Those who play with fire will get burnt
The wildcat strikes, launched in opposition to foreign labour being used at Lindsey oil refinery, are continuing and, as of Monday, were spreading. Much of the British left are rushing to back the movement. The strike committee has agreed a set of nominally progressive demands, but, says Luke Cooper, they duck the crucial question – can the Italian and Portuguese workers take up their jobs?
The Socialist Party report confirms strike was against the use of foreign labour
The Socialist Party (SP) is in the leadership of the strike movement at Lindsey oil refinery where it started. Several statements have appeared on their website as the strike has developed from Keith Gibson, an SP member and in the GMB union.
The first, ‘What's really behind the Lindsey Oil Refinery strike’, was posted on Sunday 1 February. It argues the workers “did not take strike action against immigrant workers.” But the facts outlined in the same report flatly contradict this.
Gibson says a 90-day redundancy notice was issued to workers employed by construction firm Shaws in November and suggests this is the background to the existing dispute. But it was not until December when the Italian company, IREM, won a contract to build a desulphurisation unit at the Lindsey oil refinery, that Gibson starts to talk about strike action.
Indeed Gibson confirms the issue was not over the Shaws’ redundancies, it was the nationality of workers who the Italian firm would employ: “Stewards and Union Officials asked to meet with IREM a.s.a.p. after Christmas to clarify the proposal i.e. would IREM employ British labour?”
And when it came to the strike itself, Gibson confirms it was the nationality of the workforce that was the problem: “Then, on Wednesday 28th January 2009 Shaws' workforce were told by the Stewards that IREM had stated they would not be employing British labour. The entire LOR workforce, from all subcontracting companies, met and voted unanimously to take immediate unofficial strike action.”
Is this a case of a cheap labour workforce undercutting workers’ existing conditions? No, there remains no evidence of this and even Gibson’s own account says the Italian and Portuguese workers would be on the same pay, the same hours per week and the same national contractual agreement.
By the Socialist Party’s own account of what happened, by their own member at Lindsey oil refinery, the issue driving the strike was the nationality of the new workforce.
Socialist Party clouds the issue
This initial document outlined a series of demands the SP were making in the construction industry. In their second report, ‘Update on the spreading strikes by construction engineers in the refinery and power industry’, the SP say the strike committee has agreed to these demands. They are:
* No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
* All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
* Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
* Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers - fight for a future for young people.
* All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
* Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers - including interpreters - and access to Trade Union advice - to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
* Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
These are all progressive demands. It is absolutely correct to build links with workers on the continent. It is absolutely correct to fight to unionise migrant labour.
The problem here is not what is said, but what is left unsaid.
The issue remains whether the Italian and Portuguese workers can take up their jobs. If the strike continues to oppose this, then it is no good attaching nominally progressive demands to the strike as its overriding aim remains to oppose the employment of workers on the basis of their nationality.
Nowhere in the Socialist Party’s six demands is this goal of the strike renounced. No socialist wants to be in this position but there is no point dressing it up: the strike is for British jobs for British workers. And it is clear to all with eyes to see that it has been spreading on that basis.
Just look at the comments of union stewards and officials on the picket lines. Kenny Smith, Unite shop steward at Grangemouth where 700 workers are out told The Scotsman, "it is a show of unity for the guys down south… Foreign companies have started not using British workers. They are discriminating against British workers."
Phil Whitehurst, on the strike committee at Lindsey, told the BBC, "People have said it's racist. It's not. We're not part of the BNP [British National Party]. I've shunned the BNP away from here. It's about British workers getting access to a British construction site."
Indeed – these strikes are not racist or fascist. Thankfully there are no signs of people being excluded from these sites for not being white. But the goals of the strikes are nationalistic and chauvinist. Demanding foreign workers move to the back of the dole queue so that British workers move to the front.
Foreign workers must be allowed to work
Of course workers are quite right to be angry about mounting unemployment. As Workers Power said in our initial statement, “what is wrong is to take the small number of jobs on offer on this project (300) as the grounds for a fight with fellow workers on nationalist lines. To present the whole issue as one of a conflict with immigrants is to direct the struggle in an utterly reactionary direction.”
