As noted in the last section, anarchists desire to create organisations in the workplace radically different from the existing trade unions. The question now arises, what attitude do anarchists generally take to these existing unions?

Before answering that question, we must stress that anarchists, no matter how hostile to trade unions as bureaucratic, reformist institutions, are in favour of working class struggle. This means that when trade union members or other workers are on strike anarchists will support them (unless the strike is totally reactionary — for example, no anarchist would support a strike which is racist in nature). This is because almost all anarchists consider it basic to their politics that you don't scab and you don't crawl (a handful of individualist anarchists are the exception). So, when reading anarchist criticisms of trade unions do not for an instant think we do not support industrial struggles — we do, we are just very critical of the unions that are sometimes involved.

So, what do anarchists think of the trade unions?

For the most part, one could call the typical anarchist opinion toward them as one of "hostile support." It is hostile insofar as anarchists are well aware of how bureaucratic these unions are and how they continually betray their members. Given that they are usually little more than "business" organisations, trying to sell their members labour-power for the best deal possible, it is unsurprising that they are bureaucratic and that the interests of the bureaucracy are at odds with those of its membership. However, our attitude is "supportive" in that even the worse trade union represents an attempt at working class solidarity and self-help, even if the attempt is now far removed from the initial protests and ideas that set the union up. For a worker to join a trade union means having to recognise, to some degree, that he or she has different interests from their boss. There is no way to explain the survival of the unions other than the fact that there are different class interests, and workers have understood that to promote their own interests they have to organise on class lines.

No amount of conservatism, bureaucracy or backwardness within the unions can obliterate the essential fact of different class interests. The very existence of trade unions testifies to the existence of some level of basic class consciousness — even though most trade unions claim otherwise and that capital and labour have interests in common. As we have argued, anarchists reject this claim with good reason, and the very existence of trade unions show that this is not true. If workers and capitalists have the same interests, trade unions would not exist. Moreover, claiming that the interests of workers and bosses are the same theoretically disarms both the unions and its members and so weakens their struggles (after all, if bosses and workers have similar interests then any conflict is bad and the decisions of the boss must be in workers' interests!).

Thus anarchist viewpoints reflect the contradictory nature of business/trade unions — on the one hand they are products of workers' struggle, but on the other they are very bureaucratic, unresponsive and centralised and (therefore) their full-time officials have no real interest in fighting against wage labour as it would put them out of a job. Indeed, the very nature of trade unionism ensures that the interests of the union (i.e. the full-time officials) come into conflict with the people they claim to represent.

This can best be seen from the disgraceful activities of the TGWU with respect to the Liverpool dockers in Britain. The union officials (and the TUC itself) refused to support their members after they had been sacked in 1995 for refusing to cross a picket line. The dockers organised their own struggle, contacting dockers' unions across the world and organising global solidarity actions. Moreover, a network of support groups sprung up across Britain to gather funds for their struggle (and, we are proud to note, anarchists have played their role in supporting the strikers). Many trade unionists could tell similar stories of betrayal by "their" union.

This occurs because trade unions, in order to get recognition from a company, must be able to promise industrial peace. They need to enforce the contracts they sign with the bosses, even if this goes against the will of its members. Thus trade unions become a third force in industry, somewhere between management and the workers and pursuing its own interests. This need to enforce contracts soon ensures that the union becomes top-down and centralised — otherwise its members would violate the unions agreements. They have to be able to control their members - which usually means stopping them fighting the boss - if they are to have anything to bargain with at the negotiation table. This may sound odd, but the point is that the union official has to sell the employer labour discipline and freedom from unofficial strikes as part of its side of the bargain. Otherwise the employer will ignore them. The nature of trade unionism is to take power away from out of local members and centralise it into the hands of officials at the top of the organisation.

Thus union officials sell out their members because of the role trade unions play within society, not because they are nasty individuals (although some are). They behave as they do because they have too much power and, being full-time and highly paid, are unaccountable, in any real way, to their members. Power — and wealth — corrupts, no matter who you are. (also see Chapter 11 of Alexander Berkman's What is Communist Anarchism? for an excellent introduction to anarchist viewpoints on trade unions).

While, in normal times, most workers will not really question the nature of the trade union bureaucracy, this changes when workers face some threat. Then they are brought face to face with the fact that the trade union has interests separate from theirs. Hence we see trade unions agreeing to wage cuts, redundancies and so on — after all, the full-time trade union official's job is not on the line! But, of course, while such a policy is in the short term interests of the officials, in the longer term it goes against their interests — after all, who wants to join a union which rolls over and presents no effective resistance to employers? Little wonder Michael Moore has a chapter entitled "Why are Union Leaders So F#!@ing Stupid?" in his book Downsize This! — essential reading to realise how moronic trade union bureaucrats can actually be. Sadly trade union bureaucracy seems to afflict all who enter it with short-sightedness, as seen by the countless times the trade unions have sold-out their members — although the chickens do, finally, come home to roost, as the bureaucrats of the AFL, TUC and other trade unions are finding out in this era of global capital and falling membership. So while the activities of trade union leaders may seem crazy and short-sighted, these activities are forced upon them by their position and role within society — which explains why they are so commonplace and why even radical leaders end up doing exactly the same thing in time.

