LONDON (Bywire News) - Amid ongoing industrial action against a Labour-run council, Unite’s general secretary has issued a warning that the union may pull more funding from the party. So, is the mess Keir Starmer’s already in about to get a whole lot worse? Possibly not.
Refuse workers in Coventry have been in a dispute with the Labour-run council since November 2021. As Unite wrote at the time:
“The dispute is a result of the council failing to improve the pay rates for its refuse collection drivers who must hold an HGV licence. The drivers are paid as little as £22,000 per annum. Given the ongoing lorry driver shortage, they could earn far more elsewhere."
"Unlike many other councils that have increased pay or introduced retention payments to ensure that refuse collections are maintained, Coventry has instead stuck rigidly to a fundamentally flawed pay formula”.
The council also makes refuse staff work in excess of 50 hours a week. As Unite noted:
“The long hours culture is affecting the workers’ physical and mental health as well as damaging family relationships”.
Coventry council seems unconcerned by all of this. So, workers were due to strike last Christmas. But Unite paused this to give more time for the council to negotiate with it and the workers. Yet the council failed, according to the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham, to “enter into meaningful negotiations”. So, the walk-outs began in January – and have continued ever since. At the end of January, Unite announced a further escalation – going on an indefinite “all-out” strike.
Bearing in mind Coventry is a Labour council, it seems Graham has had enough of its attitude. Because on Wednesday 9 February she issued the Labour Party a warning on Twitter. Graham said:
“Let me be very clear - the remaining financial support of Labour Party is now under review. Your behaviour and mistreatment of our members will not be accepted. It's time to act like Labour, be the party for workers”.
It’s of little wonder that Graham is furious. Because Coventry council has effectively been scabbing on the strike. It’s employed agency workers (strike-breakers, if you prefer) to do refuse collections - paying them more than its own staff. Unite has also accused the council of spreading “lies”, “misinformation” and “untruths”. For example, it claimed some refuse workers earned over £50,000 a year. Unite debunked this, saying:
“...This figure relates to a worker who is not a refuse collection driver and is not part of the dispute, information that Unite believes the council is fully aware of.
Other claims by the council about the workers’ pay fail to acknowledge that such rates are only achieved after workers work excessive hours”.
Yet still, the Labour Party immediately hit back at Graham’s funding threat. A spokesperson told LabourList’s Sienna Rodgers:
“We’re not going to get into the specifics of this dispute. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party will always act in the public interest. These sort[s] of threats won't work in KS's LP. We would have hoped that Unite would have got the message that the LP is under new management”.
So, if Unite does decide to pull the rest of its funding from Labour, what could this mean for the party?
The union has already said it’s reducing its yearly funding of Labour to around £1m, because of Starmer’s rebranding of the party. Bear in mind, Unite donated over £8m in the 2017 election year and over £5m in 2020 to it. So, this will be a major hit to Labour’s funds. Moreover, Unite is not the only union distancing itself from Starmer’s party. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) reduced its funding and the Bakers and Allied Food Workers Union (BAFWU) disaffiliated itself from Labour altogether.
But even with the unions jumping ship, it may make no odds to Labour’s finances, anyway. With Starmer’s shift in political positioning back to a distinctly capitalist, centre-right one, the party will likely reattract business donors that left under Corbyn. What this will represent, though, is a cementing of Labour’s complete severing of ties with the left-wing.
With the rise of new left-wing parties like Breakthrough and the continued presence of more established ones like the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), unions abandoning Labour could present opportunities for them in terms of support and funding. Also, Corbyn will have to seriously consider his position after Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) refused to give him back the whip.
So, the situation in Coventry may well trigger a chain of events that leads to Starmer’s complete takeover of the Labour Party – leaving it a shell of its former democratic socialist self. But maybe in the long term, this might be a good thing. Because it could also invoke a shift in the left-wing political landscape of England altogether.
(Writing by Steve Topple, editing by Klaudia Fior)