The Blame Factory

The culture of managing decline in our organisations is corrosive to organising politics and culture and serves to undermine union builders. Although rarely standing in plain sight these days, a starting point for achieving change in our unions, and re-engineering them towards organising, has to include being curious about, seeking out and tackling the narratives that underpin "managed decline" culture head on. A useful exercise many unions have run to begin to address this in their organising training programmes is to look first at what has become a key signifier that a managing decline culture is present: the emergence of what we might call – tongue in cheek - a “Blame Factory” among key workplace and union leaders, where narratives of decline can be manufactured and polished. It must first be stressed that its our long-standing convenors, reps and officers who have struggled for years in the face of employer hostility and Government attacks - and collectively ensured that there is still a trade union movement to rebuild. We need to take them with us to rebuild, re-engineer and grow our power. A good starting point is to present these leaders, on an employer or sectoral basis, with a detailed and brutally honest power analysis of their strengths and weaknesses in the workplaces and industry they represent particularly in relation to membership growth, representative structures and industrial impact. And then ask the group to describe how they believe the situation has arisen as a starting point for developing a focussed organising strategy tailored to those challenges. Common themes often emerge over the factors at play – but invariably these can centre on external rather than internal challenges and forces; providing a basis to challenge assumptions through discussion and move leaders towards a more focused analysis of what they need to change to rebuild. Many new variants emerge over the years these sessions have been running – with Covid 19 a new arrival in the landscape of things to blame. But common products of the “Blame Factory” that regularly emerge from these sessions often include these broad culprits: Politics - Without a Labour Government and Labour Councils we cannot protect workers’ legal rights, deliver on pay in public services, tackle austerity or end “fire and rehire” as nothing can be achieved in Opposition it is argued. We should manage our members’ expectations accordingly. "We can’t build unions without a Labour Government and more employment laws." Jobs Market – With rising job insecurity as a result of underemployment in the gig economy, job losses and now as furlough ends, workers with little bargaining power will be too nervous to get involved in the union and campaign for justice where they work. We should defend our current members to retain them and hope for the storm to pass. "We can’t build unions when unemployment is high". Jobs Market (Alt) - Workers with powerful bargaining positions in the workplace, high levels of job security and a very low threat of unemployment will not feel the need for the additional bargaining power the union could provide and will refuse to get involved. "We can’t build unions when unemployment is low." Union competition – Other unions in our workplaces are our competitors and are the cause of our decline. We should prevent them from organising, provide better and cheaper personal services than them and seek to recruit their members to join our union. "We can’t build unions where workers have a choice whether to join or which union to join." Apathy – workers themselves don’t seem to care about doing anything about the injustice and exploitation they face. "We can’t build unions until this changes, we get better education for children about unions in schools and a more supportive press environment." These narratives refer to real problems to union building that can’t be wished away. But if left unchallenged by the union, can of course provide grounds for leaders to remove themselves from the picture, become spectators to their own exploitation and develop a narrative around the supposed pointlessness of any future action as we wait for external forces to change. At their worst they form a narrative where employers, the law, the Tories, Labour, the EU, Brexit, Covid 19, the economy, other unions and even working people themselves form a queue in our minds as the causes of decline – often with little if any evidence. But the key issue for union builders and organisers to stress is that every one of these narratives and many others take us to a dead end. Even where acknowledged as real challenges, stressing external factors that limit workplace organising leads us to seek external solutions that, in turn, excludes the workers themselves. Eleanor Marx (whose birthday was rightly celebrated last week) speaking from her direct experience as a union builder argued that working people can rely on nobody but ourselves and our unions for our advancement – and place no expectations in external help. Organising and union building requires us to take responsibility for our unions strength now and in the future. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. But we should aim to look them in the eye were we ever to get the chance. Not to dismiss the challenges we face in building and rebuilding our unions in 2021 – but the challenges were equal and often bigger in previous centuries and for the people who built our unions first. As we build and rebuild the unions others built, workplace and union leaders should continue to retain the humility to accept that we have merely inherited the fruits of others labours rather than, yet, repeated their achievement