Strengths and weaknesses of the UK Employment Rights Bill

 

Jeff Slee analyses the Government’s new legislation and outlines how the trade union movement should respond.

The Labour Government published its Employment Rights Bill on Thursday 10th October, within the 100 days they had promised. But many of the areas it covers are for consultation with unions, bosses and others, and will take the next two years to come into force.

Alongside the Bill, the Government published  a briefing document Next steps to make work pay, which says what the Government is doing more widely on workers’ rights

The Bill and other government measures are to implement the commitments agreed between the Labour front bench and affiliated unions in May.

Some provisions of the Bill only apply to England, with the other UK nations making their own laws.

Trade unions have generally given the Bill a cautious welcome, but said that there is a lot still to play for as the Bill goes through Parliament, with some measures dependent on amendments the Government will bring forward during the parliamentary process. And much will also depend on the many consultations with unions, bosses and others, that the Government will hold. The Government says that it will take several years for all of the measures they have promised to be brought in, and many will only become definite depending on the outcomes of consultations and reviews.

Reservations have been expressed by Sharon Graham, Unite General Secretary, and Daniel Kebede, National Education Union General Secretary. Sharon Graham said: “The Bill still ties itself up in knots trying to avoid what was promised. Failure to end fire and rehire and zero-hours contracts once and for all will leave more holes than Swiss cheese that hostile employers will use. The Bill also fails to give workers the sort of meaningful rights to access a union for pay bargaining that would put more money in their pockets and, in turn, would aid growth.”

Daniel Kebede said: “It is disappointing, however, that the statutory reasons for refusing requests for flexible working have been retained.”

Here is my view of the Bill. I’m not a lawyer, and there is such a lot in the Bill and accompanying documents that I can’t cover it all.

Trade Union Rights

The Bill does not repeal the Trade Union Act 2016 in full, which Labour promised in May. But, as Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC wrote, it does remove those parts of the 2016 Act which made it more difficult for unions to take industrial action – such as the thresholds of 50% turnout and 40% voting Yes in industrial action ballots, and unions having to appoint picket supervisors for picket lines.

The Bill also includes repeal of the Tories’ Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. So, unions are now back to the pre-2016 industrial action position. In the Government’s briefing, there is a promise to look further at “modernising” trade union laws. Which might be good news. Or might not. The restrictions placed on trade unions by Thatcher’s anti-union laws of the 1980s all remain in place.

The Bill will make it easier for unions to get recognition (the legal right to collective bargaining with an employer). They will need only a simple majority in a ballot of workers to get this; the requirement for 40% of workers having to vote for recognition as well as getting a majority will be scrapped. Employers now sometimes use this threshold to prevent recognition, by taking on more workers on short-term contracts just before a recognition ballot. There will still be methods that some employers will use to frustrate unions getting recognition, and the Government has merely committed to “seek views on how to strengthen provisions to prevent unfair practices during the trade union recognition process.”

The Bill also gives unions a new right of access to workplaces to speak to workers. But this will not be straightforward. Unions will have to apply to the employers and reach an agreement on access with them. If the employer won’t reach an agreement, unions can then refer the matter to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), a Government body which arbitrates between unions and employers on industrial relations matters, who will make a ruling. There will certainly be plenty of work for anti-union lawyers in advising employers on how to frustrate this right of access.

In May, Labour committed to giving unions the right to use electronic (online) balloting instead of postal balloting in industrial action ballots and union elections. This is now delayed, but hopefully not for too long. It will be referred to “a working group with stakeholders”, with full rollout implemented following Royal Assent of the Employment Rights Bill. There is no need for a long delay on this. Trade union postal ballots under the anti-union laws are often run by Electoral Reform Ballot Services, which is now part of a software company called Civica. Civica already run electronic balloting for unions on matters that do not come under the anti-union laws, and they are all set to run electronic balloting for statutory ballots once the law allows this.

The promise of secure workplace balloting, made in the New Deal in May, is nowhere in the Government legislation or accompanying documents.

The Bill does include welcome improvements on facility time and resources that employers must give workplace union reps, and extends these to union equality reps.

Workers’ Rights from Day One

This part of the Bill makes welcome improvements to workers’ rights – but not all of them straightaway. Workers will get the right to protection against unfair dismissal, by appeal to an Employment Tribunal, from day one, instead of after two years as now. But this reform will not come into effect any sooner than Autumn 2026. Until then, the current two-year qualifying period will continue to apply. This two-year wait is disappointing and unnecessary. I fear the Government has given way to bosses’ pressure on this.

The Government says this delay is to give time for consultation on how long probation periods should last, on probation procedures, and “to allow employers to prepare and adapt”. But there should be no reason – certainly for larger and established companies – why drawing up a procedure for probationary periods that will satisfy Employment Tribunals should be hard or time-consuming.  ACAS could probably come up with a template probationary procedure in just a couple of days. And if there is to be a delay for consultation and preparing, a reduction of the qualifying period to the one year that applied under the last Labour government could be done quickly in the Bill.

It is welcome that the Bill will make paternity and parental leave a right from day one of employment. Workers will also be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay from day one. And there will be a new right to bereavement leave. The government will also start a more general review of parental and carer’s leave.

