Sir Digby Jones – former director of the Confederation of British Industry, pictured left - is to be upgraded to Lord, enabling him to serve as trade minister in Gordon Brown’s government of all the talents.
Although he will take the Labour whip in the House of Lords, he is reportedly refusing to join the Labour Party itself. That is a bit much to ask of a minister in a Labour government these days, I suppose.
I do hope the future Lord Jones doesn’t think I’m being impertinent or anything, but I’d just like to bring up some of the remarks he has made about trade unionism in recent years. For instance, here’s what Sir Digby argued in a speech to the TUC in 2003:
"Unions are tending to be a block to reform," he said.
"They are tending to put ideology and the arguments of yesterday ahead of the interests of most of their members …
"I only wish that trade unions, especially those who are adopting a more militant attitude to many things, would fight the battles of tomorrow, and stop fighting the battles of yesterday."
And here’s what the Digster told the Scottish TUC the following year:
"When there were millions of unskilled workers, vulnerable to exploitation, unions were essential to fight their corner.
"But when the labour market is stuffed full of people with a skill, even if not that advanced, unions stuck in the mindset of yesterday's ideology become less relevant.
"The only protection people need in a tight labour market with skills shortages is to be so adaptable, trained and valuable that no employer would dare let them go or treat them badly.
"With unions representing just 19% of the private sector workforce, they become increasingly irrelevant every day."
One scarcely knows where to start. In a country where employees can be sacked en masse by text message, the bulk of people who work for a living - from Chinese cockle-pickers to highly-skilled but seriously undervalued public sector professionals, right up to those who can hired and fired on a private sector manager’s whim – would benefit from membership of collective organisations that ‘fight their corner’.
If unions are increasingly irrelevant every day, that it because successive governments for over a quarter of a century have purposely striven to bring about that situation, ensuring that Britain has the most lightly regulated labour market in Europe. And the most tightly regulated labour movement.
If they are marginalised - reduced to little more than one lobby among many others, with an auxiliary role of unpaid health and safety inspectors - that is a state of affairs that organisations such as Sir Digby's CBI have lobbied hard to bring about.
In an age of politics as symbolism, the message behind this appointment is all too clear.
Comments (19)
Given that the vast majority of unskilled workers still aren't represented by unions, I expect that, in line with his quote to the Scottish TUC, Mr Jones will be leading a concerted campaign to get them to become members and to get employers to recognise their unions?
Plus, he repeats the lie that almost all workers are skilled. We live in an age of massive de-skilling, partly as a result of computerisation, partly because of industrial decline. Where skills shortages exist they are mainly a result of employers refusing to pay to train workers, preferring instead to cherrypick those who already have the requisite skills and experience.
The Labour Party has no shame nowadays, they'll let any old scum bag like Digby Jones in
Funny, old Digby probably on the "left" on some in PPL
so awful can't be bothered saying any more.
Good post Dave.
Is it time for this?
Digby's idea that employers care about keeping good employees is so out of touch with reality it is unbelievable.
The more skilled you are, the more expensive you are, and the less attractive you are to most bosses.
It's still not time for that twaddle Miles! Thought we'd explained why last tiem you raised it ... five weeks ago.
If Gordon let's Digby near Union relations we will be rightly incensed. If he sends him pootling about (and carefully sees to it he's away for any TU related legislation) and he does some good deals for British industry and Commerce then so be it.
I really don't care. It might have been Lord Browne until a few weeks ago ... but he failed to keep his ducks in a row.
Diby Jones and I were old sparring partners at university, although I'm sure he won't remember me, but we used to have some humdingers of slanging matches in the Student Union meetings. Joke to think he has now been invited to be part of a Labour Cabinet, just shows what a class collaborator Brown is. I remember hearing that Digby had given an interview to the Readers' Digest about the Trot infiltration of his student union, that would have been in about 1978-79. Never read it myself. Doesn't he look like the Squire Turniphead from 'She Stoops to Conquer' though?
