If you are feeling all 1979 there is a reason. The current spate of strikes has nothing on the winter of discontent but industrial action is punching well above its weight.
Gone are the days of months of stoppages at the Cowley and Longbridge car plants pitching incompetent management against militant shop stewards, the shutdown of public services, national walkouts of 90,000 steelworkers, and the 1984-85 coalminers’ strike which defined an epoch and ended an industry. Trade union membership at 6.5 million is near its lowest since the 1930s and half the 1979 peak.
Yet organised labour has never been so organised and industrial action has never been so well targeted.
Quantitatively, working days lost to strikes in the first nine months stands at 461,000 — less than a fiftieth of the 28 million lost in that period of 1979.
But qualitatively, you need only ask the average Southern rail commuter for the impact of targeted action.
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If British Leyland workers downed tools, motorists could buy other cars — and did. If trains south of London are paralysed by Aslef and the RMT, commuters have few alternatives.
“The trend is for smaller, shorter strikes — and smarter strikes,” says Guglielmo Meardi, professor of industrial relations at the Warwick Business School. “Industrial action is about becoming more effective. That explains why certain sectors like logistics are in dispute at Christmas. It is because they can have a disproportionate effect on business.”
Southern Rail has not been in an all-out months-long strike but hit by a series of 24 and 48-hour walkouts. On a complicated network getting drivers, guards and rolling stock back ready for work extends the disruption. Overlay that with self-confessed mismanagement and routine failures of Network Rail infrastructure and users will have an accurate feel for a business in perpetual chaos. The Communication Workers Union dispute with the Post Office over main branch closures and the transfer of services into WH Smith outlets has been going on for three years.
With the Post Office now in the process of executing those closures, Dave Ward, the CWU general secretary, has made no apology for targeting the Christmas postal rush for strikes to get the issue in front of the public and parliamentarians.
Unite, the country’s largest union, has long followed a policy of “leverage”, putting aside millions to broaden the customer impact of a dispute.
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As Len McCluskey, the union’s general secretary, memorably briefed: “This is a new, sophisticated, smart way to do business. Lenin said the sinews of war is finance. Resources are the key to anything we do as a union.” Industrial relations trends had forecast the structural end of trade union activism but the opposite may be the case.
On one hand there are fewer trade unionists; fewer days lost to strikes even when the economy has been through the teeth of a recession, job cuts and pay freezes; the shift from manufacturing to services; the end of highly-unionised, massive one-site employers.
“This trend has been accelerated by a generational change,” says Profressor Meardi. “There has been a danger that people have forgotten how to strike. It has become more difficult to organise people to strike on wage settlements. In the 1970s the [pay increase] numbers were 10 per cent or 20 per cent. When now we are talking about rises of 1 per cent to 2 per cent it is more difficult to convince people to go out on strike.”
And there has been the further restrictions of the 2016 Trade Union Act, laying down minimum thresholds of participation to make ballots legal.
However, that law may have the opposite effect. When disputes cover smaller numbers of workers —Southern has only a few hundred railway staff — it is easier to organise and empowers industrial action as both legitimate and solid. “Fragmentation into smaller conflicts is not good news for companies as it means the industrial relations landscape is much less predictable,” Professor Meardi says.
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And then there is Europe. “The effect of Brexit for Britain is a shift towards being less open to global competition,” Coen Teulings, professor of industrial relations at the University of Cambridge, says.
“There is also the effect of [the devaluation in] sterling which reduces wages in real terms. In such circumstances you might expect a revival in trade unionism.”
The official line from the TUC is this: “Going on strike is always a last resort and this is borne out in the UK’s record.” The next official industrial dispute figures next month will make interesting reading.
A year of industrial disputes
January Legal & General staff balloted over cuts
February Strike over pay at Ainscough crane hire
March Strike called over Co-op drivers’ transfer to Eddie Stobart
April Pay dispute at Conoco Phillips refinery
May Dispute at Royal Mail
Thomas Cook crew balloted over breaks
Marshalls staff balloted over bullying at the construction group
June Strike at Eddie Stobart after outsourcing of Argos jobs
July Prudential staff balloted over outsourcing to India
Strike at Fawley oil refinery over “half pay” for foreign workers
Leeds busworkers vote to strike over dismissals
August London busworkers threaten 24 hours strikes over rostering
Demands for North Sea strikes over Wood Group allowances
Brighton busworkers threaten strike
September Menzies threat to deliveries over “pitiful” pay offer
Ford talks demanded over future of Bridgend plant
October Gatwick workers balloted over pensions
CityJet vote to strike over rostering
November Post Office managers vote in solidarity with CWU over closures
Earl of St Germans attacked for feudalism on Cornish estate
Third wave of Fujitsu strikes over pay and job security
BMW UK workers threaten strike over final salary pension closure
Dismissal of Shredded Wheat worker sparks industrial row with Nestlé
December BA cabin crew vote to strike over “poverty pay”
Wincanton Christmas deliveries for Argos threatened over holiday pay
UPS workers threaten Christmas disruption over bullying and racism
Atomic Weapons Establishment in dispute over pensions