It's Halloween!

'Oh no, its 'Everton-Vampire-Duck Apple Boy'....scary!

It's Halloween!
Originally uploaded by unionblue.

240 years is too long to wait!

In Warrington today to speak at the organising session of the USDAW Retails Trades Conference.

USDAW have grown by about 12% since 1997 (to around 340,000 members) - which is no mean feat in itself - and reflects the effort the union has put into initiatives such as the USDAW Organising Academy. However the reality is despite the union's best efforts only about 1 in 10 retail workers are organised - and as I pointed out today, at our current rate of 'growth' unions as a whole will take some 240 years to bring membership levels back up to where they were in 1979...oh well, its always good to set long term goals!

Of course back in the real world we know if we take that long about it, theres not likely to be much of a trade union movement left in 2249 - so we need to do what we can now to step up our rate of growth - moving from a few thousand new members a year, to a few hundred thousand. Doing this is going to need a radical shift of resources into investing in our future, and we know there are no 'silver bullets' or easy solutions. But just because its not easy, doesn't mean its not worth doing, or it can't be done.

One rule for the rich...

Want to work, pay tax, send a bit of money back home to your family, and build a better life for your loved ones?. No chance mate...

Want to buy a Football Club and launder (sorry, invest) your ill gotten gains from dodgy 'privatisations' - come right in!

Good Tristram Hunt (how many real-life Tristram's have you ever met by the way - I've met one and he was a right 'Tristram' - you know what I mean..) comment piece , which quite rightly asks 'Why do we welcome these robber barons to Britain?'. To which the answer is of course, we (that's a collective, not royal, we) love their money - and we don't really care how they earn it.

Of course the real losers in all this are the hundreds of millions of ordinary people the oligarchs leave behind - stuck in a crippled economy bled dry by the new Russian super-rich. As Hunt puts it, 'the riches that the south-east's service economy is siphoning off represent a grotesque theft of assets from the Russian people'. Bet Berezovsky et al didn't put that on their residence applications...

A star is born!

The latest (and perhaps cheesiest) collaboration between Will Flash for Cash and the TUC can be found here.

This one stars a young newcomer who is no stranger to the Nowak household!

Not a Cymru Cenedlaetholwyr

Had a great night on Monday at the graduation event for the latest group of Organising Academy graduates. Night only slightly marred by post-event conversation in the pub, at which I was accused of being a closet Welsh Nationalist!

Not that I've got anything against the Welsh, or Wales more generally - in fact I've blogged quite a bit this year about our family's trips to Wales (this was the basis of the accusation in fact). That said, I am not, and never have been a Welsh Nationalist. However I am prepared to share the names of those who are Nationalists in exchange for leniency...













I'm not...honest! Seal of Owain Glynd?r

Organising the unorganised from Gdansk to Manchester

Manchester Evening news feature about Tomasz Laskowski, a young Polish organiser who is working with the TUC in the North West for three-months.

Tomasz has only been in the UK for 4 weeks or so, but he's doing some great work with unions including the TGWU and Community.

Pic below: The language may be different, the message is the same - Join a Union!

The end of the world as we know it?

Great article in this last week's Sunday Times about the unfolding crisis facing humanity, as '...the greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end.'

Thought this a cut above the usual 'end is nigh' pieces which fill up the pages of the Sunday glossies, and was particularly struck by the section examining the decline in the rate of 'innovations'. According to the article , '...the rate of innovation peaked in 1873 and has been declining ever since. In fact, our current rate of innovation which Huebner puts at seven important technological developments per billion people per year is about the same as it was in 1600. By 2024 it will have slumped to the same level as it was in the Dark Ages, the period between the end of the Roman empire and the start of the Middle Ages.'

Presumably this is partly because the wonders of the market mean that bright young science graduates know they're more likely to make cash developing iPods and games consoles than plugging away at long-term, poorly rewarded, genuinely innovative work, with no immediate practical applicability or financial reward.

