Not in front of the members?

I recently read a report concerning a local authority, facing appalling reductions in funding, which was contemplating attacks on the conditions of service of its staff.

The Council made clear to it's trade unions that it was willing to negotiate, but only if they pledged to respect the confidentiality of those negotiations (by not reporting back to their members during the course of the negotiations and consulting them only when talks had reached a conclusion).

The union in this case, under the supervision of Regional officials, agreed to these terms. I think this was a foolish error, not so much because it was wrong in principle (though it was) but because it will weaken the union for no possible benefit.

In principle, those of us asked to negotiate (or more often these days, to participate in consultation "with a view to reaching agreement") owe a duty of transparency and accountability to the members on behalf of whom we negotiate. We need to consult and engage with members in order to set our bargaining agenda, which should be subject to scrutiny and democratic decision through our union structures. We need to continue that engagement throughout negotiations/consultation so that the priorities which we express are those of our members. We need to be honest and transparent with our members so that we, in turn, have a sense of our collective combativity to inform our stance in discussions with the employer. It may not be possible in every case to live by all of these ideals, but we should certainly try.

For those who prefer pragmatism to principle as a guide to action (and I see no reason not to like both) it must be clear that "secret talks" with the employer fly in the face of an organising approach to building the strength of a union to defend its members. The best point at which to mobilise and recruit is the point at which the union sets out its demands, whether for a pay claim or for the defence of pension rights, sick pay or any other condition of service. We know from historical experience that we recruit most strongly at those points when we are campaigning hard around demands which resonate with our members and potential members.

In the case of an attack on conditions of service at the level of an individual authority, this point of maximum advantage comes at the very beginning - and experience dictates that the more that we can do from that point to build union density and organisation, as well as the combativity of the workforce, the better (or less worse) the eventual outcome for conditions of service.

If, however, we were to respond to such an attack by trooping silently into secret talks, we could not give members the honest and accurate updates from discussions with the employer which would be a prerequisite for an organising campaign to defend conditions of service. This would in turn weaken our position as negotiators in our splendid isolation.

The end result of such secret talks would be a "final offer" which would leave the union in a double bind. Either the employers' final position could not be recommended, in which case we would have to mobilise members we had demobilised behind leaders who had just proven themselves failures in negotiations, or we would go out to our members recommending concessions as "the best that could have been achieved by negotiation" without having taken our members honestly and transparently through the process leading up to that conclusion. Neither case is a recipe for improving recruitment, organisation or member participation.

The real tragedy isn't so much that "secret talks" will invariably lead to less satisfactory outcomes, both for conditions of service and union organisation, than participatory and transparent discussions - it's that they are so easy to avoid.

Any employer contemplating changes which they know may lead to mass terminations to achieve contract change knows that they will have to comply with section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Taken together with relevant case law, the employer knows that they will have to consult, in the open "with a view to reaching agreement" with the unions - and that they will also have to consult individuals. A recognised trade union refusing to sign up to "confidential" talks would still have to be consulted with "with a view to reaching agreement" in any case.

None of this means that there is no place for "off the record" talks when the occasion demands, nor for the advance receipt of embargoed information, nor even for occasional formal discussions under "Chatham House Rules" - however these are exceptions to general rules about the democratic conduct of trade union business, requiring robust justification on a case by case basis.

Whoever signs up to "confidential" negotiations over attacks on conditions of service thereby signs away the effectiveness and independence of the union. That this may be the preferred approach for a branch under the direction of Regional officials is disquieting, to put it mildly.

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Unacceptable injustice

For UNISON activists immersed in the daily grind of redundancy consultation and privatisation threats, and now tasked with mobilising for the beginning, on 30 November, of a decisive showdown with a hostile Government, it's hard to find time even to think about much else.

However, what is going on at Dale Farm, where families occupying their own land face forced eviction and homelessness (http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/) cannot be ignored.

Basildon Council claim that they are simply enforcing planning law to protect the green belt - yet it was they who first covered this patch of green with concrete (http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/dale-farm-concreted-over-by-basildon-council/) and the site was a scrap yard before Travellers made it their home.

This eviction is a discriminatory act borne of prejudice.

I understand that the local authority has prohibited its own staff, including union activists, from speaking out about this matter - but the trade unions must not be silent in the face of such injustice.

It was good to see Rodney Bickerstaffe, our former General Secretary, put his name to a letter to the Guardian last week in opposition to this outrage (http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/14/resume-talks-dale-farm-evictions?cat=uk&type=article) - but the official Labour movement has been all but silent, though the Travellers have the support of many Labour MPs.

UNISON has no specific Conference policy which addresses the plight of Traveller communities, whose members are generally unlikely to be amongst the ranks of the organised working class.

Justice is, however, indivisible. Discrimination and prejudice invariably weakens our class, and at our best the trade union movement recognises both the duty and necessity to oppose injustice and oppression.

We do this though in a way which - because it is intended to be democratic - is sometimes frustratingly slow. A former General Secretary can speak out - and rightly has done - but a current official has to act within the policies agreed by the elected representatives of our members.

Whatever may take place at Dale Farm - and all socialists will wish those resisting the eviction well - we need now to ensure that, through the democratic structures of our movement, we adopt clear policies to defend the right of Travelling communities.

Our sister union, PCS, has stated that "PCS is supporting the campaign to stop the forcible eviction of residents from Dale Farm. We believe the removal would be a violation of human rights and an act of ethnic cleansing." (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/pcs-against-racism-and-fascism/). UNISON needs to adopt a similarly clear position.

There are hundreds at Dale Farm, and there are hundreds of thousands of Travellers. We must find a way to offer the solidarity of millions of trade unionists.    

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Hang on, don't I recognise you?

Congratulations to UNISON's Plymouth local government branch, and to all the officials nationally and in the South West Region who have secured the (re)recognition of UNISON by Plymouth Council (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7215).



Trade union recognition is the cornerstone of sensible employee relations - and the basis of a raft of legal rights for workers and their representatives.



With a Government more reactionary than any in the last century intent upon rolling back the social gains of generations we cannot rule out that other employers may follow Plymouth's earlier error in the hope of neutralising organised opposition.



But they need to know that the response they will face from our movement will make the foolish tactic of derecognition more trouble than it's worth.



For our side, we need to seize the opportunity of the coming pensions fight to raise our membership density in every employer so that employers know that derecognition will be a futile fight against the majority of their workers.

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Rally today against low pay

Today sees another step forward in the fight to secure a London Living Wage (LLW) for workers in the capital, and in particular in higher education institutions in Central London, co-ordinated by the useful and effective Bloomsbury Fightback (http://bloomsburyfightback.wordpress.com/).



To call for a September 2011 date for LLW implementation, there will be a rally at Senate House (Russell Sq carpark) at 11.30 on Wednesday 14 September 2011. 



Labour MPs John McDonnell and Frank Dobson will both be speaking. Organisers are hoping to get a big turnout to convince the University that NOW is the time to end poverty wages.



This is very much the sort of action which deserves full official backing from UNISON as it rightly focuses on the social responsibility of public institutions for ensuring decent living standards.

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Back to the future in union-bashing Barnet

My thoughts are with comrades in UNISON's Barnet branch taking action today (http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/).



The branch has stepped up its long running official dispute with the privatisation-mad Tory Council, who have responded with a "lock-out"!



Workers called upon to take a half-day strike from 1pm today are to be confronted by managers and required to sign a document promising not to strike, or face being sent home for the whole day.



Barnet Council have obviously been reaching into the history books in support of their desire to restore nineteenth-century governance arrangements for the provision of public services - the signing of a notorious anti-union "document" was a key tactic employed against the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) in the 1830s (http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/trade-us/document.htm).



