The Trade Union and Community Campaign Against Immigration Controls & No One Is Illegal
Freedom of Movement - Equal Rights – Jobs and welfare for All - Workers Control Not Immigration Controls – No to Nationalism - Workers of the World Unite!
Not British jobs 4 British workers
Jobs for all - and for the best rates of pay and conditions to apply to all workers, across Europe, across the world
A year on from the unofficial strikes in the engineering-construction industry, the issues at the heart of the dispute remain unresolved. The GMB union leadership now has “proof “of the “exploitation” of Italian workers employed by the contractor Somi on the Staythorpe site in Nottinghamshire, but appears to be using it more as a lever to move the government to address the widespread underemployment among its existing UK-based membership.
Nationalism has no place in the labour movement
A year on, after much controversy, debate and concern in the broader labour movement, not just in the UK, it seems a real possibility that this dispute will not only be characterised as, but actually become, a dangerously nationalist dispute - if it isn’t already. Last year, perhaps a precedent was set in a deal being reached around what appeared to be an arbitrary nationality quota. It has been seized upon for this potential by the Daily Star and the BNP – despite the intentions of many or most workers – and could continue to feed the racism and anti-migration scapegoating coming from all the main political parties in run-up to the elections, obscuring the real causes and solutions to both the problems in the industry and the general economic crisis.
It is clear to us that the immigration controls regime that goes along with resurgent nationalism is brutal and murderous for migrant workers and poisons working-class politics and society as a whole. On the evening of the GMB demonstration some 60 Nigerians are due to be forced onto a plane and deported en masse. It is utterly vile and inhumane results like this – the daily systemic persecution of migrant workers – including GMB and Unite members - which we warn against when raising slogans.
Defending against the Race to the Bottom
The British Jobs for British Workers approach is ultimately self-defeating for workers and the industry. That the bosses are “under-cutting” is not really news to anyone; that they want to undermine the national agreement and union organisation in the industry - and will use every which way to limit the cost and assertiveness of labour - has always been the case.
That bosses exploit our lack of solidarity and organisation is not new either. The National Agreement itself being defended by the GMB was a big and necessary advance for workers in the UK, largely aimed at overcoming a long experience of undercutting that had played on regional and union divisions among workers within the UK.
While we defend freedom of movement, we know the reality of the bosses’ EU migration strategy is based on a large-scale super-exploitation as much as anything else. It is ironic that the EU posted workers directive, which was supposed to prevent companies from reneging on national agreements when posting workers abroad, has now been battered into a different tool, through the Viking and Laval test cases, for undercutting and denying workers better rates of pay and conditions that might exist abroad, and simultaneously destroying local labour forces. As things stand, workers in the industry tend to network and organise on a national level, whereas we need the same level of solidarity and militancy shown last year to be exist across Europe, working together, to really stop undercutting and unequal terms.
Freedom to Stay, Freedom to Move
We remember former Tory Minister Norman Tebbit saying to the unemployed "Get on yer bike". We responded by rioting. Unemployment can uproot communities and this is one of the worries for people here today. Around the world communities are being uprooted because of poverty, famine, multi-national companies digging up the land on which they depend for their livelihood, climate change creating flooding or turning the land into deserts, escaping wars fueled by the arms trade and so forth. These make up many of the worlds migrants today. We are all in this together. Not everyone moves because they are forced to. They are looking for a better life, to broaden their horizons, to join their families... many many reasons. Probably most workers in the industry take for granted the option of working on contracts abroad. We all ought to have a right to move and settle around the world. And people have the right not to be forced to move for any reason.
Who we are and how we might work together:
No-One Is Illegal and the Campaign against Immigration controls fight for freedom of movement and equal rights for all as part of our lives as migrant workers, trade unionists and community activists. We actively try and resist immigration controls in the here and now and build relations of solidarity among workers across the imposed borders of race and nationality. Our website carries stories of the migrant workers’ struggles we have been involved with and also the general political arguments we promote in the labour movement and in working-class communities as tools for struggle against the complex of immigration controls. We already take the new movement of people across Europe and around the world as an opportunity to achieve greater inter-relation, unity, understanding, solidarity and rank-and-file organisation among workers across old national boundaries.
When the Lindsey workers walked out and the news focussed in on the British Jobs for British Workers slogan, we were all concerned at the repercussions this might have. As migrant workers and fellow working-class activists, we of course wanted to show our solidarity with the core dispute, with workers making a huge stand against their bosses, but also to register a protest at the use of a slogan we have always fought against, being adopted on the pickets of unions many of us belong to. We hold our London meetings at the HQ of Unite. We held a picket there and handed out our statement (caic.org.uk/node/33 ) calling for “a fight that can unite all workers”, making a defence of the Italian workers and of the equal right to work regardless of nationality. It also helped explain the actual trade union issues being obscured by the media to our contacts and the public. Last June, when Total and other contractors sacked hundred of striking workers, we organised a picket at the Total Headquarters in conjunction with the Watford Trades Council.
Many activists have been involved in supporting the protests and strikes and have had long discussions with workers on the picket lines and throughout the movement, to help develop a more productive strategy as well as warn against the repercussions of the current strategy and slogans. We hope to build on these relations and do our bit in achieving a victory for all workers in the industry based on co-operation among workers across Europe.
NB. Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister – sponsored by the GMB. He was custard-pied Oct 2008 by No Borders activists after making an outrageous BJ4BW speech. For the CAIC letter to the GMB see http://caic.org.uk/node/26
Our regular campaign meeting will be tonight: Wed 3rd February, 7 pm at 128 Theobald Road, Transport House, Holborn. Alice Robson will be leading a discussion on the history of ESOL teaching + tube cleaners + Latin American cleaners + Our conference + Upcoming events, including anti-fascist conferences + ISS migrant worker victory in France + "British jobs 4 British Workers" in the Engineering Construction industry.
contact@caic.org.uk - info@noii.org.uk - 07974 331 053 – www.caic.org.uk - www.noii.org.uk