Drawing parallels with the (relatively) rapid collapse of the Roman empire the article asks, 'is our liberal-democratic-capitalist way of doing things, like cities, an irreversible improvement in the human condition, or is it like the Roman empire, a shooting star of wealth and success, soon to be extinguished?'.

Hopes that this is unlikely because, 'Capitalism may be the Darwinian survivor of a process of natural selection that has seen all other systems fail', appear to grounded more in wishful thinking than objective assessment.

As the article concludes, 'The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.'

The people you meet...

One thing you notice in London (or 'that there London' to give it its full title), is the amount of celebs milling about the place.

In parts of the West End its like stepping into the pages of 'Heat' magazine (not that I read that sort of rubbish you understand...)

Yesterday I was walking past the University of London when I was almost mown down by a very red-faced Ricky Gervais (pictured here working up a sweat) who was jogging along and trying to work his iPod at the same time. Wow, almost knocked off my feet by a real-life comedy hero!

Such encounters with stardom are rarer on the Wirral where I live - but not completely unheard of. Check out Bored in Bebington to see what I mean.

Things were different back then...

Sorry, going to have to cut and paste a load of text for this next article as its not available as a link.

Bert Clough is a fellow TUC staffer (though he's more of a proper clever policy wonk than me) - and this is a great article he did for our staff intranet on his first Labour Party Conference back in 1974...

Bert Clough recalls his first Labour Party Conference
1974 and all that
As the Party Conference season ends my memory takes me back to the first Labour Party conference I attended. It was in 1974 and held not in Brighton but at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. Labour had just won the second election that year and managed to get a slim working majority. I had been arm-twisted into becoming the parliamentary agent in true blue Petersfield in deepest Hampshire. My reward for not losing our deposit was to be the conference delegate.

Unlike this year’s conference there was an atmosphere of great elation thirty one years ago even though Labour only won by 4 seats compared with the 64 this year. Mind you Party membership was three times the number it is today and Labour’s share of vote was larger than it is now.

There were other differences as well. The word “socialism” peppered all the major speeches, even Harold Wilson’s. Delegates were addressed as “comrades” by the platform. The Foreign Secretary Jim Callaghan chaired the conference in his usual avuncular way. There was certainly no control freakery. Well known Militants and fellow travellers such as Ted Knight, Ray Apps, Ken Coates, Tony Saunios were called by Jim as a matter of course to speak in debates. There was no need to eject any hecklers from the gallery since most of the speeches from the floor were one long heckle.

Looking back, what was strange was that so few MPs and even Cabinet Ministers were allowed to speak. You had to be an NEC member like Ian Mikado or Judith Hart to have that right. There were however actual open debates on issues such as Planning Agreements, the Social Contract, the Common Market, Clay Cross and, of course, Chile. Jack Jones made an impassioned speech against loans to Pinochet. Above all the atmosphere was a heady mix of invective, wit and nostalgia - nowadays sadly supplanted by scripted blandness.

Jim spoke of the need for “radical and socialist change” but warned that “such measures must be relevant measures”. Jim, who was always close to the unions, thanked them for their “deep generosity”. When was the last time we heard these sentiments from a Cabinet Minister– Ian Mc Cartney excepted?

Perhaps the greatest impression the Conference left on me was the speech of the fraternal delegate from the SPD, none other that the German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt (pictured below). It was a masterly speech made at a difficult time. Against the advice of the NEC, the Conference had just carried a hostile resolution obviously drafted by the Common Market Safeguards Committee. There was strong union opposition to the Common Market. The motion insisted on the right to reject all EEC directives, to control the movement of labour and to bring any firm into public ownership. Other than the last “safeguard”, it could have been drafted by today’s UKIP.

Schmidt responded with great diplomacy and eloquence -“with regard to your vote yesterday, I cannot totally avoid putting myself in the position of a man who wants to convince members of the Salvation Army of the advantages of drinking….but we comrades on the continent want you to stay in”.

There seemed to incredible warmth and comradeship between Wilson and Schmidt, with mutual congratulation on their election success. How different to the recent relationship between Blair and Schroeder.

Harold Wilson wisely did not mention Europe in his speech. Instead, he concentrated on economic and industrial policy. It was packed full of policy ideas for intervening in the economy. He also warned that if the big battalions on both sides of industry try to get an unfair advantage, it could break the Social Contract and that union officers needed to convince their members of the need for “a fair sharing of sacrifices”. Harold’s speech also included that famous phrase that was to haunt the Party in the wilderness years in the 1980s and 90s, that Labour now was “the natural party of government”. But he also spoke of the need for Labour to be a party of protest in government as well as in opposition – a concept which would bemuse New Labour spin doctors and policy wonks.

A legendary figure that spoke at the conference was George Hodgkinson who was presented with a long service award. George had been a Party member for 61 years, a Party Agent for 35 years and city councillor for 41 years. As Mayor of Coventry, he was the driving force that rebuilt the city after it was devastated in the Blitz. George recalled the conference in 1926 which he attended – the year of course of the General Strike. The chair of the conference proclaimed that he wanted to see “the Red Flag flying over that tied cottage at the end of the Mall”. Although almost fifty years later, the 1974 conference still did not see the Red Flag run up the Buckingham Palace flagpole we all ended in us singing it.

Labour Party Conferences in those days were pure theatre even though some of the proceedings seemed like the Theatre of the Absurd. The experience of that Conference however inspired me to join the Labour Party’s Research Department and to fight the socialist cause in Petersfield at the 1979 general election and the rest as they say is history …..or in my case a footnote in history.

Credit Card trade unionism

Article from yesterday's Observer, about union's moving away from 'credit-card' recruitment.

I'm quoted in it, but that's not the reason why its interesting. Reason it is interesting is that I think it shows that unions have woken up to the fact that 'cheap' insurance deals, credit cards and will-writing services are not the future of trade unionism...people don't join unions for pet insurance (well most people don't!).

Perhaps unsurprisingly what they want is good old-fashioned effective unions that deliver in the workplace.

How to get ahead in business...

Met a few employers whose qualifications and aptitude for the job are pretty much the same as this guy!

From down under

Workers On-line Interview with Michael Crosby, who used to be the organising director at the ACTU before moving on to a new post funded by the SEIU. Among other things the interview gives Michael's take on the recent split in the US trade union movement - and what more unions need to do to rebuild their membership and influence.

Michael has just had his book 'Power at Work' published, which sets out some ideas on how to rebuild the union movement in Australia (and beyond). Haven't read it yet (spoke to him on the phone the other day and a copy is on it's way), but I've seen one or two chapters in advance and I'm sure there'll be plenty in there to think about.


One point Michael makes very well is that unions in Australia (and I would argue in the UK as well) are under-resourced and have a subscription and resource base which doesn't reflect the realities of trying to organise effectively in a modern economy. How we increase that resource base (either through rises in subscriptions or through other means such as driving up reps and stewards facility time) is a key question for unions in both the UK and Australia.

Now listen here Polly...

Nice 'response' article to Polly Toynbee from Rozanne Foyer in today's Guardian.

Rozanne works for the TGWU, and I've know her for 7 or 8 years (we went through the TUC's Organising Academy at the same time). This piece rightly points out that rather than focusing on 'union barons' - it might be an idea to cover the work unions are doing to reach out to some of lowest paid, and poorly treated, workers in the UK.

On the road again...

Just got back in from Bristol and the South West TUC's Organising Network. Good meeting, but as it came sandwiched between 9 hours of driving down the M6/M5 with a bad cold it hasn't been a great day. At least I had the latest from The Proclaimers to keep me company (note to self: This probably isn't the hippest of 'sound-checks'..."hey kids check out the latest chart-topper from....the Proclaimers.")

London tomorrow, so I'll be sharing my germs with a train-carriage full of early morning commuters - lucky people!