Detroit Marathon Refinery Workers Strike for Better Pay and a Union Shop

Marathon Refinery workers of Teamsters Local 283 in Detroit are on an indefinite strike to fight for cost of living increases in wages, better working conditions, and an all-union shop. This is the first time the refinery has been on strike in 30 years and looks to take advantage of recently-repealed “Right to Work” legislation.


Brian H. Silverstein September 7, 2024



On September 4, following a 95 percent strike authorization vote, Teamsters Local 283 in Detroit, representing over 250 Marathon refinery workers, walked off the job. The Teamsters have been in negotiations with plant management since November 2023 and workers have been on the job without a contract since January 1, 2024. After the company halted negotiations, workers at the refinery went on strike for the first time in 30 years. Their main demands include cost of living raises that recoup the spending power lost to inflation since the COVID pandemic began, better healthcare, a requirement that all refinery employees be union members, and an end to the use of non-union subcontractors.

The Marathon strike is one of the largest in Michigan since “Right to Work” legislation was repealed earlier this year. The legislation, enacted in 2012, made it illegal for employment contracts to mandate joining the union. If the workers win the demand for a union shop, this would grow the strength of the local and set an important precedent for the broader labor movement in Michigan.

The strike comes after a year of sky-high gas prices – Marathon made nearly $10 billion in profits during 2023. The Detroit plant is a significant part of Marathon’s operations, processing 140,000 barrels per day. Instead of passing along the benefits of this surplus to workers, Marathon has been on a stock buy-back spending spree – $35 billion since 2021. Workers on the picket line talked about Marathon’s price gouging tactics at the pump and feel they’re getting squeezed at both ends of the process. Now, the company is seeking to further maximize its profit margin by cutting labor costs through layoffs and slashing benefits.

Even though half of the refinery’s 525 workers walked off the job, production and distribution continues with scab labor shipped in from around the country. Some in-bound trucks have refused to cross the picket line, but distribution continues under police enforcement. Across from the picket line, almost 20 Detroit police officers are on standby making sure tanker trucks aren’t blocked. While the workers are doing their best to stop or at least slow plant traffic, the cops have at times formed their own lines to create a corridor for trucks to pass through.

On the picket lines, workers expressed frustration about the scab workers and concerns for the safety of the plant and surrounding city. The Marathon refinery sits in Southwest Detroit, a working class and immigrant neighborhood. Striking workers are worried that the quickly-trained scab labor don’t have the years of experience to safely run the plant and say Marathon’s desire to break the strike is putting the city at risk.

The Marathon strike is the latest in a growing national labor movement. In 2022, the first Amazon warehouse was unionized, and Starbucks shops all across the country formed combative unions. Then in 2023, autoworkers in Detroit and across the country went on strike, which gave new energy to the UAW’s organizing drive in the South. At the same time, Kaiser Permanente workers went on the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history. Meanwhile, academic workers on college campuses have become increasingly organized and many campuses have gone on strike, including the University of California which recently struck for political demands connecting the labor movement to the Palestinian liberation movement.

Teamsters Local 283 is calling on their union siblings and members of the community to join them on the picket line at 12800 Toronto St, Detroit. The picket lines will be present 24/7 – so go out to the lines and support these fighting workers! We also encourage activists in the social movements to go out and walk the line. Each strike victory strengthens the overall labor movement and strengthens every movement of the exploited and oppressed.

UK
Campaigners call for end to privatisation and austerity after damning report on state of the NHS

Chris Jarvis 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

'The extraction of private profits from the system has proven catastrophic for patients'

NHS campaigners have today called for the new Labour government to end austerity and private sector involvement in the health service. This follows the publication a damning report into the state of the NHS.

The report from the independent peer Lord Darzi was commissioned by the Labour government when it entered office. It says that the long delays for healthcare services are leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths and that the NHS is in ‘critical condition’.

Darzi’s report highlights three key issues that have damaged the health service – austerity and cuts under the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government, Andrew Lansley’s reorganisation which introduced more private sector involvement into the NHS, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Lansley’s 2012 Health and Social Care Act was branded by Darzi as a “calamity without international precedent” and “disastrous”.

