The Workforce after Covid
In January I wrote an article calling on the left to build a movement wide effort to rebuild workers activism. Some amazing people joined me just as Coronvirus turned the world upside down. Since then, like millions of others, we turned our attention to mutual aid, supporting 12000 workers via our Workforce Coronavirus Support Group. But the original proposition is even more important today, and now it’s urgent.
TL:DR
- We’re entering a period of unprecedented change and crisis. Things will change more in the next 20 years than in the last 200.
- Our governments have shown themselves to be completely incapable of responding to these changes. They have failed us, and we can’t trust them.
- Organised and united we — the workforce — are the most powerful force in the world.
- We’ve done it before. Like our great-grandparents did, it’s time to build a working class movement that can shape the next century.
- We must get a Green New Deal that is internationalist and led by workers, demanding guaranteed well-paid, unionised jobs and a future for ourselves, our children, and our planet.
Change is coming for good or bad.
Black Lives Matter
I’m watching the news. There are Black Lives Matter uprisings in more than 100 cities across the US and elsewhere (solidarity and strength to everyone involved!). They were sparked by the racist police murder of George Floyd but, addressing the intersecting crises that sit behind them, the newscaster gets it right: “It’s not just one crisis is it? It’s like the Spanish Flu of 1918, the economic crash of 1929 and the riots after the assasination of Martin Luther King in 1968 all at the same time”.
The Pandemic
The pandemic that has gripped the world has shone a light on our economic priorities and intersecting inequalities. Around 60,000 people have died, the worst rate in the world. BAME people — mostly low income and for that reason — have been up to twice as likely to die. And workers have been laid off in our millions or forced to work without protection. We’ve clapped for care workers while they have been left without PPE. 3 million essential workers — mostly but not exclusively women and people of colour — do not get paid a living wage. Now we are entering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and meanwhile, the climate emergency has gone nowhere.
End game
The IPCC report in 2018 was stark: we had just a decade to make drastic changes to our economy or face catastrophic climate breakdown. We’re 20% through and not much has changed. At present rates, climate breakdown promised floods, fires, food shortages, whole industries collapsing and 1.5 billion people being forced to migrate, with low income BAME people bearing the least responsibility and the worst impacts. Extinction is not impossible. Meanwhile, politicians look clueless and we keep funding fossil fuel extraction. We’ve been governed by a death cult in denial.
Recovery & transition
A change is coming for good or bad. If inaction continues, we face the full horror of an unlivable planet. But as I write, corporates are demanding a green recovery and the government are pledging it. However, this is a government who — like their predecessors — has presided over little more than cuts to services, trashing of workers rights and giveaways to billionaires (not to mention the worst Covid death rate in the world). These are corporations who pay poverty wages, exploit zero hours contracts and disrespect workers on a daily basis. While it might let us survive, forgive me if I am cynical that we can expect any more from the wealthy and powerful.
Workers have been systematically failed.
Inequality rising.
Since the 1980’s — and especially since 2008 — wages have stagnated, workers and tenants have become evermore insecure, public services have been cut and privatised and inequalities have skyrocketed. On every measure of health and wellbeing, life has been made worse for us. Even before Covid, 70% of the workforce were financially precarious, living in or on the edge of crisis, while half the world’s wealth and power rests in the hands of a tiny gang of billionaire geeks and thugs.
It’s alright for some.
In the same period we have seen an eye watering transfer of wealth from the 99.9% to the 0.1%. The world’s 500 richest billionaires have seen their wealth soar 25% in just the last year, an increase of $1.2 trillion, making a total hoard of $5.9 trillion. In 2017, it was reported that FTSE 100 bosses take home 100 times the average salary, and 386 times the minimum wage. Oxfam have also reported that just 26 people are hoarding as much wealth as half of all humanity, approximately 3.9 billion people. There’s plenty of money to provide what we need. We just don’t have it. This inequality has directly led to the horrific death toll and economic costs of Coronavirus. How can the people who let this happen be called “leaders”? How can we have any faith in their economic recovery and climate transition plans?
Union decline.
A big part of the reason for the above is the decline of trade unionism. Only a minority of workers — a tiny minority of young workers — are in a union. In contrast, between 1950–1980 membership rose to 60%, action was common and the boomers enjoyed the biggest improvement in living standards in British history. The decline has been driven by both stick (e.g the defeat of the miners strike and cuts/privatisation of public services and manufacturing) and carrot (e.g. new legal constraints dressed up as “rights”). We now face some of the most restrictive anti-union laws in the world, and unions have not helped ourselves by bending to adapt to each tightening of the crank. It’s not for want of trying, but — despite some amazing isolated efforts — what we are doing is not working (or at least not fast enough). Workers action is largely off the table, and at just the wrong time.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
The early part of the 20th century was characterised by inequality on a par with today, brutal and insecure working conditions and war. Yet by the middle of the century, progress in racial and gender equality was being won, the middle class was growing fast and millions of workers were enjoying dramatically improved living standards. How did this happen? Fundamentally, our great-grandparents built trade unions and civil rights movements, made great sacrifices to defeat fascism and demanded better from life afterward. In the US, the CIO increased union membership from 10% to over 50% in the early 1930’s. Working alongside the growth in black union organising and civil rights movement, early victories against segregation were won, and the US government funded a dramatic public jobs programme called the New Deal. In the UK, something similar happened as a wave of labour unrest in the 1910’s united divided communities and gave way to steady union growth in the late 30’s and after the war. The result was the post-war settlement, an unspoken agreement between the state, the economy and the workforce that saw the birth of the welfare state, the dramatic expansion of council housing and pay rises and job security. Those early strike waves that set the tone were not legally protected, instead relying on power in numbers. It’s a risk for sure, but not as much as inaction. Like our great grandparents did, we need the courage to fight for our futures. If we do, we will win.