Angry UNISON members need to face down the bully boy tactics of Tories intent on ripping up our Welfare state and destroying local government - and I hope many London UNISON branches will join Barnet at the lobby of Hendon Town Hall at 5.30 this afternoon.

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Wanted - an alternative.

Not being amongst the much reduced UNISON delegation to this year's "TUC lite" I won't get to hear "BB" give his keynote address first hand - but I understand he'll echo the General Council's July statement by calling on us to build a "Movement for the Alternative" and asking for a modest levy to help fund this work (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/12/brendan-barber-tuc?cat=politics&type=article).

What accounts for the poverty of the aspirations of the top of our movement, as they move backwards rather than forwards from March's brilliant demonstration, and wonder about raising a "fighting fund" one tenth the size of the fund already earmarked for campaigning by UNISON alone?

The unfortunate answer is that our movement has two wings, but only one of them is making any attempt to fly. The unions, the "industrial wing", have been promoting coherent alternative economic policies consistently since 2008 (think of UNISON's alternative budget for example).

However, what passes for the "political wing" of our movement - Her Majesty's Official Opposition - has been keeping its distance both from the policies needed to turn the economy around and - as on 30 June - the action required to protect the interests of millions of working people under attack by the Government of the millionaires.

The baleful influence of the dead weight of the Labour leadership (due to its failure to break from "New Labour") helps explain why the affiliated unions have been slower than some non-affiliated unions to take necessary action.

The Government has declared war on our movement and we need the whole movement to fight back.

That's the real significance of co-ordinating industrial action over pensions as, thankfully, it does now seem we will (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/11/unions-strikes-pension-reforms-conference?cat=politics&type=article).

We cannot lawfully co-ordinate national strike action against job cuts (and even if we could, the uneven way in which cuts fall would pose great practical difficulties).

Even for those of in the third year of a pay freeze (and more than ten per cent worse off in real terms as a result) it does not yet seem that we can mobilise members around pay claims (which feel like "asking for more" rather than defending what we have).

The pensions dispute is our chance to inflict a defeat upon the Tory Coalition. If the Labour leadership support this struggle they can position themselves at the head of a movement which will be in a position to articulate, campaign for and win an alternative for our people.

Every Labour MP - every Party member - needs to support our unions when we are forced into battle to defend our pensions, because the outcome of this struggle will shape politics, and our economy, for some time to come.

Saturday's meeting of the National Committee of the Labour Representation Committee was right to give a high priority to lobbying Labour to back the unions on pensions.

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No one guilty?

No one (at least no police officer) is, apparently, in any way culpable for the death of Smiley Culture.



In other news, a statement from the Vatican, Papal Catholicism has been reaffirmed.



It appears that what bears do in the woods, the police are allowed to visit upon those in their custody.



Tomorrow's Morning Star says what needs to said;



"London's police have long been free to kill with impunity, from Harry Stanley to Roger Sylvester, Jean Charles de Menezes, Azelle Rodney and Mark Duggan. The Met's version of the events surrounding Smiley Culture's death is so bizarre as to be barely credible. We are asked to believe that he stabbed himself in the chest while making a cup of tea in the midst of a police raid on his home. On top of that we're asked to accept an astonishing situation in which the officers involved can choose not to be interviewed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission as they are not suspects."



(http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/content/view/full/109081?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)



As a public service trade unionist I have often represented public servants, accused of making a mistake, who have been held to account. Not every case leads to a just outcome, and sometimes there are outrageous witch hunts.



However, the total absence of any accountability of Metropolitan Police officers for questionable deaths in which the police are involved goes beyond fairness to hard pressed public servants. Indeed it undermines public confidence and therefore the whole basis of policing by consent.



UNISON, as the largest trade union, needs to take a stand for justice for working people. Our defence of the interests of civilian police staff cannot silence us in the face of this grotesque injustice.

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Name and shame the guilty? Siobhain and Tom, I'm talking about you...

There are looters and then there are looters.

There are those who reach through shattered glass to nick a pair of trainers (can I admit to being so old as not to appreciate the attraction of footwear which aren't even proper shoes?)

Then there are those who profit from the privatisation of public services, extracting a surplus out of taxpayers' money and passing it on to shareholders. And those who help them.

I am not inclined to excuse either, but when considering a moral comparison I think the eighteenth century can be called upon to help.

"Tis bad enough in man or woman,
To steal a goose from off the common,
But, surely, he's without excuse,
Who steals the common from the goose."

That rhyme belongs to an earlier era of privatisation, when common land was enclosed in the interests of private profit - and against the interests of the mass of the population (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure). (Also see http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/british_poets1.html).

Today's equivalent is the privatisation of public services - one pernicious variant of which is outsourcing. And this modern day enclosure of the commons of our public services has its Parliamentary champions - the All Party Group on Outsourcing and Shared Services (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/register/outsourcing-and-shared-services.htm).

The Chair of this gaggle of subsidised (by the outsourcing industry) privatisation-geese is some Tory you've never heard of - but it's Vice- Chairs are purportedly Labour MPs. One is Siobhain McDonagh (http://siobhainmcdonagh.org.uk/joomla_folder/) who apparently represents Mitcham and Morden.

Having (once) risen to the giddy hights of (very) junior ministerial office, Siobhain is now focused on helping shareholders to maximise value at the expense of taxpayers. Her only previous claim to anything other than the obscurity which is her destiny is for undermining the last Government by attacking the then Prime Minister in 2008.

The other Vice-Chair is an even more obscure Labour. MP with what seems to be a name made up for satirical purposes, young Tom Blenkinsop (http://www.tomblenkinsop.com/). Tom, perhaps sensing that he will never amount to much in the labour movement, has also hitched his wagon to the interests of shareholders rather than voters (such as those in Teeside who elected him).

At least Siobhain has the excuse of having fallen for Blairism when it wn fashion. Tom's excuse is a mystery.

The challenge for UNISON (and in particular for our terminally ineffective and hideously embarrassing " Labour Link") is what we do about MPs from a Party we fund jumping so enthusiastically into bed with people who want to attack our members and savage our public services.

There is an answer (http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/) but it's not one to which our leadership is (yet?) receptive. Supporters of the Morning Star need to reflect deeply upon how they relate to the leadership of our Union. Having supporters in leading positions is of little value if those supporters serve only to divide or hold back our struggle.

A hat tip to UNISON Anonymous for blogging before I did (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/09/privateers-back-all-party-group-so.html#more). (But, comrades, why do you pull your punches? I have seen you deploy real venom when criticising those you perceive as "ultra-left" but somehow you can't quite manage that when confronted with the open goal of Blairites sponging off our movement in order to get into a position to do us real harm. Shape up now my anonymous friends! We "trots" need you "tankies" to remember which side you're on in a fight with Tories - and sooner rather than later!)

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Privatisation will damage all our pensions

Full marks to Barnet UNISON for having commissioned a paper on the impact on their pension scheme of mass opt-outs. Even if lobbying from the Local Government Employers, and alternative cost-saving proposals, mean that we avoid increases in pension contributions in the LGPS on the scale threatened elsewhere in public services, outsourcing could still lead to massive reductions in the active (paying) membership of local authority pension funds.



Barnet’s paper shows how large scale privatisation of our jobs could push our pension schemes to a tipping point at which they begin to have cashflow problems, and have to adopt more cautious investment strategies (worsening existing deficits). The answer to this would be to require private companies bidding for our work to have admitted body status and to allow all their staff to be members of the LGPS.