Family-Friendly Policies

More improvements are that large employers will be required to produce action plans on how to address their gender pay gaps and on how they will support employees through the menopause. The Government will also strengthen protections for pregnant workers, making it unlawful to dismiss them within six months of their return to work except for in specific circumstances. And there are new measures to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

Flexible Working

The right to flexible working will, the Bill says, become the default position. However, this may not in practice make it any easier for those workers who need flexible working for reasons such as childcare or other family care responsibilities. Because, as the Government says in its explanatory notes to the Bill, “an employer may only refuse a flexible working request if it considers that a specified ground or grounds applies and if it is reasonable to refuse the request on that ground or those grounds. The specified grounds remain the same as the current legislation.” (my italics)

Zero-hours contracts and Fire and Re-hire

The Bill bans what the government calls “exploitative” zero-hours contracts, by making employers offer workers guaranteed hours based on the “reference hours” that they have already actually been working. Some in the trade union movement, especially Sharon Graham, are sceptical of how far the Bill as proposed will actually put an end to bosses exploiting workers through zero-hour contracts.

The Bill makes “fire and re-hire” automatically an Unfair Dismissal, under the meaning of employment legislation. But there is a get-out for employers: fire and re-hire won’t necessarily be unfair if they can show that they did this because of financial difficulties which, at the time of the dismissal, were affecting the employer’s ability to carry on the business as a going concern.

Sectoral Collective Bargaining

Unions have long wanted to bring back sectoral collective bargaining, which was common in many industries until the 1980s. Sectoral collective bargaining is where unions and employers, across a whole sector of employment, collectively agree on minimum pay rates, conditions and standards for every company in the sector. The benefit to workers is that companies can’t then compete for business by undercutting others to do the job more cheaply, which encourages a “race to the bottom”. Without sectoral collective bargaining, bosses will often tell their workers and unions: “We’d like to offer higher pay and better conditions, but if we did, we would lose contracts and business to other companies who pay less.”

The Employment Rights Bill takes two steps towards bringing back sectoral collective bargaining. First, it sets up an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body which will set pay, terms and conditions for social care workers across this sector. Second, it re-establishes the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which will set pay, terms and conditions of employment, training and career progression for school support staff.

Nicola Countouris, Keith Ewing and John Hendy have written fully on sectoral collective bargaining for the Institute of Employment Rights The Long Slow Death of Labour’s Plans for Sectoral Collective Bargaining? – IER.

Conclusion

In my view, the tasks facing the trade union movement following publication of the Bill and associated documents are as follows.

Firstly, to prepare to use the new rights that workers and unions will get to build unions’ membership and organisation in workplaces, and to improve workers’ pay and conditions – and to get into the many workplaces and companies where unions now don’t exist.

Secondly, to push – together with pro-union MPs and others – for improvements to the Bill through amendments as the Bill goes through Parliament.

Third, to prepare their input into the many consultations and reviews that the Government will hold, as it turns the vague promises in the Bill into the detail of laws, regulations, and codes of practice. In doing this, it will help if the TUC can get its constituent unions working together to press for policies in line with TUC policy as decided by its Annual Congresses.

Further Reading

The ‘New Deal’ document agreed between Labour and affiliated unions in May is here: https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LABOURS-PLAN-TO-MAKE-WORK-PAY.pdf

The Government’s briefings on its Employment Rights Bill are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/next-steps-to-make-work-pay/next-steps-to-make-work-pay-web-accessible-version and https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-does-the-employment-rights-bill-mean-for-you

The initial response from Thompsons Solicitors, who do a lot of legal work for trade unions, is here: https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/news/news-releases/our-firm-news/employment-rights-bill-initial-briefing

And the Institute of Employment Rights posts regular commentary on Labour’s Employment Rights policies here:

www.ier.org.uk/news/the-institute-of-employment-rights-on-labours-employment-rights-reforms/

Jeff Slee is a retired rail worker and former RMT National Executive Committee member.

Image: https://www.ier.org.uk/news/trade-union-membership-dips-in-the-uk/ Creator: Nick Efford Copyright: © 2011 Nick Efford, Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported CC BY-SA 3.0

Boris Johnson’s book not on sale in Europe because of Brexit

“It didn’t arrive and it’s because of Brexit. It’s ironic”

Basit Mahmood

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

The irony. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s book, Unleashed, has been hit by delays and won’t be hitting the shelves as quickly as he had hoped in European countries, due to Brexit.

The arch Brexiteer played a key role in the campaign to leave the EU, making a number of misleading and factually incorrect claims about the benefits which would be gained from Brexit. As a result of the decision to leave, Britain cut itself from its largest trading partner, and British households have been left poorer, with the economy £140bn smaller as a result.

Post-Brexit red tape means that Johnson’s book won’t be available In Brussels. Politico reports: “Karma hit the former anti-EU campaigner as post-Brexit red tape snarled the delivery of his headline-grabbing book Unleashed to the EU capital.

“It didn’t arrive and it’s because of Brexit. It’s ironic,” said an assistant manager at British book retailer Waterstones in central Brussels.”

The staffer went on to add that British books take around a week longer to reach the EU market as a result of extra checks at the border that were introduced after Brexit.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

The deadly game of deregulation and how it enhances corporate power and profits

If corporations were ethical and responsible, we wouldn’t need detailed regulations, but they are not.

