TMP Online

On the day Gordon Brown addresses the GMB trade union’s annual conference, GMB and Labour Party activist, Yue Ting Cheng writes about the need to engage the young in the labour movement.

There has never been a greater opportunity than there is now, for the trade union movement to rebuild and grow beyond its traditional workplaces and boundaries, and to influence Labour party policy.

With membership in the UK around the 7 million mark at present, membership has stabilised after significant decline during the Thatcher years, when union membership was approximately 13 million (one in four workers).

The New Labour Government has all too often seen the trade unions as being “slightly embarrassing older relatives”, a view seemingly reinforced by the rhetoric of ultra Blairites like Hazel Blears MP, who constantly warns us not to “lurch back to the left”. The Government has rarely, if ever, overtly advertised the role of trade unions in society as a force for good, and encouraged more trade union activism and renewal.

But nearly all the candidates in the deputy leadership contest are either rooted in (or claim to be rooted in) the trade union movement and whoever wins must make it a priority that the movement is given a leading role in rebuilding society, and tackling inequality and unfairness at work.

However, the trade union movement itself must do more to reorganise internally, rebuild and develop activism, particularly amongst younger people. Recently I was involved in a project looking at the structures and mechanisms of the GMB trade union, how they relate to young people, and how a youth structure can be rebuilt.

The GMB is the third largest union in the country. It was clear from the outset of the project that there was much work that needed to be done to help modernise - a lot of young people were often baffled by the structures, organisation and rulebook of the GMB. Many had not even had any contact with a branch official or secretary. When such lack of communication abounds, young people will feel isolated and less wiling or able to become involved in the union.

Being a traditional, general union, many of the workplaces in we organise (in manufacturing, heavy industry, the utilities, local authorities, textiles, etc.) operate in sectors where there may even be no young people. There are also new and burgeoning industries and sectors, for example in the information technology sphere, where there is no union organisation but the majority of workers are young people. These are challenges which we need to meet.

Having attended GMB congress in 2006, I was not surprised to see the average age of a delegate to be somewhere in the forties! Many experienced activists need to do more work to encourage younger members to be active, as well as laying on succession plans, and helping to train people up.

Young people suffer from a lack of awareness about their rights at work and the purpose and role of trade unions, which results in them being more likely to be victimised. A generation ago, young people would leave school or university and, in a large number of workplaces, would join a union at the beginning of their working lives. The closed shop system helped maintain a certain statutory right within the movement which ensured individuals had to be part of a union or not be employed at all.

Thatcher and Major dismantled these safeguards and destroyed entire industries, along with the communities which had relied on heavy industry (such as coal or steel) to put food on their plates. It can hardly be a surprise that many union activists have recently appeared demoralised and frustrated at the Labour Government’s lack of courage in recreating a “level playing field” and cleaning up the problems left by the Tories.

Young people nowadays meet the union movement in changed times. In the modern world, in the “me, me, me” society, the collective spirit of the union movement can get lost in our modern, consumer obsessed, society. When asked to join a union, the responses elicited from people who do not seem overtly optimistic about the union movement range from “I can sort out my own problems”, to “I don’t see how joining can benefit me if I get the benefits anyway” in organised workplaces.

The post-Thatcher fragmentation of society has dampened any sense of collective spirit and the “one out, all out” solidarity once espoused in previous decades is gone. Too often younger people see the face of Bob Crow, or may have heard of “That Arthur Scargill” and do not understand the true motives and benefits the trade union movement brings.

Young people are different creatures to those who were raised in the sixties and seventies, though at work their problems essentially remain the same - bad pay and terms and conditions, bullying, harassment and victimisation, insecurity, stress, bad work-life balance, the list goes on. Young people need to know there is a way to fight back and change these things in our changed times.

The national curriculum could provide one way in which young people still at school could be educated about the general purpose of trade unions. The government’s current “Citizenship agenda” should be widened to include specific problems that young people will face in the real world which the education system often drastically fails to inform them of - issues around debt, pensions, as well as in industrial relations.

Currently the TUC is having discussions with Schools Minister, Jim Knight MP. It is vitally important that this work is taken forward. It surprises me that the current Education Secretary, Alan Johnson MP, himself being a former general secretary of the CWU, did not have the idea of initiating this initiative himself. To get in early and inform young people before they begin work may be seen as an inconsequential history lesson, but once they encounter problems at work when they leave school, a basic knowledge of the existence of trade unions and rights at work would assist them greatly.

The advent of a new Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour party will also be a key opportunity for young trade unionists to become key players in the rebuilding of the Labour Party and ensuring grass-roots trade union activists influence CLP decisions. The Internal Structure of the youth section of the Labour party, like the youth sections of some major unions, needs to be looked at and rebuilt too.

Often decisions in the Labour Party are seen as undemocratic, not transparent, and made by a handful of appointed (not elected) “elite” powerbrokers. The Labour Youth Conference I attended this year was a case in point. Whilst I enjoyed it, there was almost no debate around policy or industrial issues which matter to our activists. Many of those who attended appeared to be ambitious Labour Student careerists or came along for the ride. Our party needs to be rebuilt so that in future such conferences are attended by people who came into the party and movement for the right reason - to change the world.

Yue Ting Cheng is secretary of the GMB’s London Region Youth Advisory Committee.