This, however, would not permit privateers to profiteer by slashing labour costs, which is (essentially) the entire purpose of privatisation, whether in its “Tory blue in tooth and claw” form of Barnet’s EasyCouncil or its soft and fluffy New Labour version of Lambeth’s “Co-operative Council.”



Unless we secure a guarantee that private sector workers can stay in the LGPS – and that private contractors taking on LGPS members must match our pension provision pound for pound – we ought to be pursuing national strike action against the attacks on our pensions. This is the test which history has set for UNISON’s current national leadership and it will determine how they are remembered.



Why has the Barnet branch had to commission a paper which should have been prepared by and on behalf of the national trade union?

Congress - Unity is Strength...

The final agenda for this year’s slimline TUC is available online and, as ever, it is a veritable cornucopia of worthy sentiment. Delegates should emerge from Congress House on Wednesday 14 September supportive of trade union rights, opposed to cuts in public services and unemployment and generally thinking much as they did when they ventured into the building on Monday 12 September (although I notice that the Professional Footballers’ Association want our movement to back a single “Great Britain” football team in the 2012 Olympics – better read commentators will be able to identify whether this puts them on the same side as Lenin or Luxemburg in relation to the national question…)



Of the half dozen motions submitted on the question of pensions, which dominated last year’s Congress, UNISON’s motion does at least call upon the General Council to “support and co-ordinate close collaboration between affiliates in defence of schemes.” It is however left to PCS to place before Congress an instruction to the General Council “to give full support to industrial action against pensions cuts, including action planned for this autumn, and maximise its co-ordination.”



The General Council are rightly proud of the massive demonstration held on 26 March, and therefore go on some length about it in their Annual Report. For those who hoped that 26 March would be the commencement rather than the culmination of the efforts of the TUC, the report makes less than encouraging reading. The General Council have issued a statement, on 27 July, which is an elegant description of the diversity of campaigning activity underway up and down the country, and a plea for funds from affiliates to do more to co-ordinate this.



However, the General Council statement of 27 July doesn’t mention coordinated industrial action as any part of our campaign of opposition to the Government, even though the Coalition’s determination to attack public service pensions provides an unprecedented opportunity for just such united action. The Report of the General Council does find room to mention that “on 30 June, four TUC unions – ATL, NUT, PCS and UCU – took industrial action in response to the Government’s proposed changes to public service pensions. The action gained widespread media coverage and reports suggested that up to 750,000 teachers and civil servants supported the action. The Government’s claims that changes were driven by the issue of ‘affordability’ were clearly exposed during the media coverage on the day.” Strangely the General Council claim no credit for having helped to co-ordinate this action, perhaps because they didn’t.



At any event, any reader of pages 83 to 85 of the General Council report will realise that the authors consider the negotiations which the General Council have been coordinating are worthy of far more attention, although whereas a single day of action by four smaller trade unions clearly achieved some progress it is difficult to see what progress has been made in these negotiations.



The General Council acknowledged in their statement on 27 July that our movement can take the leadership of the fight against the Government’s cuts, but it seems that when we have the opportunity to use our power as trade unionists to resist the Government on ground on which it might be defeated, our leaders are less than willing.



Unity is needed every bit as much on the picket line as on the Olympic football field...

Solidarity with Plymouth

It's good to see comrades in Plymouth UNISON bearing up in the unprecedented circumstances of their derecognition by the Tory Council.



It appears that the Council have failed to meet a deadline to respond to UNISON (perhaps the Council Leader is too busy playing bowls to respond to European concerns about his Council's extremist policies?)



I suppose it is at least consistent with local maritime traditions for Plymouth Council to head off into uncharted waters by withdrawing recognition from the largest local government trade union, but its not a very useful way for grown ups to try to run a local authority. Presumably the brains behind derecognition had thought through the consequences of imposing a detriment upon people alleging unlawful discrimination - but maybe common sense will prevail?



Those of us elsewhere in the country can express our support on Facebook and by tweeting @plymouthcc telling them to restore recognition to UNISON.

Barnet Independence Day - 13 September

Barnet Council in North London has been trying to pioneer wholesale privatisation of Council services for several years now. Intelligent and committed rearguard action fought by the UNISON branch has, over recent months, taken the form of a rolling programme of selective industrial action which is now set to reach an important point on Tuesday 13 September – Barnet Independence Day.



Hundreds of Barnet UNISON members who have been taking action are set to strike together on this day in an important escalation of UNISON’s trade dispute with Barnet, which is over the identity of the employer of our members in future. Barnet UNISON members are fighting to remain in the employment of the very employer with whom they are in dispute – because they have a sound sense of their own interests and a laudable commitment to public service.

They make the sound point that it is important that many public services are independent of vested interests and are not best driven by the profit motive. Barnet Council on the other hand want to flog off anything that isn’t nailed down, and leaseback anything that is. They now prefer to call their plans “One Barnet” since earlier references to EasyCouncil have provoked well-earned derision. However, the driving force remains privatisation – so much so that options appraisal can be dispensed with as the Council moves straight to procurement.



There is of course nothing new about letting the private sector profit out of the need to provide public services - from the mid 1850s until the inception of the London County Council in 1889, London Government was in the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works, a joint board of indirectly elected representatives, with no accountability to the people of London generally, which was notorious for corruption in its dealings with the private sector.



The postwar development of a Welfare State, insurance against further reaching social change at a time when capitalism seemed to face a global alternative, has simply made for richer pickings for today’s public service “industry” to feast upon. Though since “we are all in this together” everyone has to make sacrifices – the Chief Executive of the Capita Group (Paul Pindar) had to make do with a measly £262,500 cash bonus on top of his £375,000 salary last year – with another £262,500 paid as a deferred bonus.



Mr Pindar’s company isn’t expected on Barnet Independence Day, but all those who care about the future of our public services can support the Barnet workers at a lobby at Hendon Town Hall from 5.30pm

Gazing up at another summit, selectively

Subconsciously it is clear that the leaders of our movement know that, in taking on the Tory-led Government's attack on our pensions, we have a mountain to climb. That must be what accounts for the rash of "summits" taking place just now.



Yesterday was the turn of the health sector unions to gather at UNISON HQ. Here - according to the Grauniad  plans were made to consider "smart" strike action.



This will obviously be a blow to all those who support action which is not "smart"...



More seriously, the exclusive and one-sided focus upon "targeted" or selective strike action reflects both a lack of confidence and the continuing debilitating effect of Labourism as an ideology upon our union movement.



Gail Carmail of UNITE is quoted by the Grauniad as saying "Gone are the days when you ballot members, take them out on a day's strike and have a nice rally."



Obviously this historical shift in the nature of industrial action in twenty first century Britain took place since the successful strike action on 30 June, which I recall the General Secretaries of both UNISON and UNITE lauding when it happened.



Alternatively, no such shift has taken place, and all-out action has its place in a sustained campaign of mass action quite as much as targeted selective action. The long ago lesson of Newham NALGO in the early 90s is that an employer facing selective action can always try to "up the ante" and the union needs to know that the whole membership can be mobilised in support of the selective campaign.



UNISON discovered the limits of selective action in the 2002 National Pay dispute and in the London Weighting dispute but these lessons are never even alluded to in public when pronouncements are made about our tactics.



Even if the pensions dispute is successfully broken up into its sectoral components (a recipe for less satisfactory outcomes in each and every sector) an exclusive reliance upon targeted selective action is not nearly as "smart" as its proponents, and their theoretical journal, like to think.