The prime minister Keir Starmer has responded to the report, saying the Tories “broke” the NHS and that this was “unforgivable”. He went on to say that Lansley’s 2012 NHS reforms were “ideologically-driven” and “hopelessly misconceived”.

However, Starmer indicated that Labour won’t be increasing NHS funding without introducing reforms to the health service. He said: “We have to fix the plumbing before turning on the taps. So hear me when I say this – no more money without reform.”

The report has led to calls from health campaigners for an end to austerity and privatisation in the NHS.

Johnbosco Nwogbo, lead campaigner at the public ownership campaign group We Own It said: “Lord Darzi is right to call the 2012 NHS reforms a “calamity”. Among other things, our research shows that opening the NHS to significant for-profit private involvement has resulted in £10 million being taken out of the NHS in private profits every week since 2012.

“Combined with historically low capital investment, the extraction of private profits from the system has proven catastrophic for patients. It has deprived the health service of resources that could have been effectively deployed in patient care. And as recent research from the University of Oxford has shown, it has contributed to treatable mortality.

“Alongside the big shifts from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention the government is talking about, patients also need a big shift from private to public. This could see up to 94% of all current outsourced NHS services brought back into the NHS as their contracts end during this parliament. 87% of the public in the latest YouGov poll say they want the NHS to be run completely in the public sector.”

Meanwhile, Dr John Puntis, Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and retired consultant paediatrician said: “Not surprisingly, Lord Darzi’s thoughts reflect those of health campaigners and think tanks that have persistently highlighted the deteriorating state of the NHS for many years. Viewing the 2012 Health and Social Care Act as “a calamity without international precedent” he warns that further top-down reorganisations are neither necessary nor desirable. Failings in the NHS cannot be laid at the door of managers, and any move to a different model of care would be unwise given that other health systems, such as those where user charges, social or private insurance play a bigger role, are more expensive.

“According to Darzi, the NHS may be in a critical condition but its’ vital signs are still strong. Given the right treatment, therefore, it could be restored to health. As set out in his terms of reference, Darzi has not ventured to suggest specific policy including addressing overall budgetary issues. However, it is clear he considers that austerity and ongoing underfunding have starved the NHS of the resources it needs to meet growing demand thus preventing it from functioning efficiently.

“When Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced the Darzi review was being held, he is quoted as saying that it would aim at “diagnosing the problem” so the government could “write the prescription”. In the modern era, any treatment should be founded on the best available science while taking into account the views of patients and professionals. Darzi has thrown down the gauntlet. Will government rise to the challenge or will it mistakenly conclude that the wrong treatment – ‘reform’ and further austerity – are just what the doctor ordered? If so, this would be both a tragedy for patients and a huge rebuff to Lord Darzi.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Garry Knight – Creative Commons

UK

TUC condemns ‘hateful rhetoric’ from Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, claiming the party has ’emboldened fascists’

Chris Jarvis 

10 September, 2024 
t Left Foot Forward

A speaker in favour of the motion described Farage as 'Tommy Robinson in tweed'

Trade unionists are gathering in Brighton this week for the annual TUC Congress. Delegates debated and voted on motions related to a number of issues facing the trade union movement and workers.

On September 10, delegates voted for a motion titled ‘challenging the politics of hate’. That motion accused Nigel Farage’s Reform Party of engaging in ‘hateful rhetoric’ towards migrants and LGBT people, and claimed that the party had ’emboldened the far right and fascists’. It also criticised Reform’s policies on employment rights, highlighting the party’s manifesto which said “We must make it easier to hire and fire”.

Later, the motion called for the TUC and its affiliated unions to raise awareness of “Reform’s policies for the workplace and society and scrutinise and hold to account Reform’s elected representatives”, as well as to mobilise for demonstrations and campaigns against the far right.

Proposing the motion, Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “We, as a movement, have a responsibility to expose the lies and the myths promoted by Reform”.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede also spoke in favour of the motion, claiming that the far-right violence seen in Britain earlier this year was ‘fuelled’ by Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, who he branded ‘Tommy Robinson in tweed’.

Alongside this, delegates backed a motion titled: ‘Fighting the far-right narrative, hate crimes and hate speech to defend LGBT+ rights’.

