Rodney Bickerstaffe, 1945-2017

NUPE Conference 1988

For most of the 1980s the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) was one of my most regular, and most enjoyable, sources of work. Its members were the unsung heroes of our public services – ambulance drivers, cleaners, carers, caretakers, cooks, dustmen, home helps, hospital porters and other NHS ancillary staff, street cleaners and more – and my commissions for the NUPE Journal gave me the opportunity to visit a huge variety of workplaces and meet the people who worked in them (more about that here).

The monthly assignments also meant I frequently photographed the union's General Secretary, Rodney Bickerstaffe, whose untimely passing was announced this week. It was always a pleasure. He was wise, witty, warm and, above all, a fantastic public speaker. He will be sorely missed.

Speaking for a national minimum wage at the TUC 1986

On The Road

The mostly Latin-American cleaning, security and maintenance workers employed by Cofely GDF-Suez at London University have already succeeded in their battle for the London Living Wage. They are all members of the independent IWGB union, which this week called a three day strike to demand union recognition and improved conditions of employment, and in protest at job losses. On Tuesday the union's 3 Cosas (Three Things) Campaign took to the streets of Bloomsbury in an open-top bus (above) before moving on to a rally outside Parliament (below), and unannounced visits to fellow workers at the Royal Opera House, and to the Cofely GDF-Suez Islington office. It feels like a campaign that is going to win.  More pictures here.

To Hell in a Dust Cart

The financial crisis in Spain has been top of the agenda for European finance ministers for some time. But it was not EU-imposed austerity measures that provoked the recent 13 day strike by street cleaners and refuse collectors in Granada. 

The dispute, over cuts to wages and reduced terms and conditions, was not the result of spending cuts by the city authorities, but of an opportunistic attempt by private contractor Inagra to boost profits. The company is a subsidiary of Cespa, the ninth largest waste company in Europe, itself a division of Spanish construction group Ferrovial, owner of BAA (which runs Heathrow) and Amey (the main contractor building Crossrail).

The stoppage appears to be part of a wave of strikes across Spain. According to a report by the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), the big European waste disposal companies are attempting to restore falling profits by cutting costs in their contracts with municipalities, as the industrial and commercial waste markets have shrunk in the recession. 

The episode in Granada ended in defeat for the workers a few days before I arrived there last week (thus, regrettably, missing scenes apparently reminiscent of our very own Winter of Discontent). With unemployment in Andalucia the highest of any region in Spain and even, according to one report, anywhere in the EU, they were in an unenviable position. Now they are back on the streets (above) with a 2.5% pay cut, eight days less annual leave, and an increase in the working week from 35 to 37.5 hours.  As in the UK, it is a balanced economy: the poor get poorer so the rich can get richer. More pictures here.

 
"Take to the Streets Against the Cuts"

Georgia On My Mind

Following elections earlier this month, it is unclear how far Georgia's new government will go in honouring a pledge to reform the draconian labour code introduced by the previous regime. Although opposition coalition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili is now Prime Minister, Mikheil Saakashvili, whose United National Movement lost its parliamentary majority, remains President.

As I wrote at the time, the effects of the code were apparent when I visited the former Soviet republic last year to document the work of public sector unions. Trade unionists were already complaining of intimidation by both government and employers. Now a friend, recently returned from Tbilisi, tells me that, in the last 18 months, membership of the Georgian health workers union has fallen from 27,000 to 3,000 - a catastrophic collapse that suggests the situation has deteriorated further.

The legacy of Cold War realpolitik meant that the UK was quick to leap to the defence of Saakashvili's misguided attack on South Ossetia in 2008, whilst his attacks on workers' rights, in contravention of article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, went unremarked. However, despite the lack of pressure from its western allies, a recent report suggests things may be about to get better. More pictures here.

Consultation? No Thanks!

Consultation is very popular with the authorities in west London. Residents in Earls Court are still fighting to prevent the demolition of their homes following a deeply flawed consultation exercise by Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Now the local health service is under threat.

