Building ‘countervailing power’ is just beginning!
Mattis Molde
The numbers attending the Left Trade Union Renewal Conference in Berlin broke all records. Taking place on 2-4 May, 2,300 people had registered before the ‘fully booked’ sign went up. But this did not deter hundreds more from turning up. The motto of the conference was ‘A Countervailing Power Against Strong Headwinds’. It was the sixth in a series that began in 2013, with around 500 participants, under the motto ‘Renewal through strike action’.
In any case it was a success and a sign of hope; something trade unionists in Germany and globally urgently need. But what exactly does this success look like, and what tasks does it entail for the trade union and political left?
First Impressions
Marx21 – Network for International Socialism
The conference shows that a new strength is growing within the trade unions. With the Berlin hospital movement and the Berlin city cleaning service as beacons, activists are now trying to encourage other sections to renew the trade unions, to demonstrate that that they can be different. This faction, supported in many places by the Marx21 network, relies on Die Linke, the German Left Party, and forms part of it. The current upswing of Die Linke, registered in its results in in the latest federal elections, in its dramatic growth in membership, in its new support for organising in the unions, which it continued during the election campaign, are helping in this regard.
And yes, when strikers from CFM (Charité Facility Management, an outsourced subsidiary of Berlin’s university hospitals) talked about their struggle to the packed hall, they were greeted with real enthusiasm. The emphasis on the need to finally take united action in the fight against the far right AfD also brought standing ovations on more than one occasion.
There’s not much to complain about here, surely? And if you view trade union struggles as purely economic events in which capital and labour measure their strength in terms of pay and other conditions on the sale of labour power, then you will be completely satisfied with the conference. After all, the sole aim would be for the unions to gain more and more members and to increase their activism.
In this sense, it would be sufficient for a major turnaround in the unions if hundreds, especially young people, in dozens of workshops armed themselves, as they did, with the latest organising techniques. For they would then return to their workplaces, apply their enhanced skills, recruit members, and put these into action, so that we can win the upcoming collective bargaining round and other union struggles. This, in turn, would have cut the ground from under the right wing, at least within the working class. That is the impression one takes away from the conference.
The Bigger Picture
But the situation is not that simple. The outcome of this year’s collective bargaining round for public service employees (TVÖD) both in the local and regional authorities, and at the federal level has very little to do with the mobilisation of the workers in this sector, but a great deal to do with the attitude of the United Services Trade Union (ver.di) leadership. It is Germany’s second largest trade union, with 1.9 million members, and their approval of the government’s programme of rearmament and austerity means that little can be expected from them in terms of mobilisation.
It also has to do with the fact that in the previous round of collective bargaining, where an excellent mobilisation was squandered in favour of a sham one-off payment of €3,000 tax-free. This sum had no lasting effect on the pay scales and no effect at all on pensions or social security, such as unemployment or health insurance. It had been agreed on in advance by a very small circle of union leaders, employers’ associations and chancellor Olaf Scholz.
And the outcome of this year’s wage round was also influenced by the result of the collective bargaining round in the metal and electrical industry, which had already been brought to a pitiful end by the IG Metall leadership, as well as negotiations at Volkswagen. It has something to do with the fact that ver.di is sticking to the arbitration agreement for the public sector, which gives the other side the upper hand, by allowing the employers to call for arbitration at any time they want and thus suspending the action.
All these issues should have been the subject of a workshop in the Conference, but not one of them made it onto the agenda. Why were these important and controversial issues not addressed directly? Unlike at previous conferences, however, when participants raised them from the floor, they were not actively suppressed, or only to a limited extent. Was this intentional, was it due to the size of the conference, or the obviousness of the defeats?
Silence and critical remarks
In fact speakers from the top table tried to sugarcoat everything, as is all too common in the day to day life of the trade unions. Nevertheless, speakers from the floor highlighted these problems. A certain humility was particularly evident when it came to the issue of the shift to the right within the workplaces. The solutions proposed to this and most other problems were greater involvement of the members, more participation, more democracy in the collective bargaining processes.
The goal of the conference organisers therefore was to improve the functioning of the trade unions, but not to radically change their character. The members should be involved, but the leadership should continue to make the decisions. Electing collective bargaining delegates, establishing shop steward structures and workplace groups are fundamental and important points, where effective tools are available, if there was a will to use them.
However, these measures will come to nothing unless there is also a political struggle over who actually makes the decisions in the union. And this does not mean just the local industrial action committee (Betriebliche Arbeitskampf Leitung), but above all those who enforce the decisions within the central bargaining commission (Tarifkommission).
