Given a bad rep...
Thursday 22 December 2011
by Solomon Hughes
Tens of thousands of office workers, security
guards, cleaners, social workers, library assistants and porters get elected to
represent their fellow workers.
But Patel hates this democracy and thinks the
union representatives who step forward should face deductions from their pay
packets.
Patel is the latest backbencher to join a
Tory campaign to harass union reps.
The pension strikes and anti-cuts demos have
got them all bothered and they want to hit back.
Patel released a "dossier" to the
Sunday Express - presumably it was too rubbish even for the Daily Mail -
alleging union "abuses" in the public sector.
She is picking up a campaign started by the
business-funded right-wing Taxpayers Alliance.
Patel says the abuses are all about
"facility time" and "facilities agreements." She hates the
way public-sector employers allow union stewards to talk to their members and
management for free.
Union reps are lay members - ordinary members
of staff who do a bit of work for their fellow trade unionists.
A typical rep will do their regular job most
of the week, but they will take an hour or so here and there to talk to a
member who is being disciplined and then represent them in a meeting with
management. Or they may need to talk to their members about some workplace
issue - the shortage of cleaning materials on a hospital ward, say, or an
unsafe bit of machinery or not enough time being given for breaks.
After consulting their members they will then
talk to the management and try to get the problem fixed.
They don't clock off during this union work.
They still get their regular pay.
Typically they will have to keep some kind of
diary of the time they spend on union business or put aside a couple of set
hours a week. This is called "facility time."
But Patel thinks union stewards and reps
should have their pay docked for the time they are involved in union work.
She and the Taxpayers Alliance have used
freedom of information inquiries to add up all the hours public-sector reps
spend on union business, multiply them by hourly rates and claim that
public-sector bosses are paying £80 million a year subsidising union activity.
She calls this an "unacceptable
activity." Of course unions having good, elected, local part-time reps is
unacceptable to right-wing Tories.
They want to remove the "time off for
union duties" - which means penalising the union reps by cutting their
pay, making them clock off when they deal with complaints or suggestions by
their fellow workers.
Patel wants to financially punish people who
represent their workmates. She wants to make any hint of workplace democracy
too expensive for low-paid people.
Of course time off for union reps is a
financial gain by unions.
Just as unions win higher wages for their
members, so they also win the right to represent those members in the
workplace, through facility time. It is what unions are for.
If a union couldn't win better wages, better
conditions and better representation for working people, it wouldn't be worth
joining.
And this is the real meaning of the
rightwingers' campaign against facility time. They don't want people to have
any representatives at work and they do want them to have lower wages.
The Taxpayers Alliance/Tory campaign likes to
pretend this is some odd public-sector practice, but it is the basis of most
recognition agreements in the private sector as well.
A local steward gets elected by their
workmates and is allowed some time to represent them without losing pay. The
vast majority of these reps are part-timers.
The Taxpayers Alliance is fully aware of
this, noting it in the appendices to its reports.
But in its press releases it downplays the
fact that the vast majority of these reps are part-timers, working a couple of
hours as union stewards, but most of their time being admin officers or nurses
or binmen.
You can get an idea of the pettiness of the
anti-union campaign with Patel's "discovery" of new shocking
facilities agreements - like some councils giving unions small offices.
The union office is a basic win, alongside
better wages or a union noticeboard. But to Patel, these are all shocking
"abuses."
Her shock at the hint of free speech in our
workplaces might be linked to her enthusiasm for repressive regimes abroad.
Patel is a real enthusiast for the vicious,
violent and backward rulers of Bahrain.
She used to be a lobbyist for PR agency Weber
Shandwick. Her main client was the government of Bahrain.
She's kept up her enthusiasm for the Bahraini
royals since being elected to represent the people of Witham, Essex.
Last year Patel accepted a trip to Bahrain
paid for by the sheikhdom. According to the Bahraini news agency, she spent
time "expressing delight" towards the sheikhs and she
"lauded" the royal family.
Within months the same sheikhs were shooting
down protesters in the streets, as well as beating up and sacking trade
unionists who had gone on strike in support of the fight for freedom.
Patel has never said a word about these
"abuses." But she did take up parliamentary time asking friendly
questions about "strengthening links" with Bahrain.
Bizarrely, Patel denounced elected trade
union leaders as "barons," but merely smiles at the Bahraini royals.
She said there is "nothing civilised
about the way some trade unions are acting" in Britain, but she had
nothing to say about the brutality of her Bahraini pals.
Patel isn't the only member of the
anti-facility time gang with ugly friendships.
Dominic Raab is also part of the campaign.
Raab co-wrote a book on why the Tory Party should be more right wing.
He launched the book at the last party
conference at a reception paid for by sleazy lobbyists Bell Pottinger, the firm
which represents Bahrain.
And for the past few months the same
anti-union campaign has been fronted by Aiden Burley, the MP recently caught
enjoying a party with a chum in a nazi uniform.
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