Prem Sikka 

Today

Left Foot Forward

Under the influence of corporate gifts, hospitality, political donations and lucrative consultancy contracts for legislators, the UK major parties are competing to see who can slash people’s rights and protections the most. The deadly game is called deregulation and its aim is to enhance corporate power and profits.

Many of the social tragedies are rooted in deregulation and associated power of corporations, which pays no attention to human consequences. Some 30,000 NHS patients were given blood transfusions, or treatments made using blood products, contaminated with hepatitis C or HIV. Over 3,000 people have since died, and thousands more live with health conditions. Was lack of regulation worth it? 72 people died in the Grenfell fire tragedy because the government was content to let housebuilders use combustible foam insulation. 97 people died and 766 were seriously injured in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. Left to themselves, most entrepreneurs do nothing or as a little as possible. Therefore, in democratic societies people expect the state to intervene.

Regulation is created for good reasons. Would you drive a car, ride an aeroplane, visit a restaurant, and consume food, medicine and water without assurance that they meet some standards of safety? Would you not like environmental laws that prevent pollution of air, rivers, seas and lakes, and prevent diseases? No one wants to be subjected to gangster capitalism which denies decent wages and working conditions to staff. No one would hand their savings and pensions to third parties without some assurance that they can be trusted. No one wants to be subjected to age, race, gender, religion and other forms of discriminations and be prevented from living a fulfilling life. People expect to be protected from monopolies extorting excessive profits.

Good regulation when enforced engenders trust, a vital ingredient in managing daily transactions with faceless corporations. It sets benchmarks for business and individual practices. It protects people from exploitation and discrimination. It regularises patterns of behaviour and minimises transaction costs. It addresses market failures and encourages innovation – for example, food with lower salt and sugar content, safer transport and lower carbon emissions. Yet there is a concerted effort by corporations to eliminate regulation and hard-won social rights. Google’s CEO claims red tape is “killing” Britain” as he seeks to dilute social responsibility of social media platforms. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer sucked-up to big business by adding that he wants a “bonfire of red tape”, whilst remaining silent on social costs.

Labour government is diluting financial regulation. Chancellor Reeves said that she supported the Conservatives’ decision to introduce a secondary objective for the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. This states that the regulators must “facilitate the international competitiveness of the UK economy … and its medium to long-term growth”. Protecting customers and financial system is no longer the sole duty of regulators.

Ring-fencing speculative banking from retail was a major step in controlling the contagion effects of 2007-08 financial crash. The government will let banks amass £35bn, increase from £25bn, of customer deposits before needing to ring-fence retail banking from riskier investment operations. The maximum amount that banks will have to refund to fraud victims is to be slashed from £415,000 to £85,000. The $63.2 trillion shadow banking industry is already unregulated and hedge funds and private equity is running amok. Banks and insurance companies are pushing for lower capital adequacy requirements. After the 2007-08 crash the state provided £1,162bn of cash and guarantees (£133bn cash + £1,029bn of guarantees) to bailout ailing banks. Another £895bn of quantitative easing was provided to prop up corporate bonds and securities market. The post-crash cap on bankers’ bonus, which was designed to curb reckless risk-taking, has been scrapped and bankers are free to act recklessly to enrich themselves with the full knowledge that they will be bailed out.

The government is to bulldoze planning regulations to enable builders to build new houses. Environmental laws are local objections are particularly targeted. How many more will end up in flood plains? People will find it hard to object to the building of toxic incinerators or electricity pylons in their neighbourhood. It will be boom time for builders and landlords as with pre-tax annual median wage of £28,764, not many will be able to afford to buy a house. Letting local councils build affordable housing remains a taboo. We have seen housebuilding deregulation before. In 2013, the Conservative and Liberal Democrats coalition government extended “permitted development rights” to facilitate conversion of empty offices, shops, agriculture buildings and warehouses into residential properties without full planning permission. Councils could not compel developers to provide affordable housing. A study for the London Assembly noted that many homes are smaller than the minimum space standards and of poor quality

Richer councils used the law for social cleansing. They bought up property in poorer areas and dumped the low paid, elderly and unemployed in those areas. Social dumping has put extra pressure on transport, congestion and pollution. Many new arrivals struggle to find family-doctors. Local schools end up with higher staff-pupil ratios and hospitals are barley managing. Yet none of these aspects are considered in the rush to deregulation.

In opposition, Labour promised significant improvements in worker and trade union rights, but the Employment Rights Bill retains large part of the oppressive Tory fire and rehire on lower wages and zero-hour contracts. It lets employers violate laws. In March 2022, P&O Ferries sacked 800 workers and replaced them with cheaper agency workers. Its CEO told parliamentary committee that the company knowingly broke UK employment law because that was profitable The Prime Minister said that the government would “take them to court”, but did nothing. Under the Employment Rights Bill employers will remain free to “break the law on redundancy or fire-and-rehire consultation or refuse to reinstate an unfairly dismissed worker. Employers will remain free to choose whether to obey the law, and to buy themselves out of trouble if they decide not to do so”.

