Trade Unions participation in choosing party candidates

[The Idler]

Should trade unions participate in choosing party candidates for office?
In Britain, Unite the union has been reported as registering their members as Labour party members in order to select a candidate for office.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/25/labour-unite-row-falkirk-selection

A furious row has broken out between Labour and its biggest financial backer over the selection of a candidate for the next general election. The party said it could exclude some people from voting and possibly standing in the seat of Falkirk, after claims that the Unite union was trying to "stitch up" the selection by cramming the constituency with new members. A new candidate is needed due to the resignation from Labour of sitting MP Eric Joyce in March last year, following a brawl in a Commons bar. Labour's ruling national executive committee found "sufficient evidence for concern" about the legitimacy of some new recruits to the Falkirk party. The NEC put the constituency into "special measures" and said the process of selecting a candidate for the 2015 poll will be taken over by the national and Scottish parties. Unite responded with fury to the announcement, which appears to have put paid to the hopes of its favoured candidate, Karie Murphy, who has worked in the office of Labour election co-ordinator Tom Watson. The union said it rejected the decision "on behalf of the many decent trade unionists who have joined the party in good faith and are now to be denied any say in the choice of their Labour parliamentary candidate". Adding that no allegations had been put to Unite, it said: "The intervention by party officials into this process has been driven by Blairite pressure to exclude trade unionists from any influence in the party."

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

This is an interesting question, I thank you for raising it.

I am personally an advocate of absentionism, but I don't think it'd be productive to bring that up again since this is not directly on the topic of electoralism vs anti-electoralism. So I'll play devil's advocate.

Personally, I say no. This is because I consider unions representative of the upper strata of the proletariat and in no way representative of the whole working class, I do not know about your country, but in America they represent 10% of the working class. So I don't think it is an issue of worker's democracy. Ideally, a party should function as the organizers of the class, assembling the embryos of factory councils and soviets. Ideally, workers should be able to nominate candiates from a soviet and that is how representatives should be chosen, however I know that no communist party is capable of doing so presently except for maybe the KKE if it choose to, and the CPI(Maoist) which sometimes engages in minor electoralism for tactical reasons (that I personally disagree with, but that is the issue for another thread) and has formed soviets of their own. I do not know if they nominate candidates from their soviets but I would imagine they have.

[Brutus]

The unions should attempt to get as much influence as possible, so they can gain concessions from the bourgeosie. Unfortunately, unions like UNITE are ran by class collaborationist bureaucrats like McCluskey. We need to build rank and file unions for this to have any possitive effect.

[tuwix]

Labor unions shouldn't have anything to do with bourgois elections. Parcipating in that they only authorize the system that opresses them .

[TheEmancipator]

"Unite" union is run by scumbags like Len McCluskey who earns over a £100,000 per year yet claim to represent the working classes. He should reconsider his position as what he has done is both illegal and pointless as mentioned above.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Labor unions shouldn't have anything to do with bourgois elections. Parcipating in that they only authorize the system that opresses them .
In many ways, this whole fuck-up in Falkirk has helped to delegitimise bourgeois elections. After all, what the hell is wrong with union members participating in the democratic process? Nothing, unless they vote for candidates that might actually stand up for trade union rights in parliament.

Personally, I'm of the same mind as Brutus and voted 'depends'. Trade unions should be doing everything they can to fight for the workers they represent (and the workers they don't) including clogging bourgeois democracy with trade unionists. I can criticise Len McCluskey for having a ridiculous paycheck whilst his members get pay-cuts, I can criticise UNITE's choice in supporting the Labour Party who are simply beyond saving but really it's completely understandable that trade unionists would want to ensure that the bosses have as hard a time as possible extracting that surplus value from workers.

[tuwix]

After all, what the hell is wrong with union members participating in the democratic process?

That it isn't democratic process at all.
And what the unions by that achieved in your country? Isn't welfare state cut there? Didn't the party which supposed to be the unions representation (the Labour Party) become a bourgois party that sent troops to Iraq in imperialist purpose, huh?

[CatsAttack]

Trade unions lost any usefulness decades ago. To hell with them all!

[hatzel]

And what the unions by that achieved in your country? Isn't welfare state cut there? Didn't the party which supposed to be the unions representation (the Labour Party) become a bourgois party that sent troops to Iraq in imperialist purpose, huh?

You know interesting arguments could actually be made that the former (the welfare state) exists to ensure that the latter (imperialism) is in the national proletariat's self-interest, or at least that there is no fundamental conflict between these two shades of capitalism. Not that I think New Labour were actually champions of the working class or went on their little jolly to the Middle East for proletarian purposes, nor do I consider unions like UNITE to be remotely interesting or useful to anything whatsoever, but if we're measuring the success (or otherwise) of unions on a thoroughly bourgeois/liberal scale - such as whether or not they can protect the social welfare capitalism that is a thing of the past, and won't be coming back - and noticing that they measure their own success or failure on the very same scale, then it's not so difficult to understand why there's no reason we should actually care about their little disputes with the Labour party, because there's nothing there even faintly resembling an exit door from capitalism...

[GiantMonkeyMan]

That it isn't democratic process at all.
That was kinda my point. The more people who realise just how ineffectual and pathetic bourgeois politics is the better. The very idea of it being 'democratic' is immediately put into question by the whole debacle and participation is only encouraged when it goes the way of the bourgeoisie.


And what the unions by that achieved in your country? Isn't welfare state cut there? Didn't the party which supposed to be the unions representation (the Labour Party) become a bourgois party that sent troops to Iraq in imperialist purpose, huh?
I did say that the Labour Party was 'beyond saving'. They have been since New Labour and even before that they were, at best, a reformist party propping up Keynesianism. To be honest, I think UNITE is beyond saving as well but I'm a member of one of their community unions and we basically utilise UNITE resources to fund our activities (like printing off leaflets, purchasing a banner etc) and also to 'legitimise' us in local newspapers (although that's not really something I give a shit about, it's more my local comrades who pander to bourgeois press :rolleyes: ).

[Agathor]

For the moment, reducing the influence of the union bosses in the Labour Party is essentially increasing the influence of business, as corrupt as the unions are.

[G4b3n]

Perhaps if this were 1913, when unions such as the IWW actually voted legitimate socialists into office, then I would be all in favor of it.
Today, I am indifferent on the issue. It would probably help fluff up the welfare state but as for establishing any sort of socialism or moving toward anything revolutionary, well I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How can this same trade union bloc participation in conference votes include political representation for non-unionized, precarious, "emergent service" workers, "freeters," etc.? How can the mandate to negotiate and mediate for the immediate economic interests of the most reactionary workers to the most radicalized ones square with this same bloc participation?

I say no!


Perhaps if this were 1913, when unions such as the IWW actually voted legitimate socialists into office, then I would be all in favor of it.

The IWW never voted or campaigned for legitimate socialists into office. It never became a political entity of its own, either.