The Dangers of Trade Union Bureaucratisation

The Morning Star newspaper ran a story, published via its website on June 8th, reporting that the President of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers trade union had dismissed their President following allegations of financial improprieties during his tenure.

Newton B Jones, who had been President of the American trade union since 2003, had allegedly misappropriated members’ money to pay his wife a salary. To quote from the article:

“The union’s executive committee had been told to pay his wife Kateryna more than $100,000 (£79,814) plus benefits “for apparently no union purpose while she was living in Ukraine” and spent more than $20,000 (£15,957) on flights to Ukraine for Mr Jones “to visit his wife and to go to the home which he owns in the Ukraine.”

The IBB came to the attention of the trade union movement in Britain through its proposed and subsequently failed merger with white-collar British transport trade union TSSA, which has suffered its own recent controversy with allegations of sexual harassment and the subsequent publication of the Kennedy report, which uncovered:

“a series of appalling incidents, alongside leadership and management failings in the TSSA. These incidents included inappropriate and sexual touching, sexual assault, coercive and manipulative behaviour, violent and disrespectful language, humiliation and denigration of members of staff, reps and members of the Executive Committee.”

TSSA’s General Secretary had retired prior to the publication of this report, with the President and Treasurer (the de facto vice-President) resigning shortly after its publication. It was subsequently discovered around the time of the Kennedy report’s publication that the General Secretary was in fact still in the employ of TSSA and that the Executive Committee were not made aware of this. The General Secretary was dismissed shortly after this discovery.

This latest report highlights again the corruption and dishonesty which is a by-product of the institutionalised bureaucratisation in trade unions. As we have stated in a previous article on this website:

“Trade union bureaucracies have a vested interest in maintaining their democratic structures in such a parlous state: They remain in their positions (some handsomely remunerated) for as long as they want to be in them, while opportunities for politically-suitable new recruits to the bureaucracy exist only for those with the necessary contacts and networks.”

The President of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers had been in his post for twenty years and, on the face of the Morning Star’s report, issued instructions to his Executive rather than follow their democratically-determined decisions. But this is a symptom of the atrophy in active democracy in trade unions, not its cause.

The cause is the long-standing and unchallenged disconnection between the members of trade unions and its elected officials. The ‘churn’ of members from the rank and file level to its senior levels and back again has seized up, to a point where trade union officials, in some cases handsomely remunerated ones, can act with almost complete impunity and without proper democratic scrutiny.

The only means by which this connection can be re-established is through educating and persuading trade union members that a union is more than protection at work and discounts on car insurance: It is a means through which the working class can build power, not only to win better pay and conditions, but to have a real say in how their workplace is run now and in the future.

Until the conditions which allow trade union officials to remain in their posts largely unchallenged for years to build impregnable empires and reward themselves with lavish benefits are challenged and destroyed, then sorry stories like that of Newton B Jones can only repeat themselves.