That motion called on the TUC to – among other things – “robustly challenge all forms of anti-trans narratives and hate speech, government policies or guidance that promote anti-trans narratives”, and “defend all LGBT+ workers from the actions of far-right organisations that attack LGBT+ events including prides, drag storytimes and groups supporting trans inclusion”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

UK

TUC CONGRESS

UCU Vice President: Why we need a new deal for further education

Chris Jarvis 

11 September, 2024 
 Left Foot Forward

UCU is calling for a 10 per cent pay rise for FE staff

The UCU union represents workers in higher and further education. While its campaigns around the pay, pensions and conditions for university staff often get the headlines, UCU is also active in advocating for workers in further education (FE) colleges.

That’s what David Hunter – UCU’s vice president – spoke to Left Foot Forward about at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton. UCU is currently campaigning for what it calls a ‘New Deal for FE’ – a series of demands to improve the pay and conditions for FE staff.

Setting out why the union deems the campaign to be so important, Hunter told Left Foot Forward that FE is crucial to the future of the economy and for delivering Labour’s plans for growth. He said: “Our new Labour government is really talking about retraining, reskilling, repairing the economy and bringing on growth. And that can’t happen without our members.

“Our members, we train 60 per cent of large companies’ workforces through our colleges and our universities. We train 160,000 apprentices a year. We’re in adult education, retraining. And repairing and recovering our economy can’t happen without our members.

“So, if the Labour government is serious about it, they need to be serious about a new deal for FE.”

So what is this ‘New Deal for FE’ that UCU is calling for? Hunter told Left Foot Forward: “It’s a 10 per cent pay rise, or a £3,000 minimum. Very important is parity with school teachers within three years – we had £9,000 behind school teachers in FE – so it’s trying to get that back over three years. A minimum starting salary of £30,000 to match with school teachers. Currently, people can start on £26,000 – it’s too low and it’s causing a recruitment crisis in FE. It’s to close the equality gaps all over FE that plague our black and women members.”

Alongside these individual demands for improvements for staff, UCU is also campaigning for FE staff to be covered by national collective bargaining agreements. Hunter told Left Foot Forward that the lack of national agreements is why FE staff’s pay hasn’t kept up with that of schoolteachers.

He said: “We need national agreements – national binding bargaining to get agreement on pay, on pay spine, on workloads. The reason we’ve fallen behind schoolteachers by so much – by nearly £10,000 – is that we don’t have national bargaining in our FE sector. It’s college by college since incorporation. We were told at that point that it was going to be, there’d be a marketplace – colleges would be competing for lecturers by paying more and more, and of course that didn’t happen.”

Public debates about education rarely pick up these issues. In fact, they rarely discuss FE at all. Hunter told Left Foot Forward this was a ‘class issue’ and that FE workers are ‘invisible’ in the conversation about education.

“I think it’s a class issue. Our colleges – we teach, we train, we retrain the most disadvantaged in our society, the students with the least voice. And I really do think it’s a class issue why FE gets made invisible”, Hunter says, adding: “Because of our demographics, because we work with the most disadvantaged, because we give them their first, their second their third chances in training and retraining, we’re invisible.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: It’s No Game – Creative Commons

UK

TUC CONGRESS

Equity general secretary calls on Keir Starmer to introduce an industrial plan for the creative industries

Paul W Fleming also criticised the government's decision to make cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance

Chris Jarvis 

Yesterday

Speaking to Left Foot Forward at this year’s TUC Congress, Equity’s general secretary Paul W Fleming called for the prime minister Keir Starmer to include an ‘industrial plan for the creative industries’ in his ambition for a ‘decade of national renewal’. Equity represents workers in the performing arts and the creative sector.

Fleming told Left Foot Forward: “If a decade of national renewal doesn’t include an industrial plan for the creative industries, then there’s not going to be a decade of national renewal.”

Fleming went on to highlight the significance of the creative sector to the UK economy and why his union thinks this means there is a need for an industrial plan for the sector. He said: “We do creative industries very, very well. We’re the second largest producer of film and TV in the world. We’re the second largest producer of video games in the world. Creative industries are worth more to the economy than banking. Without a sectoral plan and without an industrial strategy, we’re not going to maximise the potential.”

