Jobs for the boys – trade unions for the few not the many in a caveman’s world

 

David Miliband’s obscenely large salary of £425,000 as president of International Rescue is never far from the headlines. Some people think it a bit rich that a former Labour Party politician who represented the working class constituency of South Shields should be milking it big time from a charity but according to Huffington Post UK, Miliband doesn’t just rely on his charity retainer but as a public speaker he commands up to £20,000 a pop. Oh, and in case you were feeling that poor David doesn’t get the remuneration he deserves this Labour man of the people has or has had several other roles with major organisations to boost that deep, deep pocket of his.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miliband
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission

As usual I digress. This blog is not about lucky boy Miliband but high earners, mainly men, who represent people who can only enjoy such excessive remuneration in day dreams – oh, and are associated with the party which claims to represent the working class – the Labour Party. All of them lucky boys. Very lucky boys in a lucky boys’ world.

Trade unions might be seen as levers expected to iron out inequalities between men and women but they’ve been fiddling around, whistling, staring into the great blue yonder and rolling their eyes for around a hundred years. And are still at it.

In 2018 everyone was celebrating women winning the franchise a century before. Trade Unionists were saying – quite right, women deserve equality with us men. Saying. Not doing.

Women got the vote some innocents believe because of the sterling work they did filling in for men during the Great War (and not because the government was terrified of women returning to their militant activities that got under the skin of politicians before the war.) Certainly women had proved themselves to be useful as well as decorative. Well, strike me down guv’nor.

And once the war was over trade unions (male) demonstrated the extent of their support for working women by supporting the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, 1919 which ensured that so-called dilution of skilled labour – i.e. women and unskilled men who took over industrial production between 1914 and 1918 was rectified – by chucking women out of their jobs.

Men were in charge of trade unions. Women were expected to know their place.

An 1891 report on the increasing number of women workers concluded they were a threat to men’s employment – ‘an intolerable intrusion’ and ‘his (man’s) only chance of escape from the evil effects of their relentless sweep is to be found in directing and controlling them’ (women that is.)

Some men, perhaps understandably for there is no question male workers were cruelly exploited, spent not a little of their scandalously low earnings in bars –

‘Aberdeen factory workers toil on from morn till night for a beggarly wage of 6s and 7s a week, and in Dundee I found that mothers and their families went to the mills to earn equally miserable sums, while fathers compulsorily exercised their energies on the street and voluntarily in the public-house.’

Women were less inclined to put their drink habit before feeding their bairns and it did not go unnoticed that not a few of these men were in trade unions and ‘could have lifted a finger to help their wives and children by demanding better wages for women’ but didn’t.

Influential trade unionist Tom Mann in 1894 spoke of women workers as industrial slaves but despite such recognition trades unions largely ignored the plight of women workers. The excuse went something along the lines of men were too concerned with their own difficulties (to support the least protected of workers.) 

In 1919 Aberdeen Trades and Labour Council voted against equal pay for men and women teachers on grounds that women’s work was less valuable than men’s. And, anyhow, women needed less money than a man for invariably she only had herself to keep whereas a man had a family.

‘That was the only reason she received less wages,’ explained W. King.

I think King was, himself, a teacher. He went on to say that the 70% of women teachers were responsible for lowering the salaries of male teachers! It didn’t occur to the intellectually challenged Mr King that if he supported equal pay there would be no lowering of salaries.

Along with other Trades Councils, Aberdeen’s, failed women. In 1920 a well-attended meeting of Aberdeen women workers agreed women had no voice through the trade union movement.

Ten years later in 1930 women campaigned to be able to work in all aspects of boot and shoe manufacture and receive equal pay but they were beaten down by the union by 124 votes to 8. No ifs or buts in that vote.

Another decade on and Scottish women were still having to demand equal pay. In a classic case of shiftiness the unions said they weren’t able to establish the principle of equal pay for similar work but were directing their efforts towards that end. No hurry boys, take your time, won’t you.