The least smart thing we are doing though is precisely the deliberate fracturing of our own unity by a focus on doing things "sector by sector". This doesn't just offend against the principle of solidarity by running the risk of a short-sighted "I'm all right Jack (or possibly Mark and Christine)" mentality, it also misses the point of the nature of this confrontation with the Government.



The law restricts the limited legal protection of our trade unions to action taken in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, so we have action around a trade dispute about our pensions.



However, this action takes place in the context of a war being waged upon our welfare state, a deliberate ideological offensive to roll back generations of social gains won by working people.



This political attack from the Government requires a political response from our side - and unified public-sector wide strike action would be a key part of such a response.



The reason why Ed Miliband, and those union leaders fundamentally on his wavelength, oppose such action is that it trespasses over the line between the "political" and "industrial" wings of our movement which is a central tenet of Labourism, the peculiar British form of social democracy which evolved in the last century.



As John Foster explained this in yesterday's Morning Star "one of the key objectives of the capitalist state in the 1920s was to get the Parliamentary Labour Party to agree that any sort of external trade union pressure on Parliament was "unconstitutional" - while that by banks and big business was totally normal and acceptable." Regrettably this objective was achieved to such an extent that, in my trade union, a motion put forward to our Conference calling for politically motivated industrial action against an unjust law would be ruled out of order (because all the main parties have endorsed legislation which removes all protection from trade unions taking such action).



Therefore, although our movement faces a wholesale political assault from the Government, our responses, hidebound by decades of tradition, will be to treat one particular element of this assault as if it were a discrete industrial dispute, or worse still a series of separate industrial disputes.



Unity is strength you see comrades, but it just isn't thought to be "smart" these days, at least, not up there at the summit.

Plymouth - reject an unjust attack

At least one of Plymouth City Council's Tory fools has decided to enter the record books for all the wrong reasons (http://www.lgcplus.com/city-council-derecognises-union/5033907.article).



The looney tunes fringe reactionaries seeking to dominate one of our south western cities have announced a decision to derecognise UNISON.



D'oh!



You can't manage an organisation of the size and complexity of a modern local authority without a cordial, professional relationship with the elected representatives of your workforce.



That certainly includes recognition of the largest local government trade union. Recognition is the cornerstone of the voluntary approach to industrial relations developed over generations - and if it were to be abandoned that would be a recepie for endless, expensive litigation..



Let's hope this purported derecognition is the action of an individual extremist and that the Council leadership can successfully distance themselves from this "Thatcher on speed" approach to employee relations.



We don't need unenlightened amateurs damaging local government in such difficult and challenging times.



UNISON members must also consider how ill-advised it can be to oust the leadership of a trade union branch on political grounds...


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Sign up against the great pensions robbery

Older readers may remember that Robert Maxwell was a crook who stole from his employees' pension funds - but he had nothing on George Osborne who, within weeks of becoming Chancellor had raided the future pensions of millions of workers, in the public and private sectors, of billions of pounds we were counting on to see us through our old age. He did this by changing the future basis of uprating our pension benefits from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).



This dramatic move had been in the manifesto of neither party to the Coalition of millionaires - indeed it directly contradicted promises made by all three main parties before last year's General Election.



This was simply a massive transfer of future income away from future pensioners to the benefit of Government and employers (or class war to give it it's technical name...)



Estimates of the cumulative loss for those of us not yet retired range upwards from 15% (or almost one pound in every six which we had been promised for the rest of our lives).



This is one element of the Government's attack upon pensions which not only applies across the whole public sector but also unites public and private sector workers. It is a move they show no sign of even considering stepping back from.


This is an opportunity to try to use the e-petition site in the interests of working people rather than for reactionary knee jerk populism - the petition is at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1535.



All trade unionists, and indeed everyone who believes promises should be kept, should sign!

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The pay freeze - public servants paying a tithe to the bankers

A warm welcome to the web to the new blog from UNISON's Camden local government branch - who are pointing out that, in the third year of a pay freeze, local government workers have suffered a dramatic fall in our living standards (http://camdenunison.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/a-3-year-pay-freeze-is-a-massive-pay-cut-in-real-terms/).



Since the date from which our last pay rise was effective (1 April 2009) the Retail Price Index has risen by 11%. It takes £111 today to purchase what would have cost £100 back then - or, put another way, each £100 you earn now is only "worth" as much as £90 could back then.



In effect - for a full time worker who has had no promotion or incremental progression to soften the blow - it's as if you had agreed to forego your pay for one day a fortnight without reducing your hours. This is a tithe (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe) paid not to the Church, but to the new religion of Mammon in the cause of bailing out the banks.



This is a dramatic decline in living standards over a short period. UNISON branches with members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland whose pay is set in the National Joint Council negotiations were last week sent a circular giving us four weeks over the summer holidays to consult members on proposals for a "substantial" pay claim.



We need to start alerting our members to the cause of rising overdrafts, squeezed household bugets and increasing hardship - the pay freeze.



The devastating impact of the pay freeze will only be reversed by industrial action, and industrial action will only become possible when we start to have the argument for it with our members.

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Barnet - the front line in the defence of public services

UNISON members in Barnet are rightly calling to escalate their action as part of UNISON's trade dispute with the madcap Tory borough over their dogmatic insistence that local government workers cease to be local government workers - the branch is therefore wisely proposing co-ordinated action on 13 September, henceforth "Barnet Independence Day" (http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/644).

Whilst I was sorry no one from Barnet could attend tomorrow's Lambeth Branch Committee to update us, I am pleased that the reason is that the branch is meeting with the Region who will, I am sure, endorse the prudent and reasonable course of action which is proposed.

Barnet Council has been trying to launch itself as a flagship for Cameron's "Thatcherism with a shiny face" and it is only the diligent work of the UNISON branch, with support in the trade union and labour movement and the wider community that has staved off mass privatisation thus far.

There are no better negotiators, wiser strategists or more cunning tacticians in our UNISON Region than are to be found in the lay leadership of the Barnet branch, singled out for praise in our General Secretary's keynote Conference speech just a few weeks ago.

Privatisation is an existential threat to public service trade unionism - and now poses an unprecedented challenge to our movement. It is the issue around which the history of UNISON in the second decade of the twenty first century will come to be written.

The main purpose of the attack upon public sector pensions from the point of view of the wealthy capitalists, who expect this Government to do their bidding even more enthusiastically than the last one, is to facilitate the privatisation of public services in order to create new opportunities for profit at the taxpayers' expense (which is why any "concessions" on contribution increases in the LGPS founded upon a belated recognition of their potential macroeconomic consequences provides no basis for any agreement).

It's all about privatisation (as is Lambeth's "co-operative council" as we warned - http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/25/council-cooperative-privatisation-barnet-lambeth?cat=commentisfree&type=article - and as much as its advocates might wish that were not so).

The defining struggle of the moment is the fight to defend public services, and UNISON members in Barnet find themselves on a strategically significant part of the front line.

They need, deserve and expect the wholehearted support of every UNISON member and official.

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The unions and the riots - what do we do with Thatchers' grandchildren?

Yesterday, UNISON issued a statement saluting the public service workers dealing with the consequences of the riots (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7116).

A riot is a rending of the social fabric - and it's quite right to remind politicians and the public of the worth of those of us whose work is to weave, and sometimes repair, that fabric. UNISON was absolutely right to do so.

Whilst ACPO and the Police Federation can be pleased that both the Mayor of London and Her Majesty's Opposition have made the obvious step from that point to questioning forthcoming cuts in policing numbers, it's understandable that firefighters are angry that the cuts they face aren't being challenged to the same extent (http://www.fbu.org.uk/?p=3963) - the FBU are clearly right to articulate that anger.

However, our public services are not simply there to respond to, or pick up the pieces after, social disorder. They also play a role in meeting social need, and sustaining involvement in, and the cohesion of, our communities. The statement from PCS on Tuesday went some way to acknowledging that growing unemployment and inequality, accompanied by cuts in social provision are among the longer term causes for the social conditions from which rioting can arise (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/E0A7A515-CEFA-48A4-865EFD52B0A653D3).

Heather Wakefield, writing personally, was able to go a deal further than official comments have in her blog post, rightly picking up on the alienation of inner-city youth and the nature of the policing of those youth as elements in the causation of the riots (http://opinion.publicfinance.co.uk/2011/08/why-there-were-riots-in-lewisham/). This analysis is not a million miles from that offered in the statement issued by my own union branch (http://lambethunison.blogspot.com/2011/08/lambeth-unison-public-statement-in.html).

We certainly need to go beyond praise for our own members to make the point that the deep cuts being made to jobs and services will, without doubt, make such disorder even more likely in future. Our members losing their jobs in the provision of youth services bearing the brunt of cuts can see this and expect to hear us say it.

However, the trade union movement has a broader responsibility to those beyond our ranks, including those - predominantly young - people engaged in rioting and looting. Our union movement is not just the largest civil society organisation - it has a particular role to represent the interests of the working class.

Thatcher's grandchildren, who rioted this week, have internalised her message that "there is no such thing as society" - only a dog eat dog world in which you can expect neither hope nor justice and might as well take some "free stuff" from fellow citizens to whom you neither have nor feel any ties of common interest or obligation.

These are the bitter fruits of the failures of our trade union movement - failure to defeat the Tories in the 80s and 90s; failure to assert the interests of our class under New Labour - but also failure to organise young people, in and out of employment.

We can't change the past - but we can now turn our minds to how we take the ethos of collectivism to marginalised and excluded young people. Surely we need to start by stepping up campaigns to protect the services on which young people rely, and to reverse the policies, on EMA in particular, which are further diminishing the life chances of the young?

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Remember Hiroshima. Cancel Trident

Well said those 21 Labour MPs who have made the point that, on the anniversary of Hiroshima, Labour should be calling for the cancellation of Trident.

No case can be made for the use or threatened use of weapons of mass destruction and no civilised nation should possess, or aspire to possess, such weapons. To remember the hibakusha call on the Government to ensure that disarmament is considered as part of the review of Trident.

Leadership in the pensions dispute - and anonymous commentary

I don't know the identity of the anonymous contributor to the semi-official blog "UNISON Active" who took issue (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/08/mobilising-for-pensions-action-from.html) with commentary from Gregor Gall on the pensions dispute (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/unions-leaders-members). For ease of reference let's call our anonymous friend Joseph Vissarionovich, or "JV" for short.

Gregor, in a reasoned contribution to an important debate, observed that the Preliminary Agenda for this year's "slimline" Trades Union Congress reveals that the big unions haven't made submissions calling for co-ordinated industrial action over the Government's attacks on public sector pensions. This sounds a discordant note when heard alongside the harmonious calls for such action made at last year's Congress - and from our General Secretary at and before UNISON Conference.

Instead of engaging with this substantive point, "JV" instead picks up on an aside in Gregor's article about the desirability of General Secretaries touring workplaces in order to lampoon a serious commentary as no more than a manifestation of the "great leader" approach (a view of history comprehensively debunked by a generation of great Marxist historians including Christopher Hill, Edward Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm).

This enables "JV" in his or her role as publicity officer for our General Secretary's fan club to laud UNISON's "bottom up" approach to preparation for industrial action over pensions. But somehow, "JV", you seem to miss Gregor Gall's point.

We can do all the data-cleansing we want (and we do, and must) - and we can train up pensions champions by the thousand (as we are and should) - but a "bottom up" approach does have to go "up" and influence the conduct of our leadership.

Sometimes - when caught up in the excitement of a two hundred strong "pensions summit" with no constitutional basis or decisionmaking authority perhaps - being an (albeit anonymous) "insider" may not help "JV" to see what is going on.

Perhaps in order to avoid not being able to see the wood for the trees it sometimes helps to be on the outside, looking in.

Does the conduct of UNISON's leadership since Conference suggest a genuine wish for co-ordinated industrial action to defeat the Government, or a preference for cutting deals "scheme by scheme"?

It's a fair question for Gregor Gall to have addressed, and "JV" does UNISON members a disservice by misrepresenting the argument and turning debate about tactics into a loyalty test.

It's twenty years since the Berlin Wall came down, but the Berlin Walls of the mind which convince sufferers that all dissent is divisive continue to haunt our movement.

Gregor Gall deserves a proper and respectful response from those prepared to put their name to their views.

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Pensions - a positive alternative?

I'm on holiday, so may be prone to optimism, but it strikes me that the bad news on pensions in the private sector (http://wricommission.org.uk/wric/private-sector-needs-better-value-for-money-from-its-pensions) presents an opportunity in more ways than one.



Of course it's right to point out that the real problem with pensions in this country is in the private sector (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2392) - just as the real pensions divide is not between public and private but between rich and poor.



But isn't this also now the time to do what I've wondered about before (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2010/04/son-of-frs17-and-lgps.html) turn Hutton on his head and - instead of excluding private sector workers from public sector pension schemes - open up admitted body status in the LGPS to any solvent employer willing to pay their way?



The fight to defend our pensions is inevitably a defensive battle - but we need an alternative vision for a better pensions future, and the stable, viable, funded LGPS might just be the basis for that.



Or maybe I'm just under the influence of too much fresh air, sunshine and Crazy Golf...

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You stupid Tory

Oxbridge educated multi-millionaires clearly (think they) know how to run the world.

Not content with pursuing macroeconomic policies designed to stifle economic recovery, our odious Chancellor has made clear that public sector "reform" is all about instilling "fear" in public sector workers at the microeconomic level (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/30/public-sector-jobs-oliver-letwin?cat=politics&type=article).

This idea - that we need the "stick" of fear to improve productivity in the public sector reveals both the ideology and class bias and prejudice behind Government policy.

First, it is clear that little Oliver really believes that there is something called the "discipline" of the market and that by creating fake "market" structures and imposing them upon public services, we shall have the benefit of this discipline.

(What is it about public schoolboys and "discipline" and why do the rest of us have to be part of it? At least Max Moseley tried to keep it all behind closed doors!)

It is possible to show, theoretically, that in certain precise circumstances (which could not exist in reality) perfectly competitive markets could produce "optimal resource allocation" where all "the factors of production" are applied most efficiently to meeting the demand from consumers. That insight provides no basis however, either in theory or practice, to conclude that an increase in managed competition in the delivery of public services will improve productivity (the measurement of which is in any case deeply problematic).

Little Oliver has a faith in the "discipline" of the market, but that's all it is - it has no basis beyond his warped belief system.

After all, Letwin's chums in banking were all part of a competitive "market" - and look how well that turned out in 2008!

The comparison with the bankers (and also with benefit claimants) shows the class prejudice underpinning Letwin's kindegarten economics.

On planet Letwin, public sector workers share with benefit claimants, a need for the "stick" of discipline, whether to shake us from our unproductive torpor in the workplace or to goad us into jobseeking. Those of us doing least well from this "market economy" must be threatened with worse in order to improve our performance. It's clearly the only language we "oiks" understand.

In the Board Rooms and on the trading floors however, better performance has to be incentivised with handsome bonuses and share options. To motivate gentlemen (and a few ladies) who share little Oliver's background, it is the "carrot" of reward which the market deploys, in its impersonal wisdom, to drive improvement.

