Leveraging The Leafy Suburbs

Leverage: a very elastic term, ambivalent even. When banks use it, they usually mean debt but when trade unionists talk about leverage, the word assumes an altogether higher purpose, or, depending on one’s perspective; it becomes a euphemism for intimidation.

The news recently that strikers at the Ineos-owned Grangemouth refinery had targeted the homes of managers for public protests raised some interesting questions about the changing nature of industrial disputes. Predictably however, the media circus has largely focused on links between the Grangemouth strike and Unite’s machinations in the selection of Labour’s Falkirk candidates.

I suppose one shouldn’t blame the journalists who live in Westminster for wishing to keep the focus of the story on what is essentially just another dreary power struggle between the Labour Party and its biggest backer; who would presumably (and probably not unreasonably) like to see some value for money. After all, what have these plump, pink, soft-handed mediocrities been doing lately for the working man? What has does the union member get for those hard-earned subs which are bankrolling the status and the lifestyles of these well-spoken studies in emptiness? Allow me to climb down from the barricades for a moment, I was about to come over all apopleptic there…

As the foregoing might illustrate, it’s all too easy to understand the desire of political hacks to keep the story more political than socio-economic. From the point of view of the left-leaning elements of the press, this is an enduring soap opera about the soul of the party and for the right wing press, it’s just a great opportunity to take a pop at the squabbling pinkos. Either way it’s a story they can manage.

What was perhaps most interesting about the whole affair was Unite general secretary Len McCluskey’s robust defence of the tactics employed by the Unite strikers at Grangemouth; tactics which apparently included: protesting on the drive way of one director’s house with a giant inflatable rat; sending flying squads of protesters to dozens of businesses linked to Ineos and telling people in the directors’ leafy suburbs that their neighbour is evil.

It was in fairness, a dream Daily Mail story and I would doing those fine journalists a disservice if I didn’t give a just a flavour of their inimitable coverage.

On 30 October, the good old Daily Hate hacks breathlessly reported that ‘the sinister unit – known as the ‘Leverage team’ – sent mobs of protesters to the homes of senior figures in the firm’ with one director even telling the Mail that he ‘had feared for the safety of his wife and his two young children after 30 Unite protesters descended on his drive during the school holidays.’

On 31 October, comrade Len told The Financial Times (paywall) that ‘[i]f a company is engaged on what we believe is an unfair attack on workers and their families and their communities, then the idea that faceless directors can then disappear to their leafy suburbs and get away with that type of action is something we think is wrong.”’

He went on to tell the FT that ‘directors could not expect to hide if they “make decisions that destroy workers’ lives, destroy families’ lives, destroy their communities”.’

Now that really is fighting talk from the head of the organisation that effectively writes the Labour Party’s cheques.

Also quoted in the pink pages, Mr McCluskey said that ‘such action was a small part of Unite’s leverage strategy, which had more to do with making suppliers and customers aware of an employer behaving badly.’

And indeed this last point is confirmed by a trip to the Unite website for the union’s official line on on the tactic. ‘Leverage is a process whereby the Union commits resources and time to making all interested parties aware of the treatment received by Unite members at the hands of an employer. Those interested parties may include shareholders of the employer; competitors of the employer; communities within which the employer operates; customers of the employer and the market place of the employer.’

No real mention there of rocking up at the directors’ houses en masse to hector and some people might therefore accuse the Grangemouth strikers of off-roading in its use of the tactic in this instance. I’m not so sure; the cited list of applications for the tactic is clearly not exhaustive. I would probably tend therefore towards the notion that leverage in this instance involved the creative but not illegitimate interpretation of company directors as relevant stakeholders and by extension targets.

Once the members engaged in the practice stay within the laws of public protest and public order, I would struggle to see why their protest couldn’t be seen as lawful. There’s no point in complaining that it’s an unpleasant tactic because one would have thought that was the whole point of the exercise. After all, being reminded of the people whose lives one is fucking in such a loutish way is an altogether ghastly business, they ought to be locked up etc….But arrests have been a notably absent feature of this affair. And of course Unite maintains that ‘[w]here Unite members are involved in such lawful protest the union will use its best endeavours to ensure such members are aware of their rights of lawful protest.’ 

So while the political class take the roles of hurlers on the ditch in the latest outbreak of handbags between Len and Ed, the re-emergence of this more confrontational style of industrial action is symptomatic of a much wider malaise which is largely being ignored.

The appetite for a more direct approach to holding employers to account is growing and leverage is a just modern, networked version of tactics that are older than the Boycott. The fact that it irks employers and Tories so much can only mean that it’s likely to see more widespread use and coverage.

But is it a good thing or bad thing? Taking the moral highground is always a dangerous vantage point, ask any MP who’s been caught conkers deep after a family values campaign. And sailing close to the winds of civil disobedience is always a high risk strategy for any movement. If needs must, runs the justification but that begs the question, do they really? Have we reached that level of polarisation already? Plenty of people would happily argue that we passed the tipping point a long time ago and that door-stepping fat cats is only the start; the beginning of the endgame.

Given the abject levels of disconnect between the political and owner classes and the rest of us, the odds of further protests along similar lines are shortening all the time.

In an ideal world, one would like to imagine that such protest would achieve its higher objectives and that immoral employers would, through the judicious, if robust  intervention of the workers, come to the Damascene realisation that they were indeed bad people who had finally recognised the error of their ways.

But that’s a load of old ‘swords into ploughshares’ hokum. (Have you seen the Road to Damascus lately?) Fear and greed are the crude levers driving most of the meat-machines on this ball of mud.