The programme is about domestic workers brought into this country from abroad to work as slaves for the rich and powerful.  Some of their employers are foreign diplomats who are above the law, but they are by no means all foreign and the range and variation of the employers concerned is striking.

The programme presents example after example of men and women (some trafficked in as children) who have been physically abused, made to sleep on floors and in cupboards and forced to work 20 hours a day for very little or no pay by the mega-wealthy families who employ them across West London.  

This is totally bizarre.   Why would rich people with plenty of money treat human beings with such brutality?  Surely they would be better served as employers by treating their employees well and paying them a decent wage.

That, I guess, is our common reaction – it just doesn’t make any sense to most people in Britain.  It’s weird! Bizarre! Pathological!  But I think there is a deeper truth here which needs expressing.

Most people in Britain only find this behaviour unusual and remarkable because of what we as a nation have learnt to take for granted.  In fact this type of brutal treatment of workers by rich employers is actually the historical norm.  Think of feudal England and early industrial Britain.  It’s a norm altered in our own society by active resistance over generations.  What made the difference in our own case is trade unionism.

But this is not a connection which most people now make.  Trade unions changed our society to achieve a whole range of things to make life roughly bearable (negotiated wages and conditions, the NHS, our state education system, the list is a long one).  The problem is that most people nowadays don’t get this and do not relate these hard won gains to the pressure brought to bear historically by trade unionism.  People do not commonly understand what real pressure means in a social context. 

Now we risk these things being taken away.  We dreamers! Brendan Barber has warned that Britain will become a ‘darker, brutish and more frightening place’ as the government’s so-called austerity measures take effect.  I think this is an understatement.

Whilst not discussed, what this Dispatches programme conveys is the image of a world without trade unions or before trade unions.  It provides a picture of the general tendency of employers without trade unionism. This is what happens where there is no effective permanent organised structure to underwrite a rule of law that protects working people.  This is the world without trade unionism and that’s what you see in this programme.

The programme is available to watch online at 4OD for the next 7 days http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3117241

I should make clear that attempts are being made to help migrant slave workers in the UK.  Justice 4 Domestic Workers (established 2009) is an organisation of Migrant Workers who work in private houses in the UK. It is supported by Unite the Union and Kalayaan (a charity which provides advice, advocacy and support services in the UK for migrant domestic workers).

PS No sooner had I drafted this blog than Dispatches announced a programme on Trade Unionism to be aired on Monday 27^th September at 7.30.  Let’s see what they say.

Tracey Bent, Year 12 Organising Academy Trainee, sponsored by the CWU

I recently came across a website called “Against the Grain – A Programme about Politics, Society and Ideas” at http://www.againstthegrain.org/  This is an online radio programme. It’s produced for Pacifica.  Pacifica is a network of Centre – Left radio stations in the United States. Their most famous production is the amazing “Democracy Now!”  More about this in later blogs. 

Anyway here’s what caught my attention.  On Against the Grain, I listened to an interview with Steve Early.  He’s a Union Organiser and journalist who worked for 27 years as an international representative and organiser for the Communication Workers of America. 

His writings are collected in a book called “Embedded with Organised Labor”.  He’s also got a book out this autumn called “Civil Wars in US Labor” which describes the bitter conflict currently raging in California between the main healthcare workers union in America – SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and a new and very dynamic breakaway union NUHW (National Union of Health Workers). 

This is discussed in the programme.  Many people are totally mystified why a conflict such as this between unions should be happening at this time of crisis.  Steve Early characterises the conflict between these two unions in terms of differences in underlying strategy and policy related to organising and bargaining.  He talks about 2 different and competing visions of unionism – one more bottom up, the other more top down, one more driven by elected rank and file leaders, the other more influenced by the role of full time staff and appointed officials.  He talks about worker involvement, worker participation and the accountability of union leaders to union members at a time of unprecedented attack. But it is the issue of active organizing versus mere recruitment for dues which is the central issue.

The programme isn’t just about the conflict between SEIU and NUHW. Although that is something we should all know about. The programme also discusses:

• How trade unionism has faired at other times of economic crisis – Early talks about the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• What trade unionists can do to protect public sector workers who are under attack at this time.
• Promising directions in organising around non-unionised workers in the private sector.
• The overlap between environmental concerns and occupational health and safety concerns for workers (referring to workers affected by the recent BP oil disaster)
• Why the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is so important to Americans and why hopes for it have been dashed.
• How trade unions can help workers that are non-unionised and how non-unionised workers should organise themselves at a time of real austerity for workers in general.  Early talks about ‘Workers Centres’ funded by trade unions.

You can listen to the Steve Early interview by going to http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/321/id/251521/wed-6-23-10-labor-pains

Or go to http://www.againstthegrain.org/  and search for Steve Early – the program is called Labor Pains, broadcast 23^rd June 2010.

There is an earlier interview with Steve Early and one with Cal Winslow which are also still up on the site. I shall be listening to them this week, I hope.

You can listen to Against the Grain on-site or download to keep.

Tracey Bent, Year 12 TUC Academy Trainee, sponsored by CWU

 Background: Tracey was a student at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where her degree involved Honours work in Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.  She was introduced to the work of Noam Chomsky, whose social and political writings were an inspiration.  

After a year in the NHS, she went on to do postgraduate work in Linguistics at University College London. Her work involved the analysis of speech in working class communities.

In 2001 she started at Royal Mail and drove 7.5 tonne lorries as the only female driver at West London Mail Centre. 

Rapidly involved in union work she was appointed IR rep and branch lead union learning rep, setting up a workplace learning centre at Paddington.  She fought a protracted – and Tracey says heroic – case against Royal Mail to defend the statutory rights of union learning reps who required release time to perform agreed duties.

For the last 2 years she has been South East Regional Project Worker for the CWU Education and Training Department helping CWU branches set up their own learning projects.

Organising Academy Selection Process: Described by Tracey as “a rigorous, challenging and comprehensive process”, she is proud to have survived and to be a member of this year’s intake.

 Motivation:  Tracey believes that trade unions are the only organisations that exist to substantially challenge and constrain employers and to empower working people, and that they are fundamental to any democracy. 

What she says is that if trade unions are weakened, democracy is weakened; and if trade unions are threatened, democracy is threatened.  As Tracey is a democrat, she believes in the trade union movement. 

She is absolutely committed to the defence of working people, waged and unwaged, in their daily struggle against private interests.

Aspirations: Tracey hopes to play her part in creating a new, dynamic, and authentic trade union movement true to the best history and traditions of trade unionism.  She says that people should be beating at the door to join a union, and anything less means that we have work to do.  

Interests:  all things Chinese – including Soup Noodle at the Magic Wok. She has already begun the long process of learning to speak, read and write Mandarin.  

Union Membership: CWU and GMB