BAE Systems' war complicity is shared by Unite the union

BAE arms firm workers get big pay rise amid escalating war and genocide

Workers at BAE Systems have won a major pay rise. Their union Unite celebrated the win in a press release which made little mention of the firm’s role in accelerating global war and genocide. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:

It has taken a courageous stance from our workers on a picket line to win this award. They should be congratulated for standing together and winning a pay rise they truly deserve.

Unite regional officer Ross Quinn said:

This has been a hard-fought victory against an employer that tried every trick in the book to avoid paying our members what they deserved.

This win shows the power in a union and that when our reps and workers across the aerospace industry and across Lancashire stand together they can win against even the biggest employers.

As one would expect, the Unite press release made no mention of BAE’s role in an arms trade which fuels violence, displacement and climate damage across the planet.

BAE Systems are warmongers

This kind of contradiction characterises big unions like Unite. They’re very conservative organisations in many ways and often see their remit as ending with getting their members better conditions

Not all members agree…

There’s a evidence of substantial gap in views on issues like Palestine between some sections of rank and file and the union bureaucracy. Yet it took until 2025 for the union’s executive council to:

finally agreed to take a stand against the production of arms for Israel.

In 2024, amid numerous direct actions against genocide-linked firms, Graham even told:

union staff not to support campaigns against arms factories.

She even claimed:

there is no contradiction for a trade union to hold a position of solidarity with Palestinian workers, while at the same time refusing to support campaigns that target our members’ workplaces without their support.

Clearly this is a completely inadequate response to a genocide. Yet workers have devised ways to address runaway militarism before. For example, the Lucas Plan.

Developed in the 80s at Lucas Aerospace, a major UK ‘defence’ firm, the plan proposed all kinds of radical changes to industry:

The impetus for the Lucas Plan came from the Lucas Aerospace workers who faced losing their jobs, and wanting to produce socially useful products rather than weapons.

And:

the Plan was extremely influential in the disarmament movement, since it showed that, with political will and support, disarmament did not have to mean thousands of workers losing their jobs.

What was lacking then, is still lacking now. Real change would need a government resilient enough to the arms lobby to implement so-called ‘defence diversification’. This would re-organise workers away from the business of killing and into socially useful and meaningful tasks. The fact remains thought that at the moment, that sort of government seems very hard to imagine.

Featured image via the Canary

Tags: militarism trade unions

Comments 6

Oneness says:

3 months ago

The great misfortune of present day life is that we have forgotten the purpose of work. We have become confused by the pseudo-science of economics. Work should lead us to prosperity by following the simple rule of only doing what advances prosperity and avoiding what does not. But politicians and economists have taken their eyes off what we do and become wrongly focused on how it is measured.

Money is a measure of what we do. It has no intrinsic worth of its own but is simply a means of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Could it be that the system is valuing the things we do that hinder prosperity as equal to those that advance it? If so, would this not devalue the money we are using as the measure? Importantly, could this be a previously-obscured explanation for the increasing cost of living, for the necessities that sustain us and provide shelter and comfort?

For example, the arms trade is a hugely wasteful use of vast resources, manufacturing harmful products. But the many manufacturers’ balance sheets, and the country’s GDP, state it is profitable. Measured in money, the value of adverse production is calculated to be equal to prosperous production. This is a problem of economics, deeming all production to be wealth creation and of positive value, even when contrary to the common good of all humanity.

The global arms trade is negative value production. It adversely impacts on international currencies, our living standards, the natural world, and, above all, life itself. This hypothesis questions the way economics is taught and practised.

Airlane1979 says:

3 months ago

An excellent article! Workers in arms factories have always had blood on their hands, going back to the First World War. If those weapons were to be turned on the workers’ families, can we imagine them “refusing to support campaigns that target our members’ workplaces”? They are complicit in the most horrific crimes imaginable, vastly worse than even those committed by the likes of the late Ian Huntley who was murdered in prison because of them. They are the true wrong ‘uns.

Mike H says:

3 months ago

This is absolutely FANTASTIC news for all the highly skilled BAE Systems employees.
A superbly capable BRITISH company generating knowledge and wealth for Great Britain now paying their staff more fairly and reflecting the huge success of the company as a whole.
Right decision- well done BAE!

- Paul says:
  
  3 months ago
  
  Dear oh dear. Wealth for Britain? What a shambles of an argument. Lets see how our wealth gets on with the latest military disaster.
  
Johnny Roadcrew says:

3 months ago

Unite, my union, should be pulling out of companies who support genocide.

Eddie Dougall says:

3 months ago

War: good for business, eh Mike H? So BAE and their employees look forward to more of them? God bless you Mr Trump. How sad.