The crisis is an international one. Workers across Europe face rising unemployment. In Italy, the construction industry has lost 16,000 jobs over the last year. The problem of unemployment is no worse in Britain than it is in other countries. The call for workers of one nationality to be pushed ahead of workers of another in the hunt for work is entirely reactionary and counter-productive.
Those comrades on the left who are rushing to back the strike need to ask what happens if the strike wins? It is not so hard to envisage. First, the Italian and Portuguese workers will not be able to take their jobs. They will of course go to the ‘local’, i.e. British, workers. It establishes the precedent that this is how it should be: it sends a message to employers to go ahead and divide the working class on national lines, it sends a message to workers not to fight together against the bosses but to fight one another.
Second, British workers across Europe will be looking over their shoulder: will they be treated like their Italian and Portuguese brothers have been here? In the last decade 2 million Britons went to work abroad – was it their right to seek employment in other countries? It all strikes of double standards.
One perceptive poster on the Bear-Facts website of the strikers summed up the problem like this:
“I’m a Brit working overseas, just like many of you have done in the past - and might end up having to do in the future. Please think carefully about how you deal with your situation. The last thing we all want are bosses exploiting the divisions between workers that are based on nationality. The scum that send jobs from profitable factories in the developed world to sweatshops exploiting children and wage slaves in other parts of the world would end up having a field day with all of us if they could play us off against other Europeans.”
Well said.
Indeed the whole thing plays into the bosses’ hands. IREM bosses have gleefully announced they have 100 British workers on their books at a construction project in Venice. Let’s hope the British workers there do not face a backlash from their Italian brothers and sisters like those at the Lindsey refinery. One Italian worker told The Mirror, ‘Every time we want to go out into the town we have to run a real gauntlet of hate and there have been problems in the towns with the locals.’
Is the issue really sub-contracting?
Many people and organisations, including George Galloway MP, John Cruddas MP, Seamus Milne, the Guardian journalist, and the far left organisation Permanent Revolution have claimed that sub-contracting is the issue in dispute.
Permanent Revolution, for example, write “Were Total to be the sole employer, and not sub-contracting the work out to IREM, those workers of theirs who lost their jobs when the contract was awarded to the Italian company would have had to be offered the jobs before anyone else.”
Permanent Revolution would do well to check their facts. First off, Total actually sub-contracted to the Californian based engineering firm Jacobs who then sub-contracted the work on to IREM. That Total should have on-site construction and maintenance workers is clear, but to make a £100 million development they are likely to need specialist labour.
While sub-contracting is an issue, the point is not that Total should employ the labour for this project directly. The problem of sub-contracting is found in the construction companies they call on for projects such as this. In construction sub-contracting is used from top to bottom to create a casualised workforce of supposedly self-employed labour. According to Socialist Worker as many as 40% of the 2.2 million building workers employed in Britain are defined as self-employed to deny them basic labour rights.
Of course this is a factor behind the dispute. The Lindsey workers were employed for Shaws, the construction company, they were laid off with a 90-day redundancy notice in November. But this has nothing to do with whether IREM won a different contract at the Total plant. Opposing the job losses at Shaws means taking the fight to the Shaws bosses.
The job losses should have been opposed and fought against back in November. Instead workers have affectively sided with the Shaws bosses in protest that the Jacobs contract was given to an Italian firm.
It is plain then that the strike demands do not oppose the system of sub-contracting. They oppose the awarding of one contract to a foreign firm. The Unite union are now raising their central demand that British workers should be allowed to apply for the jobs at IREM. So instead of taking the fight to the enemy – the bosses at Shaws who made the lay-offs – they demand IREM breaks the agreement it has with its Italian workforce: where is the justice or internationalism in that?
It may be that IREM workers are not employed on a casualised basis but are directly employed with greater employment rights. If so, then instead of arguing these Italian workers should be casualised – or worse still, they should lose their jobs to make way for British workers – we should argue all British and Italian workers should have permanent contracts. The point is to unite on an international basis as a class: not blame one section of workers – ‘foreign labour’ – for the unemployment of another section.
