Trade union leaderships’ longstanding habit of compromise must cede to decisive confrontations in today’s struggles, argues John Clarke

Across the world, working-class people are looking for the means to fight back effectively as those in power try to make them pay for the cost-of-living crisis. Major strikes and powerful demonstrations are rekindling levels of militancy that have not been seen for decades.

Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that this rising tide of working-class action is facing much greater levels of intransigence on the part of the governments they are confronting. This raises critical questions about the perspectives that are needed and the methods of struggle that must be taken up if effective resistance is to be mounted.

Outdated compromise

Two key factors determine the ability of working-class movements to turn back attacks or win positive gains. Clearly and obviously, the strength and orientation of those movements are a vital consideration, but the capacity of employers and political leaders to make concessions is also decisive. This rests primarily on the state of capitalist economies. What may be won through relatively minor skirmishes at one point will only be reluctantly conceded in the face of major social explosions at another time.

The decades immediately after the Second World War were marked by a relative class compromise that was adopted in response to sweeping union struggles and an upsurge in social mobilisation. In Canada, where I live, a major strike wave followed the cessation of hostilities. This included a huge challenge to the Ford Motor Company in Windsor, Ontario that involved a massive vehicle blockade of the factory that the Attorney General of the province claimed ‘constituted open insurrection’. Doubtless, the AG was playing to a reactionary gallery, but the risks of remaining obdurate in the face of a determined working-class offensive were real enough.

This explosive upsurge necessitated a tactical retreat by capitalists and governments. Unions were granted a level of legitimacy they hadn’t previously enjoyed, wage levels were raised and systems of social provision were granted. However, this ‘post-war settlement’ came at a price. Henceforth, strikes would only be allowed when collective agreements weren’t in effect, and working-class resistance would be contained and limited within a framework of rules and procedures established and overseen by the state.

While strikes still took place, some of them bitterly contested, the officially approved system of ‘labour relations’ ensured that most disputes in the workplace would be settled through legalistic grievance procedures that precluded direct forms of action. This elevated the role of specialists and experts and reduced the participation of workers. A strong tendency towards bureaucratisation within the unions flowed from this arrangement. While the particulars and extent of the adaption varied, this general approach was taken throughout the developed world.

During the long economic boom that followed the Second World War, the regulated class compromise, while it was always a far better deal for capitalists than workers, did allow for improvements in working-class living standards. The end of the boom, however, saw profits being squeezed, and the readiness to grant such concessions turned into a determination to reverse course and intensify rates of exploitation. A shift to neoliberal approaches took place in the 70s that meant attacks on unions and the gutting of the social infrastructure.

In the context of the neoliberal agenda, the regulated forms of class compromise took on an entirely different character. They were no longer the basis for measured gains but led to major reverses. However, the weakening of unions, the reordering of the workforce along low-wage, precarious lines, and the imposition of social cutbacks were relatively incremental. The constraints of the compromise were not decisively challenged, though there were moments, like the miners’ strike in Britain or Reagan’s assault on the air-traffic controllers, when the need to break out of it stood out clearly.

Present crisis

If we accept that the term ‘polycrisis’ describes, as Michael Roberts has put it, ‘the coming together and interlocking of various crises: economic (inflation and slump); environmental (climate and pandemic); and geopolitical (war and international divisions),’ then it seems to sum up the present condition of global capitalism quite well. Such extraordinary instability and volatility render the need to break out of the patterns of compromise considerably more urgent and obvious.

At the end of last year, some 50,000 education workers in Ontario were poised to strike in the face of a cut in their real wages and deteriorating working conditions. The Ontario government responded to their impending strike by passing legislation that robbed them of their right to strike and imposed a concessionary contract on them.

It rapidly became clear that the right-wing Conservative government had miscalculated. Faced with so vicious an attack and, with the workers themselves more than ready to take action, the union leadership was ready to unleash an ‘illegal’ strike. Moreover, outraged by the behaviour of the government, other unions declared their intention to mount sympathy strikes. Opinion polls showed massive support for the struggle that was unfolding.

As the strike got underway, the government was thrown into crisis but found a way out. It declared that the strikebreaking legislation would be repealed if the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) would ensure the workers returned to work while bargaining resumed. Having demobilised in this way, little progress could be made in negotiations, and, under pressure from the top union leadership, the education workers component accepted a deal that fell far short of the workers’ needs.

The essential point here is that faced with such a devastating threat, the union leaders were temporarily ready to escalate the struggle in exceptional ways. However, even with the government on the ropes and a major victory entirely possible, a face-saving formula proved irresistible and the rituals of compromise were restored.

Strengths and weaknesses

Similar contradictions can be seen in the strike wave and rising militancy that is underway in Britain. In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the 1 February mobilisation, John Rees pointed to a ‘movement [that] is clearly regaining strength after a prolonged period of retreat which reaches back to the miners’ strike of 1984-85.’ He also, however, noted the determined effort to turn back this developing social upsurge and suggested that this requires a rethinking of the approach being taken.

Rees argued that ‘one-day action may well prove ineffective. The government clearly plans to wait out one-day strikes. More coordinated, more sustained action will likely be required.’ He was also clear that: ‘Pressure from the rank and file will be necessary to achieve that’, and that the revolutionary left can make a vital contribution to influencing the ‘newly reviving working-class movement’ in this regard.

We ‘have seen some of the biggest demonstrations in the social history of France’ unfolding in the struggle against Macron’s attack on the social infrastructure. The upsurge that has taken place has drawn out huge crowds, even in relatively small centers. Yet, those in power ‘have long given up any hope of winning majority support for their neoliberal reforms, so they have just learned to ignore or exhaust or slander the opposition movements.’ The search for ‘winning strategies’ again requires a different political orientation and huge pressure from an organised working-class base.

In Ontario in the 1990s, a hard-right Conservative government launched a major attack on workers and implemented vast social cutbacks. It was confronted by a campaign that became known as the ‘Days of Action.’ Rotating city-wide strikes and huge protests were organised. The largest of these, in Toronto, included a mass march past a Tory conference that was underway. Ontario Premier, Mike Harris, told the media on that day that the massive mobilisation was a ‘good show’ but that his government wouldn’t change course. The campaign was never taken to the necessary level of a province-wide strike and was subsequently wound down.

Today, far more than in the 90s, we must set aside the notion that a compromise with those in power can be achieved if only we can put on a sufficiently convincing ‘good show’. It is necessary to take things to the level of decisive confrontations that generate the economic disruption and conditions of a political crisis that can make it possible to press our demands successfully.