Gregor Gall: Industrial action can serve the greater good

Politicians were obviously hoping for another politically useful example of the entire population uniting in pride and joy and showcasing Britain to the international community at a time of domestic austerity and public spending cuts. But the strike threatened to affect the crucial UK Border Agency and Identity and Passport Service functions and in doing so, it showed not all was well with the Olympian spirit.

Home Secretary, Theresa May, condemned the planned strike as “shameless” and “opportunistic”. Amongst senior Tories, the planned action occasioned discussion of dismissing the strikers On this occasion, the particular debate concerned whether the strike was viewed as opportunistic and, thus, irresponsible and reprehensible.

But behind the headlines and sound bites, there is an equally valid way of looking at such a strike, namely, whether it is strategic and, thus, clever and effective in protecting wider interests.

A strike affecting passport and immigration control hit a raw nerve after continuous delays in processing incoming passengers at the critical Heathrow airport. Indeed, the PCS union has previously pointed that the delays are the result of job losses pushed through by the present government.

So it is not just the timing of the strike but the reasons for the strike that get to the core of explaining the government’s fervour in condemning the PCS strike. The two key issues giving rise to the proposed strike were continuing job losses and privatisation of functions in the UK Border Agency and Identity and Passport Service in a dispute which has been going on since late 2010 and has already seen several strikes.

If the government had felt confident of its ground to attack the PCS strike as a classic case of protecting vested self-interest, namely, the jobs of PCS members, it would have done so and with relish.

But the government’s Achilles heel here has been that the strike is about the protection of the service for the wider population and not just about saving members’ jobs. And, it is this which explains why the PCS called the strike off at the eleventh hour as a result of gaining assurances from the government on the creation of 1,100 new jobs in the service.

Indeed, what makes the issues underlying the planned strike so significant was that the PCS was obviously having some success in making the hard-hitting argument that saving jobs and maintaining a decent service go hand-in-hand in a complimentary manner. When issues of national security and law and order are concerned, as they are here, the Tories find themselves on a very sticky wicket.

The evidence of passenger delays, and then hundreds of thousands of uncompleted cases at the UK Border Agency, showed that there is a very clear alignment of the interests of the providers of the service, the PCS members, with the recipients and beneficiaries of the service, the passengers and the general public.