Tories have long targeted workers and are aiming for further deregulation. Senior Tory Kemi Badenoch says statutory minimum wage is harming businesses and also wants to roll-back women’s right to maternity pay even though some 12m people, including 4.3m children, live in poverty. Other senior Conservatives want to sack striking workers, have longer working week; end the workers’ right to paid holidays, rest breaks and rights for time off if you’ve got kids and your kids are unwell and lower pay in regions outside London and South East England.

The government is pandering to corporations who always welcome regulations that benefit them. They welcome bailout of banks and energy companies, billions in subsidies and tax reliefs. They like regulations which create monopolies and enact barriers to entry. Consider the case of external audits. It is a market created by the state requiring companies, universities, hospitals, trade unions, public bodies, local councils and others to submit to an annual audit. The market is reserved for members of select few accountancy trade associations even though they routinely deliver dud audits. Just four accounting firms Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and EY conduct 96% of FTSE 350 and collect vast amounts in fees. Between 2010 and 2022, some 250 listed companies collapsed. Despite public evidence of financial problems, auditors did not raise any ‘red flags’. It is hard to think of any instance when auditors drew attention to financial misconduct. At BHS, the PwC audit partner spent just two hours on audit and thirty-one hours on consultancy. To appease BHS directors, the audit report was backdated. When regulators began investigating KPMG’s dud audits of Carillion, the firm submitted false files and documentation. Yet, no major firm is shut-down and none ever calls for deregulation of their jurisdiction or tougher regulation.

The headlong rush to deregulation will create more social problems. It seeks to appease corporations who have no loyalty to any place, people, product or country. It is eliminating people’s rights secured after decades of struggles. The absence of public regulation does not mean that the regulatory space remains vacant. Instead it is filled by private actors who make unfair rules. Note how private car parking operators exploit motorists. Insurance and credit card contracts written in obscure language bamboozle people and the law is always playing catch-up. If corporations were ethical and responsible, we wouldn’t need detailed regulations, but they are not.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

 

Anarchism in the Mainstream

Oct

17

2024

comments

From Organise Magazine

In March 2020, when the virus raged across the globe but before we in the UK realised how serious and tragically lethal it would become or how much of a long-term problem it would be, Freedom Press published its first Covid-related update on its news site. Titled *Covid Mutual Aid Groups: A List,* the text came out ten days before the first UK lockdown and stated:

"As the global Covid-19 pandemic is upon us, a number of mutual aid groups have started forming across the country. (...) It is estimated that 2-3 people out of a hundred [infected by Covid] will die. We must do everything we can to prevent this from happening. (...) The Tory government is apparently more concerned with making sure the economy won't collapse than with saving people's lives. (...) Remember: that old lady you see on your grocery shopping and that comrade you know who is suffering from a long-term illness: it is your job to protect them as much as you can."

This was followed by a listing, initially very short, of mutual aid groups formed in the previous few days by anarchists who wanted to mitigate the potential hit of the pandemic in their communities rather than rely on the state to do it for them.

While the Freedom text, inspired by a single such group forming in South London with the involvement of a Freedom Collective member, was intended for an anarchist audience, it quickly became the flavour of the day across the entire country. Despite its rattled-off style, it ended up as one of those rare pieces of anarchist writing that broke into the general population milieu. And it broke into it hard, quickly becoming an anarchist text with a pretty spectacular reach. Soon, hundreds and then thousands of people started forming mutual aid groups, offering their details to Freedom, which in turn created the messiest and most stereotypically anarchistic of listings. It was a busy time in Freedom’s various inboxes, with people who would typically never have thought of contacting an anarchist organisation getting in touch to learn how to form such a group, to find out more about the concept of mutual aid, and about anarchism itself. Or just to ask for help.

I had the privilege of penning the intro to this text, although I don’t consider myself its author. This credit should go to those who contributed to the creation of the whole listing by taking matters into their own hands and organising a mutual aid group for their community to help protect it from the virus and the government. The need for this community response was urgent: this was after a decade of Tory government in the UK, a government that introduced budget cuts resulting in (as of 2019) 130,000 preventable deaths due to the underfunding of the healthcare system, a government that used ideologically motivated performative cruelty, aka “austerity,” against the most vulnerable parts of the population. Nobody could reasonably claim that, when faced with a healthcare and social crisis of the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic, it would suddenly change its ways and rise to the challenge of tackling it.

Many people who contacted Freedom had no idea about the prominent place the concept of mutual aid has in anarchist politics and the general way of making things happen. Rather comically, some praised us for coming up with a captivating “marketing” term in such a short period since the pandemic started, and in one case, some rather uninformed individual accused us of “hijacking the concept of mutual aid for our extremist leftist agenda.” They had to be schooled by our social media admin on anarchism, Peter Kropotkin, and what Freedom Press is. Businesses, some NGOs, and political party activists (I’m looking at you, Corbyn’s Labour) were also getting in touch, frantically attempting to figure out how they could capitalise on and take credit for something that soon started to look like a huge grassroots movement. They were all told where to go.

