TUC Establishes
"Partnership Institute"
TUC General Secretary John Monks announced on April
13 the setting up of a Partnership Institute, which will "provide
consultancy, training and research to companies and unions that want to
establish or deepen partnership arrangements". The Institute, according to
the TUC, aims also to support a network of organisations learning from each
other about successful partnerships, and provide research and policy
development that promotes partnership at work.
The announcement was made with the launch of a TUC research
paper – A Boost to Business – which found that companies who
recognise their unions and collaborate with them are more successful in the
marketplace. The report draws on research published in the government-sponsored
Workplace Employee Relations Survey and British based and international
research material which reveals an apparent link between employer union
recognition, partnership and a successful business.
John Monks then embarked on a nation-wide tour, visiting
employers who, according to the TUC, adopt a positive approach to industrial
relations. As part of this TUC offensive to push the programme of partnership,
John Monks also addressed the Institute of Directors Convention to tell them
the news that "partnership is the key".
It is interesting, to say the least, that this TUC offensive
is being undertaken at a time when the movement of the workers is growing
against the most spectacular failure of the programme of "social
partnership", that at Rover. It was little more than a year ago when the
workers employed at Rover were being told that partnership was a win-win
situation for both worker and capitalist, and that the agreement which involved
workers becoming even more flexible to suit the company was a historic landmark
for the programme of partnership which would end all fear of the future for the
workers. Now many tens of thousands of jobs are on the line, and workers are on
the move.
John Monks in addressing the Institute of Directors felt the
need to refer to "our historic mission" as regards the organised
workers. This is not as the class which will rally the masses of the people
round it and lead the way out of the crisis, nor as the class which will
constitute itself as the nation and take hold of what belongs to it, the wealth
it creates, so as to build a modern socialist society. The "historic
mission" that John Monks was referring to is "to ensure that the
workers’ role in wealth creation receives the recognition it deserves and
that labour is not just another factor of production". It could be argued
that this formulation is also justified, but in the mouth of John Monks it
means implementing a "partnership agenda" where the unions are not
"part of the problem" for the employers but "part of the
solution" so that partnership "is no burden on business but the
secret to success".
Neither the TUC report nor John Monks mentioned that the
partnership approach between unions and employers is designed to cover over an
economic reality – that the workers and the capitalists have incompatible
interests. The latter seeks the making of maximum capitalist profit through
increased exploitation of the workers and the destruction of the national
economy; the former to resist that exploitation, fight for their rights and
their dignity, and implement a programme which will take society out of the
crisis.
There is no reason why the workers should feel compelled to
accept the partnership agenda or feel guilty in rejecting it. It is an agenda
which creates the utmost illusions about the capitalist system and tries to
engage the workers in the programme of the rich of globalisation. It is an
agenda which hopes to buy off the workers to identify with the aims of
monopolies, but which is increasingly leading to disaster for both the workers
and the economy. It is an agenda which holds increasingly empty promises for
the workers provided they do not organise themselves to bring about a new and
modern society.
The workers should break out of the pressure placed on them
to subordinate their own interests to ensure the capitalists and financial
oligarchy achieve their ambition of national and international dominance –
at the expense of both the workers themselves and the national economy. They
must reject the TUC’s "partnership agenda" and that John Monks
can speak to the employers supposedly in their name that the workers will
support them if only they adopt this agenda.
Indeed, almost the last word can go to John Monks when he
told the Institute of Directors, "we know that we cannot maximise both
wages and profits", and also that "it does not mean our interests are
synonymous". This is so. But Monks' trick is to pose the situation as if
partnership in these circumstances was between equals, and say, "But so
long as we recognise each other’s interests and seek to reconcile them
with our own, we have a foundation on which we can build." He adds,
"we can each acknowledge the need for a fair balance between the two
(wages and profits). And we can seek to reach a compromise that all can accept
as fair." Monks was right first time, the interests are not synonymous,
they cannot be reconciled, workers cannot accept that a compromise can be
reached which is fair.
