When I started in journalism, working for a regional newspaper group in the early 1980s, we still used typewriters and gave copy to linotype operators to input even though the old hot metal machines had long gone. We also had computers but they were kept under wraps, literally, because the print unions would not let anyone use them.
The printing industry then was about where the Royal Mail is now. Technological advances had to be embraced; but in doing so there would be a painful transition that would change for good the way the industry worked. We all know what happened next. News International owner Rupert Murdoch built his plant at Wapping and the print unions laid siege to the place for months. For them, it was an existential struggle; their time had passed.
Things are not necessarily as bleak as all that for the postal workers, although there are similarities. The need to modernise and agree to more flexible working practices is unavoidable. There is no point hanging on to age-old methods because there is no future in them. But there is often no rational way of looking at these things.
The industrial unrest in the Royal Mail, which has been going on for more than two years now, is self-evidently not to the advantage of a business in decline (the letters side at least); but what would you do if it was your job on the line? That is what the union is for, after all – to protect your interests.
Similar thoughts might well be going through the minds of many thousands of workers in the public sector as they contemplate talk from politicians of all parties about deep cuts in spending over the next few years. This is likely to be the case whether the Tories get in or Labour pulls off an improbable fourth successive election victory.
The postal workers strike could be a harbinger of things to come for the next government. If it is the Conservatives, their first term in office in 13 years could be immediately convulsed by industrial action in the public sector, especially given their plans to impose a public sector pay freeze. We have lived through a lengthy period of unprecedented industrial peace but that might all be about to change.
It would not be like then PM Margaret Thatcher taking on the miners in the 1980s. That was long planned for – with coal stockpiled to avoid the power cuts of the 1970s – and the National Union of Mineworkers’ political agenda played into the government’s hands. Furthermore, union militancy is much reduced today compared with the 1970s and 1980s, with membership half what it was in 1982 and days lost through strikes down to 1 million a year from a peak of 12 million.
But if there is a remnant of old radicalism, it is probably in the public sector, and it is certainly here that the greatest prospect for unrest lies. This is because of the impact that spending restraint and government pay policy will have on jobs and wages. That is one reason why shadow chancellor George Osborne has been sounding so tough with bankers’ bonuses and has pledged to keep Labour’s 50p top rate: if he is going to curb the incomes of average earners in the public sector he wants to be able to say that the rich are taking the pain too.
An incoming Tory government will have a huge job on its hands implementing reforms that will affect the public sector, such as introducing Swedish-style, parent-run schools, while also cutting back spending, holding down pay and tackling pension entitlements.
They do not want their first few months in power marked by stoppages in schools or a replication across the country of the refuse strike that has gripped Leeds for weeks. There has been talk in Tory circles of sugaring the pill by retaining, for a time at least, the £10m government grant for union ‘modernisation’, which many had thought the Tories would abolish on the grounds that it was a backdoor way of funding the Labour Party.
But this is unlikely to be enough for the big public sector unions, especially if the Tories go after pension rights or try to impose higher contributions or later retirement. The public sector unions are not about to take that lying down – any more than the printers were in the 1980s or the postal workers are today.
Philip Johnston is assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph
