Clarke wants even more cuts - what should we do?

Ken Clarke is clearly competing with Peter Mandelson to sound tough on spending. He admits that if the Tories get in the cuts will be worse than under Thatcher. A cheery thought over our Sunday breakfast. Not.

We need to step up support for those Members of Parliament and Candidates who will stand alongside the working class in opposition to the coming attacks on public services.

We also need to campaign for alternative policies for the Labour Party and for the Peoples' Charter, as a set of demands, endorsed by the Trades Union Congress, around which to unite opposition to twenty first-century monetarism.

UNISON members and branches should be signing up to the Million Voices campaign - and working alongside colleagues in PCS in particular in the run up to the election to put pressure on candidates seeking our votes.

Dense about density

A rare signed article on the blog set up to support Dave Prentis manages successfully to demolish a straw man of an argument.

In attempting pointlessly to obscure the clear evidence that Kirklees UNISON (the Branch of which rank and file General Secretary candidate Paul Holmes is Secretary) has a very impressive membership density in its lead employer, the blogger concludes that there is no general evidence that leftwing branches have higher membership density.

That's not the point. There are a wide range of factors which influence the variability of membership density between branches and workplaces, including Regional variations, variations between Service Groups, the presence or absence of other trade unions etc. Since the Union refuses to publish the detailed density data we do have its hard to get very far in assessing the different impact of these various factors.

All that supporters of Paul Holmes have been saying is that he leads a strong branch in which the large majority of employees of the lead employer choose to be members of UNISON. That's a point in his favour and no amount of online obfuscation can change that.

It's reasonable to assume that the branch leadership are not irrelevant to the strength of the branch - as to why that might be, I would refer to what the Secretary of the Leeds Branch has to say (in his personal capacity);

"I'm supporting Paul Holmes because he is an uncomprimising fighter for the working class. There is nothing "new", gimmicky, trendy or slick about Paul. What you get is someone who stands for, and espouses, good traditional socialist and trade union values and principles. He practices what he preaches. During our recent 11 week long Refuse and Street Cleaning workers strike in Leeds to protect pay and privatisation, Paul was the first to visit our picket lines to offer support; his branch was the first to send much needed money for our hardship fund; he attented and spoke inspirationally at several mass meetings and rallies during the 3 month struggle; he lobbied nationally for greater support within UNISON; he was there at the victorious end. Even after the strike was over Paul was organising branches in Yorkshire and Durham for money to buy Xmas toys for the strikers' families, providing over £2,000 worth of new toys, something for which our members were extremely grateful. Supporting workers in struggle will always be 1st, 2nd and 3rd on Paul's agenda, no other considerations will ever come in the way of that, and that's what is needed in our General Secretary."

Maybe inspirational leadership helps to build trade unions?

A General Secretary in a Total Place?

It's a good few weeks now since I first blogged about the threat to our members from the "Total Place" programme.

At that time I pointed out the response of the Total Place website to a search for the phrase "trade union" returns the response; "No posts found. Try a different search?" It still does.

Total Place is taking off as the form which reductions in public spending (and consequent job cuts) will take. The shared services which Total Place requires will provide rich pickings for the private sector - and offer the dole queue to many workers.

The ideas underpinning this attack upon public services were set out in the report "Whole Systems Go" written by a couple of academics from the Warwick Institute of Governance and Public Management (IGPM).

Our current General Secretary is an adviser to the IGPM - a fact about which his supporters boast on his campaign website. Is that wise comrades?

UNISON members whose jobs are threatened by Total Place (which is all about "better for less" and achieving savings) may not be that impressed by this association. Maybe it's something to ask the candidates about at hustings meetings?

Perhaps UNISON should consider trying to get better for less by electing a General Secretary on a workers wage?

Mandelson lets the cuts out of the bag

Peter Mandelson's characteristically high handed attack upon those protesting at proposed spending cuts in higher education included confirmation that the rest of the public sector can expect the same soon (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8511638.stm).

Anyone reading local authority budget papers could tell you the same.

So, if the Government get their way, there will be cutbacks in essential services - which will also have negative multiplier effects on wider economic activity and employment.

If only the Government would listen to Joseph Stiglitz (http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/swKYeW1PW8EUPSkOd_cicLg/view.m?id=320693&tid=120787&cat=United_States) they might see the macroeconomic folly of cutting back at a time when this could tip the economy back into recession.

However now that the ideas of those who led us into this crisis appear once more to be guiding policy makers we clearly face warmed up Thatcherism from whoever wins the election.

The trade unions must raise our game, confront those like Mandelson threatening our economy and society - and rally to the aid of those left MPs and candidates upon whom we can rely.

That's why I am supporting the challenge by Paul Holmes in the election for Unison General Secretary. Paul's candidacy shifts debate from the sterile argument for or against Labour Party affiliation - and on to more challenging terrain, asking what we are actually doing with our relationship with the Party and how we get the best we can for our members now by applying our influence to end the obsession with spending cuts.
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A goodbye call to arms

Tom Snow, a Regional Organiser widely respected amongst UNISON activists, who has just retired, passed me the following text of a message to UNISON activists in the Greater London Region and I reproduce it here because I think it offers us some important suggestions to improve our trade union;

A goodbye call to arms

The problem: We were told a couple of years ago that the London Region employed 95 whole time equivalents. I don’t know what it is now. I’m aware of several new posts created and none abolished. In time they will join those whose purpose has vanished. Anyone can see that this huge human resource is almost completely wasted. There is massive duplication of work which is or could easily be done elsewhere, especially the big, well-organised branch offices. Very little takes the form of specialist help across all branches. We have no pubic profile. The workforce is so large that a good deal of its work is directed at servicing itself. Some people undoubtedly work far harder than others. It is difficult to think of any successful regional initiatives. It is slightly easier to think of the small number of initiatives which began and have either failed or are, to be delicate about it, on hold. There has been serious deskilling, with no steps to put it right. 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 failed solution: UNISON designed a top-down reorganisation which, on the face of it, might have transformed London. Those of us with negotiating, organising and advocacy experience were going to manage organisers in small teams. The first steps were taken. These showed that the changes in job content required of some were formidable. All credit to the many who applied for new posts because they were willing to make those changes. But the “how” of making them was never properly thought through and there was little back-up. I was involved in a pilot exercise in schools. But before the vital shift from office work to organising had been achieved, and with no explanation given then or since, my three colleagues were whisked away to run the Newham Branch office. The only course for retraining those doing the RO job turned out not to be designed for the purpose and was anyway two years ago. The reform presupposed some existing level of effectiveness. From day one in 1993, we’d never done corporate effectiveness.

London is different. London’s big and generally well organised local government branches always meant that the union centre of gravity, particularly in NALGO, was local and not Regional. This set the scene in the run-up to 1993 for most new UNISON Borough branches to be highly autonomous. It has made it possible for them to get on with the job and survive without an effective regional machine. But things cannot be left as they are because of privatisation and other changes on the way. The Region’s proven inability to organise change makes it unwise to wait for someone else to do something. They may not. And, if they do, it is unlikely to help.

Reverse re-org. Luckily, there can hardly be a bunch of people with more experience of “reorgs” than UNISON branch reps in London. It’s a case of using every channel of the union’s democracy (the Rule Book is packed with powers), to get the precious resources locked up in the Regional workforce redistributed into the branches. They are desperately needed there – to organise unorganised workplaces and provide representation in privatised workplaces too small for anyone to acquire the necessary skills from within. A completely reasonable objective would be to get an additional union worker into every branch, leaving a leaner, strategic Regional machine with such duties as servicing the democratic system, leading any London negotiations, organising training and only stepping in where branches are in trouble - and say so.

Multi-employer, Borough branches. Whoever wins the election will go for productivity gains by combining functions across existing employer boundaries. To meet this, there is a need for each of the existing 32 Borough branch offices to become the core of a new branch. They will have no alternative but to cater for all. It will in some cases mean the loss of existing office premises. The union will have to spend more money on rent. But the resources are there, tied up in a high value office where some ROs have the privilege of driving across the Congestion Zone to a WC1 underground car park. A slimmed down Regional machine could be tucked into a corner of the new head office - with bike rack!

Multi-skill, pay and conditions. The need, to be able to cross employer boundaries, where paid time off cannot go, to recruit and represent, can and should be met by the same person. Anyone who does one task needs a feel for the other. There is an employment status precedent in the few remaining Branch Employed Staff, who have their own union to negotiate for them. Secondly, this combined job is already called organising! They must be part of the local team. They cannot be managed from the Region. The recent past stands as proof. Nor is paying someone to travel across London, perhaps to visit one school or undertake a routine disciplinary, a responsible use of precious work time.

Filling the training deficit. For existing Regional staff who want to do this, training will be an immediate issue. Observing, mentoring, tapping into the skill and experience already in the big branches will be essential. One of our past failures has been the absence of a general traineeship and the fact that Regional Organisers have been appointed without training which they could so easily have had while employed in other posts. However, designing and organising the training will have to be done centrally.

Cut out the gatekeeper. The most expensive UNISON employees in London (apart from managers of course), the Regional Organisers, are heavily tied up with unnecessary legal casework. When the CASE form comes in, they wade through the documents. If they can see a fighting chance of winning at a Tribunal, they send their analysis to a manager who then repeats the exercise. If both say yes, then it goes to a Thompsons lawyer and finally to a Thompsons supervisor. This crazy system is crassly wasteful and cruel to people when they’re down and, in most cases, have no chance of redress. We have failed to provide the training needed by the ROs whose job, on paper, is to make the initial judgement. Those of us who got hold of our now completely inadequate employment law from running Tribunal cases are taking such skill and knowledge as we still have with us.

Get the lawyers into the branch. The large Thompsons’ workforce tied up with UNISON work in London, should be redistributed to work directly with branches. Doubtless, many would leap at the chance. They should make regular visits to discuss casework – as indeed their Personal Injury colleagues already sometimes do - and, most important, take part in training branch activists. The tragedy of much of our legal work is that it is too late. Employment law is needed in the workplace at the outset, not in the few days before a statutory deadline expires. We are depriving members of their rights at the time when they need to know them. Sorting this is not rocket science. Enough training to be able to make use of Tamara Lewis’s superb handbook (edition 8 now out!) would meet much of the vast amount of need. For the rest, lawyers have to be integrated into branch work. That’s the logic of past neglect. And given that ROs who do not know the law are paid more than Thompsons’ lawyers who do, there are substantial savings to be made, especially because so many cases are rejected by the existing, costly meat grinder. Without it, much of the lawyers’ current work will vanish. They will be able to provide answers in time to avoid those countless situations in which union members throw away their rights, slip into disastrous confrontations they can’t win, or plead their cases by digging a deeper hole. And a good few more will win too.

The hard bit isn’t so hard. By neglect, we have created a monster. Ultimately, all union members are paying for it. But the solution stares us in the face. A good first step would be to offer immediate, pro-tem branch secondment to those prepared to move there. Where union employees do not want jobs where the real union work is done, no activist needs to be told that this calls for the most humane and favourable of redundancy arrangements. But, equally, a union with such needs as ours, and a membership base in such need of repair, has no right to provide a nice WC1 working environment for those trapped in unproductive work. By redistributing the precious resources they represent, branches would stand a realistic chance of building back to where we were when two thirds of Borough workforces were organised instead of one third. A leaner Region would be more democratic and more able to provide the oomph and leadership which London members need. There was never a better cause.

Tom Snow
Jan 2010

The thoughts of a Regional Organiser

What follows is the text of a message sent by a widely respected UNISON official to his colleagues in the Greater London Regional Office on the occasion of his retirement. I don't publish this lightly as it makes some implicit and explicit criticisms of a trade union upon the Executive of which I am proud to serve.

However I am also proud to know Tom Snow and I believe his views deserve our respect and attention. Our loyalty to UNISON must be loyalty to our members and must drive us to want to put right the things that are currently wrong.

Anyway here is what Tom had to say to his colleagues;


Where’s the real union?

Here’s an old git’s story. Heard from a ‘work study engineer’ on a TUC stewards course in Streatham in 1969. He’d been part of a team sent in to deal with low productivity in the GLC Plumbers Section. To cut it short, they couldn’t find the job tickets because there weren’t any. The level of complaints was so high that the whole workforce had been turned over to dealing with them. They responded to every single one right away. Things looked fine. The London Region is well down the road of the GLC plumbers. Complaints are already our unofficial Priority Number One.

I don’t know how many of us there are. We were once told it was 95 whole time equivalents. I have always been struck by the high motivation of new employees of UNISON. Somewhere, some time, most of us wanted to do a job which would help workers organise. But it is as if someone’s designed a system to make that impossible. Many never have any contact with members’ workplaces. Few of us have that privilege. Many jobs were badly designed long ago. Worse, some new jobs were badly designed last year. Some people’s work just helps the other 99 to tick over. The results are deplorable. The idealism is wasted, belief corroded, motivation ground down. What most want to do, most can’t. And it is all a direct charge on our members’ precious subs.

After a meeting in Merton just before Christmas, I had a CASE form and a wad of papers thrust into my hands without comment. I looked at it that night. It was from a 64-year-old member who was being manipulated into a post she didn’t want. She had to give an immediate answer. I phoned to reassure her that, for four separate reasons, any one of which would have been enough, she could reject the new job without jeopardising her right to redundancy pay. Anyway, I had been called to a meeting in the office next morning, “urgently”, to help sort out a complaint. On the way in, I bumped into a colleague who asked “did you phone my aunt last night?” Without that very rare coincidence, the only evidence of my call would have been a two line e-mail to the branch. The only community through which people can care about each other is the branch. It can’t be a Regional processing machine. I believe that’s where most of our own labour ought to be employed – where every working hour really can build the union.

A case of deskilling

I’ve known this member’s area of the law since winning a Tribunal claim many years ago, against a bunch of slick NHS managers. They too thought they could force someone to work for the cost of the redundancy pay she was entitled to. Later, the insurance costs of complaints rose to the point where it was cheaper to hand over tribunal work to lawyers. Fine. But what the union failed to do was ensure, from then on, that our RO successors got hold of the law in some other way, in particular, by proper training. We are now seeing the effects of deskilling. Every day, union members in trouble are losing out badly, through ignorance of their rights and how to secure them. This can’t be dealt with by a few stewards’ training courses, vital as they are. Every day, branches need clear, usable answers, often very quickly. We have allowed the necessary knowledge to be shut away in the offices of lawyers whose job is to crunch their way through mountains of casework when it’s all too late. If my member’s CASE form before Christmas had gone down this route, she’d just have started a year’s work she didn’t need to do - and with no remedy – while, no doubt, telling her story of the trade union help she didn’t get. As it happens she wasn’t forced into the new job but she wasn’t made redundant either. He situation still isn’t what she wanted. But the difference is important. Down the CASE form route it would have been our fault, not the employer’s.

Now, if you are taking the trouble to read this, consider how many of that magic 100 are likely to know the law well enough to help her. I’m sorry, but I do not believe all those whose job it is to know actually do know. And how many’s that? A couple of dozen ROs? Not so long ago, it took so long to order the latest edition of the only employment law handbook in the office, by the time it came it was nearly out of date. So while we waited, how were all the queries dealt with which were thrown up by changes in the law? The answer can only be a combination of high management input, endless calls to Thompsons’ duty line, booking into their advice clinic and plain avoidance. Those of us who do know the rudiments are heavily reliant on the lawyers too. But asking lawyers everything stewards needs to ask us cannot be a substitute for proper training.

I believe we’ve lost it. Any day now, a child will see right though the Kings New Suit of Clothes. If the union isn’t there when you need help, it’s a disaster which sends damaging ripples right through the workforce. And here we are, about to face a jobs holocaust. Complaints can only get more important.

No place for the low paid

A few years ago, UNISON in London was given a lesson by an outfit called London Citizens on how to organise low paid workers. With a significant component of Vicars, Pastors and Ministers of Religion, it focused on the pay of ancillary workers in three hospitals. Working with UNISON reps, they encouraged them to join the union and helped them put in pay claims to get above the National Minimum Wage. When the contractors said “Sorry chum, we’d love to pay more but we don’t get paid enough ourselves”, London Citizens lobbied the NHS Trusts who’d hired the contractors. Considering the narrow front of the campaign, the results were very, very respectable. UNISON should have been deeply ashamed at being caught napping. What did we then do? Very slowly we appointed organisers. Years later, in early 2008 a team of three began work in Merton Schools. The reception was especially good in the kitchens. Then, suddenly, they were whisked away, never to reappear. When I asked what had happened I was told they had been sent to work in Newham. What work, and why this wonderful initiative collapsed, neither the branch nor I have ever been told.

