Brighton SolFed

Remember the Tories looking after the rich at the expense of the poor? Remember the jubilation when the Labour Government was finally elected in 1997? Remember all the promises? Well, the latest research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the total poverty gap - the total income by which families fall short of the poverty line - has increased under Labour.

The report concludes that children who live in the poorest UK households have less of a chance of escaping poverty than when Labour came to power. Yet, child poverty is one of Labour's key targets, and has been at the heart of the political agenda since 1999.

Although some poor families have benefited, it is the rich who have benefited more. According to government surveys, 1.1 million children live in households with less than 40% of the national average income. Four out of 10 of these children live in households that do not receive any of the main means-tested benefits - even though they may be entitled to claim.

More and more people are being forced in to minimum wage jobs that are casual, temporary and often part-time. It is these in low-paid minimum wage jobs that are stuck in the poverty trap between benefits and a decent wage.

So, for all their talk, this government has failed abysmally to tackle poverty.Their policies benefit the rich at the expense of the poor - and they are set to continue to do so.

Since May, there have been daily pickets outside the prestigious Piccadilly Gardens development in Manchester. The action began when four electricians were sacked by the contractor DAF Electrical for forming a branch of the TGWU/EPIU and insisting on their right to direct employment. There were seven further dismissals as other electricians took unofficial strike action in solidarity.

DAF have used the terms of the JIB (Joint Industry Board for the Electrical Contracting Industry) to justify the sackings. This body represents Britain's longest running ‘sweetheart deal', under which the employers pay workers' dues direct to the union (originally the EETPU, but now, through a series of mergers, Amicus). As such, no other unions are recognised.

Meanwhile, the sacked electricians' work is being handled by unskilled labourers, which itself is a breach of JIB regulations. So too are the pay (£5/hour v. £7.10 JIB rate) and out of town allowances (£5/day plus sleeping bag v. the £28 JIB rate for B&B) that DAF is paying their scabs. As usual, employers break agreements with impunity while union officials look the other way. In a similar vein, it was the sacked men, not Amicus officials, who forced a reluctant Health and Safety Executive into investigating DAF's unsafe working practices. The use of low paid unskilled workers to do electrical and other such potentially hazardous work is an increasingly widespread feature in the construction industry, and partly explains the currently rocketing death and accident toll.

The T&G eventually gave this dispute official backing in early July and is representing the workers through the industrial tribunal process. To contribute to the fighting fund, send cheques, payable to ‘A. Jones', to: Mr S. Acheson, 13 Thompson Close, Danebank, Denton M34 2PQ. Tel. 07813 456831. For further details on the strike and on the JIB sweetheart deal, see the next issue of Direct Action, due out in September.

Health workers in Bolton and London have won important victories against the private hospitals group, ISS Mediclean.

After a series of strikes in London, workers at Whipps Cross Hospital forced a climb-down by the multinational's management over the imposition of pay and a two-tier work system (where those joining from the NHS had better contracts than those joining after privatisation).

Meanwhile, in Bolton, workers at Royal Bolton Hospital forced yet another back-down by ISS. After 12 days of strikes spread across four weeks, management were forced to increase pay to £5.33 per hour, with night shift workers getting time and a third, and sickness benefit to be paid from day one instead of after three days. This is a major setback to private sector healthcare companies, who have sought to capitalise on casualisation in order to turn a healthy profit from undermining basic workers rights.

It just goes to show that even the most hard-nosed companies, when faced with indomitable strike action, can be forced into humiliation. They are delighted with endless negotiations, teamworking and lobbying, because they can manage them, but they can.t manage a load of people getting themselves together and walking off the job in protest. As always, direct action gets the goods! Meanwhile, the health sector trade unions are so institutionalised that they refuse to support any such real action for health workers.

The recent train drivers union (ASLEF) leadership election was a shock to many rail union activists.

It had been thought that the current leader, Mick Rix would walk it, so he hardly bothered to campaign. Shaun Brady was seen as a right-wing Neanderthal no-hoper who had only managed to gain the support of a handful of branches compared with Rix, who had the backing of over 80 branches. While Rix sat on his backside, Brady got out and about with his populist arguments, ranging from antipolitical-correctness to opposition to asylum seekers.

To many, the real shock was not that Rix got defeated, but that so many drivers ignored their branches and voted for the likes of Brady. This can be partly explained by the fact that, like many unions, ASLEF is moribund and isolated from the workplace, even at branch level. Also, there is the fact of the nature of ASLEF as a craft union, which means it has always sought to preserve and further the sectarian interests of drivers, often with little regard for other rail workers. This elitism within ASLEF is merely a reflection of those drivers who see themselves as a skilled group, above other rail workers.

The hierarchical mindset means some drivers are willing to take action to defend and preserve their own immediate interests, while showing little interest in the problems and struggles of other rail workers. As new technology has effectively de-skilled the craft status of drivers, this conservatism has become even more entrenched, as they have sought to preserve their status in a changing world. Hence, we have the situation where many drivers have opposed the idea that guards can become drivers, on the grounds that they had only had to undergo a short training course. Not only did they pour cold water on these so-called “boil-inthe-bag drivers” (ready in twenty minutes), they were also openly hostile to the idea of women becoming drivers. It is precisely this conservatism that Brady's campaign of putting drivers' economic interests first and ridding the union of “trendy” lefty politics, appealed to.

Here at Catalyst, we have argued that reactionary ideas should be challenged and defeated. It was the failure of Rix to challenge and overcome such reactionism that led to his downfall. ASLEF's sectionalism stands in the way of building a workplace organisation aimed at uniting all workers in opposition to the attacks of a boss class currently in full cry. Craft unionism and the elitism that underpins it has been a thorn in trade unionism's side for centuries; it is high time it was pulled out and discarded, and ASLEF along with it.