Few anarchists would call upon members of a trade union to tear-up their membership cards. While some anarchists, particularly communist anarchists and some anarcho-syndicalists have nothing but contempt (and rightly so) for trade unions (and so do not work within them — but will support trade union members in struggle), the majority of anarchists take a more pragmatic viewpoint. If no alternative syndicalist union exists, anarchists will work within the existing unions (perhaps becoming shop-stewards — few anarchists would agree to be elected to positions above this in any trade union, particularly if the post was full-time), spreading the anarchist message and trying to create a libertarian undercurrent which would hopefully blossom into a more anarchistic labour movement.

So most anarchists "support" the trade unions only until they have created a viable libertarian alternative. Thus we will become trade union members while trying to spread anarchist ideas within and outwith them. This means that anarchists are flexible in terms of their activity in the unions. For example, many IWW members were "two-carders." This meant that as well as being members of the IWW, they were also in the local AFL branch in their place of work and turned to the IWW when the AFL hierarchy refused to back strikes or other forms of direct action. Anarchists encourage rank and file self-activity, not endless calls for trade union bureaucrats to act for us (as is unfortunately far too common on the left).

Anarchist activity within trade unions reflects our ideas on hierarchy and its corrupting effects. We reject totally the response of left-wing social democrats, Stalinists and mainstream Trotskyists to the problem of trade union betrayal, which is to try and elect and/or appoint 'better' officials. They see the problem primarily in terms of the individuals who hold the posts. However this ignores the fact that individuals are shaped by the environment they live in and the role they play in society. Thus even the most left-wing and progressive individual will become a bureaucrat if they are placed within a bureaucracy — and we must note that the problem of corruption does not spring from the high-wages officials are paid (although this is a factor), but from the power they have over their members (which partly expresses itself in high pay).

Any claim that electing "radical" full-time officials who refuse to take the high wages associated with the position will be better is false. The hierarchical nature of the trade union structure has to be changed, not side-effects of it. As the left has no problem with hierarchy as such, this explains why they support this form of "reform." They do not actually want to undercut whatever dependency the members has on leadership, they want to replace the leaders with "better" ones (i.e. themselves or members of their party) and so endlessly call upon the trade union bureaucracy to act for its members. In this way, they hope, trade unionists will see the need to support a "better" leadership — namely themselves. Anarchists, in stark contrast, think that the problem is not that the leadership of the trade unions is weak, right-wing or does not act but that the union's membership follows them. Thus anarchists aim at undercutting reliance on leaders (be they left or right) by encouraging self-activity by the rank and file and awareness that hierarchical leadership as such is bad, not individual leaders.

Instead of "reform" from above (which is doomed to failure), anarchists work at the bottom and attempt to empower the rank and file of the trade unions. It is self-evident that the more power, initiative and control that lies with the rank & file membership on the shop floor, the less it will lie with the bureaucracy. Thus anarchists work within and outwith the trade unions in order to increase the power of workers where it actually lies: at the point of production. This is usually done by creating networks of activists who spread anarchist ideas to their fellow workers (see next section — "What are Industrial Networks?").

These groups "within the unions should strive to ensure that they [the trade unions] remain open to all workers of whatever opinion or party on the sole condition that there is solidarity in the struggle against the bosses. They should oppose the corporatist spirit and any attempt to monopolise labour or organisation. They should prevent the Unions from becoming the tools of the politicians for electoral or other authoritarian ends; they should preach and practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative. They should strive to help members learn how to participate directly in the life of the organisation and to do without leaders and permanent officials.

"They must, in short, remain anarchists, remain always in close touch with anarchists and remember that the workers' organisation is not the end but just one of the means, however important, of preparing the way for the achievement of anarchism." [Errico Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 26-27]

As part of this activity anarchists promote the ideas of Industrial Unionism we highlighted in the last section — namely direct workers control of struggle via workplace assemblies and recallable committees — during times of struggle. However, anarchists are aware that economic struggle (and trade unionism as such) "cannot be an end in itself, since the struggle must also be waged at a political level to distinguish the role of the State." [Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, p, 115] Thus, as well as encouraging worker self-organisation and self-activity, anarchist groups also seek to politicise struggles and those involved in them. Only this process of self-activity and political discussion between equals within social struggles can ensure the process of working class self-liberation and the creation of new, more libertarian, forms of workplace organisation.

The result of such activity may be a new form of workplace organisation (either workplace assemblies or an anarcho-syndicalist union) or a reformed, more democratic version of the existing trade union (although few anarchists believe that the current trade unions can be reformed). But either way, the aim is to get as many members of the current labour movement to become anarchists as possible or, at the very least, take a more libertarian and radical approach to their unions and workplace struggle.