Tell us more, Sue. Which uni? What rows? The movement needs to know!
With Jones and the admiral being brought into government and no matching figures from the left Brown is pitching to be the Ramsey MacDonald for the new century. The striking thing is how much support he's got from inside the party. How do you "reclaim" this?
Liam wrote:
How do you "reclaim" this?
Deep entryism into Digby Jones?
Liam - you can't reclaim the Labour Party.
You can only blame the left who shut their mouths when Blair became leader.
Deep entryism into Digby Jones?
Deep entry into his jugular vein with a machete you mean?
Anyone hear why Jon Cruddas turned down a job and what job it was? I read this on teletext, yesterday i think it was, but forgot to look it up.
Digby Jones has been given a joint role.
He's Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister of State at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
Lord Drayson is also a Minister of State at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and has dual role too: he's also Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence.
Lovely stuff.
Brown has certainly landed running, moving so fast to the right that he's taken out the whole field and is inviting members of the crowd to join in.
I can't imagine that there won't be a mass of seething resentment amongst those he's spiked.
Which signals a growing division between Labour at a cabinet level and just about everyone else from the back-benches downwards.
Of course, a lot of the PLP will keep their gobs firmly shut and hope for the best, like the careerists they are.
But if the Labour Left doesn't make a noise about this, build links with the unions, such as supporting the posties and publicly organise outside the party, they will continue on the road to decline we've seen since 1997.
What's sauce for the goose is dupiaza for the gander.
I joined the 'Sir Digby Jones is a Tory who has no place in a Labour Government' Facebook Group because he is an anti-trade unionist, but much of what you quote here is fair comment.
Most importantly, to represent just one per cent of the private sector workforce is a very great failure of which the trade union movement should be ashamed. To whinge that Digby and his ilk are more effective lobbyists is rather pathetic.
Trade Unions are more closely associated with the public sector, where they are ultra-conservative. Take the NHS where the government wants patients to spend less time in hospital and to be more often treated at home. That creates new posts while rendering others redundant. A progressive Union would not simply oppose those redundancies and it certainly wouldn't scaremonger.
Do you want Tony back yet? :)
Actually, whatever you think of Jones, he is on to something.
I am a trade unionist, always have been and indeed, in the past was a lay official at various levels.
But these days I work somewhere where unions are not recognised. There is no hostility, my manager knows I am a union member and indeed he used to be a member of the same union.
I am also just about the oldest person in my office and it is pretty clear to me that the younger people, even the lefties, see no reason to join a union. I might as well ask them to fly off to the Moon.
Office workers in the private (service) sector have never been widely organised. I'll bet most of the loss of trade union density in the private sector is because of the decline of manufacturing, not because of anti-union legislation.
It's dead easy to say it is all the fault of that evil Gordon Brown or Digby Jones, actully facing up to the issues in a way that gets people into a union is the tough one.
Anyone would think from Stephen's comments that the government can be trusted when it says it is looking after the health service... Sadly, I am a cynic in this regard. It's not as if Blair has not signalled his intention to have the state as enabler rather than provider (which is to say, goodbye welfare state, hello Sicko-land). And anyway, I thought the whole point of trade unionism was to defend workers... A "progressive" union that refused to speak out agaisnt redundancies wouldn't have many members, would it?
There are times to accept redundancies in the case of an organisation like the NHS.
Otherwise the country would remain dotted with TB hospitals, for example.
Change will always unsettle, but unions in that position do not make things easier by taking ultra-conservative positions; they play into the hands of the likes of Digby Jones. Far better to work to ensure change is progressive.
There are times to accept redundancies in the case of an organisation like the NHS. Otherwise the country would remain dotted with TB hospitals, for example.
Because of course there's no possibility that those staff could have been redeployed or retrained.
There are times to accept changes in working patterns, but that's very different from saying that the NHS should employ fewer health workers.