After all, Oliver knows that he - and decent people like him - are motivated by being rewarded, whereas "oiks" obviously need a different approach.

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The Government's "contribution" to pension negotiations - we should strike back

I really am trying to do nothing whilst on leave, particularly as the prospect of an adequately remunerated retirement seems to be in some jeopardy! But things keep happening...

The Government's decision to announce proposed "contribution increases" for public sector pension scheme members does seem to pre-empt the "scheme-specific" negotiations into which the trade unions allowed ourselves to be pushed (particularly since "consultation" on these proposals will take place over the summer recess). Today's announcement shows plans to take one billion pounds next year out of the pockets of teachers, health workers and civil servants to help meet the cost of a financial crisis not caused by these groups of workers.

It is certainly a reasonable response to these tactics to get angry but a credible threat of industrial action is an even better response and the best response is to highlight the spreading threat of ever wider action.

When negotiating with an employer under a threat (whether that is of pension contribution increases, job losses or a pay freeze) then any union negotiator knows that they are in a stronger position if clearly preparing - and balloting - for credible, achievable and potentially effective action. The response to a playground bully should not be name-calling, but firm action.

What we need - in line with UNISON Conference policy - is "industrial action to be aimed at achieving maximum unity at the earliest appropriate time, across the public sector."

After Norway - think globally and act locally

I’m not sure if I mentioned sufficiently, whilst blogging a few weeks ago about UNISON Conference, what a pleasure it was to see the exhibition of banners made by my old friend (and former Lambeth UNISON Branch Secretary) Ed Hall, at the People’s History Museum in Manchester.

In pride of place stands the banner, pictured above, which Ed made, almost overnight for us in 1999 when we mobilised local people to protest against the bombings in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho, which we now know were perpetrated by a criminal influenced by the hate politics of the far right.

In the awful shadow of the far worse events which took place in Norway, it is important that labour movement activists recognise that the politics of hate, the antithesis of the politics of labour, require our constant opposition.

Whatever the true nature of any relationship between the Norwegian killer and the thugs of the EDL, it is important that – as we send our condolences to Norway - we prevent the EDL spreading their hate-politics in Tower Hamlets on 3 September.

Pensions "silver bullet"? A lycanthrope's views...

UNISON Active deserves a hat tip for blogging the widely anticipated news that the Local Government Pension Scheme is to be exempted from the contribution increases proposed for other public sector pension schemes (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2011/07/fund-mergers-silver-bullet-in-lgps.html). (Although I really don't understand, comrades, why you blog anonymously! Whether lay activist or full time official, you are surely free to express your views?)(Remember there are now no enemies in the hall...)

I'd like to believe that this positive development (http://m.professionalpensions.com/professional-pensions/news/2095677/lgps-freed-contribution-increase-rule) is primarily attributable to the "the sustained pressure of evidence produced by UNISON during the negotiations" as UNISON Active say, but it occurs to me that lobbying by the (Tory controlled) Local Government Employers (http://www.lge.gov.uk/lge/core/page.do?pageId=119455) may have played a significant role.

I'd also like to believe, as the anonymous blogger does, that "fund mergers will deliver (the Government's target) saving without imposing costs on scheme members or further reductions in pensions for retired members" (even though I still want us to fight the 15% reduction in the value of my pension due to the imposition of CPI for uprating!) UNISON Active say that fund merger is the "silver bullet" in negotiations around the LGPS.

Merger of the separate pension funds has been the Holy Grail at UNISON HQ for a number of years, but if it were to reduce the ability of individual local authorities to determine their employers' contributions (taking account of actuarial advice) this could turn out to be something of a poisoned chalice for local government workers. I'm not saying it's a bad idea - just that it needs careful thought and that it is incautious to start suggesting now that there is some sort of "silver bullet" in negotiations over the LGPS.

In particular, if we emerge from the premature "scheme-specific" negotiations into which we have allowed ourselves to be frogmarched without protecting both the right of private sector workers to be part of our pension schemes, and the requirement upon transferees to match public sector pension provision then we will be offering up hundreds of thousands of our jobs to the profit-hungry multinationals which leech off the taxpayer.

I'm all for negotiating deals without the need for strike action, but you never get the best deal you can without at least mobilising for action - and you don't do that with idle talk of "silver bullets."

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A tale of two sections

Today was another busy day for activists in my own branch, with the different experiences of two different sections of our workforce illustrating a clear lesson about the value of union organisation.

We called off strike action in our libraries - because we secured a deal which met our objective of averting compulsory redundancies, whilst protecting the service better than the previous proposals from management (http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/streathamnews/9153624.Library_strike_called_off/).

Later that same day we lost a key vote at Lambeth's Finance Scrutiny Committee, although we had won the argument, with the result that the Council will press ahead with privatising its own caller centre - to Capita who intend to move the work to Southampton. We will continue to resist - and to do all we can to protect our members - but there is no disguising that this was a setback.

Why such different results in the same branch?

The crucial difference between the two sections is the density of union membership and the demonstrated willingness of those members to take action. In Libraries - where we saved every job - we have 90% density and had a 90% "YES" vote in an official ballot. In the Caller Centre we represent a minority of the workforce - and had not yet been able to get to the point of balloting.

The lesson of this contrast is twofold. First, recruitment matters to members and non-members alike, because "Kirklees" levels of membership give us the potential power to protect the workforce as a whole.

Secondly, to realise that potential, local leaders need to use the confidence which strong membership gives them to find the courage to organise industrial action.

On most working days for a year or more now I have been in at least one meeting to discuss redundancies. I have never seen the union contribution listened to as attentively as it is when backed up by a mandate for strike action.

There are those who believe that you ought not to ballot for action until you have "exhausted" all procedures, some even wrongly believe this to be a requirement of UNISON policy. This is, of course, a foolish view.

I am very pleased that the Greater London Region supported, and the NEC Industrial Action Committee sanctioned, a strike ballot - and a date for action - whilst we were deeply enmeshed in continuing discussions with management.

It is because we were supported to take this correct approach that we have been able to defeat compulsory redundancies in Lambeth Libraries.

We will seek to apply the key lessons of this episode to other local disputes - and I invite other UNISON members reading this post to do likewise.

We need an application form in one hand and a copy of the UNISON Industrial Action Handbook in the other!

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Pensions - A view from the foothills

As a mere member of the UNISON NEC I was not invited to Tuesday's "pensions summit" at UNISON HQ.



(And that's as it should be - the NEC doesn't have direct control over service conditions issues).



I understand that those at the summit were largely facing in the same direction, although whether from that lofty perspective they could see the class struggle I do not know.



Down here in the pensions foothills it seems obvious that we need to be gearing up for action and - if "naming a date" is a bit too Spartish for us, we should at least pencil in a week (or month?)



Not for the first time this year I find I agree completely with the Communist Party of Britain about a key question confronting our Union (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/107288) - it is time now to concentrate upon preparing for industrial action against the Government, and to use negotiations as a tool to assist those preparations.



This is not the approach which we can expect from the General Secretary of the TUC, who will invariably see industrial action as a tool to be used to assist negotiations.



Without effective united mass action we will not be able to shift the parameters within which negotiations are taking place in order to arrive at anything resembling a worthwhile outcome.



The Government are losing the "affordability" argument not because of the eloquence of our negotiators but because of the decisive action of hundreds of thousands of public servants on 30 June.



Although Brendan Barber's letter to the Government does appear to face in both directions (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2375) it still panders too much to the illusion that there is - at the moment - anything approaching a deal to be had from the Coalition as things stand.