What does this mean in practice? Fleming told Left Foot Forward it will require the reinstatement of arts funding. He said: “That will mean returning arts funding to where it was, and that is not a commitment from the government at the minute.”

Fleming has other issues he wants the government to pick up too. This year’s TUC Congress has taken place against the backdrop of the controversy surrounding Labour’s decision to make significant cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Fleming added his voice to those expressing concerns about this change and about other elements of the benefit system. He told Left Foot Forward: “60 per cent of our members have claimed social security at some point. Our members as pensioners are reliant – as freelancers, and they’ve been freelance for a long time – on tiny industrial pensions, their royalties, their secondary payments and things like the Winter Fuel Allowance. And it is a mystery to me as to why ‘tough choices’ means putting pensioners into penury and keeping children in poverty.

“Freelancers – particularly people in our union who work as variety artists, children’s entertainers, stand-up comedians, gigging artists – they really are dependent on the benefits system. And lifting the two-child cap, reform of Universal Credit to remove the minimum income floor, which is a big ask of ours of the government, which it means there’s a two-tier pay out for freelancers versus the employed. There’s not any movement on that and I don’t understand how you can promise a different outcome on the economy unless you change the inputs, and that seems particularly cruel.”

Image credit – Equity.

How the Musicians’ Union wants to make streaming fair for artists – interview with Naomi Pohl


Chris Jarvis 

Yesterday


Naomi Pohl spoke to Left Foot Forward at this year's TUC Congress

The shift from physical music sales to digital streaming has transformed the way the music industry works. While fans have access to millions of songs and albums at the touch of a button, musicians have frequently spoken out about the impact this has had on their incomes.

The Musicians’ Union (MU) – which represents over over 35,000 musicians across the UK – is among those calling for a fairer deal from streaming services. According to polling carried out on behalf of the union, 80 per cent of musicians and music creators earn less than £200 a month from streaming.

At this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton, Left Foot Forward spoke to MU general secretary Naomi Pohl about the current problems with the streaming model and what steps her union wants taken to fix this.

Pohl told Left Foot Forward that the MU’s campaign on streaming services began during the pandemic. She said: “We started running it during the pandemic when live performance basically closed down, so most of our members weren’t earning any money and it became clear that they’re just not receiving fair royalties from music streaming – so recorded music isn’t playing the part it should in sustaining musicians’ careers.”

Asked what changes the MU is specifically looking for in the streaming industry, Pohl told Left Foot Forward that the two key asks were improved royalties for featured artists and guaranteed royalties for session musicians.

She said: “What we’re calling for is a minimum modern digital royalty rate for featured artists. So, if you’re signed to a label, if you were signed decades ago, you might be on a very low royalty rate, like – say – 10 per cent on music streaming. We think that’s just not fair. So we would like to see a minimum digital royalty rate of more like 25 or 30 per cent, which is the modern rate. All artists should be on a modern rate. So that’s one of our asks.

“And another ask is to have a guaranteed royalty for session musicians. Currently, session musicians get no royalties whatsoever. So you could be somebody who’s played on a massive track – like an Adele track for example. You’re a string player, you played on the Adele track, you got £130 for the session, and then it’s making billions of income from music streaming and you get no share of that whatsoever.”

At this year’s TUC Congress, many trade unions were cognisant of the fact that some of their demands will require additional investment from the new Labour government – a government which has been seeking to make clear that it does not intend to ramp up public spending. Pohl is no different, acknowledging that one of the MU’s big campaign asks around restoration of arts funding may not be forthcoming.

However, she is also clear that beginning to address remuneration from streaming services wouldn’t cost the government a penny. “Arts funding would require investment by the government, but the music streaming issue, it actually wouldn’t cost the government any money to change the law to provide a better royalty, or to help negotiate a voluntary agreement with the industry,” Pohl told Left Foot Forward.

Alongside the challenges posed by streaming services, the MU has major concerns about other issues currently facing the creative sector. Artificial intelligence (AI) is among those, with Pohl telling Left Foot Forward: “our members are very worried that’s an existential threat to their careers.”