In the last couple of weeks there have been two big demonstrations by residents and health workers in Hammersmith (above) and Southall (below) over proposals to close the A&E departments of four local hospitals: Charing Cross, Central Middlesex, Ealing and Hammersmith. As with the Earls Court redevelopment scheme, the plans are 'out for consultation', but it is clear that NHS North West London has already made up its mind. In the current climate the powers that be will have a hard time convincing anyone that 'reorganisation' isn't just a euphemism for cuts in services. The demonstrations are likely to continue.

Beer, Sandwiches & Hypocrisy

Earlier this week a group of MPs, plus assorted followers on the right of the Conservative Party, celebrated the launch of the Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC) with a ‘Beer and Sandwiches’ reception at the House of Commons. Top of the bill was Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (pictured below); also in attendance was former Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

It’s hard to know how seriously to take the campaign, despite its distinguished proponents – or even how seriously it takes itself. Both the ironic beer (bottled Spitfire) and sandwiches were plentiful. The speeches were brief and addressed to a room full of the already converted. The only journalist was from the Morning Star.

The TURC wants to bring an end to what it calls “taxpayer funded trade union activity”, with one of its key demands that unions should pay commercial rents for the use of public buildings. This, surprisingly, it does not apply to its own anti-union activity, making free use of the Commons’ oak-panelled (publicly owned) Jubilee Room, with not a raised eyebrow in sight.

Access All Areas (almost)

The photographs above and below, shot in Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, are unusual. Not in the way they were taken, or for any exceptional artistic merit - but because they were taken at all.

I’ve written before about the ever-increasing privatisation of public space, the restrictions this imposes on our freedom of action, and how the public realm is becoming a smaller and smaller place. This modern day version of the Enclosures has not only handed control of our streets to private corporations, but also our hospitals, schools, prisons, sports centres and more. As a result, photography in many such workplaces has been almost impossible in recent years.

These photographs are evidence that the move from public to private can be, and is being, reversed. In Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all contracting out of hospital cleaning and many other hospital ancillary services has ended. The relevant authorities have ditched ideology and realised that they are better off with directly employed staff.

It’s not the sort of thing that gets on the front pages, but it has had a big impact on the quality of services, and on the wages, terms and conditions of the workers who provide them. And it means that, almost for the first time since the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering in the mid-1980s, it is possible to record something of their working lives.

Private companies are accountable to their shareholders, concerned for their image, and unwilling to grant access to independent photographers or journalists who might provide the wrong sort of publicity – and overstretched workers on the minimum wage and lousy terms and conditions are unlikely to make good PR. Walking around hospitals in Belfast and Glasgow recently with a camera and a trade union rep from Unison, talking to directly employed staff proud to be back as part of the hospital team, was a pleasure I hadn’t experienced for nearly 25 years. I look forward to being able to do the same closer to home.

More pictures here. A video interview with Unison Branch Secretary Tom Hughes is here.

News value? Not much

Just three days after the very thoroughly photographed gathering of a couple of hundred pro-cuts provocateurs outside Parliament (see below), a march of several thousand from University College Hospital to Whitehall was largely ignored by the mainstream media. The relative news values of the two events suggest that marches and petitions, on their own, are unlikely to shift the political agenda. For that to happen, an organisation with significant public recognition would need to formulate and propound a clear alternative to the current neo-liberal orthodoxy. Now that would be news.

TESCO: Every little helps

At an assembly marking the 10th anniversary of the Living Wage Campaign last week, Citizens UK launched a campaign to persuade supermarket chain Tesco to pay its workers a Living Wage. The company’s “every little helps” slogan, designed to promote its low prices, applies equally well to the wages of its employees, as was made clear in personal testimony on the impact of the Living Wage on their own lives by individual members.

The community organisation also announced the updated Living Wage rate for London (£8.30 an hour), and for the rest of the UK (£7.20). The National Minimum Wage is £5.93. More pictures here.

