Partners to Social Police
For a Workers Republic1995Trade unions and workers' strugglesLoyalism and unionismTrade unions and workers' strugglesLoyalism and unionism
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This summer's Tralee conference, under the utle “Managing Change” marked a new turch to the nght towards company unionism and redelining [CTU as an adjunct of management.
The policy, outlined by outgoing President Phil Flynn. contained an explicit endorsement of the new capitalist strategies of “lean production”, “human resource management” and worker “participation”.
His onc complaint was that the new policy was too individualistic and concentrated too much on the individual worker - the message to the bosses was that there was no need to bypass [CTU - they could play their part in speeding up the workforce. Amongst all the praise of modernisation there was no mention of the new levels of exploitation recorded by lean production. Experts boast that workers are on task for 57 seconds in every minute!
You might expect some working class opposition to these new levels of exploitation. Flynn and company have the answer - compulsory arbitration and aggregate voting. ICTU will join with management in erecting new barners to industrial action and by attempting to swamp the votes ol militant workers in more gencral votes to prevent advanced lavers ol skilled workers from taking independent action.
ICTU are entering the end game ol their policy of social partnership -the degradation into company unionism where the real nature of the partnership becomes crystal clear - the bosses tule, the workers obey and increasingly [CTU provide the police force to keep it all on track.
For A Workers Republic. Page 9
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“Managing Change” FROM SOCIAL