But who can blame people for not immediately linking a basic human practice that anarchists call mutual aid with this particular politics, given how universal it is? Loads have been written about the concept of mutual aid by people far more capable than I am, so I’m not going to do it here. However, it is important to note that while the term “mutual aid” is strongly associated with one of the founding fathers of anarchism, Peter Kropotkin, this model of community organising and self-defence is far from our invention. Throughout human history, various communities used similar models they independently developed. Many of these communities designed practices that anarchists would call mutual aid to defend themselves from the oppression they faced—especially of the racialised, gendered, or classed forms, but not limited solely to these. For example, in the UK, a group called UK Mutual Aid was formed in 2018, two years before Covid. The group, now operating under the name Co-Care Project, describes itself as a “Black-run, activist-forward intersectional support network for marginalised people.” Another such group is the Aborcyjny Dream Team (“Abortion Dream Team”), a women-led network formed to bypass the stringent anti-abortion laws in Poland, offering peer support, advice, and access to safe abortion for all who need it, regardless of the potential legal dangers its members face. Queer communities are also no strangers to forming mutual aid-like groups, ensuring that community needs, such as trans healthcare and access to HIV medication, are met. Cooperation Town, a self-organised network of food cooperatives in the UK, is another group that uses the mutual aid framework, providing groceries to its members for a fraction of the price—all within the context of the cost-of-living crisis.

Contemporary anarchism took this organising model and used it to create a network, a secret dimension even, where we as a movement organise our internal affairs and all that comes with it. It is the foundation of how we run our projects and spaces, based on non-monetary informal exchanges and high levels of trust in each other and our intentions. And, with glitches, it works for us. In the UK, the popularity of Covid-19 Mutual Aid was likely the greatest injection of an anarchist-associated concept into mainstream society, at least since the Poll Tax, if not ever. It has changed the general image of an anarchist, and what anarchists do, for large parts of society. It also came with its own problems and fuck-ups and clashes, and overall, anarchists did not manage to take long-term advantage of the sudden popularity of one of their more basic concepts. But is this inability to take political advantage really a problem? Or was it something that just had to happen, given the very nature of anarchism?

There is this term I see online, “Big A Anarchism.” “Big A Anarchism” is used in discussion to complain about things not being anarchist enough, expressing a longing for pure and proper anarchism, as opposed to things the person using it does not consider anarchist enough. The problem is, this “Big A Anarchism” is effectively a myth that is being used to stop us from relevance in the complicated modern world. Often, what’s complained about as not being “Big A anarchist” enough are community projects, such as the aforementioned Cooperation Town or Covid Mutual Aid groups, or in other words, projects that involve reproductive and care labour. The irony is that these very projects—the ones focusing on reproductive and care labour—are much more likely to serve as a gateway to anarchist politics than any puritan anarchist approach ever would. That’s because if we are to reach the general population, we must address the issues and problems faced by them and present solutions and practices that would actually present a compelling practical alternative rather than allow ourselves to get stuck on ideological purity. It is also these not “Big A anarchism” projects that are proving themselves to be a great, accessible and fast-acting solution to a situation of community crisis, be it a pandemic or other disaster, and disasters we will experience plenty, with last stage capitalism collapsing, the global heating increasingly affecting our daily lives and governments of all spectrums unable or unwilling to tackle it all.

We live in a perma-crisis world, where states continue to prove themselves to be utterly useless as forms of organisation, unable to adapt to situations that aren’t just business as usual, and unable to respond to actual community problems—instead enhancing these problems while serving capital and those who try to divide us. This is both a precarious and often tragic predicament and an opportunity for movements such as ours to use what we preach in practice and demonstrate that what is being presented to us as impossible is indeed very much possible. But we can’t do it without working in cooperation with other groups, and this will involve compromise and flexibility on our side. Politics, baby!

Now and going forward, there will be an increasing need for community self-defence organising in its glorious diversity of forms and tactics, which may or may not appeal to anarchist puritans. We, as a movement, have two options: 1) embrace it and become part of it, or 2) remain in our niche network. It’s up to each of us to decide what we will do. ■

Zosia Brom

Zosia “Scourge of anarcho-terfs” Brom, is a life long anti-fascist and anarchist organiser. Former editor of Freedom, Zosia dodged giving us a blurb. Find essays here: theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/zosia-brom

DESANTISLAND

Inside Solidarity, a socialist-anarchist student organization at FAU

Oct

16

2024

comments

From University Press, Florida Atlantic University student run news

Formed in 2020, this student organization says community is its main goal.

by Sage West, Copy Desk Chief
October 14, 2024

Room 113 of Florida Atlantic University’s education building is home to more than just college courses. By day, it is your traditional classroom, but every Tuesday night from 6 to 8 p.m., it becomes Solidarity meeting grounds.

Solidarity is a self-proclaimed “socialist and anarchist organization” at FAU that meets weekly to engage in group discussion and political activism. According to the organization’s Instagram, Solidarity aims to “build socialism and anarchy through direct action, mutual aid and education at FAU.”

“Socialism is the establishment of an economy that is based on cooperative ownership and need-driven, rather than private ownership and profit-driven, and anarchy is the abolition of power and people’s domination over people and the planet,” Ximena Dipietro, former Solidarity co-delegate said.

Dipietro shared that Solidarity promotes these ideas through discussion, reading socialist and anarchist texts, and their unique organization model, which emphasizes member participation.

The organization is currently orchestrated by lead organizer and anthropology major James Morgan and three others. It also consists of 20 to 30 members, who Solidarity classifies as anyone who has attended two or more general meetings.

Solidarity said in a presentation on Sept. 3 that they are against all hierarchical relationships between people — which is a structure dynamic in which one person possesses more power than another — and emphasize group involvement, placing no one position higher than another. They also hold intersectional, queer, feminist and anti-racist ideals at the foundation of their organization, demonstrated through the many diverse mutual aid efforts hosted by the group.

“Our structure is one really built on the idea that there are no leaders; as a club, we have abandoned formal ways of defining leadership, where we don’t have presidents or secretaries but rather just general ‘lead organizers’ who are just people that tend to do more,” Morgan said.

The group’s first meeting of the fall 2024 semester took place on Sept. 3. However, the organization was founded in January 2020. In their first Instagram post, Solidarity stated its goal is to “positively affect our surrounding communities through direct and collective action.”

“Solidarity practices socialism and anarchy in many ways in both its structure and its outward actions,” Morgan said. “As for outward stuff, solidarity is truly trying [to] do mutual aid, which is a vital part to any anarchist group, and is actively connecting FAU students to a wider network of mutual aid groups of socialists, communists and anarchists across South Florida.”

Morgan personally noted that a major goal of the organization is to create what he called a “safe space.”

“I feel like we hold the position of almost a safe place in some way, where people can have community, where we can build these social networks and build these safety networks,” he said.

The word “community” is something repeatedly heard in the groups’ meetings — another concept that lives at the root of their organization. The group defines this as “a main draw bringing the group members together… each with a shared goal to make the world a better place.”

Solidarity leads shared during their introductory meeting that each week’s meeting consists of presentations, skill workshops, social events, potlucks, game nights and more.

“To be an anarchist or a socialist or a communist is to be creative… We aren’t some crazy edgy people trying to be different and smash windows. We are all smart and talented people who are all extremely diverse, in both thought and action,” Morgan said.

The workshops, along with many other initiatives the group works on aim to provide the community — FAU and broader — with access to resources, tools and food. Some of the workshops consist of music classes, art classes and sewing.

“The workshops are a new thing that we’re implementing this year… The first workshop I will be hosting. I will be bringing in instruments, my personal instruments: guitars, pianos, whatever I can find, ukuleles, and it’ll just be a free access opportunity to instruments and paints because those things cost money,” said Jimena Machorro Swain, FAU special education major and one of Solidarity’s lead organizers elected in the spring.

“We really believe in allowing access to whatever you want to do; if you want to unlock a new skill, if you want to do something outside of your comfort zone, we want to provide the tools for that… It’s serving the community, and the community is serving us,” Machorro Swain added.

Morgan also shared the importance of ownership and mutual aid, a driving force for many of the group’s initiatives.

“Our clothing drives and swaps, we always tend to do, which are always free, as are all of the stuff we do other than every now and then book sales. The hope with any mutual aid is that it builds a wider culture to create counter-power structures,” Morgan said.

The group recently announced a clothing and toiletries donation drive in an effort to help those affected by Hurricane Helene. The drive took place on Oct. 1 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

At the start of a typical meeting, students are greeted at the door by diverse faces, welcoming in members and curious students alike. Inside, a group of 20 to 30 gather in discussion.

“Welcome, are you here for Solidarity?” members repeatedly echo at the entrance as the clock approaches 6 p.m.

At the front of the room is a table laden with a small but extensive library of political and historical text, each surrounding socialist, anarchist and Marxist teachings. Termed “the traveling library,” the books are transported to various event grounds and are available for members to check out. “War and Peace,” “How Fascism Works” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” are just a few of the library’s titles. Others, the works of Malcolm X and Karl Marx.

With a bright red bandana atop his head, Morgan introduced the meeting after a quirky set of icebreakers shared between members. He began with a PowerPoint in bold white letters that read “Introduction of Socialism and Solidarity.”

However, Morgan shared that the organization has not always been widely welcomed by everyone on campus.

On May 15, Solidarity hosted a vigil-style protest in support of Palestine to “protest the genocide against Palestinian people and FAU’s complicity” and to “show solidarity with other college protests which has faced excessive police suppression and brutality,” according to a May 14 Solidarity Instagram post. However, Solidarity protesters reported being greeted by masses of various law enforcement upon their arrival on campus.

“Not even 24 hours in, the university immediately knew, sent us a message of what rules we had to go through… they called a mobile command unit, an armored truck, men with assault rifles and stuff like that, army green uniforms… checkpoints everywhere, cops taking pictures of every single thing for just 20 people,” Morgan said.

They also reported getting backlash from opposing political groups on campus.

“The only groups that have really come out against us in some way is conservative groups on campus, whether it’s College Republicans or TP [Turning Point] USA… they do debate us now and then [when we’re] tabling,” Morgan added.

However, prospective member and FAU multimedia journalism freshman Sarah Satchel noted that witnessing Solidarity’s social activism is what moved her to join.

“I was very intrigued by the protest stuff they do, and the community outreach programs. I would like to implement some of those in my own hometown, specifically for the homeless people,” she said. “I’m excited to do more here; learn more from other people.”

Since its creation, Solidarity has held several protests both on FAU’s campus and off campus. They have hosted rallies advocating for education equity, against medical restrictions for transgender youth and, more recently, the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in South Florida.

