Letter: The right role for trade unions
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Sir: The trades union movement has never had greater opportunity than now to influence industrial performance, and thus the long-term interests of its members. The sterility of government thinking about its own role (the President of the Board of Trade has yet fully to show his hand), and the abdication of both the CBI and the Institute of Directors from anything that differs significantly from that thinking, leave a huge gap waiting to be filled.
The place of manufacturing, the need for training, the provision of skills, all need practical champions, not just lip service. It is, for example, only the continuing investment of political capital, reflected in the views of Edward J. Roberts, chairman of the Training and Enterprise Councils' G10 (Letters, 16 July), that prevents TECs being seen and designated as the emperor's new clothes in the context of the UK's massive and urgent skill and training needs.
The ability of the unions to take this opportunity, however, depends critically on their using the current debate on the relationship with the Labour Party to distance themselves from it. It is conventional wisdom that the trade unions constitute the Labour Party's albatross. It is less frequently observed that the reverse is also true.
Yet the contribution of the trade unions at national level is crippled by the TUC's having to act as a surrogate for a Labour government when that party is in opposition, by the reluctance of individual unions to use weapons at their disposal - such as the purchase of shares and their use at annual general meetings, because they may appear ideologically inappropriate - and by the failure to give bargaining for training as high a priority as bargaining for money. An industrially oriented, as opposed to politically oriented, trades union movement could speak for industry at a time when no one else does.
It is, therefore, a sad irony that while the Labour Party has identified the danger from its past affiliations and seeks to distance itself, the trade unions attempt to cling to a relationship which can only prolong their ineffectiveness. They are needed by their country, not their party.
Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY CHANDLER
London, SE10
16 July
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