There is actually a bourgeois protectionist argument in all of this; when pushed union leaders like Derek Simpson have revealed their real concern is the use of an Italian construction firm. The Morning Star too basically argue that the contracts should go to British firms, employing British workers. Genuine Marxists and internationalists reject this protectionist argument – we have done since Marx’s writings on free trade in the 19th century – because it involves striking a collaborationist pact with ‘our own’ ruling class. Our alternative is the international solidarity of labour against capital.
Is this a strike against the ‘race to the bottom’?
Many people have raised the EU ruling that allows the bosses to employ workers on the basis of the legal code of the country they are recruited in regardless of where they are working. For example, Permanent Revolution describe this as a ‘key aspect’ of the strike:
“Another key aspect of this strike is the impact of the ECJ's Laval and Viking rulings from 2007, which state that workers terms and conditions must only meet the regulations of the country from where they were recruited, not from where they are due to work. This is a very serious issue in various industries, which is already leading to workers being imported and exported by bosses (so hardly 'free movement of labour'), and one which will exacerbate all kinds of antagonisms between workers. Alan Johnson the Labour Minister has finally noticed that the rulings need to be challenged.”
The Laval and Viking ruling is obviously reactionary for the reasons Permanent Revolution give but in this instance it is being used as a total red herring. The Italian and Portuguese workers at Lindsey are being employed on the same pay and conditions. Indeed, as we noted in our first statement, the media have reported that Unite officials met with IREM to agree these terms and conditions and ensure they were consistent with the existing national agreement. Before we are accused of spreading media lies it is telling that no Unite officials came out and denied this story. The employers, both Total and IREM, also insist this is true. One way to confirm it would be to build links with the Italian and Portuguese workers themselves – go and ask them – but, first, comrades would need to stop arguing for them to get the boot.
In any event, even if this were not the case, even if the workers we are talking about were being paid half the amount of British construction workers, our response is to go and unionise them, build links and fight for universal pay and conditions. Socialists – indeed, any internationalist worth their salt – do not to call for them to be sacked and replaced by British, ‘local’ workers. This however is the reactionary goal of the current movement that the left has capitulated too.
Should we support the movement in order to guide it away from reaction?
When pushed Socialist Party members have conceded the slogan ‘British jobs, for British workers’ is wrong. But, they argue, this is not the demand of the strike. And even if it was the job of socialists is to try to give the movement leadership. So what kind of leadership does the Socialist Party give?
One look at their leaflet to the strike reveals all.
First, the Socialist Party dress the movement up as an entirely internationalist one that can be paralleled with the movements across Europe of the last months: “Iceland, Greece, France, Latvia ….. all across Europe workers are taking to the streets in protest against governments that have let the fat-cats get rich while our jobs, wages and pensions are being attacked.”
There is not a word of criticism of nationalism or chauvinism. There is no warning against the dangers of racism and how it divides the working class.
Even when it comes to the BNP the Socialist Party’s main argument is not that this fascist organisation has systematically spread racist lies, that it has grown off the attacks on asylum seekers and immigrants carried out by Labour, but rather that it doesn’t support trade unions. True as this is, it does not challenge the aspects of the BNP’s argument many workers in Britain are sympathetic to, in particular their attempts to divide the working class on nationalist lines.
The Socialist Party leaflet is 100% clear and upfront as to what this strike is about when they write, “We are striking against the employers like Alstom and IREM who refuse to hire local labour.”
Now ‘local’ indeed is being used as the politically correct alternative to ‘British’ by the Socialist Party and the union leaders but it means exactly the same thing: British, ‘local’ citizens should be put ahead of other Europeans. The local ‘slogan’ is either this or meaningless. Presumably they do not mean to stop internal migration in Britain: are construction workers in Liverpool to be denied jobs on sites in Leeds and London until local construction workers are all fully employed?
So this is the kind of ‘leadership’ the Socialist Party have given the movement. It is in fact tailing the movement: instead of standing up for internationalist principles they have failed to challenge chauvinistic ideas and goals. In order to get or retain influence amongst the construction workers, the Socialist Party is prepared to sell out the most basic internationalist principles: sell out the jobs of Italian and Portuguese workers at the plant.
