123. THOUGHTS ON STRIKING - Why We Need More Striking, Not Less

This week England has experienced rail strikes as the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) voted overwhelmingly to strike over jobs, pay and conditions. June 21st, 23rd and 25th saw RMT members withheld their labour over threats to the jobs and disputes about pay and conditions in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Inevitably media discussion focused on the disruption the strikes would - and did - cause. They alluded to future further disruption as teachers and other public service workers seek to ballot union members soon on similar strike actions over their own jobs, pay and conditions. And fears of disruption spread further, beyond the public sector, as British Airways workers at Heathrow also voted for impending industrial action. By Thursday, on BBC Question Time, some carefully selected members of the public were not only furious about the disruption, but were suggesting that demanding job security and better pay and conditions in 2022 was an archaic notion. Across websites, papers and television, workers in all sorts of industries bragged about their own exploitation - low pay, precarious employment, poor conditions - and declared their lack of striking under such circumstances as some sort of badge of honour. The implication that closed railways were costing others in inconvenience, frustration, and even access to their own work was never far from any public discussion about the RMT action.

As philosophers we can smell fallacious argument a mile off. We know an ad hominem attack when we see one, attacking the person (or people) rather than the actual idea. When it comes to discourse around striking in this country, it seems that fallacy and fear-mongering abound. And I would suggest that if you can’t counter the actual arguments of the unions you should be supporting their strikes, maybe even joining them, rather than complaining about them or attacking their industrial action.

Let’s start with disruption. Disruption is the entire point of a strike. A strike marks the moment that negotiation has broken down and an employer is attempting to make people work in conditions, or for levels of pay, that they no longer feel are reasonable. In such negotiations employers hold the advantage of power - the suggestion that if YOU don’t want to work for that pay in those conditions, someone else might. The threat of job loss. Job loss is also the threat that might lead to strikes of solidarity: the condition of precarious employment and unfair dismissal being one in which the rest of us refuse to work. Until a strike is called, the disputed conditions prevail and workers have no choice but to exist within the circumstances they are trying to change. It is a show of their good willing that they continue to offer their labour even in conditions they find unsatisfactory in an attempt to find a non-disruptive solution. The strike symbolises the moment workers feel they are not being listened to and they can see that the pay and/or conditions are unlikely to change so long as they continue to offer their services on the terms they are opposing. By withdrawing their labour they are attempting to demonstrate their worth. Recognising what it is that they do by taking their labour away, albeit temporarily, is a tactic meant to cause disruption precisely because if many of us are disrupted by their refusal to work it shows their value to their employers. Rutger Bregman, in his book Utopia for Realists, reminds us of the Irish bankers strike of 1970. For six months bankers took industrial action over their own pay and no-one really cared. It turned out banks aren’t that essential and by withdrawing their labour, the banking industry demonstrated their value: there isn’t much. The lack of disruption to the lives of most Irish people in the absence of banks was exactly what led the bankers to eventually go back to work and accepting the strike had been unsuccessful. Compare that with the widespread disruption caused by just three days without trains and we can see that the RMT are right to value their labour highly. We really do need them and perhaps their employers should be paying them more, securing their jobs, and giving them better conditions if that’s what it will take to ensure the public transport on which we all rely runs smoothly?

Disruption is the point, and the negotiation up to the moment of strike action is entirely predicated on the idea that disruption is to be avoided. It is up to the employer to avoid the disruption - not the workers - by meeting the union’s demands, or at least offering something acceptable to them. But to suggest that the disruption caused, even to essential services, is a reason to call off a strike is to entirely miss the point of strike action. My train not running and therefore my missing an important hospital appointment or job interview is not a reason a strike should be called off, it is evidence that the employer who failed to reach a satisfactory agreement with their employees beforehand ought to reconsider their offer because the labour being withdrawn is essential. It is the very thing the unions were seeking to avoid by offering negotiations in the first place and not simply removing their labour the first moment they were dissatisfied. Disruption is not an argument against striking, disruption is the strategy striking aims at. But disruption might be an argument for ensuring strikes are avoided as much as possible by agreeing to fair pay and conditions and ensuring job security in the first place.

Which brings us to the second common fallacy seen this week: I don’t have job security or fair pay and conditions and I don’t complain so why should they?

My own failure to act does not make someone else’s action wrong. When a hero jumps in front of a bullet to save someone’s life, we don’t eulogise at their funeral about how wrong they were to do so because no one else jumped with them. And when we cheer the rescue of someone from the indentured servitude of modern day slavery we don’t stop our cheering just because others in the same position, trafficked from one site of exploitation to another, have simply accepted their miserable fate without a fight. Just because the rest of us might not realise how unjust our conditions are doesn’t make the first of us to recognise it wrong. If anything it is reason we ought to re-examine our circumstances and demand more. Maybe going on strike ourselves. Certainly this is the model the press are attempting to quash with their narrative of disruption - the domino effect of one service after another being inspired and demanding more. The infamous “threat of a good example” that dominated much of American foreign policy throughout the Cold War. But if we need our railways, our nurses, our teachers, our airports, our bin collections, then we do need to prioritise paying for them.

