a post-pandemic consensus
Many
workplaces, from hospitals to warehouses, supermarkets to schools and
mail depots to care homes are unable any longer to be managed through
a system of strict command and control. Workplace pluralism has
broken out and is now recognised as necessary to optimise
organisational efficiency and safety which is essential for the
effectiveness of the public response to a national crisis and
represents an opportunity for a renaissance of trade union activity.
Taking
the existing provisions of the TUC
Campaign Plan,
Charter
for a new deal for working people
and considering the spirit behind the motions submitted to the
postponed 2020 Annual Conference of the TUC North West, the Executive
Group has considered the appropriate immediate tasks. These assume
that the TUC and affiliated unions will form a functional part of the
interventions required from civic society if we are to emerge from
the Covid-19 pandemic with a renewed relevance and appetite to
deliver progress for the people we represent:
A
stronger voice at work
The producers in the economy have
assumed a new significance and found renewed respect throughout the
public health crisis. Medical and social care professions, shop and
distribution workers, engineers and other workers in the fields of
education, communications, sanitation and transport; public sector
employees engaged in welfare, justice, housing, social work and
beyond; and thousands of other jobs and vocations which were
previously undervalued at best or exploited, and even demonised at
worst, but are now held in higher regard by society at large. Their
workplace voice is being heard more clearly and with more confidence
than at any time since the peak of collective bargaining influence in
the mid-1970s with examples including the demands for personal
protective equipment in hospitals, the practical and academic
arrangements for schools to remain open for those who need them but
closed for the majority of students and the social distancing regimes
which are now routine in factories, depots, warehouses and shops.
Going forward, a recalibrated industrial
balance tipped in our favour is essential; backed up with a range of
new and legally enforceable, collective workplace rights to secure
effective mechanisms for regulating relations between workers and
employers of any size. International Labour Organisation conventions
and publications such as the Institute
of Employment Rights’ Guide to a Progressive Industrial Relations
Bill provide a
template for such an initiative to be progressed by the TUC and
supportive organisations, consistent with existing policy and in
conjunction with affiliates.
Employment,
security and flexible working
The lockdown announced on 23 March has
exposed a range of inefficiencies in traditional ways of working and
forced a reconsideration of how technology can assist workers rather
than be used to replace them. Video conferencing and digital
communications have become commonplace and have replaced physical
meetings - saving time, stress and significant levels of pollution
from unnecessary travel on congested transport networks.
The process of “furloughing” (Job
Retention Scheme), introduced in no small part as a product of TUC
lobbying, challenges a whole plethora of assumptions about the role
of the state and its relationship with industry, incomes policy, the
markets and maintenance of some sort of temporary order in the wider
economy. Moreover, the scandal of precarious employment, bogus
self-employment and casualisation more generally, now needs to force
a fundamental re-think about job security – not least because as
many as 11 million workers are expected to fall between the gaps in
the government’s emergency provisions.
Globalisation and global markets have
proven unable to provide an adequate response to the crisis, as
exemplified by the absence of a domestic manufacturing sector capable
of responding as quickly and effectively as required, for example, to
produce medical ventilators, clinical gowns, masks and other types of
PPE. With UK business investment2
and productivity3
continuing to decline and global debt to GDP at historic levels4,
the recovery from the crisis requires significant state intervention,
specifically in respect of long-term domestic industrial development,
research, skills and job creation, including new Green Jobs, towards
a policy of full employment.
Flexible working and home-working have
proven effective in ways that employers might not have previously
thought possible and, with a few exceptions, unions have been able to
secure pragmatic agreements on the use of discipline, capability,
performance management, redundancy consultation and other Human
Resource Management initiatives during the crisis. This reorientation
needs to be secured after the crisis subsides with a transformation
of management techniques and practices which are leveraged by
confident workers with a better understanding of industrial
relations.
Welfare,
tax and public services
The fragility of social care provision
has been brought into even sharper focus throughout the crisis –
not least in respect of the lack of coordination around the provision
of Personal Protective Equipment for an enormously undervalued group
of professional Carers. Though just one example of the failure of
market provision, this can provide the basis for a popular campaign
of nationalisation and insourcing of a wide range services which have
been removed from democratic control since the post-war consensus
made way for neo-liberalism in the 1970’s but which have been
demonstrated to be essential for societies to thrive and in reducing
inequality.
This requires a new way of thinking
about who contributes to society and how those contributions are
valued. Hedge-fund managers and financiers were nowhere near the top
of the list of “key workers” as identified by the government5
but to ensure that all citizens and corporations meet their social
responsibility obligations it is necessary to re-evaluate how taxes
on high salaries, profits and accumulated assets can contribute to a
transformational programme of societal and economic reform. Such a
programme does of course require sufficient numbers of trained staff
to collect tax owed and circumvent domestic and international
loopholes which currently allow and facilitate large-scale tax
avoidance and evasion.
Reforms of the type described can
provide a solid basis for root-and-branch social security reform in
the interests of families; sick, disabled or retired workers and the
professional staff who care for them.
Safe,
satisfying and dignified work
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