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Review of Why You Should Be a Trade Unionist by Len McCluskey (Verso 2020).

Today’s world is rife with inequality and injustice — something the recent coronavirus outbreak has simply made plain to see. From the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline health care staff, to warehouse employees forced to keep working in unsafe conditions, it is workers on the front lines who are carrying the risk — with employers and governments showing a deplorable lack of concern for their safety. As capitalist states attempt to overcome a virus that threatens us all, we see how ordinary people’s lives are deemed less valuable than those of the better off. Yet at the same time, we can see that it is workers who are keeping the system moving. Faced with the COVID-19 outbreak, it is workers who care for the elderly and disabled, drive the buses, stack supermarket shelves, and make sure our hospitals are safe and clean. Some may want to confer patronizing titles and medals — in the British case, calling on us to pay tribute to health workers by literally clapping outside our front doors. But genuine appreciation would mean extending our solidarity to workers’ fight for dignity in their workplaces. This is why we need trade unions — the means by which workers can come together to win what we deserve. This is the case made by the Unite union’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, in his recent book Why You Should be a Trade Unionist . While written before both the COVID-19 outbreak and December’s UK general election, McCluskey’s argument stands strong in this current crisis. It shows how working people can stand up for ourselves despite all that’s being thrown at us — and build an enduring power.

Solidarity, Not Charity Indeed, this crisis particularly illustrates why workers need power of our own — and not to rely on the charity of the wealthy. The case of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is indicative — who, stock prices suggest, stands to be a major financial beneficiary of the outbreak. Showing off his philanthropy, he donated $100 million to American food banks. But at the same time, even as Amazon accelerates hiring through the crisis, the company refuses to pay sick leave unless workers test positive for the virus. This is just one of many cases exposing the limits of charity — something quite different from the solidarity promoted by trade unionism. And, as McCluskey argues, trade union culture also has a wider meaning. Being involved in your trade union forces you to engage with your colleague and neighbor, to have difficult conversations, and to believe in the fundamental good of humanity. While social media can become a talking shop, or a place where little reflection is required, union organizing requires ideas to be put into action, for political strategy to be explained clearly, and for conflicting opinions to be listened to. This is especially important in today’s climate, where many workers find themselves without a voice and without a sense of collective identity. Reflecting upon his own entry into the trade union movement, Len McCluskey writes of his time working on the Liverpool docks. Shortly before his arrival, the docks had been a notoriously precarious place to work — with many workers employed casually and living without security of income or in their lives more generally. As he notes, it was members of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T&G) who fought and won the outlawing of precarious employment practices for dockers, improving pay and quality of life for the workers involved. By the time McCluskey started on the docks, trade unionism was enshrined there, with all the workers belonging to the union — meaning that the bosses were forced to listen to an organized workforce. This underlines a central argument of McCluskey’s book: that rights we take for granted today — the right to join a union, to vote, and to basic workplace standards — were not gifted from above, but rather won only through the hard work of our class.

Standing Together Across the world, work is defined by its lack of dignified conditions, and very few workplaces with a proud trade-union culture remain. Indeed, the majority of private-sector workers in most countries are not members of a trade union or protected by collective agreements. When faced with a crisis like COVID-19, workers have no means to respond without collectivizing their grievances — and this is exactly what many of them have been doing. We see this among workers in the service and leisure industries, hit hard by workplace closures due to social distancing. In my own country, Scotland, the hospitality industry — where zero-hours contracts and low pay are common — has faced mass layoffs and loss of pay affecting a multitude of workers. Yet workers have been fighting back. Following a letter sent from the workers with the support of Unite, both SEC and G1 Group — Scotland’s two largest hospitality employers — have been forced to reinstate 630 and 2,000 workers respectively. Across Britain, workers at Carluccio’s, Compass Hospitality, Caesars Entertainment, and Grosvenor Casinos have also won reinstatement and major concessions as part of Unite’s campaign in the hospitality sector. Workers at Cineworld, with the support of union BECTU, have also collectivized to demand their reinstatement and furloughing, and workers at the Wetherspoons pub chain forced a major U-turn from their employer with the aid of the BFAWU. In the care sector, where many workers have struggled to procure access to personal protective equipment, joint intervention from the GMB, UNISON, and Unite unions forced the Scottish government to support their right to adequate safety equipment. There are countless more examples of workers fighting back in this crisis, but the message is clear — unions are the means in which workers can win the respect they deserve.

Who Are Unions For? But what does the future hold, in a world where trade union power has declined? Two things are clear: those without a trade union desperately need one, and workers are hungry for more power. A recent report by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) found that for precarious workers, the feeling of a lack of control over their lives was just as important as the issue of low pay. Following intense debates over Brexit and Scottish independence, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many workers long to take back control in this sense as well. This isn’t something the Left should shy away from: workers’ control is what we’re about. As work has changed, so has the working class. Today, it is majority female, with migrants, people of color, and young people relatively overrepresented. While we may all want to expand industries — or, as McCluskey writes, to “build things here again” — this situation is simply not possible under Tory rule; and in the meantime, the service sector, alongside care and logistics, is only set to expand. These are the new mass factories, and like any workplace, the workers need to be unionized. COVID-19 has proved that those who provide services are just as important to life as we know it as those who work in more traditionally unionized workplaces like car factories or oil rigs. Yet there is no new “normal.” While we may campaign for a Green New Deal or a just ecological transition, in order to win these arguments, we must restore the link from union political departments to the concerns of the shop floor. As life inevitably becomes more chaotic in the shadow of an impending climate crisis, as well as the threat of automation, the only answer is to become rooted in our communities — and to be able to listen to our neighbors. Even despite recent political disappointments to the Left, we should remember that workers have the power to overcome a multitude of obstacles. Being a trade unionist means believing that we are all worth something and that our movement has to look outward to everyone, not just those who already agree with us. Rebuilding the Left must, therefore, begin with organized labor. Trade unions can give workers a collective class confidence — the power to stand up to bosses, politicians, and governments. As we transition back into our workplaces — whenever and however disrupted this might be — our movement must empower those workers who have collectivized for the first time. With the help of our movement, these new members can become leaders and union reps, and they can establish their own branches, but only if they are supported and encouraged to do so. Writing in his book, McCluskey rightfully critiques a purely “servicing” approach to trade unionism. Often critiqued from the Left, servicing is a model where existing union members are serviced at the expense of organizing new workplaces. Proponents of this strategy may liken trade union membership to an insurance policy, arguing that members will join a union if they get their money’s worth, and this philosophy is responsible for unions literally providing insurance services to members, such as life and car insurance. Of course, the servicing and representation of individual members is an important part of how trade unions function — but much of this work can and should be taken on by the lay membership. To stay relevant, we need to organize. While we must consolidate pockets of industrial power we already have, failure to penetrate into new workplaces will mean the managed decline of trade union power.