Thirty years later —–in 1970 – 1970!! unions were still doggedly anti-women workers insisting that equal pay had to be negotiated between unions and employers. The pay gender pay gap meant around 25% lower incomes for women.

British women were among the lowest paid in western Europe but male-centred unions still regarded equality of pay for women as a threat to men’s (their own earnings.)

Another thirty years plus – nearer forty years later and women in Glasgow were still waiting redress for decades of under-payments. Other local authorities had paid up but the city controlled for decades by the Labour Party dragged its heels. Not just dragged its heels but spent millions of pounds of public money – I repeat £millions – fighting the women’s action through the courts.

When at long last Labour was kicked out of Glasgow by the SNP a great clamour was heard from Labour politicians up and down the UK in support of the underpaid women workers. Cynical and hypocritical? No question.

And most of today’s trade unions 100 plus years from their inception? – surely now women have found equality and opportunities to stick their fingers into the profitable pies of grossly outrageous salaries enjoyed by union leaders? Hardly at all, it seems. Well, what a surprise.

There are women union leaders. A few. The General Secretary of the TUC is a woman. Frances O’Grady enjoys a big Desperate Dan sized pie amounting to around £152,365. She is the TUC’s first female general secretary in 144 years. “We like to take our time,” she says. You can say that again.

Being in the national leadership of unions affiliated to the TUC has its perks. Below is a mere snapshot of a long list of General Secretaries, their pies and gender. 

Grahame Smith’s salary as General Secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress is not easy to find, impossible for me, but The Herald did have a piece that suggested he earned around £70,000 for his STUC stint plus remuneration from sitting on the boards of other government-linked organisations.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16599644.stuc-general-secretary-in-row-over-extra-three-jobs-on-top-of-union-role/

Accord: led by Ged Nichols, a bloke although its membership is over 71% female (2015 fig.) 98% of Accord shop floor reps are women but higher up the union ladder only 15% of its regional officers are and a mere 4% of its national officers. Man at the top Ged Nichols earns c. £140,000.

ASLEF: General Secretary Mick Whelan struggles on a paltry pie of c. £118,000.

The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union is led by another man, Ronnie Draper

Road Transport Union General Secretary is Robert Monks

Airline pilots union BALPA has Brian Strutton in the pilot seat earning c. £140,000.

77% women make up the membership of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists but nailing the post of General Secretary is Mr Steve Jamieson.

The GMB union made up of 46% women is led by two blokes – Tim Roache and Paul Kenny who together earned £263,000 in 2016.

A whopping 78% of UNISON, the public Service Union, are women but two blessed men are in charge – Dave Prentis and President Gordon McKay. Prentis gets something in the region of £117,000. I tried to find McKay’s salary but UNISON’s website didn’t have that information. It did include a table of proposed salary structures for the plebs in the union with the highest as far as I could see around £42,000. Last year McKay spoke about the union’s success in raising the wages of members, ‘£33 a week makes a real difference in people’s lives,’ he said. It certainly does for those on the lowest pay grades. What’s £117,000 divided by 52? £200 a week is even better but that’s for the few not the many.

‘A Woman’s Place is in the CWU’ – Communications Workers Union (CWU) claims according to its leaflet which features lots and lots of pictures of women members. The CWU is led by a bloke, Dave Ward

USDAW, the union of shop, distributive and allied workers based in England and with a membership that includes 58% women, is led by, you guessed it another bloke, Paddy Lillis. Is it just luck men hold these top positions?

Christine Blower of the English teacher union NUT gets a canny £142,000. Christine is a woman. That’s a lot of money. Not many teachers get close to that amount over their careers.

Unite union General Secretary is Len McCluskey. No idea what he earns. Can imagine.

‘More than half the female officers in Britain’s biggest union claim to have been bullied or sexually harassed by fellow officials or members in their workplaces, a leaked internal study has found.