At one time, anyone working in a school kitchen – or cleaning, or working in a care home or doing domestic work in a hospital, or any number of other public service manual jobs – was highly likely to be a union member. Indeed, they formed the greater part of NUPE. Now, nearly all the survivors are working for private firms. If they are getting more than £5.73 an hour, they tend to be older and doing a more skilled job. The impoverishment and de-unionising of this huge, mainly female workforce has been tragic. The London Citizens’ spectacular intervention showed how simply it could be turned round. But there is one tripwire we can’t escape. Nobody on the NMW is going to pay out more than £40 a year UNISON subs without being able to see the possibility of getting it back in extra pay. It sounds like a small sum. The lowest paid live on small sums. If a bunch of odd-balls can go in there for God’s sake and get them to join and pay these subs, why can’t we do it for the union? Why can’t we release the energy and enthusiasm in our own ranks, which is always there to be tapped, to make the whole union much, much stronger?

Black, living in London, short-listed, but going nowhere

Back in 2001 the Labour Government issued an Order under the Race Relations Act requiring public employers to publish their recruitment figures by race. They show black applicants for council jobs being appointed at far less than the rate of their white counterparts – from the same shortlists. So the queue of disappointed black applicants goes on stretching back down the street. Many senior managers think it’s their job to see that the proportion of black residents in the population is reflected in the workforce. But the number of black applicants exceeds the black proportion of the population. So here you have a formula for massive race discrimination at the point of selection. It is worth pausing to consider how serious it is. These shortlists are being drawn up, often colour blind, by the very same people who are then making discriminatory appointments. Some inner Boroughs have been appointing shortlisted whites at double the rate of shortlisted blacks – including Lewisham.

Unfortunately many colleagues have misunderstood the blunt significance of the figures. Why, they ask, pick on appointment statistics when there are so many others which affect unison members already in post? The answer is that those other figures are very important. But what they lack is the same clear, unambiguous proof of aggregate race discrimination – for which there aren’t even any possible, innocent explanations. From the level playing field of the shortlist, the only difference in the case of white candidates is that managers prefer white candidates.

This is a scandal of the first order which has yet to blow publicly. So what are we doing about it? London has the most racially diverse population of any great city in Europe. UNISON has the largest black membership of any union in London. This is a gift of an opportunity for us. The facts have been known for five years. To be generous to ourselves, we’ve got a project on it. What this really means is that it will be bogged down in bureaucracy until someone else makes the running. Nobody can accuse us of discrimination because we have no public profile about anything. What we must do is ask ourselves two questions. First, how much longer will it take before doing nothing becomes, purely and simply, connivance? Second, if we can’t pick this up and run with it, so central to the equal rights of our members, is there anything we are capable of doing? What is the London Region’s record of achievement?

Where respect belongs

It has always been important for those of us who work for the union to remember we aren’t it. Everyone else is. It is quite possible to work for UNISON without grasping that unions are always grounded in the collective strength of the members. The blood in the union’s veins is its branch activists and stewards. Why does it need saying? Because, sadly there is, in the union’s own hierarchy, a culture of disrespect for these incredibly important people.

What is special about our activists is that they have volunteered for what they do and have been elected to office to do it. An overwhelming majority are highly capable individuals with huge commitment. It is true that a tiny number are disinclined to do very much to build the union – an inevitable spin-off from a complacent regional machine. UNISON is wholly dependent on all those who don’t need to do work for the union if they don’t want to. It is courting great damage not to realise this.

When branches have achieved astonishing results, the Region’s administration has failed to invite their reps into the Regional office, so we, paid employees, could learn directly from them how they did it. Instead, we have all come close to falling asleep, gazing at unreal Staff Conference overheads, while our managers drone on as if they know it all. Branch activists are the union’s greatest resource, disgracefully wasted, even when they provenly have the answers to UNISON’s problems in London. It has been an inspiration to work with so many down the years. And the paid colleagues I most respect are those who go against the grain and give the elected ones their due.

Yes, I’m responsible too

“So what have you done about it, Tom?” Fair question. How many of us have said “well, if this is how they want it, it’s their problem” – “they” being our managers? I’m under no illusion that getting on with my job to the best of my ability was any answer. Nor that I offered to help where I thought my particular experience might be relevant. Nor that I made a fuss now and again. I didn’t make anywhere near enough of a fuss and I didn’t try hard enough to get anyone else to make it with me. Nor, above all, did I do a damn thing to help activists win effective, democratic control over us. Don’t wait for retirement to wake you up to your part in a regional machine which daily wastes your precious labour. My time’s run out. Yours hasn’t.

With thanks for past friendship and good wishes for a road ahead full of challenges.

Tom Snow
28.01.10.

Joint working with PCS

Dave Prentis reported in some detail to yesterday's meeting of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) on a meeting he had held the previous day with Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).

PCS members working in public services face the same challenges as we face in UNISON and it is good news that we will be seeing joint campaigning, joint leaflets and other materials and coordinated political lobbying.

I asked about the possibility, further down the road, of coordinated industrial action over the linked issues of pay, job cuts and attacks on pensions. Dave emphasised the difficulties of coordinating industrial action but indicated that if there were common issues we would see in future the sort of coordination that we saw over public sector pensions a few years ago.

Watch this space?

Equal pay victory

Normally I cannot report anything about the discussion at the National Executive Council on Equal Pay for the very sound reason that the Union is engaged in so much litigation (sometimes as a respondent). Public comment could prejudice the position of the Union.

However, I can draw to your attention this good news from Sheffield. I hope to be able to link to further good news soon.

Pay freeze threat to national bargaining?

Today's NEC meeting received a full report from National Secretary, Heather Wakefield, on the employers' proposals for a pay freeze for UK local government workers.



The Union has written to Councillors and MPs. Regions will be able to publicise to branches the replies we receive so that before we cast our votes in local or national elections we know the stance adopted by candidates on the pay freeze.



Interestingly the General Secretary intervened to express the view that we need to campaign around the issues of pay, jobs and pensions. This is the approach which PCS have adopted to mobilise members to take national action and I hope Unison will try to learn from this example.



Worryingly there were reports from Yorkshire of a threat to national pay bargaining - coming from employers who want to offer a pay rise and oppose the pay freeze!



In a strong defence of national bargaining, Paul Holmes made the point that Unison must rise to the challenge of defending national bargaining by making it work for our members.

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NEC nominates Prentis

Today's meeting of Unison's National Executive Council predictably gave its nomination to incumbent General Secretary Dave Prentis.



There were 38 votes for Dave, 5 (myself included) for Paul Holmes and 4 for Roger Bannister.



The NEC has agreed its submissions to Conference, including a report on the political funds about which I will blog separately.

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Zero time for zero hours

Today's Morning Star reports on Unison's fight against private care firm "Choices Care at Home" over the imposition of zero hours contracts (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/86570).



A zero hours contract may be appropriate for casual employees (for example "pool" workers who may be available to provide relief cover without obligation on either side).



However the imposition of such contracts on employees providing a regular and continuous public service is nothing more nor less than a deliberate - and outrageous - attempt to circumvent the few legal rights of employees.



From recent local experience I have seen the unaccountable power such contracts give to managers, who can lawfully stop offering work to an employee on a whim, sending them home without pay - and without effective legal redress.



Building union organisation in such circumstances of casualisation requires that activists risk their employment in an environment in which the legal and procedural rights relied upon by public sector workers are a distant dream.



It is a disgrace that public authorities give work to firms that want to take employee relations back to the nineteenth century.



Good luck to the South Lanarkshire branch in taking this fight on.

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Unison General Secretary election - main challenger emerges

Discussion amongst rank and file Unison activists has begun to indicate a clear preference amongst the ordinary workers who are seeking to emulate Mark Serwotka and be elected as General Secretary.

Paul Holmes - who today won the backing of Unison United Left - offers a clear and credible alternative to the inadequacy which has been the recent hallmark of the national leadership of our Union.

Paul has a proven track record of taking on and defeating those who do not believe that our Union should be run by our members. He proved my world weary cynicism wrong when his branch won the Special Conference on Local Government Pensions!

