Maid in a Union

One of the most striking aspects of the recent show of force by hotel maids in New York (voicing their frustration and anger at the privileged treatment of Dominic Strauss-Kahn even in the face of an allegation of rape) is that firstly, the majority of workers degraded daily with similarly agressive, violent behaviour, are in the main black and Latino and second, it is only their union which is providing the essential voice to a collective grievance.

Where are the hotel chains in demanding that their customers behave more appropriately towards their staff? Any comments from the Mayor's office or New York's tourism board? The silence, they say, is deafening.

Local 6 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU) (http://www.heardny.org/Local%206%20Info.htm) is working closely with its members across the vast network of hotels in New York to articulate a wide range of closely related issues that have been underlined by the severity of the Strauss-Kahn case.

The coverage of the dignified assembly of women (it is mainly women) workers affected by daily abuse from largely rich, male hotel 'guests' has been effective, albeit limited: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/10/new-york-maids-reveal-dirt

It is shame that it took the disgraced head of the IMF to help articulate a live, tangible crisis in the lives fof these hard working women, but so be it. The hard work now it seems is to convince hotel chains to defend their staff from the form of harassment and intimidation that senior hotel employees would not accept.

It will be very interesting to watch the coverage of the trial unfold but once the carnival is ended to see what in practice changes for these workers on the front line of misogny coupled with intimidation and violence.

Ian Manborde (Ruskin College, Oxford)

Tackling Racism - A Trade Union Challenge for the 21st century

The 2001 TUC Stephen Lawrence Taskforce set clear objectives for trade unions to follow when dealing with issues of race discrimination.  It acknowledged the need for trade unions to tackle institutional racism with employers and within its own structures. The outcomes of the taskforce resulted in the TUC changing its rules to make the promotion of equality for all and to eliminate all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination, both within its own structures and through all its activities, including its employment practices a key objective for affiliates. Although the nature of the debate about race discrimination in society has changed, developing and implementing a strategy for the achievement of these objectives must remain an important part of the work of the trade union movement.

David Cameron’s declaration in February 2011 at the Munich Security Conference signalled a new chapter in the discourse on race relations in the UK.  His declaration that “under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives” was a continuation of the myths and political and policy discourse that we have seen on state multiculturalism since the Paris uprising of March 2005 and the comments by Trevor Phillips in September 2005 that in the UK we were sleepwalking into segregation. 

What was new was the switch from seeing Britain in racial terms as a tolerant society and his view that “we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism”, a comment that implied a break from the liberal integrationists policies that were heralded by former Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1968.  The change in emphasis from Roy Jenkins definition of integration being “equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance”, to Cameron’s strident call for robust assimilation policies reflecting a myth of collective identity and British values is part of a political and policy dialogue that has most recently been constructed in the context of the debate on national security that has taken place since 9/11 and the declaration of the war on terror.

The assumptions behind this change are that we live in a meritocracy and post racial world where discrimination on the basis of colour is no longer a problem. In this new world increased migration, make the old group identities irrelevant, black and minority ethnic communities are reduced to individuals locked into religious and cultural identities and the problems of ethnic minorities relate to individual disadvantage and the need to remove barriers to advancement for certain sections of the community.  The ultimate goal in the context of the labour market is the creation of diverse workforces.  The solutions become those of creating policy solutions so that individuals from disadvantage groups have a pathway to overcome these barriers that are seen as being a consequence of educational underachievement and poverty resulting in a lack of human and social capital.

None of these debates and assumptions takes account history, especially the role that black workers and communities have played in fighting racial discrimination in the workplace and society. Neither do they take into account the changing nature of the modern labour market, the political and economic consequences of European enlargement, or the increasing levels of exploitation resulting from the deregulation of the labour market and the consequences of this for migrant workers from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean  and South America.

Much of the change in rhetoric mirrors the advancement of neo-liberal economic policies and globalisation which has resulted in an increased emphasis on the individual and attacks on group and community formations.  Along with the increase in consumerism, debates about the nature of our society have been reduced to market terms.  In the context of the labour market this has served to mask the nature of the power relationships between groups of workers and management and resulted in the issue of race changing from dealing with discrimination to encouraging diversity. At the same time diversity management as an idea has become more prevalent, equality has increasingly been appropriated by management as a policy issue which is not subject to collective bargaining and rarely to consultation with trade unions.

While there may have been big changes in the political and policy debates around race equality and equality issues generally, the reality of working lives for black workers from established black communities has not dramatically changed over the last 30 years and the issues of concern resulting from race discrimination in the workplace have remained the same.

There are still major problems about access to employment  with the employment gap between people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds and the general population at 13.8% and 13% of ethnic minority people being unemployed compared with only 8% of the general population. Black workers still suffer from occupation segregation with only 9.91% of black workers in management positions compared to 15.32% white. This continues to be reflected in the issue of pay parity with male black workers earning 11% less than their white counterparts and occupational segmentation is still a huge problem with 85% of black workers being employed in public administration, education and health; distribution, hotels and restaurants; manufacturing; banking, finance and insurance.

The Conservative/Liberal democrat coalition government’s programme of public expenditure cuts, privatisation and withdrawal of welfare will only exacerbate these issues and result in increased unemployment, greater difficulties in achieving advancement in the workplace and a squeeze on the availability of jobs in sectors where Black workers are traditionally employed..