Our goal
Green…
We will prevent runaway climate chaos by leading the fight to transition our industries, winning green change at work and repurposing carbon intensive production and distribution (securing our future against industrial collapse). Nobody knows better than us how to transform our work.
New…
We will ensure it’s the people, not the profiteering corporations, who benefit from the transition. We will fight for an end to funding fossil fuel extraction around the world and investment in millions of new climate jobs; For recognition of and decent pay for the green and essential social, care and food work that is mostly done by women, BAME and otherwise low-income workers; For income and job security, pay rises, controlled rents and pay ratios; And for warm homes, high quality public transport and renewable energy, greener streets and reforesting our once green and pleasant land
Deal!
We will unionise our workplaces, to use collective bargaining rights to win and lock in these changes in each sector and company. But fundamentally, we will fight for a new settlement, a new deal that formally and legally recalibrates the power relationship between the state, the people and the economy. Our government and our economy should work for us, to protect us and benefit us. Today they are failing us and benefiting themselves. We will set things right.
Our theory of change.
Our unions need a movement.
The trade union movement represents 6 million workers and will be a vital part of winning what we need from this recovery. But they face multiple and serious barriers to change, move too slowly and simply cannot deliver what is needed on their own. We must build a fast moving and dynamic workers movement that stands both outside and inside — but most importantly alongside — organised labour, helping to rebuild our unions as a component of winning justice.
A Workers Rebellion.
Extinction Rebellion have swept the world. The founders of this impressive and powerful movement were right that traditional campaigning (including unions) has largely failed, they were right that disruptive civil disobedience and direct-action is now necessary and their mobilisation model has been second to none. We will adopt these lessons. But they were wrong to separate the climate and ecological emergency from our other crises and inequalities. They were wrong that if 3.5% of people block roads, change will just happen. And they were wrong that it doesn’t matter who those people are.
Who fights does matter.
A recent study of 100 social movements from 150 countries shows that movements win when they involve the working classes in all our diversity. This comes down to two factors: The first is that, being representative of “the majority”, workers make powerful political messengers; The second is the strike. Covid has shown who makes the world turn and it stands to reason that if we make it turn, we can stop it, shape it and save it. Covid has also shown that when the economy (profit) is threatened, the government can find the magic money tree and do whatever it takes. Ultimately, road blocks aren’t the single most powerful action we can take. The strike is. For those two reasons, even a movement of workers that simply implies that economic disruption is a possibility, holds enormous social, economic and political power. We need a workers rebellion.
Our plan.
People
The task facing us is to rapidly organise and unite a fractured and disorganised workforce to take mass-scale public and direct-action up to and including strike action. Specific constituency focuses are still to be developed but it seems likely that the project needs to create a unified constituency including: workers laid off or otherwise unemployed; low-income and precarious workers; health, education and public sector workers; workers in essential and carbon intensive industries; workers who suffer particular disrespect as a result of being BAME, women, disabled, LGBTQIA+ and/or old or young, and — more generally — workers who identify as socialists, environmentalists and democrats.
Action
We need to bring that constituency into an escalating civil disobedience campaign of mass public and direct action. A campaign strategy and mobilisation plan is still to be developed but it seems likely this might involve escalating through some or all of the following until we achieve our goals: A kick off moment of collective action; city based marches and direct-action; a national mass march; local, company and/or sectoral/demographic strikes building toward city based generalised strike action and ultimately national general strike action. Underpinning all of this will be a core training and organising plan, designed to intake new activists, skill them up and unleash them for the next wave.
Method
- Powerful messengers: By ensuring that movement leaders and spokespeople are workers and representative of our constituencies, we will ensure our messages carry legitimacy in the eyes of both targets, the media, the public and our base of support
- Mass action and civil disobedience: As XR leaders have said, “If it’s not disruptive, nobody is going to give you their eyeballs”. Note that our actions could be disruptive both because of the type of action and/or — referencing the point about messengers above — who the participants are. A planned black march on Washington in 1941 was as disruptive as a direct-action.
- Momentum driven organising: By mobilising disruptive action and powerful messengers to cut through, we will be able to take advantage of rapid intake of new activists.
- Decentralisation and political education: We will take a decentralised approach providing teams and groups autonomy and benefiting from the creativity of workers. At the same time, to ensure we become more than the sum of our parts, we will train and support an initial 1000 organisers and prioritise political, economic and social education.
- Worker led community organising: Union organising is slow because of the need to build majority membership in single workplaces. Rooted in mass public and disobedient action, our movement can grow fast in our communities and streets, developing organisers who can then turn their hands to workplace organising
- Geographic, sectoral and workplace organisation: We will organise workers on all of these levels to enable local mobilisation, sectoral transition planning and workplace unionisation
- Strikes, unionisation and bargaining for the common good: Our movement needs to win legally enforceable change over the long-term. Unionisation and collective bargaining is a powerful tool and one we will support workers to win and use to improve life for ourselves, our families and our wider communities.
Next steps: A cross movement effort
It goes without saying an effort like this will need everyone. We are therefore making this call to progressive movements to join and help shape this effort. We need a diverse and representative army of trade union organisers, community organisers and social movement organisers; workplace militants; climate rebels; data geeks; savvy communicators and veterans of meme warfare; fundraisers and blaggers; graf writers and trainers, project managers, and the people skills of every hospitality and public service worker. Over the next few weeks and months we are on a mission to reach out to and speak with organisations across the movement’s eco-system, as well as trade union branches, trades councils and local groups of socialist, climate, anti-racist and feminist movements.
If you are ready to help or want to find out more, get in touch right now at info@workforcemovement.org. We don’t have much time.