The group has also marched alongside other campus organizations and advocacy groups such as Owls Demand Action, a student-run organization aiming to stop gun violence, FAU Action Coalition, a student organization in defense of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.), and BLISSS, an organization for Black, Indigenous and People of Color and LGBTQ+ students on campus.

“Sadly, anarchism and socialism are genuinely such misunderstood terms here in America. It’s very tragic because these assumptions become more than just that—they genuinely become stigmas,” Morgan said.

Morgan remains hopeful that student engagement and discussion can create deeper understanding from those with questions about Solidarity’s mission.

“I think people hear about the socialist/communist club at FAU and think we’re rabid dogmatic militants, the truth is that solidarity is a very opening and welcoming place to those willing to genuinely hear us out,” Dipietro said.

The group says they remain open to discussion with a formal criticism policy, should anyone take issue with their organization, and continue to meet in hopes of providing a sense of community for their members.

“I mean we can work as hard as we want to to try to change our future, but if we don’t enjoy what we’re doing and if we don’t find a reason to fight for what we believe in, which is each other, and building a better world hopefully, then what is it for?” said Machorro Swain.

Sage West is the Copy Desk Chief for the University Press. For more information regarding this story, email her at wests2020@fau.edu.

 

Spain overturns death sentence against anarchist Puig Antich

Oct

16

2024

comments

By thecollective

From Catalan News

The 25-year-old was the last prisoner executed by garrote – a device that strangles the victim - in 1974

The Spanish government has overturned the Francoist sentence that condemned the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich to death 50 years ago.

He was executed in the notorious La Model prison in Barcelona on March 2, 1974, and was the last prisoner to be put to death by garrote – a device that strangles the victim - by the regime.

The Minister of Territory and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, on Wednesday presented the family of Puig Antich with a declaration of "recognition and reparation" as a victim of the Francoist regime.

The acknowledgment comes after his family's endless struggle to have members of the Francoist regime tried in Spanish, European and Argentine courts for his death.   

"We have been fighting for this for 50 years. For the dignity of our brother Salvador. This moment is very important for us, we are touched and without words," said his sister Imma Puig Antich.

Flowers laid on the floor of La Model prison in memory of Salvador Puig Antich, 50 years after his execution / Pol Solà

During a ceremony with the family of Puig Antich, the minister said that this recognition is an act of "reparation, justice and truth."

"Salvador was a victim and so was his family. This gesture puts things in the right place. Wherever he is, he will know that today, in a certain way, justice has been done," he said.

Before his execution, Puig Antich was a member of the Iberian Liberation Movement (MIL), an anarchist group that robbed banks to finance its activities.

The activist was arrested in Barcelona on September 25, 1973, after participating in a bank robbery in the northern Catalan city of Girona.

During his arrest, a police officer was killed and Puig Antich was sentenced to death. He was the last prisoner to be executed in Barcelona's La Model prison, which celebrated the 120th anniversary of its opening this year.

La Model prison in Barcelona / Pol Solà

To learn more about Puig Antich and La Model, listen to this episode of our podcast Filling the Sink. 

Fifty years later, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Novel about Utopian Anarchists

Oct

16

2024

comments

From Scientific American

Original title: Book Review: Fifty years later, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Novel about Utopian Anarchists Is as Relevant as Ever

In The Dispossessed, a physicist is caught between societies

FICTION

The Dispossessed: A Novel (50th Anniversary Edition)
by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Harper, 2024 ($35)

A little more than halfway through The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin’s inexhaustibly rich and wise science-fiction novel about a physicist caught between societies, the protagonist, Shevek, born and raised in an anarchist’s collective, gets drunk (for the first time) at a fancy soiree in a capitalist society on a planet not his own. There this brilliant but bewildered scientist gets cornered by a plutocrat with impertinent questions. What is the point of Shevek’s efforts to create a General Temporal Theory reconciling “aspects or processes of time”?

Shevek explains that time in our perceptions is like an arrow, moving in one direction only. In the cosmos and the atom, however, it moves in circles and cycles, the “infinite repetition” an “atemporal process.”

“But what’s the good of this sort of ‘understanding,’” the plutocrat asks, “if it doesn’t result in practical, technological applications?”

The tensions Le Guin explores here—between the theoretical and the applicable, the scientist and society—have not diminished in the 50 years since The Dispossessed swept the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. The science in this 1974 novel—now reissued with a celebratory, pained-about-the-present introduction by literary writer Karen Joy Fowler—is vague, a physics explored through metaphor. But Le Guin’s depiction of a scientist caught between opposing, utterly convincing worlds remains thrilling in its precision, at times even frightening.

On the collectivist planet Anarres, a desert landscape ravaged by famine, Shevek’s search for a General Temporal Theory is thwarted by scientist-bureaucrats who are concerned his discoveries might prove counterrevolutionary. After engineering a diplomatic escape to lush Urras, funded by capitalist plenty, Shevek learns that his work is viewed as proprietary—a product. This perspective changes him. Shevek finds himself behaving like the patriarchal “propertarians” of Urras. Drunk and lonely, this gentle man whose language has no possessive pronouns seizes a woman as if she is his. It’s an act that later disgusts him—and sets him on a revolutionary course that will affect all the worlds that humanity has reached.