Paul also has the advantage of having been Branch Secretary of an excellent union branch. Our current General Secretary lacks that experience and - whilst there is surely a place in our movement for those who come straight from college to work for a union - maybe our leaders should rise out of our own ranks as have all the union leaders whose names are more than footnotes in our history. Those who join us straight from college may serve us but may not be the best to lead us.

Some things I think we know that Paul won't do include;

Paul won't manipulate the timing of future elections, whether to influence succession or for any other reason.

Paul won't work with any academic institution which helps to develop plans for the Government to attack our members' jobs.

Paul won't accept invitations to questionable international union events and then make commitments which require the reallocation of Unison resources to please his hosts;

Paul won't give the green light for the settling of political scores against activists with minority opinions;

Paul won't pretend to influence he does not have over Government Ministers.

Then again, I know enough about Paul to know what he will do;

Paul will lead and inspire our members with both genuine enthusiasm and experience as part of the rank and file;

Paul will speak to our members directly as he speaks as one of us, living on a worker's wage - and will continue to do so;

Paul will stand up for our members without fear.

In the light of the foregoing I can report, as promised, on the emergence of the main challenger in the Unison General Secretary election.

Dave Prentis has now emerged as the main challenger to Paul Holmes.
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Anonymous attacks upon UNISON activists from tedious sycophants?

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Union-Blogger) will know that I am rarely impressed with those who blog (or indeed comment) anonymously.

It is a shame that so much of what is sometimes a quite well written little blog (Unison Active) is anonymous - and it does make me wonder whether some of the "Unison activist" bloggers are perhaps in fact employees of the Union.

Certainly a recent vitriolic attack upon the three rank and file challengers for the position of General Secretary does reinforce the cynical view that the blog was set up to support Unison's establishment come what may.

I get some stick for being openly critical of the Union leadership (and fair enough) but I don't sink to the level of personal attacks which you would expect to find in the playground (or on the Unison Active blog).

I don't accept the counsel of despair which says that a rank and file worker cannot aspire to be the General Secretary of a trade union. Mark Serwotka seems to do a pretty good job.

Nor do I think that the campaign for the re-election of our General Secretary is being carried forward on a wave of sheer enthusiasm - not when many of those expressing their heartfelt support know more than they are saying about why there was such a delay in agreeing the timetable for the election.

Now is not the time for loyalty to UNISON to prevent us from voicing legitimate criticisms of shortcomings in the Union. Nor is now the time for rank and file workers to shut up, know our place and tug our forelocks to the staff we employ (even if some of them have taken to blogging anonymously and attacking lay activists who have the temerity to believe that they could lead our Union).

Higher Education in the firing line

Here we go.



The Higher Education Funding Council for England wants to take £449 Million out of higher education, threatening thousands of jobs (http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/sxhgLJHmi3H7R-DQO91AOkg/view.m?id=316271&tid=120787&cat=News).



As the economy crawls out of recession this is not only an attack on jobs - and on the educational prospects of thousands. This is also deflationary and flies in the face of the need to sustain demand in the economy in order to support employment and economic activity.



That this is happening now illustrates all too well the power of the neoliberal consensus which dominates the thinking of the leadership of all three major political parties - and which is contrary to the interests of Unison members and the policies of our Union.



Where the Higher Education sector is heading today shows all public servants our future (whichever major party forms the next Government).



We should of course all be aware that the Tories will be worse, cutting deeper and faster (http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/sxhgLJHmi3H7R-DQO91AOkg/view.m?id=316248&tid=120787&cat=Politics) - but the most important role trade unions can play in the run up to the General Election must be to maximise the all too small number of genuine allies we will have in the next parliament.



We need to work with the Labour Representation Committee (http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/ge2010candidates) and abandon remaining illusions in New Labour Ministers who are now overseeing massive attacks on Higher Education.

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Coronation or election - political influence?

The third of UNISON's national objectives relates to campaigning and promoting UNISON. This objective is of particular importance to a public service trade union, since the terms and conditions of the majority of our members are determined not by the market mechanism directly but rather by political considerations. The influence which we have over national and local politicians matters directly to the pay, pensions and job security of UNISON members.

In assessing the "Oram hypothesis" that it would be best for our members if there were no contest in the election for General Secretary it is worth thinking a bit about how well we have done in building and using that influence over the past decade.

Under the New Labour Governments since 1997 we have witnessed the retention of anti-union laws which place restrictions upon trade unions in this country way beyond those faced in most OECD nations (and in breach of obligations to the International Labour Organisation). With the unions still shackled we have also seen an extension of privatisation of our public services beyond the dreams of the Thatcher Government.

UNISON has repeatedly spoken out against these reactionary policies (and other such policies, such as the introduction of tuition fees and identity cards and - of course - the attack on Iraq). Our policies are progressive policies of which socialists can generally be proud - we are advocating policies in our members' interests.

But as a major affiliate to the Labour Party, it would be difficult to say that we have had much success in influencing the Labour Party in Government.

One of the key tests UNISON set ourselves in Blair's second term was to try to prevent foundation hospitals but in spite of a significant Parliamentary rebellion the Government won the day. UNISON's sizeable group of MPs included many rebels, but these were outnumbered by those who put loyalty to the policy of the Government (which was not supported by the Labour Party) ahead of any loyalty to UNISON.

When UNISON Conference instructed the Union to publish the voting record of MPs associated with the Party the Union responded by putting a link on the website to the admirable TheyWorkForYou website - rather than have to acknowledge too openly on our own site just how little MPs happy to be associated with our Union were prepared to support our policies.

One of the few benefits for individual trade unionists of being an "affiliated" Labour Party member is having a vote in elections for the Party Leader - but UNISON was instrumental (along with other affiliated trade unions) in making sure that MPs were not encouraged to nominate another candidate so that none of our members got to vote for anyone when Gordon Brown enjoyed his "coronation". Having decided to back Gordon Brown for Labour Party Leader, UNISON then became part of the farce in which the trade unions all backed different Deputy Leadership candidates (leading eventually to the victory of the only candidate with no trade union nominations!)

At the eleventh hour Dave Prentis intervened at last year's Conference to cut across the ongoing review of the political funds and announce the termination of Constituency Development Plans. This was a welcome move - but the approach of prioritising UNISON's interests in the application of our political funds is one we should have adopted at the beginning, not the end, of a Labour Government!

Such is our pride in our Parliamentary work these days that whilst there is still a list on our website of UNISON Members of the European Parliament, the list of UNISON MPs has disappeared from the Labour Link home page...

Wednesday's NEC meeting will receive the report of the Review of the Political Funds which will conclude that the existing arrangements, whilst they can be improved a little, are essentially sound and should be retained.

This flabby complacency about our poor political performance over the past decade may be consistent with support for a coronation of our General Secretary (after all, it worked so well for Gordon Brown?)

However, those who want UNISON to have the weight our numbers - and the quality of the best of our work - deserve may prefer to see an election in which different views can find expression and be debated by our members.

Democracy and Debate - or hasty hero worship?

UNISON's North West Regional Council decided today it did not need to hear from any candidates before overwhelmingly endorsing the recommendation of the Regional Convenor to nominate the incumbent General Secretary to carry on, as did the Scottish Council.

In the competition to praise our General Secretary my NEC colleagues in Scotland and the North West do not seem to have offered any explanation for why we were warned off discussing the General Secretary election as recently as the December NEC only then to be bounced into a special NEC meeting at two weeks' notice.

I suppose it must be really obvious that the General Secretary was always committed to seeking re-election and that that somehow explains the timetable of decisionmaking about the election and I am just missing something. Because if, in fact, there had been a debate at Mabledon Place for some time about whether or not to have an election then that would make a bit of a nonsense of some of what is now being said by those lining up in support of the status quo...

Perhaps it is a requirement of "collective responsibility" not to ask too many questions or want to encourage debate?

The Eastern and South West Regional Councils have however voted to call special meetings with adequate notice before deciding upon a nomination. I hope that UNISON branches up and down the countries will also want to involve members in proper discussion before taking decisions as important as the nomination of a General Secretary.

Coronation or Election - the case of pay

In deciding whether or not to support the Oramist view that Dave Prentis should be the one and only duly nominated candidate for UNISON General Secretary it is worth reviewing the effectiveness of our trade union over the past decade against some of our key objectives.