What happens next?

Yesterday’s TUC March for the Alternative saw between 250,000 and 500,000 demonstrators parade through central London calling for an end to the government’s cuts in public spending. Unsurprisingly, the march has not lead to an immediate reversal of policy, despite the impressive turnout. But it has perhaps laid down a marker indicating the likely public response when the coalition austerity programme begins to implode, as it surely will. Watch this space. More pictures here.

A Passing Moment?

The student demonstration in London last weekend was, by all accounts, significantly smaller and calmer than previous outings. There was nothing to match the earlier trashing of Conservative Party offices in Millbank, or the confrontation with Charles’s and Camilla’s Rolls Royce – images of which raised smiles around the world at the end of last year.

It seems that the students’ moment may have passed, the relevant votes having been cast without the government giving ground on the raising of tuition fees or the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. But that doesn’t mean the demonstrators have failed. The students were just the first to be hit by the dismantling of the welfare state that is currently under way, and they have laid down a marker that others will follow. An extraordinary number of anti-cuts campaigns have sprung up across the country in the last few weeks, as fine words about front-line services become a reality of closed facilities for young and old. There is much more to come. Watch this space.

More pictures here.

Missing from the Record: what has happened to workplace photography?

The call to action from the TUC in Manchester this week brings to mind campaigns against public spending cuts imposed by previous governments, and the part that photography has played in them.

Perhaps the most memorable image of the ‘Winter of Discontent’, which immediately preceded the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, was of rats scurrying over piles of uncollected refuse sacks in Leicester Square. In that and subsequent disputes, those parts of the press more sympathetic to the trade union point of view, particularly the papers produced by the unions themselves, built solidarity with photographs of countrywide protest actions, and of workers in their workplaces.

One big difference between then and now, immediately discernable in the trade union press, is the current lack of representation of people at work. This is the culmination of a trend that began in the 1990s. It’s also at the root of the heated debate about the use of photography in TU journals that recently sprang up in the pages of the NUJ’s Journalist magazine.

The TU papers of the 1980s and 1990s were usually tabloid in format, like the NUPE Journal, for which the above photo was taken. Features frequently ran over two or three pages, with pictures used large, often occupying more than half the page. And they were very often unposed, documentary shots taken in workplaces – something that is now rare.

I think this is a significant loss, particularly in the present context. Such photographs can give meaning to the otherwise seemingly abstract effects of ‘planned public spending cuts’. If these images do not even appear in the TU press, they are unlikely to appear anywhere else.

Why has this change come about? One obvious reason is that the privatisation of so many services – from the railways and other public utilities, to hospital porters and school dinners – has made access difficult. Another is that union membership has fallen, resulting both in an increase in non-unionised workplaces, and in a decrease in union income. Over the same period there has been a move, across the media generally, away from serious photojournalism and towards ‘lifestyle’ and celebrity. And then there is the proposition that, with the rise of the new, fully automated, digital cameras, anyone can do it - so why pay for photos when members will send them in for free?

Access is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. As for the rest - I don’t buy any of it. Declining union membership has been offset by amalgamation – the membership base of the new ‘super-unions’ means that cheapskate sourcing of photography should really not be necessary. And there’s no reason why union journals should follow Murdoch and the rest down the celebrity and lifestyle route. As for digital cameras – ownership no more confers the ability to produce meaningful photojournalism, than does possession of a pen the ability to write like Shakespeare.

The fundamental reason for the absence is, I think, more depressing. It is that many editors (and those who employ them), inundated with mundane, ‘good enough’, almost-free imagery, have forgotten the value and impact of intelligently presented, serious photography.

Turning the Tide

The Turning the Tide project, begun by the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) last year, looks likely to continue. The project reports on actions by EU public service workers that assert the importance of public services and defend them from cuts, privatisation, commercialisation or liberalisation. Watch this space for updates.