Two of the big questions posed by AI are around performers’ image rights and the remuneration model for the works that AI is trained on.

How would the MU want its members to be protected against these threats posed by AI? “We’d like to see a new right for performers and creatives so that they have control over their personality and image rights, for example – so some controls to protect against deepfakes.

“We also want to make sure that individual creators and performers get consent for ingestion of works. So, you’ve got AI models being trained on artistic works and, at the moment, the record labels and the publishers, their position is that they believe that they hold the rights for the works in their catalogues and that they can license them for ingestion.

“But we’ve not had an answer to if they did that, how would they actually pay the performers and creators. Would it be a one-off payment? What kind of share would be paid out? Is it going to be an ongoing licensing situation that’s going to continue to generate money?”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development a Left Foot Forward

TUC agrees radical proposals to tackle climate crisis

Delegates at TUC Congress voted for a motion which called for 'a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown'.

Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress have voted to support a series of radical measures to address the climate crisis. A motion backed by delegates called for ‘a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown’.

The motion was proposed by Unison and seconded by PCS. Among the proposals put forward in the motion were ‘negotiated transition plans’ to protect workers in all sectors of the economy, the establishment of a ‘national climate service’ to ‘plan, coordinate and fund education and training for the workforce and wide scale transformation to a decarbonised economy’, and mandatory environmental impact assessments on all proposals and decisions.

The motion also called for key sectors including energy, water, transport, mail broadband, education, health and social care to be taken into public ownership.

The discussion around the motion has been fraught, with long behind the scenes work being done to get a final text that a large proportion of the trade union movement could agree upon. While no union delegations ultimately voted against the motion, some did abstain – including Prospect.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

 11 September, 2024 

UK

Mick Whelan explains why rail privatisation was a scam and how public ownership can improve the railways

Chris Jarvis 

10 September, 2024 
Left Foot Forward


'The opportunity to have a real railway for the people is there.'

One of the flagship policies of the new Labour government is the plan to take the railways into public ownership, bringing an end to three decades of privatisation.

Opinion polling has consistently shown that policy is extremely popular with the public. It’s also popular with the people who work on the railways and the unions that represent them.

At this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton, Left Foot Forward spoke to Mick Whelan – the general secretary of the ASLEF union – about his support for the move to take the railways into public ownership and what a publicly owned railway could deliver.

Whelan started by setting out how privatisation failed on its own terms and the impact it has had on the railway. He told Left Foot Forward: “Strangely, I think it took covid to highlight the Ponzi scheme that was rail privatisation. Everyone talks about railways and how they make money. The railways have not made any money for the last 23 years. Privateers have made money, pillaging and taking taxpayer’s money with no rationale at all.

“So, if you look at the three basic tenets of John Major’s privatisation, it was going to be that privatisation would drive investment. Well, asset strippers aren’t interested in our industry because no one’s got any assets. None of the train operating companies own any railways, infrastructure or whatever else.

“The second thing was it was going to drive competition. Well, there’s been zero competition on the railways. You can only use a Virgin ticket on a Virgin train. So therefore it was more about protecting the fare box rather than creating an infrastructure that increased capacity. And of course the way that we managed the railways with hundreds and thousands of different tickets was also price it high to keep them off. If you actually look at the figures there was more passenger growth in the last few years of [British Rail] than there actually was under privatisation. And while there was growth under privatisation it was caused by GDP and it was caused by population growth, it wasn’t actually caused by the model itself.

“And the third tenet of John Major’s privatisation was competition would drive prices down. Well we know that ticket prices went up by 65 per cent over a period of time. Even if you rationalised it to take account of inflation, it’s still 23 per cent. And then the Tories brought in that awful law that fares will automatically go up, required or not, by RPI. So you got some vast jumps.”

Later, he moved on to explain some of the benefits that a publicly owned railway could deliver. Focusing on improved efficiency, Whelan said: “What you do get is the economies of scale. What you do get is the benefit of investment. And what you do get is that anybody who works for the new [Great British Railways] isn’t restricted to only working in their own company. So, when I worked in British Rail, I could drive any train anywhere within three hours of my location. They could send me to Crewe, they could send me to Preston”.

