Trade Unions

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Hoyle

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a long- serving official of the TUC. Indeed, I am a lifetime member of what was the Transport and General Workers’ Union and, subsequently, Unite, having organised membership in the Economist Intelligence Unit in 1963.

Many of us are aware of the range of unions in the TUC; we do not need to be reminded of it, perhaps, but nevertheless it is an interesting and important point that people in professional occupations are now more likely to be in a trade union than those in the other half of the economy. Likewise, many unions with that sort of membership know very well that many of their members vote Conservative. I do not think that the TUC in its day-to-day work is working with a particular relationship with a political party—but let us put that the other way around and look for just one moment at the political connotations, as mentioned by two or three speakers on the other side of the House.

In any democracy one needs pluralism—in terms of political parties, unlike Russia, and in terms of people’s right to belong to a trade union, in this case. The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, nods his head, but it so happens that the £20 million or £30 million raised for an election on the part of the Conservative Party comes from somewhere, and that is the sort of money that the Labour Party cannot compete with, or even get near to, unless some considerable contribution is made through the trade unions. I make that point in passing without wanting to start a great debate about political funding.

Unity is strength for workers and seems also to be strength for capital. I was going to say “capitalism”, but that is a word that suggests that one belongs to a particular sort of analysis. But it is a fact that what drives capital in the City of London is very much mergers and acquisitions. In the multinational corporations of today, it is very difficult to get any sort of countervailing power if you think that capital and labour should be on the basis of some degree of equality. That is a much bigger debate than we can have at the moment, but capital is organised in a developing way that has a lot to do with the difficulties of trade unions in recent years. As my noble friend Lord Monks pointed out, the difficulty of organising in recent years has been associated with an increase in inequality—and that, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby pointed out in a very interesting speech, has in its turn produced a non-joining culture in a society of individualism. That has lots of downsides in society.

I shall briefly come back to that point if I may, but not before I congratulate the two maiden speakers. I am delighted to hear from a very strong friend of the trade union movement on the Liberal Benches, the noble Baroness, Lady Burt—and I wish her well for her future contributions. Then there was the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, whom I know to be a not particularly strong friend of the trade unions. We have had conversations in the past where the word “TUC” was treated, if not as a term of abuse, then as something along those lines—as I recall, and he will recall as well.

[Lord Hoyle (Lab)]

You know each other.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Yes, we know each other.

The question of how we redress the balance of these forces, which go against trade union interest and tradition, is a very thorny one indeed. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, made the point, which allows me to make the response—although he is not in his place at the moment. The noble Lord intervened from the opposite Benches on, I think, my noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, and said, “Of course, these organised producers are just against the consumer”. I think I am not paraphrasing him; I think that was right. Having thrown that hand grenade, he retired from the Chamber—well, it was quite soon afterwards. Somebody must have put something on his seat, but it was not me. That is a very interesting idea, precept or fallacy to spend a couple of minutes on. We are all consumers, and that is why we want low prices and everything hunky-dory as far as consumers are concerned—but that is nothing to do with what we get paid as producers, presumably, and nothing to do with the health and safety conditions of people producing tea, lychees or textiles in Bangladesh or wherever.

I shall make this comparison: I suspect that even the Chinese economy, as it evolves over the coming period, will find that it needs a degree of pluralism in its structure, and I think that that will be the development of the trade union principle in China. It is one to watch because it will give the lie to those people who think that the future of the world will be successful in relation to increasing gross national product without any reference to the degree of inequality that might be associated with it. Does the Minister agree that there is a model of the future where producers and consumers are opposed to each other and that the problem of inequality is not associated with that fallacy?