Facing in two directions at once was a theme of the last Amicus conference before its amalgamation with the T&G – like being in favour of the free movement of labour, but against its consequences...
The state of Amicus: Conference 2007
WORKERS, SEPT 2007 ISSUE
The last Amicus conference as a union distinct from the T&G took place in June. It was a rushed affair, with four days' worth of business crammed into two-and-a-half days. Motions drafted two years ago and debated over a year ago appeared dated, and were, with a few exceptions, rubber-stamped, with conference waiving the right to speak. Seventeen motions out of a total of two hundred (plus NEC statements) went unheard – voted through automatically at the end, by a membership that had lost the will to live.
A major reason for this compression of business was that too many speakers were invited to address conference and spoke for far too long. These included not only the inevitable British line-up – the general secretaries of Unite, Brendan Barber of the TUC, Gordon Brown, Jon Cruddas – but also a bevy of foreign trade union officials, anxious to demonstrate their working class credentials in pursuit of a globalised union. However impressive they may be in their home territory in Australia, South Africa, the USA or Canada, it is an affront to British workers to take up their precious time.
Back to the workplace
When Conference finally got down to the preoccupations of the members, two or three main themes were identifiable – protection of jobs, standards and pay, assertion of the national interest as opposed to the EU, and the future of Britain as an industrial economy.
For a few, Conference was not "political" enough – it was too "bland". Certainly there was a worrying degree of unanimity, even in areas where there were clear ambiguities and contradictions in policy, often contained within a single motion. But there was also a real attempt to drag the problems of the workplace to the table via the lumbering mechanism of the 2006 Branch, National and Regional Sectoral Conferences.
A prime example of muddled thinking came in the international debate on migrant workers and asylum seekers. The virtue of anti-racism was used to justify the vice of mass migration. Motions from the Black and Ethnic Minority section, Ireland, Shipbuilding, Yorkshire and Humberside, Metals and Foundry, amended by London and the Women's Section, were composited to accommodate such diverse issues as unregulated agencies, establishment and enforcement of union negotiated wages and conditions (particularly in the engineering sector), undocumented workers, and trafficked women and children.
Free movement of labour
A token attempt was made to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants, but the two were essentially conflated, and the London amendment "welcomed all moves to allow free migration of working people". In the same motion, Conference called for "migrant workers not to be seen as a back door solution for Government to plug national skills shortages at minimum cost", yet demanded a campaign to support 'vulnerable workers' – a term distorted to mean migrants, not vulnerable British workers facing lack of skills training and replacement by an alternative, cheaper workforce.
An earlier motion opposing the EU Services Directive was passed unanimously. This pointed out the government's false promises of job creation, and the myth of migrant labour helping the economy.
On the contrary, Conference believed that "the opposite will happen, with well paid, secure employment being substituted by low paid insecure jobs ....the dilution and destruction of the role of the trade union movement ...and ....a harmful effect on health and safety". The proposer highlighted the dangers of all EU legislation on free movement of labour and politely took the NEC to task for its misleading assurances that Amicus has successfully dealt with the directive.
Be less polite
Perhaps we should be less polite. Amicus has had plenty of time and warning from its members that the Services Directive is historically unprecedented in creating a revolving door of cheap European migrant labour with the capacity indefinitely to uproot and supplant the indigenous working class.
To discourage debate, a London Region speaker tried to compare the situation with the 1950s and 60s when notices saying "No coloureds" prevented West Indians from getting jobs or accommodation.
This comparison was a deliberate anachronism; union members and the TUC have yet to wake up to the reality of capitalism in 21st-century Britain where out of 28 million workers, only 6.6 million are in unions – and even union membership is no guarantee of security or stability.
The truth is, a working class in perpetual motion cannot organise itself, and capitalists know it.