Most trade union members expect the union to secure them more (rather than less) pay.

We haven't been doing too well in local government recently. A couple of years ago our General Secretary acknowledged that "Local government members' pay has slipped back against the private and other sectors." Since then things have not improved for the majority of UNISON members in the Local Government Service Group.

This is hardly a new problem - the Local Government Pay Commission noted that local government pay fell behind from 1998 to 2002 and long term readers of this blog will remember my complaining about this on more than one occasion a couple of years ago.

Of course local government members are also scarred by the experience of the implementation of Single Status and the cynical attempts of the employers to use equal pay as an excuse to cut the earnings of low paid workers.

The position in the health service isn't quite so bad - according to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) the median gross hourly earnings for workers in "health and social work" increased (in cash terms) by 41% between 2000 and 2009, fractionally higher than the 39% increase for "all employees".

However the benefit of trade union membership seems to be declining (though still substantial) based on government data. The "trade union wage premium" in the public sector fell from 29.9% in autumn 2001 to 22.5% by the fourth quarter of 2006. Pay freezes and restraint in predominantly unionised areas could further erode the benefits of union membership. It will be the responsibility of our leadership to persuade members of a strategy to resist attacks on our earnings which will also undermine our Union.

Therefore, for those who favour a coronation of our General Secretary over an election in which ordinary workers can express our views with our votes need to ask themselves whether the mixed record of our Union on pay over the past decade really warrant the deification of our existing leadership.

Is the leadership that has at best managed to tread water under a (notionally) Labour Government the leadership we need to stand up to the attacks which public service workers will face in the coming years?

Regional Council meeting to nominate General Secretary?

I have written today to follow up a question asked at Wednesday's Regional Council by Local Government Service Group Executive member (and Tower Hamlets local government Branch Secretary) John McLoughlin.

John asked about the convening of a special Regional Council meeting to consider Greater London's nomination in the recently, and hastily, declared election for UNISON General Secretary.

Past practice in the Greater London Region has been for this to be considered by the Regional Council, as the West Midlands Regional Council will be able to next week.

I understand that the South West Regional Council last week decided to convene a special meeting rather than delegate nomination to a smaller and less representative body.

This was clearly a wise move since any nomination made by a Committee on behalf of a Regional Council would be tainted with illegitimacy (and therefore hardly welcome by the candidate who received it!)

It would be possible to convene a special meeting of the Greater London Regional Council if steps are now taken urgently.

Given the concerns expressed on Wednesday about the difficulty of getting a quorum for meetings this could well be an opportunity to attract delegates to a Regional Council other than the Annual Meeting - and to use one of the four Council meetings required by our Rule Book constructively and effectively.

The Regional Committee could approve a nominating meeting as one of our four Regional Councils (so that there would be limited additional expense in convening the meeting).

I shall report back on any response (and am hoping for a response which tells me that my proposal was unnecessary as steps are already being taken to convene such a meeting!)

The attack on redundancy terms in the civil service is an attack on us all

PCS members are now voting in a national strike ballot in opposition to an attack on the redundancy terms offered to civil servants (details online at http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/cscs/cscs-updates-and-briefings/branch-briefing-4-february--additional-speakers-notes.cfm).



Although the Government seek to justify this as bringing the civil service into line with the rest of the public sector, wise public servants will recognise a threat to all our interests.



In local government we have already lost "added years" of pensionable service for those made redundant and - in common with other sectors - will see the minimum pension age increase to 55 in a few weeks.



However it is still expensive for the employers to make older and long serving colleagues redundant and rather than our employers therefore seeking to avoid redundancies we may expect attempts to weaken our rights in the LGPS if New Labour wins its last attack upon our class. The stronger the defence of the Civil Service Scheme the better for us all.





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UNISON General Secretary election - the questions not being asked

Over the weekend I'll comment about the impending General Secretary election in some detail.

The campaign of the candidate who effectively determined the timetable was of course first off the blocks - and the normally anonymous UNISON Active showed what it was created for by expressing uncritical adulation (with ill-informed sectarian banter sprinkled on like hundreds and thousands).

Dave's anodyne official website will (presumably) steer clear of the playground Stalinism that is the stock in trade of what passes for the intellectual bedrock at Mabledon Place.

I think the leadership will be all too keen to focus on points of difference with any challenger(s) because it will help avoid some interesting questions.

Why, if our General Secretary has always been passionately (and bravely) committed to our democracy did we have a special NEC meeting on 20 January to agree an election timetable rather than doing so in December (or October as we had five years before)?

Why, if our record as a trade union is one of total success has disaffection reached the point at which a national official considered standing in the election? What does that tell us about succession planning at UNISON HQ?

Why, if the majority of my NEC colleagues are confident in the leadership of the Union, did we have to set a timetable for this election which requires nominations to be made before the likely General Election date?

Behind the fixed smiles and ritual pledges of loyalty from senior officials and the NEC majority there may not be the enthusiasm seen in previous elections as eyes turn to 2012 or 2013 (on the basis of the widely held view that UNISON's strict policy on retirement at 65 won't be waived for a General Secretary....will it?)

Budget setting and the phoney war

Having been back at work a week now I suppose I am nearly recovered from a week of 'flu' - since its budget setting time in local government I need to be.

This year's budget round has the feeling of a "phoney war" since all the talk is of restrictions on spending from 2011/12 onwards. One of the high points of an otherwise fairly dreary Regional Annual General Meeting on Wednesday was hearing John Burgess from the Barnet branch doing his best to wake the Regional Council up to the reality of Total Place.

UNISON's baroque structure of Service Groups is not fit for the purpose of facing an attack which will cut across the public sector (and as to our arrangements for "Service Group Liaison" I was always taught that if you have nothing good to say it is sometimes best to say nothing). Unfortunately having failed to propose a sufficiently democratic structure to devolve bargaining to sectors at last year's Conference the NEC will be taking our ball home this year and doing no more with our structures for the time being (though perhaps leaving this to the Service Groups themselves will in the end make more sense...)

At a Regional and local level we need urgently to be building links not just with other UNISON branches but with all trade unions representing employees of partners in our Local Strategic Partnerships. Will we find that our Union's structures facilitate this vital work? One obvious step would be for the Region to organise a branch briefing on Total Place to coincide with the June Regional Council meeting.

Since the Regional Council AGM was not persuaded to reduce the frequency of our invariably inquorate meetings we might as well make use of the June meeting to focus on the form which the coming wave of public spending cuts is almost certainly now going to take. Thousands of our members' jobs are at risk over the next couple of years and we need to wake our Union up to this threat.

Elected Deputy General Secretary....

My first day back at work was as exhausting as you would imagine – but on the way home I was pleased to bump into my friend and comrade Kevin Courtenay – newly elected Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

This of course reminded me that my branch Annual General Meeting has instructed our Branch Committee to try to write a Rule Amendment for UNISON Conference to introduce the election of the Deputy General Secretary (and which won’t be ruled out of order).

The question of leadership for our public service trade unions was underlined by today’s Evening Standard which renewed its scaremongering about the Local Government Pension Scheme. The coming months offer great challenges to all of us - and I wish Kevin and his NUT colleagues the same luck I wish us all.

Labour against the pay freeze?

Having spent the last few days revising my view that all this fuss about swine ‘flu’ is out of proportion, I haven’t yet blogged about the pay freeze for local government workers announced by the Local Government Employers last week.

Today’s news that the Labour Group on the LGA think that at least the lower paid should get something may be no more than shrewd political positioning (It is much easier to be sympathetic from opposition…), but it does two important things.

First, it does invite a response as to what has been communicated between the Labour Group and the management side (though there is nothing online here yet).

Secondly, evidence of division on the employers’ side should always be accumulated as it can make a significant difference to the assessment our members may have to make of the worth of supporting any proposed action.

The initial case against a pay freeze was made in the immediate official response and has been elaborated by Heather Wakefield in her blog where she hints at the need – and possible appetite - for action.

UNISON Anonymous also includes an unusually worthwhile piece weighing up what the trade union response to the pay freeze should be. The full answer to that question inevitably depends upon a dialogue amongst the membership (into which at an appropriate point, it is the responsibility of leadership to put forward a strategy which we believe can win).

For now though, we need an early start to a campaign against the pay freeze “offer” from the employers. We need leaflets and petitions, model letters and an Early Day Motion and we need all these things now – and we need to start using them.

