The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 29th September 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 29th September 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
The Trades Union Congress has recently published a brief report snappily entitled Pulling all the levers: Learning from Biden: a UK clean industrial strategy that protects workers and the Climate. The title is perhaps unfortunate as Joe Biden has now gone well beyond the ‘Sleepy Joe’ stage.
The report suggests, however, that we have something to learn from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that had nothing much to do with Biden, apart from him signing it into law (and probably instantly forgetting about it). This measure is designed to reduce the cost of prescription drugs in the USA and encourage investment in green technologies using slightly increased taxes on big business. That could mean that big business will get its money back by ‘green’ investments. That two very different measures are combined in one Act is a typical result of the horse trading necessary in Congress and the Senate to get any laws passed. One senior US diplomat openly admitted that the aim of the measure was to try to catch up on China’s lead in green energy and green production technologies.
The TUC, however, sees the IRA as something to be copied here. “As new industries grow and existing industries transform, the UK cannot afford to remain stuck in the 20th Century.” So “Without our own active net zero industrial strategy, the UK economy will be left behind, our industries will become less competitive and many jobs will be put at risk” the TUC observes. There is indeed an urgent need for planning of some sort.
The report points out that: “Between 660,000 and 834,000 jobs could be offshored from Britain if the UK fails to deliver comparable clean industrial policies to our peers” and “identifies jobs that, unless government acts now, could be moved offshore to countries that offer superior green infrastructure and greater support for decarbonising industry.”
That is true. The New Worker has made exactly that point several times, particularly as regards the sorry saga of the Bifab yards in Fife, which in February 2021 were sold off for a pittance by the SNP Government after they unsuccessfully invested £37.4 million since 2017 in the failing company whose yards were perfectly capable of producing components for wind turbines which required for a wind farm just a few miles offshore.
It is not just the steel and car industries where jobs are at risk. High carbon manufacturing sectors such as ceramics, glass and chemicals also need to be decarbonised.
The report points out that the “UK has not implemented an effective industrial strategy to support foundation industries or jobs, or to create jobs in new clean sectors at pace”. That is hardly a surprise given that the Tories have expressed a distaste for economic planning in favour of the market for decades.
One way Britain has successfully reduced its carbon footprint is by de-industrialisation. There are no more smoking chimneys, but they have been metaphorically at least exported to Asia.
Although the rapid growth of offshore wind industry is often hailed as a success, the turbines have been made in such places as Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia where wages are abysmal.
The derelict Bifab yard is not the only place in Britain where turbine manufacturing could provide decently paid jobs in areas where traditional industries have given way to pizza deliveries. In addition, building locally saves the energy expended on transporting turbines across the globe.
The TUC thinks that the American IRA is good for trade unions because it imposes conditions about wages and using domestic supply chains. “In the US, thanks to active industrial strategy, companies now proactively come to unions for partnership” according to the report. The word ‘partnership’ is often a code-word for class collaboration and American unions are sceptical about the details and note many loopholes in the Act.
The TUC predictably also admires European Union efforts to develop home-grown green industries (despite the Germans rediscovering the merits of coal).
The more specific plans the TUC has for the UK include endorsing Labour’s £28 billion Green Prosperity Plan (which many or may not have been abandoned later this week). It also places great faith in the rejuvenated Civil Service to act as a “guiding, entrepreneurial state [that] is pro-active, empowered and co-ordinated” but deplores the fact that “UK governments have repeatedly hollowed out state capacity and the government’s ability to execute industrial strategy” and is too dependent on consultancy companies.
It wants lots of new institutions “to co-ordinate and invest into the transition and clean infrastructure where required, to administer funding pots”. This would naturally involve “non-public entities like the private sector and trade unions”, which would provide comfortable seats on boards for trade union officials. No vulgar calls for workers’ control are made, but the TUC demands that the Government should: “Empower civil servants to direct demand and investments and to shape innovation.”
Some parts of the report read as though it will reappear in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner, but its heart seems to be in the right place. It makes now ritual demands for repealing anti-trade union laws, improving employment protection for workers and increasing the National Minimum Wage to £15 per hour. We might respectfully ask what mobilisation has been done by the TUC to advance these aims. It recognises that workers in high-carbon manufacturing sectors such as steel are developing plans to decarbonise their industries and that this needs to be encouraged.
One aim of the report is too counter “corporate governance which encourages directors to prioritise shareholder returns over wages” through the inclusion of worker directors, which simply means that the minority of “worker directors” simply become part of management and become responsible for unpleasant decisions and splitting the workforce.
The TUC wants to ensure that any company getting public money should insist on unionisation and collective bargaining both for workers directly employed and in supply chains at home and abroad. The use of using public procurement policies to impose improving conditions in the private sector is a surprisingly modest aim and were the sort of things Winston Churchill advocated in the 1900s.
Back to reality
At present there is a major battle about an “environmentally friendly green investment”. This involves that Tata Steel plant at Port Talbot in South Wales, the largest in the UK. Here the already loaded owners, Indian multinational Tata Group, have been given a £500 million subsidy towards the £1.25 billion for two electric arc furnaces. This comes at a cost of 3,000 jobs (at present the UK steel industry employs 33,000). It is claimed that without the deal 8,000 jobs would be lost.
The $331 billion Tata Group also recently secured a £500 million grant to build a vehicle battery factory for its Jaguar-Land Rover business. Port Talbot’s current blast furnaces are coal-powered and produce virgin steel. The electric furnaces are of course much less labour-intensive and can be powered by renewable energy sources. The disadvantage is that they can only produce recycled steel from scrap metal. Although recycled steel is adequate for most purposes, it is not suitable for making aeroplanes or for use as frames in multi-storey buildings because the electric furnaces cannot reach high enough temperatures. Other blast furnaces in the UK will be therefore kept in operation, which means the environmental benefits will be small.
From a low base the UK steel industry is experiencing something a boom recently, largely due to NATO-related military demand (a fact which explains the TUC vote to follow the Government line on Ukraine).
The main unions involved, GMB, Community and Unite, had their interests largely ignored as the plans unfolded. Roy Rickhuss, General Secretary of Community (the former Iron & Steel Trades Confederation), complained that: “Following years of talking about decarbonising Port Talbot, we were given assurances by the leadership of Tata that discussions between them and our Government would be restricted to their financial commitment and policy support … it now seems that Tata and the Government are intent on building a future based on an Electric Arc Furnace-only steelmaking model.” So much for the TUC’s hope of being in the driving seat of a greener industrial Britain, but what do they expect?
The union’s Assistant General Secretary Alasdair McDiarmid added that: “Putting all our eggs in the electric arc basket will come at the cost of thousands of jobs, our economic security, and the independence of our industry. Tata and the Government should have consulted with the unions well in advance of the announcement, and their failure to do so has put unnecessary worry on the workers at Port Talbot.”
The other union involved is Unite, which described the plans “a disgrace” and announced that it was launching a “Workers’ Plan for Steel”. This includes the demands that procurement regulations are changed so that UK public contracts use only UK steel, a measure which Unite says will create 8,000 jobs. It also insists public investment is tied to job guarantees and other solid commitments. Going further than the TUC, it also insists that energy is returned to public hands.