The global capitalist crisis adds another dimension and seriousness to such a capitulation. We are after all only at the beginning of the crisis. In the short and medium term we can expect major attacks on the working class. We can expect intensified struggles: posing questions of tactics, principles and working class organisation. If we do not take a clear and principled stance now, we will never be able to give a revolutionary lead to the battles and challenges we face ahead of us.
Is unity with Italian and Portuguese workers possible with this strike demand?
In disputes involving migrant workers undercutting the terms and conditions of an existing labour force, which, in turn might be leading to lay offs, the key question is always fighting for unity.
Many now pose this question of unity between the Italian and Portuguese workers with the striking labour force at the Lindsey plant. For example, Kirstie Paton, a member of Permanent Revolution and NUT activist, condemns Workers Power’s opposition to the strike and argues:
“The demands that the strikers at LOR have adopted are now explicitly about raising class demands - the unity of workers through trade union organisation, the demand that the bosses train and employ workers rather than forcing them to scrabble amongst each other for a few jobs, and the rights of all those working in the UK, which I assume includes immigrant workers too, to the same rates of pay and conditions. The key to the dispute is if they can convince the Italian workers to join the strike...to achieve this they would have to convince the workers on the barge that they will fight for their rights too.”
Unfortunately, the comrade has fallen hook line and sinker for the Socialist Party’s clouding of the real issue behind this dispute. It is no good raising nominally progressive demands so long as the strike is demanding the Italian and Portuguese workers are sacked and replaced by British labour.
The precondition for unity with these migrant workers is to cease to raise the demand they should be sacked and replaced by ‘local’ labour; to explicitly reject the slogan ‘British jobs, for British workers’.
At the time of writing the unions have just rejected a deal. The break down of the deal exposes again the real nature of the dispute. Unions say British workers were offered 25% of the 300 jobs. Bosses say they were offered 50%. But whatever the true share of these 300 jobs it is clear as day for anyone who is willing to look that the working class is being divided along nationalist lines, as British and Italian workers are asked to carve up 300 jobs between them. Of course, the demands of the strike remain for 100% of the jobs, i.e. for the migrant workers to be replaced by ‘local’ i.e. British labour.
Anyone who is able to distinguish between working class tactics and working class politics can see that this strike has a reactionary goal. No appeal to the sociological conditions – the onset of mass unemployment in the crisis – can get away from the reactionary character of these goals. Indeed such a logic would take us down a dangerous road: it would have us ceasing to fight racism in the working class and excusing it on the grounds of the barbarities and injustices of the system. Yes, capitalism causes chauvinism but this only makes it more important for the left to consciously fight it.
There is a class struggle alternative to workers fighting one another for a share of a pie that is getting smaller and smaller. The only consistently working class, consistently internationalist position is to share the work on full pay. This means recognising – indeed, positively supporting - the right of the Italian and Portuguese workers to take up their jobs at the plant.
Just to be clear (as many on the left have called us ‘scabs’ for our principled line) Workers Power’s unreserved opposition to the strike should not be taken as a call to cross the picket lines. Those who disagree with its reactionary goal need to have the arguments out on the picket lines. And to cross them would be to side with the bosses against the union itself – that, whatever the reactionary character of the strike, remains an instrument of working class self defence.
The capitulation of the left opens the door to the BNP
It is a sad fact that the first major industrial confrontation by workers in response to the crisis has adopted a reactionary demand. And – even worse – rather than being challenged a significant section of the left, the Socialist Party, Respect, and Permanent Revolution, have chosen to tail this movement, indeed, lead it in the case of the SP.
Now, the AWL, who at the outset of the strike had challenged its nationalistic demands, have seen the strikes gain momentum and changed their line: “The workers now on strike are our people. We are on their side. This is a tremendous working-class movement that must act as a stimulant to other workers faced with defending themselves in the greatest capitalist crisis in three quarters of a century.” The AWL clearly does not like half measures: when they go down a reactionary road they go the whole way.
It would be easy to dismiss this division - and many will – as just another doctrinal difference amongst left organisations that never agree with one another anyway. But it is far more serious that that. It represents a real division in what Marxists call the ‘vanguard’ of the working class; the most advanced layers conscious of the need for class struggle and socialism. Each side of the division in the left represents a different feeling and tendency within the working class vanguard.