At some point we must begin to turn the ideological tide running so heavily against us (even in our own minds) – and the decision of the LGA Labour Group to break ranks with the employers’ side position is as good a place to start as any.

News from the US

Such is the wonder of the internet that, lying in my sick bed, I can get news from half way round the world about workers reclaiming trade unionism for the principle that the workers should lead, rather than be led.

The new National Union of Healthcare Workers in the US (to which my attention was drawn recently by a UNISON colleague to whom, in deference to his career prospects, I shall anonymise my hat tip) broke away from our sister union the Service Employees International Union in a dispute (at least in part) about trade union democracy.

US trade unionists have to vote periodically for which trade union will represent them in contract negotiations with the employer, and it would appear that the NUHW have just won a small but significant victory in such an election.

UNISON is rightly trying to learn what positive things we can from the SEIU approach to organising – let’s hope we are not trying to learn about union democracy at the same time…

Coronation or Election - the case of Recruitment

For those following my health (Sid and Doris Mabledon-Umbrella) I am pleased to report eating some toast and feeling strong enough to edit and post something I had drafted before falling ill a few days ago...

As our General Secretary has decided to submit himself for re-election it seems a good time to start assessing the performance of our leadership over recent years against our main objectives.

In this way it is possible to assess objectively whether Bob Oram's implicit call for a coronation rather than an election (casting our Deputy General Secretary perhaps in the role of Archbishop of Canterbury anointing the one true candidate once more to serve a grateful Union) has a merit which outweighs the democratic principles upon which our trade union was founded.

The first of our objectives relates to organisation and recruitment - and one of the easier ways to measure this (though not necessarily the most important) - is UNISON membership.

Trade union membership figures may generally be as much art as science but the quality of reporting on recruitment in particular has improved in my time on our NEC and from this I can generally vouch for the veracity of the following.

According to our last Annual Report membership stood at 1,315,000 although we affiliate to the TUC at the level of 1,343,000 which corresponds with our last published submission to the Government Certification Officer (and is 42,000 (3.2%) higher than the figure four submitted to the Certification Officer four years previously).

So UNISON’s membership has grown under our present General Secretary, but we have done this in a growing pool of public sector employment, so that our density (the proportion of the workforce which we have in membership) and therefore our bargaining power has been in decline.

Public sector union density fell from 60.3% in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 57.1% in the fourth quarter of 2008 (official stats online here). UNISON remains a trade union with nearly 90% of our membership in the public sector so that gives us some sort of benchmark – but it is hardly a good one.

The breakdown of union density by industrial sector (which overlaps private and public sectors and across which UNISON straddles several of the industrial sectors) has been as follows over the same time period;
Electricity, Gas and Water Supply from 57.2% to 41.7%
Public Administration and Defence from 59.3% to 55.8%
Health and Social Work from 46.9% to 40.7%
Education is an exception increasing (albeit barely) from 53.9% to 54.1% (but this figure is obviously influenced by the relatively high level of unionisation of teachers and the figure from this source cannot be disaggregated).

Although the Union (wrongly in my view) refuses to publish the more detailed density data which we have this bears out the contention that our density in many areas is appallingly low. Since most of our members pay their subscriptions by deduction from salary (by arrangement with the employers) the employers already know this information and there is nothing to be lost by sharing it honestly and openly with our activists and members.

In very many areas of local government for example our density is below 50% (indeed the average across Greater London is below 50% on the employers’ internal figures produced for their own use).

Although the spectre of derecognition probably haunts no more than a few home counties saloon bars where Tory Councillors do not actually understand how their authorities manage their resources, these density figures will be a hurdle to be surmounted in organising fights in defence of jobs, pensions and conditions of service over the next few years.

The situation in health is hardly better and there too the Tories will quite probably soon be in charge.

There have been some positive initiatives from UNISON in the last couple of years, including the dramatic success of online recruitment and the appointment of local and area organisers to assist branches.

Though both these developments were a long time in coming they are most welcome and need to be built upon.

They both also show that the Union, at its best, is a collective entity, a team of lay activists and paid officials working together to build a stronger union for the benefit of working people.

We don’t of course stand or fall by the one woman or man we put up to be our General Secretary, but leadership is not unimportant. In trade union elections, incumbents usually win, because they are known and because they have more power and influence than challengers, but incumbents also have a record by which they can be judged.

The questions which supporters of Dave Prentis have to answer (should they fail to achieve the coronation called for by Bob Oram) are these;

How can an administration which could not reverse declining density in the relatively benign environment of the past few years convince us that it can drive up union density moving into a harsher political and financial climate?

Is the leadership that could not build the union’s strength in a time of relative peace the right leadership to try to do so in the time of coming war?

One thing we should do more of is celebrate and learn from success – such as the Kirklees branch which has density in its main employer (the local authority) above 80%. This is a level of membership density most of us who are UNISON Branch Secretaries would kill for yet – even though the Secretary of the local branch, Paul Holmes, serves on our National Executive Council, there is little effort by the Union generally to spread the word about the methods whereby the Kirklees branch sustains this strong position.

Why is that?

Public sector workers climbing out of recession may fall into a total place

Still poorly but feeling up to sitting up at a computer for a bit I am wondering, as we all are, how to celebrate the news that we are out of recession! I think perhaps I will settle for a cup of weak tea, since, like the economy, I am weakly recovering.

Unfortunately plans are afoot to take a hatchet to public spending, which could all too easily push the economy back into recession. In London some bright sparks think that the "Total Place" approach to public service provision could have saved eleven billion pounds last year.

Allowing for the possibility of exaggeration arising from the use of extrapolation (a tool used by statisticians to make large and bold claims from smaller less clear data) this suggests both a massive target for public spending reduction in the capital and an outline agenda for how they would be made.

I'll comment again later about the problems with this approach for the services themselves (although I do sympathise with the view that public services should be under local democratic control even if the point is made by Tory controlled London Councils).

The point I want to make here is about the macroeconomic consequences of such significant cuts for the economy.

Eleven billion pounds in savings will mostly come from laying off workers in the public sector and organisations providing services to the public sector. Most of these workers will be working within the domestic economy, many of them in the immediate locality, and their wages and salaries will be spent in the economy, purchasing jobs and services produced by other firms and their workers. Sack them and their expenditure will fall, with knock on effects on unemployment, which themselves have further knock on effects (it's called "the multiplier").

Total Place would make some sense at a time of growth if it was used to reallocate public sector resources the better to meet social need, but in a time of cuts, it is far more likely to be a device to drive down employment and prosperity in our communities.

I have now finished my cup of weak tea and finished celebrating the end of the recession.

Blogging interrupted!

I am stricken with 'flu' and therefore blog posts will have to resume in a couple of days.

For the avoidance of doubt, since I am certainly not a potential candidate in the UNISON General Secretary election, this is not the first use of biological warfare within internal trade union politics in the United Kingdom.

Although I did wonder if that was someone brushing against me with an umbrella as I left Mabledon Place on Wednesday...

Not a pantomime...

I was roundly condemned by at least one fellow member of UNISON's esteemed National Executive Council (NEC) this morning for having referred to the fact that our unprecedented special meeting this morning took place towards the tail end of the pantomime season.

This inoffensive remark which was factually accurate was misread as an insult to NEC members, many of whom responded completely spontaneously to the officially unanticipated announcement by General Secretary, Dave Prentis, that whilst he would have been legally entitled to remain in office until retirement without an election he would nevertheless stand down and seek re-election in order to "renew his mandate".

Dave had written to the President to this effect and his letter awaited us in the Conference chamber this morning.

So there was nothing melodramatic about that and any reference to pantomimes would be utterly unwarranted.

Only cynics wondered why, since Dave had always been determined upon this course of action, we could not have agreed a General Secretary election timetable back in October (as had been done in 2004 and 1999). I can only imagine that Dave had been trying to persuade other senior officers that there should be an election, as they argued against him.

Of course, had that decision not in fact already been taken when the special NEC was first convened two weeks ago then there would have been no reason to convene the special NEC, but I am sure that it would be wrong therefore to assume that the whole thing was contrived.

Indeed not. Many NEC members felt immediately driven to compete for superlatives with which to describe our General Secretary (and his passionate and unswerving commitment to our democracy).

