This article is a slightly edited version of a presentation I gave at the Equality in a Time of Crisis conference, organized by the UCD Egalitarian World Initiative (EWI) and the UCD School of Social Justice in UCD last week.

The issues raised by an agenda of workplace equality have urgent implications for trade unionists.

By way of two specific examples I want to tease out the enormous challenges in creating strategies to actualise egalitarian goals or to even get us on the first rung.

The first concerns the intrusive micro-supervision of routine tasks - repetitive tasks which people have little hope of escaping through a more equitable division between different tasks within a given process.   One need go no further than one major international retail chain whose conduct has been well documented - everything from hidden cameras and microphones to spy and eavesdrop on workers (in which their conversations are transcribed), to requiring that women having their periods wear wristbands to entitle them to toilet breaks; to in the few countries where the company is forced to recognise trade unions - attempting to prevent election of shop stewards or actively victimise elected representatives of the workforce.

Given this conduct, adherence to legal requirements such as the working time directive, are seen as luxuries.  These and similar attacks, under the guise of micro-management of routine tasks to ensure more efficient production, are prevalent.  In the hospitality sector, workers are forced - on pain of losing their jobs - to work ‘free hours’, back-to-back shifts, give up holiday time, forgo overtime, etc.  Again, such actions are not confined to unskilled or semi-skilled sectors but appear in various forms and guises throughout a number of sectors, though it may not manifest itself in such extreme forms.

How do we respond?  Here is where we see the challenges mount almost geometrically.

First, is the isolation of people within the workplace.  While I would not claim that this is the ultimate benchmark, the minimal level of trade union membership mitigates against a collective response.  In the hospitality sector, only 6 percent of workers are in trade unions; in the retail sector only 15 percent.  Given that 30 percent of all private sector workers make a living in these sectors - with a much higher proportion of women, young people and non-nationals - we have a significant percentage of people working in conditions where they have little ability to defend, never mind advance, their interests in the face of a vindictive management.  In effect, they stand alone.

Even where there is some trade union membership in a workplace - say 10 percent of the workers - this is largely ineffective and silent for fear of management retribution.  In such cases trade union membership is usually an insurance policy to be used as a last resort, say in an unfair dismissals hearing.  But in terms of the day-to-day it is largely ineffective.

Even where workers, through a trade union, decide to respond, there is still a hill to climb.  How do they communicate their demand or effect a negotiation?  Here, management have a statutory right to ignore a collective process.  In these cases, workers must struggle - not to have their concerns addressed - but to establish a process whereby those concerns can be addressed.  A double hurdle, if you will.

Even if this is successful, there are more hurdles.  The first is the silence of power.  One may find themselves in a formal process but those on the other side do not respond, do not engage, because they don’t have to.  They effectively fold their arms and dare the workers to do something.  It is a game of industrial chicken.  The balance of power is such that workers do not have the power to elicit a response, never mind engage in fruitful negotiation.

Workers may decide to go outside the workplace and in order to put external pressure on their employers.  Yet, through what media will they communicate?  Eurozone fiscal crises, NAMA, ministerial pensions, rising unemployment - such a message may find it hard to compete for space.  This has certainly been the experience of unions taking stories of extreme situations to media outlets - if we’re lucky, we might get a couple of inches on page 7 or third item on an afternoon radio bulletin.  But without solidarity this cannot be sustained into anything like a campaign - and the blowback from management can be fierce.

And even were the message to be heard - there is one more problem we face in the current economic conditions.  In the three years of our recession we will lose over 250,000 jobs.  Add to this the growth in the under-employed and those only marginally attached to the labour force; add to this the growth in agency workers- workers who have almost no place in formal workplace organisations because of their contract basis; take all this together and workers who attempt to publicly problematise issues of concern are likely to be faced with the comment: ‘you’re lucky to have a job’.  And the sad thing is that a lot of people are lucky to have a job, will do anything to keep that job, will put up with any indignity, any loss of pay or working conditions to keep hold of that job.  Unemployment and the fear of unemployment is a great control mechanism.

After all that, it can be seen that internalising and tolerating the denial of dignity and respect in the workplace is a rational and often-times necessary choice.  After weighing up all the downsides - and the downsides are many with few prospects for success, it is better not to do anything.

To confront this calls for new modes of workplace organising - one that goes beyond just the servicing of members; one that embraces new forms of solidarity, especially for those who find autonomous action and joining a trade union problematic.  It is not just about highlighting the injustice - in the media and on the street - but to call into question the underlying logic of managerial practice on its terms.  For is there anything more wasteful, more inefficient and more unproductive than these micro-management practices.  This can lead us a place where trade unionists are reluctant to go but one in which we must go if we are to advance an egalitarian ethos - to challenge the very idea of unmediated, unnegotiated, unaccountable management itself; a vapid managerialism that rests on custom and practice, rather than any authentic or verifiable ability. And to do so within the logic of management itself as forcefully as we do in the realm of labour rights and egalitarian justice.

Let me give you an example what this means by looking at another section of the workforce - one that doesn’t suffer from many of the handicaps of those in unorganised workplaces:  the public sector.  Highly organised, with more higher-skilled employees, higher formal educational achievements, and greater work-experience; in the public sector we should find a greater egalitarian ethos at work and, in comparative terms, we do.  But there are major gaps and I’d like to focus on one aspect - the right to contribute.