He then continued: “Under privatisation and sectorisation, you lost that flexibility, you lost that benefit. With that then is the opportunity – because we’ve got so many salary scales – with the benefits you’re going to get from the productivity levelling up, to then also level the salaries up and have it in common. Because our biggest problem is we’ve got in some companies three sets of drivers on different salaries because the franchise has been cut up so many times, and you can ameliorate that under one body.”

Whelan also made the case that a publicly owned railway is crucial to delivering the ‘green agenda’ and a ‘greener and better transport system’, as well as getting people ‘out their cars’ and ‘back onto trains’. Pointing to how public ownership of rail has worked in Scotland and Wales, Whelan argued that a nationalised railway enables governments to take more steps to attract people onto the railways.

He also highlighted that through public ownership, the Welsh Government has been given “the flexibility they need for their plans and their vision for the future of where they want to extend their light rail, where they want to bring their railway into the communities, where they want to build their transport links for the homes they’re going to build in the future.”

Despite all this, Whelan is pragmatic about what public ownership will deliver. He acknowledges that public ownership won’t transform the railways “overnight”, but told Left Foot Forward that “the opportunity to have a real railway for the people is there.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: ASLEF

Israel has created an ‘ecosystem of genocide’ since 1948, Palestinian ambassador tells TUC Congress

Chris Jarvis 

11 September, 2024
Left Foot Forward

"It is a slow genocide that has been happening over the period of 76 years"

Israel has created an ‘ecosystem of genocide’ since 1948, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK – Husam Zomlot – has claimed. Zomlot made the comments in a keynote address to this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.

Speaking on Israel’s actions towards the Palestinian people, Zomlot told the Congress: “It is a slow genocide that has been happening over the period of 76 years, and is the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people. Israel has created an ecosystem of genocide that is not just about mass killings, but about ending the very possibility of Palestinian independence – freedom – but also the very possibility of Palestinian life.”

Later in his address, Zomlot heavily criticised the Labour government’s decision to only suspend some arms sales to Israel. He said “while we welcome the decision by the UK government to suspend some arms licenses to Israel”, but also called for a “complete, full arms embargo” and said “it is simply unconscionable that the UK should continue to deliver any arms to Israel”.

Earlier at the Congress, delegates voted to support a motion which called on the UK government to end all arms licenses to Israel.

Zomlot began his address to the TUC Congress by praising the solidarity the UK trade union movement has shown with the people of Palestine. He told delegates: “Unions, the labour movement, are a bedrock of solidarity for Palestine”, adding: “Allow me to start by thanking you all – each one of you – for all that you have been doing over the months and the years, for your solidarity, for your actions, for taking [to] the streets every week, in every city”.

Zomlot’s address was met with a standing ovation from delegates.

TUC calls for an end to all arms sales to Israel

Chris Jarvis

11 September, 2024 

Left Foot Forward

The motion passed at TUC Congress also called for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

At this year’s TUC Congress, delegates passed a motion calling for the UK government to end all licenses for arms traded with Israel. The motion also called on the government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine, demand a permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages and Palestinian political prisoners, and ‘impose sanctions upon individuals and entities who have made statements inciting genocide against Palestinians’.

The motion was proposed by the National Education Union (NEU). After speaking on the motion, NEU executive member Louise Regan received a standing ovation from delegates at the Congress.

Delegates from Unison, Unite, PCS, CWU, FBU, GMB, ASLEF, BFAWU, UCU all spoke in favour of the motion.

In the debate, Fran Heathcote – the general secretary of PCS – told the Congress: “We cannot be bystanders, we cannot walk by on the other side”, later saying that: “There is no moral or legal case not to ban all arms sales to Israel immediately.”

The motion was passed before the Congress was addressed by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot.

Speaking after the motion passed, Ben Jamal, the director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “We welcome the passing of this important motion which confirms the enduring support of the British trade union movement for the Palestinian struggle for liberation. It marks a clear dividing line between the union movement, which is committed to ending Israel’s genocide, occupation and system of apartheid, and the Labour government which has so far taken a wholly inadequate approach to its obligations under international law. The suspension of a small fraction of arms exports to Israel is a tap on the wrist with permission to continue – the Government has been scrambling to reassure this genocidal Israeli government of its continued support.

