By Jeremy Dewar
The rank and file network Troublemakers At Work held its first AGM online at the end of January.
It was organised in two parts: an open session, ‘How do we invigorate and democratise our unions?’; and a one-hour AGM for members.
Speakers for the first session were Andrea Egan, left candidate for Unison general secretary, Luke Dukenfield, a housing and benefits caseworker who has just won a union recognition battle, and Lisa Xu from Labor Notes (US). A wide-ranging discussion followed.
One of the main subjects was how to wrest control of disputes from union officials. Mass meetings and elected strike committees were seen as essential. Others wanted to know about ‘open bargaining’ in the US, where members were more involved from the start and even invited into negotiations. But it was not clear who was in the driving seat and who was the passenger.
Another hot topic was bureaucratic blocking of members and reps. Even after winning control of the executive committees in Unison and UCU, for example, comrades said unelected officials and general secretaries would block left initiatives.
This made it all the more surprising that a Workers Power amendment to TM’s constitution, calling for ousting the bureaucracy and installing workers’ democratic control of our unions, met with hostility and was voted down.
We explained that we had to put our end goal into the document to inspire activists to aim for unions without bureaucrats, though this does not mean we refuse to make alliances with officials when they are fighting the bosses. However, even ‘lefts’ will always betray eventually unless we break them from their caste mentality.
Against this, comrades from rs21, ACR and the AWL said it would put off new militants. For the same reason they did not want to open up affiliations to socialist organisations. But discussions about political strategy are essential for militants and activists to engage in, not something we should hide or shy away from. Troublemakers could provide a forum for these conversations and develop workers’ fighting strategy and class consciousness in the process.
Our other amendment was to encourage local branches of TM and sectoral networks, so that we could intervene in struggles, share experience and recruit new troublemakers.
As an example, our members in Leeds made a leaflet advertising the AGM, which was warmly received at a school picket line—but there had been no way to coordinate these efforts with other TM members in the city.
This too was voted down, though only narrowly. The main objection here was that TM did not have the capacity centrally to do this. This seems absurd since local and sectoral groups could run themselves, relieving pressure on the centre.
Worryingly this puts TM on a course to become a British version of Labor Notes. LN confines itself to a biennial ‘conference’ of workshops, educational programmes and backing ‘left’ candidates in union elections.
As Lisa Xu pointed out, LN backed Shawn Fain’s campaign in the United Autoworkers, but were immediately let down when Fain used the Washington Post to announce his willingness to do a deal with Trump. Another example of a left bureaucrat using the rank and file to get elected, then dumping them.
Nevertheless Workers Power will work loyally to build TM in the coming months because it is the best, and perhaps the only space where rank and file militants from across the unions can come together and discuss how to ‘invigorate and democratise our unions’.