The report about the treatment and working conditions of female representatives at Unite also concluded that a quarter of employed officers believe allegations of bullying were not handled well by the union when they were reported.

Titled Women Officers in Unite, the report cited an official who said she felt increasingly isolated at work because of male officials talking among themselves. “I have to sit among colleagues who refer to our secretaries as the girls … [They] think it is correct to refer to black people as coloured, talk about chairmen, refer to women as a piece of skirt,’ one female officer said.

The old-boys network is alive and kicking unfortunately in Unite, where it is who you know and where they come from that matters.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/02/unite-union-female-officers-bullying-harassment-internal-report
(2 October 2016)

Misogyny has always been part and parcel of the trade union movement and evidently still is.

Most trade unions are based in England. Here’s a Scottish one – the teachers’ union the EIS whose president is A WOMAN, Alison Thornton, which is right and proper given over 77% of teachers are female but the EIS spokesman never off the telly is its General Secretary, Larry Flanagan. Flanagan earns just shy of £100,000.

The trade unions have proved to be nice little earners for many male members and a lucrative career structure.

Irrespective of whether a union represents a mainly female work force the tendency has been and remains for a man to lead it. Union leadership tends to be a boy’s perk. Women’s earnings and working conditions have always been of secondary concern to the unions they pay into.

Trade unions emerged to defend workers’ rights – to protect skills and standards and the delineation of work – for workers read male workers. Women’s skills were regarded as inferior to men’s even when they were comparable such as seamstress/tailor; domestic cook/chef. The skill involved in knitting garments is never seen as comparable to, say, joining two pieces of stick together to make a stool. During the world wars women proved their abilities were every bit as good as men’s but that made no difference to attitudes towards women and their earnings. Indeed the work carried out by women during the World Wars intensified male unionists suspicion of women in the workplace (they couldn’t really argue anymore that women diluted skills) and the male-dominated unions worked hand-in-glove with industry managements to ensure protection for male employees. For long women trade unionists were not exactly welcomed or taken seriously and isn’t that still the case according to the Guardian piece above?

In recent times it is claimed that whenever women enter what has been regarded as a male preserve pay levels tend to decline. Women have traditionally been equated with low pay – even when they stepped into ‘man’s work’ during the First World War munitions workers were paid less than promised and a century of trade unions has done little to eradicate this state of affairs. As far back as 1918 Gertrude Tuckwell, a trade unionist, said men’s and women’s interests are identical. Don’t think that message got across to many of her male comrades.

In 2013 the TUC sent out questionnaires on equality issues to all 54 TUC affiliated trade unions. Only 36 returned them such was their concern with equality. The TUC site that explained this had a link to further details on equality and unions but unfortunately the link doesn’t work.
https://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/equality-issues/equality-audit/equality-audit-2014-improving-representation-and

Trade unions have been self-protective and paternalistic. They have been complicit in keeping women workers’ pay low and in creating jobs for the boys. Just like David Miliband with his eye-watering extravagant salary paid by a charity UK trade union leaders who talk about workers’ rights and negotiate pay claims for their members, the many, increasingly look like the few whose earnings are approaching stratospheric levels with most of them earning in excess of £100,000. And for trade union leaders read mainly male, mate.

Jobs for the boys. Surely is.

 

Me? I’ve always recommended joining a union and have been a member of the EIS and Unison (but I withdrew from paying the political levy to the Labour Party.)

https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/if-all-men-are-born-free-how-is-it-that-all-women-are-born-slaves-trade-unions-and-womens-inequality

In the midst of poverty there was plenty: William S Rennie – Socialist

William Simpson Rennie
Aberdeen

William Simpson Rennie: Socialist & Stonecutter

Guest blog by Textor

William Simpson Rennie, 1866-1894, was a man of his time and one who would have asked questions of the present morass of greed, wars and crises.   Sadly aside from labour historians he is probably unknown to most Aberdonians, but for a brief period, too brief a period, he was one of the best known men amongst the city’s working class.

