Workers' Resistance in Britain to Anti-Social Offensive
Workers Step Up Opposition to Widespread Use of "Fire and Rehire" Methods 
The method of "fire and rehire," where workers are re-contracted on
unfavourable terms under threat of termination of employment, or in
other cases forced to re-apply for their positions, has become a
widespread phenomenon in Britain particularly over the past year of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Its use is now so extensive that opposition to it is
being taken up by various unions, the Trade Union Central (TUC), and in Parliament.
Some one in 11 (nine per cent) of over 2,000 workers polled for the
TUC last November had experienced the tactic in some form. The poll
also found that this doubles (18 per cent) for workers aged 18 to 24
years old. Black and national minority workers were also
disproportionately affected (15 per cent).
Fire and rehire is a method being used to marginalize workers and
prevent workers from meaningfully expressing any kind of opposition to
their conditions. It is akin to the overt rule by police powers.
The newspaper Workers' Weekly points out:
"Part and parcel of the anti-social offensive, a general
disequilibrium exists in the social relation between those who work and
those who employ them, the owners and controllers of business and the
economy as a whole.
"This disequilibrium exists both at the level of society and in
individual workplaces, where employment relations have become entirely
one-sided, under the absolute control of the employer. Without
equilibrium, there is social disruption and chaos. All that exists is
the one-sided relation dominated by competing powerful interests.
"Imposition and arbitrariness are features of this situation and
amount to a refusal by those in control to recognize the right of
workers to negotiate collective agreements; as such, they amount to an
attempt to render workers and their unions powerless to resist.
"Recognition of this right is a starting point for regaining an
equilibrium in a workplace and contributes to bringing about an
equilibrium in society as a whole. People have a right to an
equilibrium at work and in general to be able to live and work with a
degree of security and without a constant and increasing sense of
anxiety."
The reason for this state of affairs is ultimately the highly
efficient and sophisticated nature of the modern socialized economy and
its fragmented ownership into privately-owned competing parts, showing
up as a dwindling rate of return on investment for the owners of
capital.
 These
owners claim their profit, or added-value, from the new value created
by the working class. Modern business, in order to compete, invests
large amounts of capital in automated machinery, computers, and other
means of production, giving rise to an economy that is so productive
that a vast social product, in the form of goods and
services, is produced with relatively few workers contributing
work-time compared to the past.
As a result, a given commodity typically holds far less new value
than the pre-existing old value transferred to it by machinery and so
on. In this way, increasing productivity has greatly reduced the amount
of new value produced in relation to transferred-value, the social
product, and the total invested capital.
In the present, powerful global oligarchies are driven by ever
fiercer competition to maximize their claims on the new value produced
by the working class to counter the falling rate of return, to the point
that now they cannot countenance any opposition and are demanding total
control of every aspect of the economy, politics and the social
relation in which they stand with the workers they employ, altogether
taking the form of the anti-social offensive.
It is therefore significant that the unions are stepping up
resistance. The arrogance with which the owners of capital act with
impunity through their offensive against the social interest and any
pro-social arrangements calls into question their traditional and legal
position of authority.
This article was published in
March 24, 2021 - No. 21
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08212.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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