Which brings us to another canard: living in the “real world”. The idea that desiring job security, fair pay and decent conditions in 2022 is naive. Evidence of a detachment from the real world where such a thing simply isn’t possible and we ought to be grateful for what we have. First of all, as always, it is worth remembering there is no “real world” beyond the world we have chosen to create. If the so-called “real world” is one in which we can’t promise job security and fair pay and conditions then that is a good argument to change the sort of world we have created as it is obviously not fit for purpose. If you can’t afford to pay the price necessary for securing the willing employment of your workers, then your business model doesn’t work and is based on incorrect costings. If consumers aren’t able to pay a price that reflects the real costs of the business then the business is not part of the “real world”, it is a fiction. An economy based on such falsehoods, offloading hidden costs elsewhere and paying only the minimum they can get away with for necessary labour, is not a functioning “system”, it is a scam. A deliberate con which builds a fragile house of cards liable to collapse at any moment. It is unsustainable and strikes merely expose its brittleness by shining a light behind the scenes and reminding us that so much of this is untenable and unjustifiable. Far from an argument not to strike, we need to learn from what strikes show us: pay workers, make conditions fair, and ensure job security if you want your business and services to be equally secure. Precarious workers = precarious industries. A simple equation we would do well to take heed of.

Saying strikes cause disruption, are asking for the impossible, and that many others suffer just as badly without causing the same fuss are so empty as responses that they barely meet the criteria of being an argument. That the media, in the main, continue to echo these discussions and frame industrial action along these dead-end themes rather than address the actual grievances of unions such as the RMT or analyse the practical possibilities (and moral necessity) of improving conditions, pay and jobs for all demonstrates a failure of media discourse indicative of the class allegiances of media owners. A strike like we have seen this week should be reported through the lens of why the employer has failed to come to reasonable terms with their workers. Reporting should address the issues being fought for, and the length of time workers have accepted poor conditions, pay or job security in good faith that their dispute might be resolved. There should also be a constant reminder that every decent right a worker currently has, and every fair condition they currently enjoy - including rates of pay and levels of security - has been fought for by unions and groups of workers who refused to accept their exploitation. The the history of labour is not one of generous employers magnanimously giving out good jobs, pay and conditions, but one of systemic exploitation and attempting to pay as little as possible for as much as they can get. The basics that we take for granted - weekends, paid time off when we’re sick, having a job to come back to if we need to take time off, due process around dismissal - are all things no employer ever wanted to give without a fight that forced them to give it. We dismiss industrial action and accept the low standards of the status quo at great risk of reverting to levels of exploitation previous generations fought hard to save us from. We point fingers of blame instead of fists of solidarity as evidence that the state and the media have continued to successfully sew division and distrust amongst us instead of working in our best collective interest to have a better life.

The calls for the RMT to just accept that in 2022 we shouldn’t expect job security or good pay and conditions should instead be calls for more strikes, not less. For refusal from more of us to accept the 2022 standard of precarious and poorly paid employment, especially as we come out of a pandemic where unsafe working conditions have literally killed thousands and put many others at unnecessary risk, including the unsafe working conditions seen at the very heart of British government in Sue Gray’s recent report. We have accepted the unacceptable for far too long without speaking out. We have weakened our collective voice by watering down our unions or opting out of collective representation. We have taken what we were offered, zero hours or not, and done what we needed to pay the bills in the moment without thinking about the long-term and the bills still to come. The future. The us beyond the I. Their job loss today will be mine tomorrow. Their poorer conditions over there will become the standard over here given time without complaint.

One of my roles at the current job I am leaving has just been advertised internally this week. I have always been paid for the role. I note that my replacement from September will be unpaid. It is a lot of work. Far more work than I was ever paid to do it. But the pay was symbolic recognition that the school appreciated the work and acknowledged the time it took me to do. evenings, weekends, lunchtimes. It was a sign that they understood how important it was for the students. What does taking away the payment say instead? Another expectation for a colleague to do extra hours of unpaid work just for the supposed privilege? Another expectation of exploitation. Another slipping of conditions and protections. Am I surprised that teaching is another area of the public sector considering strike action in the future? No, I am not. Even though strikes will disrupt the education of our children? That would be their point. The challenge, therefore, is for the Education Secretary and the government, as well as individual schools and academy trusts, to avoid that disruption by listening to teachers’ grievances and improving jobs, pay and conditions. To do what the rail industry did not. To do what BA and Heathrow did not.

We need more striking, not less. The challenge is for employers to listen now and transform that need into satisfactory agreements that make those needs fade away. Move away from exploitation and move towards negotiation. Move employment rights forward, instead of regressing ever backwards into the very conditions we once fought so hard to escape.

Author: DaN McKee

My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE , from the publisher, and from all good booksellers.  Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com