He was a member of that band of activists of the 1880s and ’90s who fought hard for the rights of working men and women.   At meetings, demonstrations and marches he, with others, stood against wealth and privilege and argued for the right to unionise as well as believing in the need for labour to have its own distinct political voice in parliament.   In other words he had a notion that the classes defined society and as a consequence favoured foundation of a Labour Party, although not necessarily the one that we now know. Through the later part of the nineteenth century most of the parliamentary and municipal representation of workers found expression through the Liberal Party.   Socialism challenged this.

S. Rennie came originally from Ellon but spent most of his life in Aberdeen. where he served his apprenticeship with Bower & Florence at the Spittal Granite Works, becoming a qualified stonecutter in the 1880s, when the reputation of the city as the place for quality granite work and workers was at its highest.   From the beginning of the 19th century to William’s time the sophistication of the stone trade had come on leaps and bounds.   Basically the trade consisted of the building side and the monumental-decorative industry.   Evidence of the skills of both can be seen in not only the remarkable monuments standing in cemeteries across the world but also the fine cutting displayed on buildings, bridges and other civil engineering structures.   This was the working life of William Simpson.   Like many others he crossed the pond and spent some time in the United States, taking his skills to Concord, New Hampshire to work with many other Scotsmen and stonecutters from across the world.   William was there 1889-1890. when Concord’s granite industry was at its height, with 20 local quarries, 44 stone companies and 45% of the population were foreign born. Apart from the attraction of available work the town had a further attraction for W.S.: Concord was at one time the home of the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this fact made work in New Hampshire doubly attractive.   When he returned to Aberdeen he came, back as his fellow stonemason and historian of the Trades Council records, abuzz with stories of his time in the US and replete with Americanisms.

Coming from the highly esteemed granite industry William, within his own class, was in an envious position.   Stone masons had a long history of being willing to defend their craft status against any attempts either to cut wages or undermine their rights.   Like others they suffered the ups and downs of economic cycles, trade slumps and booms.   But given that so much of the work they carried out depended upon knowledge of stone, manual skill and dexterity, in times of business upswing masons were in a relatively strong position.    Unlike trades such as handloom weaving which had been destroyed by mechanisation machinery had not pushed their skills to the margins.

William S Rennie
Headstone

It seems that W. S. first entered the political arena in the mid 1880s when he joined Aberdeen Parliamentary Debating Society a forum for all manner of opinions.   This was some forty plus years after the high points of the Chartist movement, years which had seen the creation and expansion of a more secure industrial capitalist society.   In the process, or perhaps more correctly part of the process, elements of the working class had organised themselves into trade unions which had more solid foundations than those of the earlier period.   Working class interests became more distinct and with a gradual expansion of workers’ indirect representation in Parliament socialist ideas began to permeate ever wider circles with a corresponding challenge to and gradual decline of Liberalism’s influence.

William Rennie was in at the formation of Aberdeen Socialist Society, he represented Aberdeen Operatives’ and Stonecutters’ Union on the Trades Council and was a founding member of the local Social Democratic Federation and Aberdeen Independent Labour Party.   This was a period of mass outdoor meetings with Castle Street-Castlegate being particularly favoured for gathering.   He was no shrinking violet and had no hesitation in addressing hundreds of workers, whether it was damning the managers of the gasworks for sacking men with many years service, calling for the introduction of the eight hour day, demanding that all Town Council workers be paid union rates, or seeking help for the unemployed; all these issues and more drove the stonecutter to fight for a fairer more just society.