Dave was brave. He was brilliant. Bob Oram from the North West Region went furthest when he said that he hoped that there would not need to be an election as we would all unite behind Dave. (I have a feeling that that approach to socialist politics - one party which gets 100% of the vote - was tried somewhere in the twentieth century and did not get on too well...)

Leading NEC member, Paul Holmes made an obvious and important point when Dave left the meeting (not disappearing in a puff of smoke as this was not a pantomime). Dave had told us first that he would graciously permit an election, then that he would be a candidate, and then which timetable he felt we ought to have for the election.

Paul wondered whether there might have been a conflict of interest in the leading candidate for election to a post recommending the timetable for that election (but in any case the candidate had in effect determined that timetable himself by the timing of his announcement of his intentions).

Paul was also first to respond when our President, Gerry Gallagher, suggested that anyone else who might be seeking nominations should withdraw from the discussion. As Paul said, NEC members had had no notice of the decision of our General Secretary, and no one could yet know whether they would be a candidate.

The NEC went on to agree, by an overwhelming majority, a timetable for the election of General Secretary which will see the polls close just before our National Delegate Conference and the result announced just after.

Now that we know that there will be an election, those of us who believe that UNISON has been rudderless for some time and has failed to achieve the potential of our excellent trade union have very little time to consider the question of what should be done to seize the democratic opportunity which has been presented to us in such a way as to so benefit the incumbent.

Having got into such trouble for the slightest reference to a pantomime this morning I shall refrain from any comment about the closing date for nominations in this hastily called election.

Which is 1 April.

Democracy in UNISON?

The well attended Lambeth UNISON Branch Annual General Meeting got through its entire agenda on Thursday - which meant that we reached Rule Amendments for submission to UNISON Conference.

Whilst the absence of contention at the AGM may reduce the scope for ill-informed comment elsewhere in the blogosphere, it was good news for the branch, and I was pleased in particular at our decision to move a Rule Amendment to require an election for General Secretary every five years regardless of the age of the General Secretary.

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Mabledon-Tank) will have spotted a slight obsession with this topic here in recent months. I think that democracy in our trade union does require that there shall be regular elections for General Secretary (and I would extend that principle further than our Rules presently do). At the moment our Rule Book only states that we elect our General Secretary in order to comply with the requirements of the anti-union laws.

Whilst many aspects of the anti-union laws put unacceptable burdens and constraints upon our trade unions (and all should be removed and replaced with a Trade Union Freedom Bill) we would not - I hope! - give up the practice of electing our General Secretary were the law no longer to require this.

Unfortunately under our current rules (which specify only that the General Secretary shall hold office for the the maximum period of time prescribed by law) were the law requiring elections to be repealed (as it should be) our General Secretary would immediately become General Secretary for life...

(Who knows? Maybe then we could move on to adopt a hereditary principle for succession?)

I hope that Conference will be permitted to debate (and will agree to implement) a Rule Amendment to specify a five year term limit for the future.

Overcoming the public/private divide over pensions?

It is opportune that I am having to catch up with some delayed blogging over the last few days, as the Liberal Democrats scaremongering over local government pensions on Friday only served to add relevance to a decision taken at our UNISON Branch AGM the day before.

The most important things we need to do to prepare for the coming attack upon the Local Government Pension Scheme are;

• To recruit more members to increase our density;
• To build unity with the other trade unions at every level;
• To mobilise pressure on all candidates in the forthcoming elections to pledge to protect our pensions;
• To prepare our members (and our membership records!) for the likely necessity of strike action.

However, we also need to overcome the division between public and private sector workers (otherwise we will forever be on a back foot defending fair pensions for a minority of the workforce).

One way to contribute to overcoming this divide would be to lobby for an extension of "admitted body status" to open up the Local Government Pension Scheme to workers in the private sector generally.

Scheme members who are privatised can remain in the Scheme if their employers pay their share of the contributions - so why not open this up? Allowing wider scheme membership would not jeopardise the funds as long as employer and employee contributions were paid - and though few private employers might be prepared to make the payments it would be open to their workforce to pressure them to do so.

This idea is not a short term solution to anything at all, but the Lambeth Branch Annual General Meeting has instructed us to prepare and submit a Conference motion to try to get some discussion going about how we overcome the public/private pensions divide.

A great result for strike action underlines the political challenge before us

I was busy yesterday with the National Committee of the Labour Representation Committee so fell behind blogging.

UNISON's victory over Sodexo in North Devon is an important step in seeking to bring to privatised workers the benefits negotiated for the core workforce. This is a vital element of our opposition to privatisation, which has generally meant profits made at the expense of low paid workers.

Following the victory before Xmas for the Leeds refuse workers these disputes provide a potent answer to those who think that strike action has had its day.

However, with the courts prepared to scupper strike action on technicalities and a would-be Tory Government gearing up to attack our right to strike we need both a political and industrial strategy to defend our members' interests.

It was reported to the LRC National Committee that the proposals from the Trade Union and Labour Organisation (TULO) for the Labour manifesto are predictably feeble, so I suggest we look elsewhere for our political strategy.

The question for UNISON members between now and Wednesday is whether there will be an election for General Secretary in which we can discuss these questions and - if there is - whether the National Executive Council will be bounced into a snap election.

Renewing a mandate?

Whilst I was busy yesterday with work in the branch the report for next week's special meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council was circulated.

It contains nothing that could not have been predicted.

The authors of the report seem to believe that the combined effect of our Rules, statute law and the General Secretary's contract of employment mean that Dave Prentis could choose to remain in office until retirement (which would mean an election for his successor would not take place until 2012 after one or more new Assistant General Secretary posts may have been created and appointed to...).

However, the authors don't seem that confident as they also think that if the General Secretary decides to carry on without an election then the NEC should endorse this. I am not persuaded that the Rule Book is so unambiguous that there is no need for the NEC to use its power to interpret the rules if it wants to achieve this end.

However Dave may decide that he needs to "renew his mandate" by seeking re-election (or he may decide to retire now) and the NEC will learn of this at the start of our meeting on Wednesday.

Should an election take place the Presidential Team are recommending a snap election starting virtually immediately with the NEC deciding its nomination (if any) on 10 February.

This recommendation is based upon the idea that a General Secretary election must not run through Conference week (an idea with no basis in the Rule Book or indeed anywhere else, but the sort of idea that will probably persuade the majority of NEC members to do as they are told).

The report acknowledges that there is another option - an election for General Secretary starting in July. This would be the most obviously reasonable and democratic course of action (and is therefore not the course of action being recommended to the NEC).

I am awaiting comments from London branches but my initial view is that I think it would be absurd if there were no election until 2012 and an outrageous move to run a General Secretary election through the period of a General Election in which UNISON needs to make our voice heard.

In deciding whether or not to seek re-election our General Secretary will no doubt remember who it was who pointed out (in criticising last week's failed coup within the Parliamentary Labour Party) that "neither Hewitt nor Hoon are standing for re-election, so they won't have to live with the consequences of what they have just done."

The election that matters to our members in 2010 is the General Election, not the General Secretary election, and I think we should focus on that now and run the election for General Secretary after we know which Government we are having to deal with.

UNISON General Secretary Election?

As you read here first a week ago an unprecedented unscheduled meeting of the Unison NEC has been called (at a fortnight's notice) for next Wednesday just three weeks before the next scheduled meeting.



The only agenda item concerns options relating to the post of General Secretary and NEC members were told - last Wednesday - that a paper setting out these options would be circulated.



Not having seen this paper yet I have been asking after it. I thought I should share the helpful response of our President;



"Jon



I've been away recently but understand you've been asking a number of colleagues about the paper going to NEC on the 20th of Jan.



I'm afraid I don't see any point in engaging in a dialogue on this in advance of the paper being sent to the whole NEC.



To do otherwise would be inappropriate and unfair to the rest of the NEC.



Gerry Gallagher

UNISON President"



At least I can be assured that all members of the NEC are being denied information equally...



Since the limited range of "options" are fairly obvious to anyone possessing a law book, a calendar and a brain I have offered to help whoever is drafting the report. As yet my kind offer has not been accepted.



We need this report soon if our NEC is not to be seen as a pointless talking shop.



We would not want anyone to think that an attempt will be made to bounce the NEC into a General Secretary Election before the General Election (nor even to agree an interpretation of our Rules which would avoid any election this year for fear of such avoidable ill-timing).



