We are recommending that members vote to REJECT the amendment regarding the party’s relationship with trade unions (“Strengthening trade union relationships”, 3.d.iii).
It is absolutely essential we root this Party in workplace organising. We need branches that help organise workplaces, support strike action and connect powerful workplace organising to a broader political project of transformation.
That means the Party’s connection to trade unions must be built from the ground up, area by area, workplace by workplace. There must be Party infrastructure to support this work, but not on the model that this amendment proposes.
‘Senior trade union movements figures’ laying the groundwork for ‘national affiliations’ isn’t the way to do this. We don’t want a repeat of the Labour Party affiliation model, with trade union block votes decided from the top down.
The sad truth is our unions are not the fighting instruments we need them to be: too few workers are unionised (especially in the service sector), too many members are inactive, organisation in each workplace is weak and turnouts in strike ballots are low.
The genocide in Gaza has shown us how our workers’ movement is weakened by narrow limits on what we organise around – like our Italian comrades we should have been able to grind the war machine to a stop! The majority of trade union leadership isn’t willing to take risks to challenge these limits.
Too often unions function as service providers, and senior leaders don’t represent & reflect the organising of workers on the ground, or fight for the scale of transformation a strong rank and file workers movement could win.
We are building this new party at a moment of immense historical opportunity: to break from the history of how the Labour Party has sold out workers, weakened the workers struggle, and allowed bureaucrats to make deals with bosses to decide how society is be organised.
The only way we can build a party on a different model is to root our workers organising truly in the workplace, in the rank and file of the workers’ movement.
We should have a Workers’ Movement Commission, but led by rank-and-file members rather than trade union officials. Affiliation should take place on a local party to local trade union branch model. Local party branches should be building local groups of rank-and-file trade unionists who support each other to map and organise their workplaces, connect disputes and coordinate strike solidarity. Coordination with groups like Trades Councils are also important in this process.
Formal national affiliation also neglects non-TUC unions which we may wish to cooperate and support, who often are organised at the local level or would not want to affiliate formally with a political party.
Rather than focusing on national affiliations, the national party should focus resources on a training programme for practical skills workers need to organise at work and building national cross-union, cross-sectoral rank and file networks of workplace organisers.
As there is no option to change this amendment, please vote to reject this amendment so we can explore models to root this Party in workplace organising from the ground up.
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