If these problems are not dealt with, then ‘union democracy’ has nothing to do with the majority opinion of the members, but rather the majority view of the officials, who constitute a bureaucratic caste. By ‘bureaucracy’ we do not mean merely a hidebound obsession with the administrative rules, but the political domination of officialdom and the consequent disempowerment of the membership.
Left Bureaucracy
The conference was led politically by the more left wing section of the bureaucracy, especially those from ver.di, which wants and needs change, a turn towards left reformism instead of the ongoing decline linked to right wing social democracy (SPD): instead of capitulating with hardly a fight, like IG Metall did at VW, where in December it agreed to cutting more than 35,000 jobs nationwide by 2030, of course in a ‘socially responsible manner’.
The conference agreed there should be more action and participation in hospitals, social services and public services. On a political level, what manifested itself at the beginning of May at the Technical University in Berlin corresponds to the upswing of Die Linke vis-à-vis a despondent, dying SPD.
At this conference, it became clear that a faction of the bureaucracy no longer just wants to show that things can be done differently and that they are the ones to do it, but that it really wants to do them differently. This faction is counting on Die Linke and is part of it. It is also prepared to allow a few more radical forces to flourish. On the one hand it uses them as allies against the right wing socialists, but on the other hand it is confident that it can continue to control them.
This approach is particularly promising in parts of ver.di, but it is of course also accompanied by the upswing of Die Linke, whose support since the federal election has risen in opinion polls to 11 per cent compared to the SPD’s 16 per cent. Besides, the Left Party is significantly more dynamic.
This makes it much more appealing. But such a renewed leadership of ver.di or other trade unions would still be a bureaucratic apparatus and still politically reformist: striving for small changes for segments of the class that maintain the illusion that such changes are possible for everyone.
What we need
This is precisely why there was no discussion at this conference about the general attack that capital is planning through the new government and how resistance can be built against it. There was no discussion, let alone criticism of the fact that the trade union leadership has unanimously backed the government’s programme, or rather its socially whitewashed façade. The rearmament programme could be discussed, but there was to be no statement against it or against the general attack, let alone adoption of such a statement.
Just as the radical words of popular Die Linke member of the Bundestag, Heidi Reichinnek, are one side of the reformist coin and the other is Die Linke’s backing for billions in the ‘special fund’ for arms, so too the call for ‘countervailing power’ is one side of reformism, while the other is continued social partnership. The former are thus left cover for the latter.
It is no coincidence that the very existence of this bureaucracy within the unions was not discussed. Rather, we are all treated as if we were cut from the same cloth: some a little more militant and left wing, others more conservative. But ultimately, a genuine renewal of the unions can only come from the grassroots, can only be based on a consistent policy of class struggle. Arguments such as ‘we can transform the unions slowly’ should not be taken at face value. Instead, the question of control of the leadership by the workers and the need for fundamental political education by the unions must be put on the agenda.
This means campaigning for demands, such as:
- For the election and right to immediate recall of all officials!
- No official should earn more than the average skilled worker’s wage!
- Strike leadership by the strikers: for workers’ meetings during strikes, which must make binding decisions on how their struggle will be conducted!
- No to all talks behind closed doors! Negotiations should be broadcast publicly on the internet!
- No agreements without prior consultation of the members!
- For the election and accountability of the bargaining committee by the rank and file!
- For the binding of works councils (Betriebsräte) to decisions made by union structures and workplace meetings! For the right to replace works council members at any time, as well as a cap on the salaries of union officials, works council members, and staff council members to the average skilled worker salary!
This list could go on, but it shows that renewal is more than just winning workers over to existing structures. Renewal requires democracy—and, as already mentioned, democracy must be fought for and will not simply be handed down from above.
But with the emergence of a new movement in the unions, all forces that see themselves as to the left of reformism are faced with the question of how they want to respond to this left reformist, bureaucratic renewal campaign. How do they see the fight to fundamentally democratise the unions, to place the struggles under the control of the members, not only to mobilise and involve them, but to make them self-confident class struggle militants? In other words how are they going to behave, in real class struggle situations, toward this left reformist bureaucracy?
Instead of uncritically conforming to it or just standing aside in a sectarian manner, claiming that it was ‘always clear’ that the reformists at the top would betray the struggles, we believe that we must build an oppositional, class struggle based militant movement that actively intervenes in the struggles, takes a position on them and points out its contradictions, This movement must also actively initiate debates and grow structures, not only within the trade unions but also within Die Linke.
It is important to offer the thousands of motivated workers a class struggle perspective so that they do not give up when the next betrayal and sell-out takes place (which it certainly will), but instead pushes forward the struggle for a fundamental renewal of the unions.