Le Guin, who died in 2018, leaves it to readers to make what they will of this shift. The arrow of time has sped forward since 1974, but the circles and cycles of Le Guin’s masterpiece continue to suggest, with urgent humanity, both present and future.

The Environment Is the Economy, Stupid.

By Joel B. Stronberg

October 16, 2024

Source: Civil Notion


Flooding road closures by U.S. Forest Service (source) is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” said the mayor of Tampa, Florida, two days before Hurricane Milton was predicted to make landfall—less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene wrought biblical destruction from the coasts to the mountain tops. If ever there was a time to talk about the consequences of Earth’s heating, it’s now—but not in the usual terms.

Every election since James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” it’s been the economy.

By any measure, Helene was one of the most expensive hurricanes in US history. Although still preliminary, Hurricane Milton will not be far behind. The two storms have affected “more than 200 counties encompassing 31 million people in six states.

The coffers of the two primary federal disaster response groups—FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Administration) and SBA (the Small Business Administration)—are unlikely able to cover their relief responsibilities without much larger appropriations. The politicization of federal disaster relief has made cooperation challenging even when the need was apparent and time of the essence.

A preliminary damage estimate by AccuWeather is that Hurricane Helene has resulted in damages of between $225 to $250 billion. The number is considerably higher than the initial estimates of others. It is also higher than estimates for previous hurricane costs. More shocking still is that insurance companies will pay out only $6.4 billion to policyholders, according to AccuWeather forecasts.

The AccuWeather number is higher than most others because it better reflects reality. Included in the organization’s calculations are:

· The cost of rebuilding homes, businesses, roads, and infrastructure;

· The loss of wages and economic output during the years-long rebuild;

· The loss of life;

· The cost of healthcare for storm survivors and first responders;

· The cost of extended power outages;

· The cost of major business and travel disruptions; and,

· The long-term loss to tourism, technology, renewable energy, and other industries.

AccuWeather estimates that Hurricane Milton will be responsible losses of between $160 and $180 billion. According to the organization’s Executive Chairman, Joel N. Myers, the storms together will result in losses equal to 2 percent of the nation’s GDP.

Consider, too, that the costs of weather-related disasters are hardly one-and-done. Many people who thought living in the mountains of North Carolina would protect them from a storm in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic wouldn’t harm them are now afraid of staying in the area—much like those along the coast who are now migrating out of low-lying areas.

Many who saw loved ones lost to the rushing waters or power and bridge outages because they couldn’t get needed medications or lacked the electricity to run dialysis machines will require years of counseling. It’s also predicted that the disaster areas will become ground zero for COVID and flu outbreaks.

There will be a lowering of real estate values in many impacted areas. There’s the widespread ecological damage to factor. Tens of thousands of trees were downed by the winds and rains, leading to lost habitats and more erosion until new trees can do the job of the old ones. Lower real estate values mean lower tax revenues.

The cost of home insurance—even in areas outside disaster alleys—rises as damages intensify and accumulate from one storm and forest fire to another. Since 2020, the average premium has increased by more than 30 percent. Where weather risks are higher, so are the rates. In a growing number of locales, it’s no longer possible even to get home insurance. Lenders take a dim view of uninsured properties.

When private insurance is no longer available, governments will be called upon to become the insurer of last resort. In which case, taxpayers will bear the brunt. It’s not just the cost of insurance. It is also about diminishing the amount of land on which to build. Private insurers won’t keep paying to reconstruct houses or factories in high-risk areas. What were plains of hundred-and-thousand-year floods are now land inundated in one and two-year averages.

Eleanor Mueller reports the National Flood Insurance Program will “likely exhaust the program’s nearly $5 billion in funds and force it to tap $9.9 billion in Treasury borrowing authority.” Hurricane Milton’s damages may require the Program to seek higher borrowing caps. What’s certain is that all taxpayer will be on the hook for a decade or more—just to cover disasters to-date.

The consequences of Earth’s warming are not simply the damages caused by winds, rains, and rising and warming oceans. It’s also about droughts and the rising cost of food production, the competition between cities and farms for dwindling water supplies, forest fires, and the movement northwards of insect-borne diseases that negatively impact the health and welfare of human, animal, and vegetative populations.

The message here is simple: The environment is the economy, stupid.

A problematic message is best paired with positive—and realistic—solutions. There are substantial connections to be made between what makes sense scientifically and what makes dollars and sense. Climate change deniers have shown themselves unwilling to accept the word of most of the world’s scientists. Perhaps the word of insurance and investment brokers will be better tolerated.

There are solid bi-partisan arguments for building back better after weather-related catastrophes. The Infrastructure and Jobs Act was the one bi-partisan piece of climate-related legislation passed since Trump left office. It’s the type of legislation that needs to be expanded to make communities—from the coasts to the mountain tops—more resilient and not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Even if Helene and Milton and hurricanes, forest fires, and droughts of the past haven’t cost all Americans—the next ones will. The clean energy and environmental communities need to make economics the dominant theme of their arguments.


Joel B. Stronberg
Stronberg is an attorney and climate -policy expert. He is a featured voice on Resilience.org, a Top Climate Change Writer on Medium, and Energy Central.