“The time for half measures and hypocrisy is over. The Labour government must choose whether its stands with a state committing the crimes of genocide, occupation and apartheid, or with the millions of people in the unions and in the UK who want to see freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

UK

Opinion

Carla Denyer MP: Trade unions are right. Starmer must not repeat the mistakes of Thatcher’s pit closures.

Carla Denyer 

11 September, 2024 

Left Foot Forward

"The time has come to mobilise millions of workers to dismantle and rebuild our broken economy, and heal our damaged planet."

Carla Denyer is co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and the Member of Parliament for Bristol Central.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called for a just transition to a net-zero world. As a Green MP, I’m pushing the government to ensure no worker is left behind, by developing a fully funded Green New Deal that ensures good, green jobs and training for all workers in high carbon sectors such as oil and gas.

Decades after the closures of coal pits which devastated countless working class communities, former coal mining areas are still scarred by the results of an unjust transition. Health and prosperity, shops and services, jobs and training have been irreparably ruined. No government must ever repeat the Thatcher government’s legacy of inflicting devastation upon working class communities.

Oil and gas companies have profited from the exploitation of workers and the planet for far too long. The fossil fuel industry has created huge fortunes for shareholders while pay has stagnated for those workers doing the hard, often dangerous graft on the oil rigs. The time has come to mobilise millions of workers to dismantle and rebuild our broken economy, and heal our damaged planet.

A just transition underpinned by a Green New Deal must put workers and communities at the heart of building the new energy system that will keep us within the scientific limits of our climate. That is how we will bring communities along with us and achieve prosperity and stability, now and in the future.

The Green Industrial Revolution (part of a Green New Deal although the latter goes beyond far beyond just industry) will need every worker we can muster. It has been suggested that one of the reasons Labour dropped their £28bn climate investment pledge is that the workforce of the future is not yet available. The government must ensure our pathway to net-zero is not hindered by worker shortages or skills gaps.

Many jobs and skills in oil and gas are transferable to green industries, but there can be financial and bureaucratic hurdles for the many workers who want to go green. Many oil and gas workers are employed on short term, ad-hoc contracts and required to pay for their own training courses and qualifications. Much of the training to move into green industries is also self-funded, resulting in a double-whammy of expenses and lost income. We can’t just put the burden on workers to go out, train up, and hope for the best. It’s these basic economic realities of the here and now that worry people about the future, no matter how bright the opportunities might be.

The government can clear away those worries by guaranteeing opportunities for all workers. Investing in good, clean jobs, simplifying the transfer of qualifications between industries, and opening up clear pathways for workers to move across. Upskilling and retraining can be supported with paid time off work, subsidised adult education, and salary continuation for laid off workers. This is how we bring people along at the speed the science needs while protecting their livelihoods.

There is much that government can do, but a lot will also depend on the relations between workers, their unions, and employers. High carbon industries should be planning a just transition in collaboration with their workforce, preparing for the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels. This should prepare workers for the jobs of the future and, where those jobs are available within the existing employer’s business, allow swift and smooth transfers while protecting pay and conditions. Certainty can be given by formalising these plans as collective agreements, which become an enforceable contract that workers can rely on.

Far from the misleading media reports that the TUC Congress has rejected net-zero as being anti-jobs, the interests of workers, unions, and the climate are heavily overlapping – each is dependent on the support of the other. The role of this new government is to support workers in the high-carbon economy to move, swiftly and securely, into the green jobs of the future. Neither of the alternatives, runaway climate change or decimated communities, bear thinking about.

Image credit: Matthew Philip Long – Creative Commons

UK

TUC CONGRESS

Patrick Roach: “The country did not vote for a rebrand of austerity economics”

The NASUWT general secretary spoke to Left Foot Forward about his hopes from the new Labour government.

Chris Jarvis 

11 September, 2024 

Left Foot Forward

Patrick Roach is the general secretary of one of the UK’s largest trade unions – the NASUWT. His union has recently secured a major pay settlement for teachers from the new Labour government, after years of intransigence under the Tories.

