If you are looking for relentlessly positive and upbeat
assessments of all aspects of trade union organisation you may be in the wrong
place. This blog has been a critical voice now for more than a decade.
It is hardly a novelty for me to suggest that the tradition
of lay leadership in UNISON is honoured
rather more in the breach than the observance. I have been criticising
officials of my own trade union for
years – and have often focused on my own (Greater
London) Region.
For example, in February 2010 I published the farewell
messages from respected UNISON official Tom Snow to his
colleagues and to activists.
Tom didn’t pull his punches and I was pleased to publish his shrewd observations
that (in the Regional office); “There is
no esprit de corps. It is difficult to define what the Region has actually done
for UNISON members in London. It is little more than an office, a large one,
containing many highly committed people, all unable to escape a very tight
strait jacket. When branches have found ways to organise significant numbers of
new members, their activists have not been brought in to tell us how they did
it. That is a waste - symptomatic of managerial hubris and gross disrespect for
activists.”
A month or so later I was scathing
in my criticism of officials taking our Bromley and Greenwich branches into
regional supervision. This was just one example of my criticising UNISON for
the conduct of internal disciplinary matters – there were others.
And still
others. (and more…)
I have always been aware of the possibility of complaints
being made to the Certification Officer – and reviewed
a number of such complaints against UNISON back in May 2008. I was not keen
to join those making such complaints, but when I did I explained
why here.
What I don’t quite understand is why my persistent
criticism of what I have perceived to be shortcomings in our trade union over
many years appears to have been tolerated in the past, it is only now that I am
party to a complaint to the Certification Officer that I find myself facing an
internal disciplinary investigation.
Funny old thing coincidence, eh?
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