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Pensions "summit" and the need for unity

Those attending today's Pensions "summit" at UNISON HQ should be guided by the statement put before UNISON Conference by our NEC four weeks ago;



"In the weeks ahead though every member must be made aware of the severity of the issues that face us, and the union must step up a gear in preparing for industrial action, to ensure that the 1.2 million members who will be balloted will participate, and will vote positively for industrial action. We must ensure that members are involved and fully understand what is at stake, to ensure we deliver a high turnout in any ballot and deliver a resounding yes vote for industrial action."



To win the ballot - and the battle - we'll need unity across the whole public sector, not just across health and local government. If we put sectoral considerations ahead of the need for unity we will all be poorer in the years ahead.

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What was the point of that then?

Now we move into "scheme-specific" negotiations on our pensions (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=7060).

So why did we bother to have the talks with Francis Maude and Danny Alexander? What has been achieved?

Nothing.

Nothing appears to have been ruled out. Maybe "voices off" have indeed promised no contribution increases in the LGPS (a tribute to the influence of the employers rather more than to the organisations of the employees perhaps?) but it appears that "world class" negotiators have emerged from the Cabinet Office with a no score draw at the bottom of League Two.

The point of the Cabinet Office talks (if I can explain it for the really dense pupils of struggle like novice B Barber) was to use the power of unity to have some leverage. If you never meant to do that then you really shouldn't've wasted all our time. You may have asked the unions who struck on 30 June what their "exit strategy" was - but have you ever had any sort of strategy at all?

The workers who struck on 30 June - and the many others fighting round the country - are truly lions (and they are led by lions) - but our movement as a whole does appear right now to be led by donkeys (or possibly barbers)(meaning no offence to those engaged in the honest toil of cutting hair!).

If I went to my Branch Committee and said "right, I've spoken to the Director of HR, the Leader and the Chief Executive and agreed that nothing is ruled out, now off you trot [pun intended] and negotiate your redundancies department by department" they would rightly ask what I was for.

Where cuts and job losses are hitting a whole Council workforce (for example) it must be right at least to try to mobilise a response across the whole workforce, rather than deciding at the outset to leave each section to fight alone. The least you do in these circumstances is ensure that you have a corporate trade dispute so that the door is open to workforce-wide action.

Where an attack on pensions hits the whole public sector (and provides the only lawful opportunity for a generalised response to any of a whole series of attacks) then the least that should be done is that disputes should be organised and co-ordinated around unifying demands.

That means that the Cabinet Office talks should have been used to make some general demands (around, say, contribution increases, retirement ages, uprating and private sector membership). These demands, if unmet, should have led to trade disputes with the relevant Secretaries of State, and to co-ordinated action in the early autumn.

A leadership of our movement which lived daily with the attacks of the Tory Government would have pursued such an approach. It remains the right approach, reflecting UNISON policy and the interests of our members, and we should pursue it still.

Those who support the move to "scheme specific" negotiations on the basis that no concessions have been won (or perhaps even been asked for) support neither UNISON policy nor UNISON members.

The Service Group Liaison Committee (SLGC) meets tomorrow. It has no place in UNISON's Rule Book - and was only ever mentioned in UNISON Conference Policy when our largest Service Group declared it unfit for purpose after the fiasco of the last pensions dispute.

If the SLGC wants to support the move to scheme-specific negotiations in order to break the unity of the trade unions with no assurances whatsoever then I hope each member of that august body will be prepared to undertake a speaking tour of branches to explain why the "protect our pensions" campaign was no more than hot air.

As a local government worker, I know who sold me short last time there was a pensions dispute. As a public servant I can see what is happening now.

I have no enemies within the Union, but if my friends make mistakes I shall let them know. If tomorrow's SLGC lives up to its potential it will call for trade disputes in all sectors now and unified action at an early date.

No socialist or trade unionist would settle for less. This is not a time for soundbites, but the hand of history is on their shoulders...

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Focus!

It's wonderful to speculate that Cameron may be destroyed by his relationship with Murdoch. In the mean time my pension may be destroyed by the relationship between my union leadership and "Mr Ed" - since it appears we aren't (yet?) up for the united fight which the occasion clearly demands.



Rather than celebrate the humiliation of the Murdochs please can we all try to focus on what matters?



Anyone who thought Monday 18 Juky 2011 was a day on which one would be wise to do a deal with a powerful reactionary Government should be prepared to think again.



But how do we communicate that? UNISON members should get on to their Service Group Executive member now!

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Panem et circenses

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the discomfiture of a rich bastard as much as the next trade unionist.

Watching the odious Murdoch and his entourage playing the camel trying - and (most importantly) failing to get through the eye of the needle has been a great deal of fun.

I am, however, a tiny bit worried that whilst we celebrate the downfall of News International (and the emergence of Ed Miliband as a leader of the stature of Neil Kinnock) the TUC may be about to throw away our strength in the fight to defend our pensions (and therefore give up any hope of a national fight against the Government.)

It may be that we are being distracted (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses) whilst what we should be doing is focusing on our own interests.

Of course we don't want our media dominated by one plutocrat (or two, or three) - whether or not he (or improbably she) is British. Of course we want a greater democratisation of our mass media.

However, the key issue which confronts us is the Tory assault upon our Welfare State - and our only chance of effective, nationally co-ordinated action to confront this is if the TUC can find both the courage and the intelligence to organise the widest, earliest and most effective action against the assault on public sector pensions.

(For those whose scripted response to such a suggestion is to observe that the TUC could not do this, I invite you to consider whether your script was prepared at 10 Downing Street, by Ed M, or at Congress House, and to reflect upon what it says about you to be in agreement with such a parcel of rogues.)

The Government's attack on pensions provided - and still provides - the trade union movement with the opportunity to organise widespread national strike action (around a series of separate trade disputes), likely to achieve a large part of our objectives, whilst delivering a shattering political blow to the Coalition.

The Government, having belatedly realised that they were in danger of over-reaching themselves, have been drawing back in order to disrupt the unity of the union movement which (alone) can threaten their hegemony.

Those union leaders who focus now on building strength sector-by-sector in order to do the best we can in "scheme specific negotiations" are abandoning the very cause which brought into existence the largest of UNISON's "former partner union"s, as well as the interests of our class. (The purpose of a trade union is not simply to continue to exist, but to represent and promote the interests of our members, so as to give some purpose to continued existence.)

We need to press home the advantage given us by the present political weakness of the Coalition of the millionaires in order to assert the agenda of the millions. The key battle of the moment is about whether we humiliate the Government over pensions or they humiliate us.

If tomorrow the PSLG support a move to scheme-specific negotiations, without having won a single concession, then we shall enter this battle under a leadership which neither believes in, nor wants, victory.

If that happens - as I hope it will not - rank and file activists need to redouble our efforts to secure both unity and action.

In the mean time dear reader, enjoy the pain of the Murdochs as we once enjoyed the pain of the Maxwells - but don't be distracted by the Murdochs from the Government's plan to "do a Maxwell" with the pensions of all public servants!

Unity is strength. It's not complicated. Don't be distracted.

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Trade Union Unity or a pensions farce?

I hope that the tragedy of 15 April 1921 (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(1921)) isn't set to be repeated as farce at the TUC Public Service Liaison Group on 18 July, ninety years later.

In 1921 the pledges of mutual support between trade unions were found wanting. In 2011 the Government may be set to propose that negotiations on the future of public service pensions move on to "scheme-specific" negotiations on the basis that, as far as the recommendations of Lord Hutton are concerned, "nothing is ruled out."