At this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton, Left Foot Forward spoke to Roach about his verdict on the early days of the that government and whether he was optimistic about it reversing the damage caused to the education sector after 14 years of austerity under the Tories.

Roach begins by saying: “We want the government to deliver what the country voted for – and that is change,” before going on to make clear what it is his union wants change from, giving a damning verdict on the Tories’ time in office.

He told Left Foot Forward: “We’ve had 14 years in which we’ve seen austerity, austerity, austerity; a lack of investment in our public infrastructure; a lack of investment in education; teachers leaving the profession in droves; the worst recruitment and retention crisis since the Second World War; record numbers of kids absent from schools; a behaviour crisis in our schools; we’re seeing rising levels of child poverty; rising inequality.”

What does NASUWT want Labour to deliver in order to tackle these issues? Roach said that a “national plan” is needed to deliver a “new deal for teachers and for children’s education”.

He went on to tell Left Foot Forward that the “omens, so far, are good” from the government, pointing to the government accepting the recommendations of the schoolteachers pay review body as evidence of how Labour are making steps to address the issues in the education sector.

Roach also praised the government for “committing to work with us in partnership”. He told Left Foot Forward: “The only way we’re going to fix this is not by doing what the Tories did for 14 years – keeping us outside of the room, making poor decisions, making deliberate decisions in order to incite our trade unions and to create, if you will, a fight with trade unions – not making decisions to outlaw trade unions’ ability to organise and to represent their members, but bringing unions as the representative voice of teachers and working people into the room.”

“So, for us, it’s a really big priority – securing that education partnership to understand the extent and the scale of the crisis that we’re facing – but also co-designing the solution, developing a national workforce plan, a national plan to fix the state of our broken schools.”

Despite this optimism about the relationship between the new government and teaching unions, Roach is realistic about what is coming down the track. He said he is not “dewy-eyed” about the new government and what it will deliver, and that it is a “cause for concern” that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are talking about difficulties facing the public finances.

Speaking on the prospects of further austerity from the Labour government, Roach told Left Foot Forward: “The country did not vote for a rebrand of austerity economics – that’s not what they voted for, they voted for change. People want hope and they want to see a difference. They want more money in their pockets, they want to be able to see their kids being able to thrive, and they want security in their lives.”

He continued: “We’re continuing to press, and with the TUC we are pressing the government to think about its approach to fixing the foundations. Because it’s pretty clear that after 14 years in which the Tories deliberately took an axe to our public infrastructure, that’s going to take time to repair, that’s going to take time to rebuild.

“But what we can’t afford to do is to put more pressure onto ordinary working people and families to clean up the mess that was left by the Tories. So when you talk about austerity, what I want to be talking about with this government is – yes they’re having to make difficult decisions – but they need to be making those decisions in a way that’s progressive: progressively ensuring that those who’ve got the broadest shoulders, those who can afford to pay are paying their fair share, which we did not see in the last 14 years under the Conservatives where the rich were getting richer and the rest of the country merely got by.”

Alongside speaking to Roach about his assessment of the new government, Left Foot Forward also discussed his work internally within the trade union movement. Roach has been leading the TUC’s anti-racism taskforce for four years. That taskforce was established to “tackle the structural racism within the labour market and wider society”. Roach told Left Foot Forward that this work is “even more important now” than when the taskforce was set up and that the “threat” and “danger” of racism and the far-right are “ever present”.

Roach said: “Here we are in the grip of the resurgence of the racists and the far-right, and it’s telling us that there’s even more work to do. Racism, it feels, is alive and kicking in our country.”

He continued by saying: “We really really do need to redouble our efforts to organise in our workplaces, to speak about why anti-racism is important to our members, to equip our activists to have the confidence to take this conversation out there – stop demonising migrants. It’s not migrants that are causing the cost of living crisis, it’s people who are making decisions to line their own pockets at the expense of the poorest in our society.”

Roach concluded by calling for the trade union movement to become more inclusive. He said: “We need a trade union movement that is inclusive, that is representative. I want to see more people who look like me – for example – across our movement, leading our movement. We’re doing some great work on that front – more training for black activists across our movement, more opportunities to progress black members into leadership of our unions.

“But what’s really important here is that we connect – we connect black and white working class people together.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward