THE LAST LINE
IN THE GROUND
Big Issue North Magazine, 28th November to 4 December
THE LAST
LINE IN THE GROUND
Unite
boss Sharon Graham shares with Mark Metcalf some of the campaigning tactics
that have helped the union win double-digit pay rises for its members in a
series of successful recent disputes
“We are
determined that anyone being brave enough to withdraw their labour is not
starved back to work.”
Sharon
Graham, the first woman to be general secretary of Unite, the UK’s largest
trade union, is passionate about ensuring her members and workers generally do
not become the victims of the cost-of-living crisis.
This has
led to a willingness to lead her members into strike action when negotiations
with employers have failed, with over 90,000 withdrawing their labour in the
last 12 months. The result has been spectacular successes, such as double-digit
pay increases at Stagecoach Buses in Hull and on Liverpool Docks.
But these
wins are not just the result of strength of will. A rigorous approach to
research and campaigning – pioneered by Graham – and a sound financial footing
have been equally or more important.
Graham
calls this approach “leveraging”. She says: “We look at companies as a whole so
that when we need to have campaigns the employer knows we can affect their
business. Using accountants, economists and investigative researchers we
intensively look at their directors, shareholders, clients, suppliers,
creditors, possible future clients, emerging markets, political structures
where they are based and communities where they operate.”
Share
prices and their possible volatility during a dispute are also
considered.
Pressure
is then applied on the companies, many of whom are major multinationals in which
key decisions are taken overseas, through a variety of options including
“adverts, briefings and strikes”. These leverage campaigns worried one
Conservative party figure enough to be called “sinister”.
In 2020,
for example, Unite determined that BA was using Covid as an excuse for its plan
to hire and rehire 42,000 staff on worse conditions. It highlighted that IAG,
BA’s parent company, was not in any threat of insolvency because it sat on
assets and reserves that could see it through the crisis without the need for
permanent cuts or redundancies. And it wrote to members of the board of IAG,
copied to Willie Walsh, IAG CEO and Luis Gallego Martín, chairman and CEO of
Iberia, BA’s sister company, to make its point. Ultimately BA’s then CEO Alex
Ctriz agreed, saying: “There is no need for British Airways to lay off cabin
crew and then rehire them on inferior terms.”
Earlier
Unite took similarly sophisticated and successful approaches to a union
derecognition dispute against Yorkshire Ambulance Service and the victimisation
of a senior union rep at Honda. That brought not only his reinstatement but an
additional 1,000 members at the Swindon plant to boot.
Unite can
fund disputes because over a decade ago it established a strike fund that is
now worth £30 million. Other unions such as the RMT and CWU, both of whose
members have engaged in long-running strikes this year, are unable to provide
much financial support to those walking out.
“We are
determined that anyone being brave enough to withdraw their labour is not starved
back to work. I upped the daily strike rates to £70 when I became general
secretary.” says Graham.
These
funds have facilitated action by over 450 groups of Unite members against their
employers in the last year. “We have won 81 per cent of them and put £200
million into members’ pockets. I feel privileged to have participated in these
victories that include, in some cases, double digit rises.”
Born in
1968 in London, Graham, who has strong North East connections, became aware at
a very early age of the exploitation working people can suffer when she heard
about the death of her uncle in 1921.
“He broke
his back working as a miner in County Durham,” she says. “He left a wife and
three children to live out their lives in poverty.
“The
employer admitted liability and paid out just £300, equivalent to £15,000
today. I thought, they took away his life – how could that happen?”
Graham
left school in Hammersmith at 16 in the mid-1980s to start work as a waitress.
She was inspired by everything from Robert Trussell’s book The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists to the Dagenham Ford women sewing machinists she calls “heroes”
for their successful strike in 1968 that led to the passing of the 1970 Equal
Pay Act. Within a year she had led a successful strike in defence of casual
workers’ rights that won equal pay.
Overall
though, the 1980s were not a period when collective organisation was
successful, with defeats for, among others, the miners, print workers and
dockers. Trade union membership, which peaked at over 13 million at the end of
the 1970s, collapsed and is now under half that figure. Workers became
reluctant to take strike action, preferring to bargain for a better deal while
staying at work. Since then, and particularly since the economic crisis of
2008, wages have fallen and rapidly rising prices are now hurting
millions.
After
attending the Trades Union Congress Organising Academy at 27, Graham was
employed by the TGWU, which merged with Amicus to become Unite in 2007. Its
members come from sectors including construction, manufacturing, transport, and
logistics.
Graham
became head of Unite’s organising department and built a large following, which
later helped her defeat the strong favourite Steve Turner at last year’s
general secretary elections.
“I believed I was saying something very different to what had been said
previously,” she says. “We were talking the language of the workers and what
they needed was for the union to refocus on jobs, pay and conditions, and by
winning for workers this would give them confidence to ultimately change the
political centre ground.”
Earlier
this month Unite secured a pay rise of 20 per cent over the next two years
after 250 bus drivers went on strike for a month. Graham is especially pleased
for the Hull workers, who she felt were being exploited for living in a low
wage area. Unite, which has led a series of productive bus workers disputes
this year, successfully sought parity with terms and conditions
elsewhere.
At
Liverpool Docks nearly eight weeks of strike action has also won rises of 14-18
per cent for dockers there, depending on their grades.
Other
ongoing disputes where pay is an issue include food manufacturer Quorn in
Billingham, Co Durham, where Graham is set to attend the 24/7 picket line.
“Nothing will ever be as powerful as workers withdrawing their labour and a
properly organised picket line is key,” says Graham, who contends that it is
only when workers take action that it becomes clear to the public that they are
essential to the functioning of the economy.
But won’t
pushing up wages lead to more pain in the future due to “wage-push inflation” –
as the government has argued in its attempts to persuade workers not to take
strike action – in which resulting price rises lead to ever more demands for
higher pay?
Not so,
argues Graham. “Our Unite investigative approach has shown that this second
wave of inflationary pressures has been driven by excessive profits, not wage
rises. All Unite members want is a fair share of what they have earned for
their employers.”
Meanwhile,
Unite, in a strategy that breaks with tradition, has transferred some of its
political funds away from the Labour Party into a new campaign that takes the
union closer to working with its grassroots members.
Some of
Graham’s predecessors played a major role in the Labour Party. Len McCluskey
provided significant support for Jeremy Corbyn when he was elected leader in
2015. Millions were spent supporting Labour, which nevertheless lost badly at
the 2019 general election. Graham does not want to play such a role in the
party. This may give her a chance to be more critical of a future Keir Starmer
government.
“We have
launched Unite for a Workers’ Economy, which seeks to use our
power in workplaces whilst also organising in our communities to develop a
workers’ manifesto to drive the political agenda,” says Graham.
To help
do this Unite is looking to open community bases in northern communities and is
targeting Grimsby, Hull, Workington, Barrow in Furness, Leigh and Morecambe for
special attention. It already has thousands of non-working members who pay a
nominal fee to become community members.
“Politicians
do not lead – they follow. In order to get a better deal for workers and
communities we need to shift the centre ground to show what voters want. For
example, pensioner poverty as a whole is linked to the demise of occupational
pensions, which we are defending in workplaces and trying to reopen in others
and which we want to see fought for more generally. We are not doing this
through lobbies but by doing the five miles of organising.”
On food
poverty, Unite campaigning will highlight how it is linked to low wages,
meaning many people have to claim Universal Credit and use food banks. “Why is
it acceptable that a number of these people work for supermarkets that make
massive profits and as such are being subsidised by the taxpayer?” asks Graham.
On the
political front Graham has attacked the government for introducing the Covert
Human Intelligence Sources Act, which makes it lawful for undercover police
officers to spy on trade unionists if they believe they are engaging in actions
that are “damaging the economic welfare of the country”.
Clearly,
taking industrial action is aimed at causing economic damage in order to force
employers to negotiate a deal that is satisfactory to both parties.
“We know
Spy Cops collected information on building workers that was used to blacklist
them so that they had to move to other sectors of the economy,” says Graham.
“Good activists were victimised and while Unite has won many cases of
compensation it was wrong and we need to stop it happening in the future so
that workers can organise collectively to be properly rewarded for their
work.”
With the
government seemingly intent on passing more anti-trade union laws, Graham, who
believes she can’t stop the legislation because Rishi Sunak’s party has an
80-seat majority, is focused “on how we can overcome any hurdles parked in
front of us, including if they attack strike pay, to put our members in the
best position to win. We are the last line in the ground for many
people.”
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