Currently, we are debating a public sector pay deal.  This agenda is being pushed ostensibly because it will increase efficiency and productivity in the public sector workplace.  Personally, I doubt this very much.  It’s a cover for primarily cutting public sector employment.  Let’s leave that issue aside, however and focus on this:  where was the contribution of the workers, either directly or through their trade union representatives, to this agenda?  Was this ability or opportunity to contribute denied?

The Government slammed down a cut and paste document on the table and put the words ‘Transformation’ and ‘agenda’ on it because it sounds cool.  Immediately, workers’ representatives were on the defensive and counted it as small victories such as where x amount of work was to be out-sourced, now only y amount will be.  We blunted the edges of a profoundly misleading process - that is was about increasing productivity - but at the same time accepted not only the parameters of the document, we unnecessarily accepted the process itself - namely, that management proposes and our only contributory role is to negotiate defensive amendments.

Why should it have been like this?  I certainly would like to hear nurses’ take on efficiency and productivity in the health sector, secondary school teachers in the education sector, guards in policing.  People with the experience of these services, the collective ability to identify the issues and put forward alternatives, the workplace opportunity to create innovative inclusive strategies with the public they serve, and the infrastructure both to organise this bottom-up process but to broadcast this to a wider audience - we have a great opportunity that workers in other sectors don’t have.

In short, why didn’t we slap down our own document on the table?  It would make for an interesting read.  We might find that it is the structures, practices and policies created by and maintained by management - in many cases, to reinforce their hierarchical position (for what’s the fun of being in an hierarchy if you can’t dictate to those below; its one of the perks) - that is the problem, not the people who are forced to operate those structures and practices.

What would be the reaction?  Devastating.  How dare employees presume to comment on management practices? Who are they to say what’s a better way of managing services? They should know their position.  If you don’t believe me, pick up any issue of the Sunday Independent and get back to me.

But the point is this - in this narrow example we limited our own capacity to contribute; we limited it because we could not think or imagine our way out of the traditional roles assigned to us in the workplace; and we couldn’t do that in the area where organised labour is the strongest and has the greatest capacity to do just that - rethink, imagine.

Would the outcome have been different?  Qualitatively, at this juncture, probably not - but it would have been better because we contested ground that traditionally belonged to management.  More importantly, we would have created a process - a democratic, inclusive process - that would have touched each worker and provided them a space to contribute.  When such a process happens, it is hard to close the door.  It could have laid the groundwork for more ambitious initiatives.  And - and this is key - it would have provided an example to workers in other sectors.

It is these two examples - where it is hard to prevent attacks on respect and dignity and where it is hard to overcome limitations on contributions - that can make one depressed.

But now for the good news.  We are right.  On every scorecard, every metric, the arguments for equality, the arguments for more and more democracy, are irresistible.  Let’s take some headline areas.

First, on the macroeconomic front; it is interesting to compare the recessionary impact on EU countries by reference to their levels of inequality.  Economies with greater income equality and less at-risk of poverty, have weathered the storm in far better shape.  This is not surprising.  In listing the five classic reasons for the depth and duration of the Great Depression, John Kenneth Galbraith stated the first reason was the disparity between rich and poor, which was the prime driver in the loss of demand.  We could learn from that here in Ireland.

Second, at the level of the workplace - what enterprises are the most productive, the most efficient, the most profitable?  The literature is clear - and confirmed by our own National Centre for Partnership and Performance: it is those companies that accept the right to collective bargaining alongside measures that enhance worker participation.  Even a shard of democratic light improves performance.  Again, this is not surprising, a little bit of democracy goes a little way - a lot of democracy goes a long way.

Third, in terms of workplace organisation - which set of workers are better able to enhance their working conditions, defend against attack and promote their living standards.  On this the jury has long been in - those who are members of trade unions.

These three principles - Income equality, recognition and participation, acting collectively:  these are not sufficient to establish an egalitarian politics but they are absolutely indispensible and the more deeply embedded they are in institutions, practices and culture, the more it makes possible greater advances.

But let’s not be under any illusions.  Daily we are invited to join the consensus.  We must work together, we must join a common purpose, we must be patriotic, we must put aside our petty interests and be part of the larger cause.  In other words, work hard to restore the status quo.

Let’s be clear:  when people are denied recognition, respect and dignity; when conditions in the workplace and the community are under assault; when living standards are attacked; when we are not only denied the right to contribute, to participate but are attacked when we put forward that right - in such conditions, consensus is wrong.

Conflict for change is right.  To assert, to declare, to put in motion the practice of change - that is right.  To deny the self-declared privileges of hierarchy; to challenge the ground which has been monopolised by interests that are hostile to an egalitarian politics; to be imaginative in such a challenge and, most of all, to be persistent - that is right and necessary.

Gramsci tells us that before a social force assumes power, it must act like it is in power.  It is through this acting out - throughout the economic, social and ideological spheres - that it slowly displaces, first the ability, then the legitimacy, and finally the actual space which the old order occupies.  And all that time we increase our own abilities, our own legitimacy, slowly expanding our space of power, slowly delimiting theirs.

That is one way, of many ways, that a new egalitarian logic can evolve.