Once we see the report we can explain the good reasons for convening a special NEC meeting three weeks before the scheduled meeting and reassure UNISON members that our democratic structures are not being manipulated.



I am sure the report will soon be circulated.



I am an optimist.

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Save Our Stations

Worrying news for all those of us who commute to work in Greater London.



London Underground plans to close or cut most of its ticket offices, and to reduce station staffing by over 1,000 staff. 



To provide customer service and safety, tube stations need more staff not fewer.



Popular opposition stopped planned ticket office closures in 2008; now we need the same popular opposition to stop them again. 



The RMT has set up a petition against the job cuts on the 10 Downing Street website. It will take you just a minute or so to add your name, and give a big boost to their campaign to save jobs. 



Click here: http://petitions. number10. gov.uk/StaffOurS tations/ 



The petition reads: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop plans to close ticket offices and cut staff on London Underground.



Details at www.rmtplatform.org.uk/SOS 

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Support strikers against Sodexo

Readers in the South West have an opportunity to support health workers fighting injustice this Saturday, as the union holds a rally to support striking members at Barnstaple Hospital.



The rally will take place on Saturday 16 January, from 12.30-1.30pm at Barnstaple Town Square.It will be addressed by the Lord Mayor of Bideford, a senior medical consultant, a striker, the hospital's 'league of friends' and a UNISON speaker. They will be releasing 1,111 balloons to represent every day they have not been paid their wages and terms under Agenda for Change.



Full details are on the Unison website at http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=5848.



This important dispute may have significant ramifications for the three companies organising project as the private employer in this case (Sodexo) is one of the targets of that campaign.



Messages of support and financial donations can be sent to the branch at UNISON branch, North Devon District Hospital, Suite 2, Munro House, Raleigh Park, Barnstaple EX31 4JB email unisonhealthndevon@hotmail.co.uk.

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Remember Jean Charles de Menezes

Adverse weather has kept me away from the office today and therefore also from the unveiling of the memorial mosiac for Jean Charles de Menezes. Happily a full report is available online at the admirable HarpyMarx blog.

I'm sorry to have lost two uncles over the past week or so. Though one died younger than he should both had lived full lives, worked hard, contributed to society and seen their children grow up. Both were also, in their time, public servants.

Jean Charles, on the other hand, died as a young man thousands of miles from home and did so at the hands of police officers whose job it was to protect him.

While the Government may have felt it right to honour the officer responsible for this tragic outrage, the mosaic provides a lasting opportunity for local people to remember, and honour the memory of, a young man cruelly killed by the police.

Viva Viva Palestina

Whilst we are slipping on the ice and waiting for it to melt there is good news from Palestine where the aid convoy has got through.

Details at http://readingpsc.org.uk/convoy/

Whilst the priority of our Government now appears to be changing the law to guard against the possibility that our Israeli "military allies" could face justice if the visit this country, our trade union movement needs to do more to help those in the Middle East who need and deserve our support.

(Returning to the parochial question of when we in the ice-bound south can expect a thaw, I did see a couple of large drips yesterday - but they turned out to be half remembered Blairite former Ministers.)

Update at 2pm - you can watch a film of the arrival of the convoy on the Grauniad website.

Election Year?

A special meeting of Unison's NEC has been called for Wednesday 20 January (the first such unscheduled meeting in my time on the NEC).



The agenda is to consider future options for the post of General Secretary.



If Dave Prentis serves a normal five year term this will end on 31 December.



I was told, ahead of December's NEC meeting, that the Presidential Team thought I was wrong to perceive any ambiguity arising from the combined effect of the Rule Book and the law (which allows in certain cirumstances an extended term of office where a General Secretary is approaching retirement).



I therefore look forward to sight of the paper on "options" which has not yet been circulated.



How refreshing that in our lay led Union the elected lay Executive receive a full fortnight's notice of such a meeting (even if we don't yet know what "options" will be put before us).





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Support Devon strikers

More than 200 UNISON members working for Sodexo at the North Devon NHS Trust started a two-day strike at midnight last night over the company's and trust's refusal to pay them Agenda for Change wages due three years ago.



The industrial action, voted for by 97% of members on a 71% turn-out, follows on the heels of the workers organising themselves to campaign for what they're owed over the last few months.



UNISON membership has risen from 45 to 213 between June last year and the end of 2009, and the workers have an organising committee of five stewards.



This sort of action arises from the spread of privatisation in our public services and shows the folly of delivering public services for private profit.



Messages of support and financial donations can be sent to the branch at;

UNISON Branch North Devon District Hospital Suite 2 Munro House Raleigh Park Barnstaple EX31 4JB

email: unisonhealthndevon@hotmail.co.uk

Details on the Unison website

http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=5837

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Unison SGE elections - nominate John McLoughlin

I reproduce here the text of a message sent yesterday to local government branches in London by John McLoughlin which I commend to Unison members in the relevant branches;

Firstly can I thank all those who supported me in the recent by election to the Local Government Servive Group Executive (LGSGE.)  I was honoured to be voted to succeed David Eggmore and will do my best to represent all our members in the Local Government Service Group in Greater London. Please feel free to contact me about issues that you need to be pursued at the Local Government Service Group Executive. 

However before I have the chance to attend my first meeting I must write to ask again for your nomination for the elections for the LGSGE for 2010 - 2012. The nominating period is now open and closes on February 12.

With the General Election now looming is is clear that the two year term of the next  LGSGE will be a critical period for Local Government. 

With all the major parties projecting a period of sustained cuts in public services to reduce the deficit created by bankers greed every aspect of our jobs and services will be under renewed threat. 

A pay freeze has already been proposed by Alastair Darling, barely a day passes without talk of attacking our pensions, and we know we face the prospect of massive cuts and further privatisation. 

I believe we need a fighting leadership in Local Government that is prepared to give a lead in insisting that we will not pay the cost of a crisis created by the greed of bankers and big business, and to support branches that are resisting the attacks on us.
 
I also believe that is time that UNISON stopped wasting our resources on witch hunts of activists and instead dedicated all our energy on defending our members jobs and conditions and the services we provide.     

I have a long track record of organising resistance to these kind of attacks in Tower Hamlets, and of working to build unity with other unions, service users and community organisations.  
  
I have also played a leading role in Local Government in London as a member of the Regional LG Executive. I believe these experiences will enable me to provide leadership and support for branches.   

Good luck John!

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How do we tackle bullying at work?

No real shock in the news that workplace bullying is on the increase in a recession.

In our public services management by pressure leads to a deterioration of interpersonal relationships, particuarly up and down management lines, and managers who were not at the front of the queue to get "people skills" can all to easily manage staff in a way that staff experience as bullying.

The constant assaults upon public sector workers in the media (and by our enemies such as the CBI) help to legitimise such bullying conduct (often from managers imported to public services from the private sector or working as consultants). There is a wrong headed perception that public service workers are feather-bedded and don't work hard enough.

There is however an unhelpful lack of clarity around bullying. A necessary victim-centred approach can lead to a conflict of perceptions. Staff can see bullying where more senior managers see only robust management. These differences in perception have their origin in the different interests of managers and staff.

In a recession, with public spending cuts to come, managers will face pressures to get rid of staff as cheaply as possible. Watch out for attempts to renegotiate sickness and capability procedures as cut price alternatives to redundancies (and for a less tolerant approach to disciplinary matters). Bullying is one, fairly extreme but not uncommon, response to these pressures. The problem is not with individuals but with an economic system based upon competition.

Workers who want to tackle the culture of bullying need to understand that individual complaints can, at best, only treat the symptom in one case. Somehow we need to rebuild trade union density and collectivism so that progressive peer pressure can be brought to bear to regulate conduct in the workplace.

Union activists must avoid being submerged by individual casework if we are ever to reverse the tide of workplace bullying.

Mobile Blogging

For the second decade of the century I intend to try to blog by mobile phone more often.

Whether this will make for more frequent blogging remains to be seen.

It may however encourage brevity which should please at least one other blogger in my Unison branch.

Amongst treats to come this week we have the coming AGM of UNISON's Greater London Regional Council and elections to our Service Group Executives.

Unfortunately I won't have time to wonder why the (semi-official and often anonymous) Unison Active blog posted; a story criticising people who send their children to private schools right now.

This year may of course see a significant election in Unison also.
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