He was a member of what the conservative Aberdeen Daily Journal called the advanced wing of socialists which, for them, was evident in, among others things, in his call for the nationalisation of land.   No doubt this was confirmed when William Rennie took part in a demonstration in 1891, standing behind an Aberdeen Socialist Society banner which made fun of the Duke of Argyll.   Aberdeen’s socialists did not falter when it came to attacking privilege and wealth and when necessary denounce the class pretensions of local Town Councillors: in 1892 William writing as a representative of the city’s unemployed demanded relief work for those in distress, including men being put to work on building council housing.   This letter was not couched in wheedling tones but in terms of strident rights for the unemployed.   Some Councillors took great exception to this including Provost Stewart who said the letter had a disrespectful tone; Baillie Lyon said it came from a subversive street meeting and was seditious.   Unperturbed W. S. damned the Council decision to pass a list of the city’s unemployed to the Aberdeen Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.   It was not improving that was needed he said; not charity, but the abolition of the conditions of exploitation which gave rise to poverty.   he recognised that in the midst of poverty there was plenty.   An unemployed man he said was like a man buried up to the neck in sand, and surrounded with food which he could not reach.

William Simpson Rennie worked closely with fellow socialists such as James Leatham.   Not that they agreed on everything, far from it.   Ideas and arguments were the stuff of political discourse; it might be over who should be chosen as a parliamentary candidate in a coming election or, indeed, with the presence of the Anarchists and Revolutionary Socialists whether Parliament was in fact the way forward.   William sided with the parliamentary road and was one of the Aberdonians who in 1891 called for a conference of all Scottish Trades Councils and socialist societies with a view to establishing a national presence to fight for greater representation of the working class.   However, despite significant differences he had with others it seems he did not fall into a narrow sectarianism and was willing to march and associate with a wide spectrum of left wing opinions.

It’s clear that William Simpson must have spent most of his time on union and socialist business.   He had a wife and child (sadly I have no further information on them), how far, if at all, the strains of such a heavy load played on the family I cannot say.   It must surely have been present in one way or another.   What we can say is that there is every likelihood that the volume and pace of political work he undertook, not to mention the physical toil of being a stonecutter, played some part in his sudden death on 3rd August 1894.   For three months prior to his death he had been staying with his wife and child at Kincardine O’ Neil, just west of Aberdeen, working on a contract of stonecutting at the local mansion, a new-build castle in the ever popular Scots Baronial style.   On Friday the 3rd William returned to his lodgings at the end of the working day.   Was taken ill and died shortly after.   Dr Cran of Banchory issued the death certificate, concluding that death was caused by heart disease.   William Simpson Rennie was twenty eight years old.

Kincardine o’ Neil castle

It is a sad irony that a man who campaigned against privilege should die while employed on the grand folly at Kincardine Castle

The following day his body was taken from the village to the railway station at Torphins to be carried to his home town.   In a mark of respect some fifty of his fellow workers at Kincardine O’ Neil, dressed in working clothing, followed the coffin to the station.

When it came to his burial at St Peter’s Cemetery at 6.30p.m. on the evening of 7th August (allowing workers time to attend) the extent of his influence became apparent.   The cortege of mourners was in the region of 1600 with thousands lining the streets to the graveyard.   And, again giving an indication of how he stood for breaking of many of the conventions of bourgeois society a large number of processionists were ladies.   Women walking to the graveside en-masse, not a common sight in late Victorian Aberdeen.   His coffin was draped with a red flag, bearing the words “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”.   An indication of the non-sectarian strength of the man and others was that at the graveside orations were given by men from the Anarchist Communist Group, the Trades Council, the SDF, the Aberdeen ILP and the Secularist Society; and at William’s home at Kingsland Place the Reverend Alex. Webster had conducted a short religious service.

At the Trades Council meeting of 15th August W. S. Rennie was described as one of their youngest and best members . . . one of their most eloquent speakers . . . always endeavoured to convince rather than to bully . . . a credit to the council and an honour to the working men of the city.

John H Elrick

His headstone was erected by fellow workmen to a design by John H Elrick, mason, trade unionist and socialist.   Drawing on his own verse inscribed on the headstone it’s fitting to describe William Simpson Rennie as “A Courageous Friend of Freedom”.