Big Bad Unions part 2

As I said in an earlier post, one of the greatest dangers to our society has been the marginalisation and the demonization of trades unions. To understand why will take more than one post and I trust you will bear with me as this will not appear the most interesting subject, but it is very important. Also, many of the points I make will have to be accepted at face value as they are important subjects in their own right and I will be happy to elaborate on any of them for anyone who wishes me to do so. However for the moment I ask you to take them on trust.

The first point is that the human being is essentially a social being. This means that the human is not an individual in the way our dominant neoliberal ideologues, such as Thatcher and her supporters, claim them to be. The isolated human individual of liberal economic theory is a fiction that does not, nor cannot, exist. Human beings can only individuate themselves in a collective and social sense, and cannot be understood outwith their development in an interdependent relationship with other people. As humans are interdependent and social by nature, they require order, both in their individual and social lives. The human being needs an ordered and regulated environment.

Trade unions were born out of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, where workers were thrust into unregulated working environments that had no precedents to guide them. The ability to harness the forces of nature allowed work to be carried on regardless of weather conditions and regardless of whether it was day or night. As a result, the traditional constraints on work were either removed or conquered and work now took place under new conditions where employers had a free hand on the conditions and circumstances that their workers had to perform under. In other words, work was unregulated, different groups of workers working for different employers, but making the same or similar products had different conditions of employment, different hours, working days, working weeks, wages etc. One group might work 18 hours a day, another 14, another 12 for example. One group might work 7 days a week, another 6 etc. Workers were hired and fired at will, had no rights, had no safeguards and no control over their own lives.

As a result, workers formed into combinations to rectify such conditions and to bring some form of order and regulation into their lives, as human beings cannot function in such conditions. They suffer from what sociology calls anomie. In other words, they sought to bring a measure of control, of meaning and direction into their lives. They sought order and regulation over their living and working conditions because that is what human nature demands. Therefore, the first point to note about trades unions are that they are regulatory organisations, and are a direct reflection of the human social nature. They emerged to satisfy a basic human need, and they continue to exist for that same purpose. In a modern economy where the mass of people work for employers for a money wage they are essential, they are not a luxury. Thus, what is a trade union? It is a regulatory organisation that establishes ordered and regulated working conditions and seeks to bring a measure of control over the working environment as it effects ordinary working people. I will elaborate on this later and hope I do not bore you.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.