NEW LABOUR PAINS

All the lobby correspondents at Westminster seem agreed that Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson is for the chop. The urbane member for Coventry, they say, is soon to be shifted to a less high-profile position.
Hardly the sexiest news item of the year. But around our way Robinson is (slightly) better-known than you d think. I ve heard no reports of fisticuffs at his demotion being mooted. Merely mordant muttering in the more politically-sussed saloons.
We reckon here he s being dumped for the wrong reason. The right reason has relevance for us all, North and South.
Robinson first emerged as a New Labour liability just three months into government when press sleuths revealed that he had #12.5 million squirreled away in a Channel Isles trust. Registering the trust in Guernsey meant he paid no tax on the stash.
Perfectly legal but it didn t look clever alongside the fact a Treasury job involving a crack-down on smaller-scale tax-avoidance schemes.
Red faces contrasting with their pasty-faced politics, the sultans of spin let it immediately be known that Tony stood resolutely by Geoffrey, who wouldn t be moving nowhere, no way. So it s no surprise now that he s being elbowed off-side.
Fair enough, in its way. Even under New Labour, there must be a limit on acceptable levels of hypocrisy.
But a more pertinent question has to do with how Robinson became so rich in the first place.
In recent years, he benefitted from a bizarre bequest from a Belgian business associate who left him more than #10 million in her will. But this wasn t just luck in the lottery of life. He was moving in such circles because he d already amassed more money than anybody could decently be doing with.
This came from a company called Transtec, suppliers of aluminium mouldings to car-makers. Robinson set it up in the 70s when he was a manager with a motor-manufacturer in the Midlands, and spotted a wide-open market opportunity.
Transtec, expanded, now operates at Maydown in Derry, employing around 200 people. It is a by-word for low pay, bad conditions and bullying management.
Basic money comes to around #200 a week for 42 hours on shifts, well below the average wage for such work.
The accident count is high. The casualty department at Altnagelvin is well-used to Transtec workers arriving wounded in cars driven by agitated work-mates.
On March 26th the company was convicted in court of a series of breaches of health and safety regulations. One of the charges related to an incident in which an employee lost his index and middle fingers while working on a machine, another to an episode in which a worker in the die-casting department lost half his right foot.
One union activist describes the set-up: Health and safety is practically non-existent. In the die-maintenance section where I am, for example, hand-operated overhead cranes carry dies two and a half tons in weight. During my career at TT this has broken down twice, the second time narrowly missing me.
To my knowledge, these were the only times the crane was checked after it had broken.
Molten metal regularly spills over the floor when carried uncovered in buckets on the front of speeding forklifts.
On at least one occasion the furnace door jammed, sending molten metal over quite a large area of the factory floor.
The facilities are disgusting. An unkempt canteen with a coke and tea-vending machine plus two microwave ovens are all that s provided for a 12-hour shift.
Industrial relations are commensurately bad. Union officials have managed to keep the lid on shop-floor anger over the past couple of years. They have been helped by the fact that rank-and-file self-confidence has been low after the long Tory years. And local media and political opinion frowns sternly on action which might deter future investment .
Insecurity is increased by the company bringing in contract workers when it needs to boost production. They can be let go when the pressure eases, without reference to union agreements, standard practice or common decency. Agencies like Grafton can deliver a dozen workers for a week, two weeks, whatever, then pull out until asked to supply another batch.
In the mantra of modern management, this files under flexibility . It ensures that production is kept up without any pressure on wage costs, enabling owners to maintain a wide profit margin.
This is the source of Robinson s riches. In the no-frills language which preceded New Labour, it s called exploitation: in the propaganda sheets of the robber class, entrepreneurship .
In the last four years Transtec sales worldwide have rocketted by 300 percent to around stg#350 million. Robinson's 17.2 percent share is now worth #27.5 million. Although he resigned as chairman when he went into government, the profits still pour into his coffers, flowing, more safely than molten metal around his factories, through a blind trust" and eventually to Guernsey and the reservoir brimming over with ill-gotten gold.
Hatred it's not too strong a word for Robinson is rife among Transtec workers. But any time in recent years shop-floor feeling threatened to erupt into industrial action, officials of the Engineering Union counselled . . . Let s wait for a Labour Government . . . When we are rid of the Tories, union rights will be restored . . . The climate will be more propitious . . . We'll be better able then to deal with the outstanding ills . . .
Instead they discovered that the author of their ills was in the Labour Government. Union rights have not been restored. The climate in the workplace is the same as ever it was. On every relevant matter, New Labour has positioned itself on management's side.
Some might argue that Old Labour was never whole-heartedly, or even half-heartedly, on the workers side either. Whatever about that, there s no argument now.
Robinson is to be moved to a less sensitive position because squeaky New Labour is desperate to look clean. His dodgy tax arrangements have become mildly embarrassing. But far more significant is the fact that there's no embarrassment at all at the way he came by his wealth or at his ruthless denial of dignity to the workers at Transtec.
Very much to the contrary. Blair and the plastic apparachniks around him are entranced to have scoundrels like Robinson in government, precisely to prove that fabulously rich parasites have nothing to fear from millennial New Labour. On the bright side, we know better now, or should, that if we want change for the better, there s no point looking to New Labour. Things can only get better if we make it so ourselves. n