My weekly comment in the daily Plymouth Herald (25.6.24) which cut-out all the references to the Pride LGBTQ+ links that I wrote about. My purpose was to promote Pride whilst linking the reason for both gender oppression and other oppressions as doing a job for the bosses. Perhaps the editor didn’t get it, or perhaps the subject was seen as too delicate, or perhaps even too political. I simply don’t know, but if there is such fear in mainstream publication, its worse than anything I wrote about.

Trade unions exist because of the power imbalance between business owners as employers, their managers and supervisory staff, and the the workers who produce the goods. It’s a universally experienced pyramid of power.

The tension that exists, exists because when workers combine together we can create a power equal to or greater than The Boss. When we are treated like slaves, paid subsistence and ordered to undertake gruelling and unhealthy work we can unite, stop working, go on strike and show the employer that nothing gets done without us. 

We have bargaining power because, when work stops, so does the profit for the business owner. 

Indeed the greatest threat to profit is workers united in defiance. So employers worldwide have learnt the myriad of ways to divide and rule the workforce, and indeed, our communities.

For so long as we fret over each others’ differences and seek individual superiority based upon personal characteristics, there can be not unity. Division and competition in the workforce only ever benefits the bosses and their bigoted courtiers.

The employing class uses oppression to hold down workers’ confidence to fight for our rights by dividing us each from the other. Women continue to be paid less than men for the same work, the false ideas of femininity as emotionally weaker and less able than men still fed into workplaces to stoke competition and division. Sexual and gender superiority are tools of control, encouraging violence and domestic abuse. 

Bosses also always promote nationalism, even losing profit to give workers time off to watch the national football team play in the final. Nationalism tells workers we have more in common with our bosses than we have with the same workers from another country or even an associated rival business – such jingoism is an essential prerequisite for putting us into uniforms and sending us to war. 

Racism is encouraged to boost individual self-importance and prevent unity in struggle. White skin in the workplace remains a symbol of entitlement over those of colour, said to be “different” or “other”.

The categories proposing superiority and inferiority have differing roots but are all linked. There is no hierarchy of oppression. Those seeking personal power continue to campaign to cancel human rights across the board. 

Sexual and gender superiority is heavily promoted. So to consider the demand for women’s liberation as vital whilst collaborating with the continued oppression of trans-women simply maintains the power that prejudice wields over everyone.

We each have unique characteristics. We appreciate the family and friends we love, accepting of a wide range of sexual preferences and gender identities. Whilst the ruling class continues to present only heterosexuality as “normal” if not “god given”, we love and care for our relatives and friends who are gay or lesbian, bisexual or abrosexual, aromantic or asexual, transsexual or Queer – the term reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ members who have redeemed it from its use as a homophobic put-down and excuse for violent attacks – but  non-heterosexual and straight-gender characteristics are still portrayed as outside “the norm”.

The shift in social attitudes and acceptance of differing gender identities has been fought for through generations of struggle, and continues to be challenged, especially in the workplace. Trade unions have had a key role to play in championing the right to determine and express ourselves without prejudice or oppression in the workplace. Unity is strength.

It is little wonder then, in this period of heightened political debate, that the racist, sexist, white-supremacist millionaire profiteers and business owners are pushing “anti-wokism” to win the votes from those who want to bolster themselves and the power of prejudice at the expense of others. 

Campaigns have challenged oppression and won time after time. The Capitalists learn to adapt to the general consensus, only to then create new divisions, new demons they can intimidate us with. They seek to incorporate and commodify everything we do, but will destroy anything they can’t control. A pertinent example is of the arms manufacturers who are trying to sponsor our schools and universities, campaigns and community activities. Their purpose is to normalise an inhuman culture of individual competition, social conflict and imperialist war all based upon pre-judgement of “The Other” as lesser, invalid or inhuman.

This week’s Pride celebrations, and the Pride Month of June offers a voice to all the oppressed locally and internationally, and offers a powerful wedge against prejudice in the workplace.

Trade unionists are Woke to the core! When at our best we not only fight for decent jobs but for decency in the workplace, organising always against all oppression.