For black workers the change in the way that racism is perceived has had profound effects in the way that institutions – including trade unions - deal with problems of discrimination in the workplace.  The status of race discrimination has been relegated to that of individualised legal problems arising from conflicts between individuals in the workplace.  It is as a consequence externalised from the workplace and only discussed in relation to pursuing legal solutions for acts of discrimination that occur.  This approach has led to the issue of race discrimination as with most areas of equality as being seen as a separate and specific area of expertise that can only be dealt with by specialists and that is different from the normal industrial relations concerns that trade unions negotiate on with employers.

This as a strategy is extremely problematic for future trade union development and the relevance of trade unions for black members especially in the context of debate about the need for a move towards organising strategies which embrace both workplace and community.  Analysis of the Employment Tribunal cases in 2009/10 reveals that of 4,500 cases submitted to the tribunal:

• 100 reached Tribunal Hearing stage
• 38% (330) were stuck out
• 15% (700) were lost at hearing
• 3% (130) successful at hearing

The level of success for all discrimination claims was 3% compared to a 13% success rate on all claims.  Proposed changes to the employment tribunal system are likely to lessen the chances of access to and success of tribunal claims.

The increasing legalisation of the tribunal system over the past decade and the more extensive grounds for awarding costs against applicants has led many unions to not only instruct legal firms to undertake tribunal representation, but also led to a more cautious approach to taking cases with many applying a 50:50 success criteria to the taking of cases.  This in the absence of a workplace strategy for dealing with race discrimination has led to increasing number of black members in unions seeing the employment tribunals as the main solution for dealing with race discrimination problems and increasing conflict between black members and unions about the availability of legal representation.

The 3% Employment Tribunal success rate on race discrimination claims clearly shows that the over reliance by black workers and trade unions on legal strategies will not tackle the endemic problems of race discrimination in the workplace.  As a strategy it reinforces the idea that race discrimination is an individual issue and does not tackle the problems of institutional racism so clearly identified in the Sir William Macpherson’s Inquiry report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. More worryingly as a strategy it limits trade union action to dealing with race discrimination problem after the event, in effect attempting to obtain justice after the injustice has happened.  In this context the only possible outcome is obtaining compensation often at the expense of the workers job and with, as part of the settlement, a gagging clause prohibiting the parties talking about the case.

If the trade union movement is to take forward the commitments of the TUC Stephen Lawrence Inquiry its future ambition must change to finding ways to stop discrimination happening in the workplace in the first place and to promoting worker participation to ensure a fair deal for everyone.  The implications of this are that there needs to be a shift from legal solutions for dealing with individual instances of race discrimination and a return to a collective approach grounded in industrial relations and pursued through negotiating intiaitves.

The advantages of this approach are that the issue of race discrimination is collectivised making it easier to both organise black workers in the workplace and to involve, educate and gain support from the wider trade union movement about the experiences, injustice and race discrimination issues that need to be tackled by unions. It further puts pressure on management to address the fundamental issues that are giving race to discrimination in the workplace.

Racism is first and foremost based on historical and current unequal relationships between social groups and reinforced by the patterns of public discourse, power ownership and privilege within the economic, social and political institutions of our society.  In this context there are two main challenges for trade unions in the 21^st century to address.

Firstly to devise strategies that not only deal with the individual symptoms of race discrimination in the workplace but achieve systemic change in the way that employers and workplaces operate with an objective that goes beyond the idea of creating a level playing field and that addresses the historic and current economic and social disadvantages that black workers face.

Secondly to recognise that black workers are a major component in the quest for trade union growth and renewal as the numbers of young black workers from settled and migrant communities in the labour market dramatically increases and could play a key role in helping to organise and unionise a deregulated and fragmented private service sector where racism and extreme exploitation are rife.

The TUC in responding to these challenges has published to a negotiators guides on ‘Tackling Racism in the Workplace’ and ‘Immigration Document Checks and Workplace Raid’ to assist workplace representatives and trade union negotiators. It is hoped that these guide will be used by unions as a first step to reappraising their approach to tacking race discrimination in the workplace.

CBTU launched in the UK

Ruskin College, Oxford, provided the venue on 21st May for the inauguration of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists UK (CBTU). Inspired and supported by the CBTU in the United States, CBTU has been launched in the UK to encourage black workers to recruit, organise and participate in the trade unions in order to meet the social and economic challenges ahead.

Chair of the newly launched CBTU-UK Roger Mckenzie (Assistant General Secretary of UNISON) said “this new organisation will work to fulfil the dream of those Black trade unionists, both living and deceased, who have courageously and unremittingly struggled to achieve economic, political and social justice for all’.

The inaugural meeting adopted a constitution and elected the following officers (in a personal capacity) to ensure the strategic development of the role and function of CBTU(UK):

• Chair: Roger McKenzie (Assistant General Secretary, UNISON)
• Deputy Chair: Gargi Bhattacharia (UCU activist) Secretary:
• Wilf Sullivan (Race Equality Officer, TUC)
• Treasurer: Harish Patel ( Regional Official, UNITE) .

CBTU(UK) is a membership-based organisation and will disseminate news of activities and promote events via the Race Matters blog http://cbtuuk.blogspot.com/ Membership is open to any black trade unionist (including NUS members) on a subscription basis. Funds raised will be used to support educational, promotional and campaigning activity. CBTU(UK)  looks forward to a period of significant growth and will be undertaking promotional and educational activity during 2011-12 to achieve this. Anyone interested in joining the CBTU(UK) should e-mail ukcbtu@gmail.com