Today the vanguard is divided between those who have capitulated to chauvinism and those that are prepared to stand up against the stream. If you had asked any militant from these groups two or three months ago whether they would support a strike against the use of foreign labour, for British jobs for British workers, not one of them would have said ‘yes’. They would have probably claimed to be offended by the very question.
To their great credit, and despite the many mistakes they have made over the last decade, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has retained a principled line through all of this. Of all the left groups, only the SWP and Workers Power have shown any preparedness to stand up to chauvinism.
Not only will the far left organisations that have capitulated never lead a socialist revolution if they are not prepared to challenge backward ideas in the class, but they have opened the door to reaction and to the BNP. Even if the British National Party does not recruit a single member out of the strike movement, could they have dreamt of a more favourable run-in to the European elections than a wave of nationalist strikes with widespread support across Britain? Not in their wildest fascist dreams.
The idea – peddled by the SP and Permanent Revolution – that to not support the goals of the strike is to ‘play into the hands’ of the BNP is quite absurd. It is equivalent to the old-Labourite argument that ‘fighting’ the most virulent racism in the workers’ movement means putting forward a ‘nice’ and ‘respectable’ racism. In fact, just a few months ago Phil Woolas MP made exactly this point, “if people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny”. His conclusion: “It’s been too easy to get into the country in the past and it’s going to get harder.”
There was a time when the left could oppose Woolas and his ilk with a clear conscience.
A dark moment for the British working class
This is a very serious moment for the British working class. An exaggeration? No. Though there are no opinion polls out on the level of support for the strike, it would be pretty naïve to think that they do not have significant support for their reactionary demand: British workers first for jobs over Europeans and other migrants.
Though the left never fully won the argument for defending asylum seekers and migrants inside the labour movement, it is nonetheless the case that labour movement campaigns have on occasion successfully defended immigrants, and the labour movement has been – generally speaking – more progressive on the issue than society at large. This movement could well change that. And let us not forget that it is short a step from jingoistic nationalism to outright racism. It is a short step from ‘British jobs for British workers’ to ‘Rights for whites’.
But there are also opportunities in the current situation too. The idiocy of those that claim it is not possible to give leadership or have influence if you do not back the strikes can be seen from the fact that by adopting a principled and internationalist attitude we are sparking a debate across the working class. For every trade unionist that agrees with the strikers' demands there will be another who is shocked and appalled by these slogans. It is that layer of activists – that component of the working class vanguard – who can give a lead and make the internationalist arguments in the struggles ahead of us.
For those comrades and groups like the Socialist Workers Party who have not capitulated to chauvinism we now have to face up to some hard and difficult tasks. Attacks against immigrants, refugees and migrant workers will no doubt increase. Workplace relations between migrant workers and so-called ‘indigenous’ workers could deteriorate: the BNP may not be in the leadership of this movement, but the prospect of fascist led strikes around the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’ is more immediate and likely today than at any time in the last two decades.
The left must launch a campaign across the labour movement against the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’. We must reinvigorate the migrant workers and refugees movements. We must fight for organised self-defence against racist, chauvinist and fascist attacks. We must oppose immigration controls and any attempt to restrict the right of workers to move across borders in the European Union. Last of all, we must strengthen and build international working class unity and co-operation: for a pan-European movement founded on the principle ‘we won’t pay for the bosses’ crisis’.
Those in the British working class movement horrified at the nationalist strikes must make links with our brothers and sisters in Europe. As a statement from the Italian trade union, Cgil, put it “What’s going on in Lincolnshire is one of the ugliest pages in the history of the trade union movement in these globalised times: English workers against Italian workers.”
That just about sums it up. But it can be put right. If we are clear in our principles and determined to fight reaction in every corner of Europe. We should work towards an international conference of trade unions and the left to discuss resisting this divisive and troubling turn.
The International Socialist Group (Fourth International) statement and the statement from Socialist Fight show a 'preparedness to stand up to chauvinism'. I read these statements after writing the article - LC
