Letter: Unions have power to throw knockout punch

DUNCAN Hamilton ('Unions harming only themselves with a refusal to accept reality', 19 September) is right to say that a "crisis in capital means a crisis for labour" but he then constructs a non-sequitur by arguing that unions and workers should accept the 'reality' of the coming cuts in public expenditure even though they have no responsibility for causing them.

Whether workers are made to pay their disproportionate share of the coming pain is not down to matters of right or wrong, right-wing or left-wing ideology but the far less prosaic matter of power.

So the question is: can the unions mount resistance that is powerful enough to halt the cuts and force the government to look to make cuts elsewhere other than public services? In this task, if unions create broad and campaigning civic alliances where the interests of the providers of public services are aligned with the interests of the users of these services, this will help prevent the easy charge being made that the unions represent only producer interests and vested self-interest at that.

And although unions start from a relatively weak position in mounting such resistance, the saving grace may be that a weaker punch can still be effective because the government is a coalition with significant differences of opinion within it and the involvement of the Liberal Democrats with the Conservatives is eroding the former's support and membership base.

Gregor Gall, Research Professor of Industrial Relations, University of Hertfordshire.