If the TUC support this move they will be acknowledging a failure to use the potential strength of our unity to secure concessions - and will be opening the door to "divide and rule" tactics from the Government. This wouldn't simply - as in 1921 - be a betrayal of one (or more) union(s) by the leaders of other unions. It would amount to the leaders of those unions who support Brendan Barber in bending the knee to Danny Alexander letting down their own members very seriously indeed.

If I may be parochial for a moment, as a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme - I would clearly be relieved if lobbying from the local authority employers meant that the Government withdrew proposed increases in contributions in the LGPS.

It may be that hints of such a move are amongst the encouragement being given to the largest unions to break ranks with the teachers and civil servants in particular and rush now into "scheme-specific" talks.

However, if talks about the LGPS commence now we will be swallowing the 15% reduction in our pensions imposed on 1 April when the basis of uprating was changed - and (more importantly) we will be squandering the opportunity to use the combined strength of the entire public sector to resist Hutton's catastrophic plan to exclude private sector workers from public sector pensions, which sits alongside the Government's desire to end pension protection on transfer.

If outsourcing companies (such as Capita) know that they can transfer local government employees without having to preserve the value of their pensions then they will be able to offer cheaper bids to Councils desperate to save money.

This will tend to accelerate privatisation - and will ensure that the many thousands of workers whose jobs face privatisation will lose completely whatever we think we have gained for LGPS members in "scheme-specific" negotiations.

If we miss the chance to fight nationally to defend our pensions (and therey resist privatisation) we will be abandoning our members and branches to a contract-by-contract fight against privatisation from employers who will then know that the UK's largest trade union funked the only chance it will get in this Parliament to defeat the most reactionary Government in our history.

I so hope I am worrying needlessly.

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Disjuncture

Stepping from a meeting of our National Executive Council back into the maelstrom of job losses and privatisation in the workplace is like moving between dimensions.

Looked at from the perspective of the national trade unions (those employed in, or spending much of their time in, the Centre) the Government's attacks upon our welfare state and those who work in it are happening "out there."

That's not to say that there isn't a genuine and heartfelt desire to resist at the top of our Union. There is. But to leave the Centre and travel back the few miles to my own branch is to rejoin the world in which these attacks are raining down on us, in a way which you simply don't feel at the Centre.

Here - and I take my branch only as an example - are librarians preparing to strike as their shop stewards negotiate with management to avert that strike by avoiding redundancies; One O'Clock Club workers pleading with a Labour Party branch meeting to make Councillors stop their managers ruining their service; Park Rangers helping their Convenor to try to persuade management to focus on income generation rather than dismissals; Caller Centre workers mobilised by their shop stewards to lobby local businesses against the privatisation of their jobs to a company which wants to take the work sixty miles away; and, shop stewards fighting a rearguard action against management bullying and discrimination under cover of the cuts.

These are just some of the things which are going on (in addition to the everyday grind of casework) and I know that a hundred other Branch Secretaries could tell a similar tale. This is the busiest time I have known in more than two decades of union activism.

But - and here I agree with our General Secretary - this is what we are for. This is why our predecessors built, here in this country, the first trade union movement in the world. Our collective organisation is meant to be for fighting to protect ourselves when we have no other option.

I have heard many people say that our members are not uniformly or universally ready to fight, and of course that is (always) true.

But this is a time that calls for leadership. Not leadership that seeks and then replicates a consensus, but leadership which leads from the front.

Not leadership which reflects back the uncertainty of our members, thereby magnifying it, but leadership which sets before our members the need for decisive action and for a willingness to make the sacrifices which this will entail.

In short, this is a time for leftwing leadership. At local level we can make what little difference it is possible to make. A Branch Secretary cannot make members fight injustice if they lack the confidence or inclination to do so - but she or he can help, rather than hinder, them when they do.

At a national level our leadership have, this year, a chance to shape UNISON's place in the history books of the future.

We could be the clever people who, understanding the complex differences between pension schemes, realised the centrality of sector-by-sector organisation and, in helping to broker scheme by scheme deals in which our members shoulder more of the demographic burden, help to weaken defined benefit pension provision.

Or we could be the stupid people who fail to recognise the inevitability of increased contributions and reduced benefits at a later age. We could foolishly insist upon unity in negotiations and subsequent action, regardless of all the detailed differences between the schemes.

Worst of all, we could be so daft as to stand shoulder to shoulder with teachers and civil servants, as well a other health and local government workers, in order to assert the (tremendously unfashionable and old-fashioned) unity of the working class.

If we were that stupid we might one day be remembered as the people who stopped the most reactionary Government in history from destroying the key gains of past generations.

Now is the time when union leaders are called upon to risk the enormous humiliation of failure in hope of the prize of success.

If we can take that risk nationally then life at HQ will come to reflect the all but intolerable pressure in the branches, and the disjuncture I have felt wil disappear.

I hope.

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No enemies in the room

Newly elected local government NEC member, Kathy Smith, sought to raise - at the close of today's meeting of the UNISON NEC - concerns about the Regional supervision of the Bromley branch.



Whilst procedurally the President may well have been correct that this matter could not be pursued to a conclusion as a "matter arising" from the previous minutes, the majority of my NEC colleagues who voted to move to "next business" will need to consider further how we give effect to the statement of our General Secretary, made at our Conference in Manchester, that he had "no enemies within the hall."



We need not to have enemies in the meeting room either - and the new Development and Organisation Committee needs to oversee the rapid return to democratic control of the branches under supervision. It may be that we need also a clearer process for taking branches into supervision.

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The biennial dance of the Committees and the Magnificent Sevens

As is customary, the first full meeting of the newly elected National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON split into its various Committees in order to elect the Chairs and Vice-Chairs, who act, between meetings, with the authority of the NEC.



The President announced, before we split up, that hustings would not be permitted, but that the Presidential team would review this and hustings might be permitted - in 2013... ("Name the Day" I say!)



Sue Highton was re-elected unopposed as Chair of the Development and Organisation Committee, with Mark Clifford winning the position of Vice-Chair with nine votes against seven (of whom I was one) who voted for Moz Greenshields (who had asked for hustings).



Jane Carolan and Steve Warwick were re-elected as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Policy Committee defeating challengers, Helen Davies and April Ashley.



The Chairs of the other strategic Committees remain as they were. Former President, Angela Lynes, remains Chair of the Industrial Action Committee with Lucia McKeevor as Vice-Chair, defeating a challenge from veteran NEC member (and former Vice-Chair of the Committee) Roger Bannister, who garnered seven votes.



Congratulations to all those elected.

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Naming Ceremonies?

Serial UNISON NEC member and sometime blogger, James Anthony, opined today (in response to the suggestion that we should "name the day" to commence unified industrial action to defend public service pensions) that we were talking about a campaign of strike action and not a wedding.

This is of course true, as was the observation from our General Secretary that a single day won't in any case do the job and that a sustained campaign will be required.

However, since we do need both to marry together the efforts of all the public service trade unions and to begin to visualise a timetable for sustained action, the demand to "name the day" does correspond - in a general way - with the interests of our members (and potential members).

By identifying a clear timetable for unified action our trade unions would send an unambiguous message to this Coalition Government that we are not going to allow the complex differences between particular pension schemes to divide and diminish our unity of purpose (which must be to inflict a defeat on them in this battle in order to weaken and diminish all their many attacks upon the interests of our class).

Additionally, by giving a general indication of the timetable to which we are working, we will help to overcome the problem of activists putting other issues ahead of the pensions dispute.

As one such branch activist I know that I can now only deal with crises and that I need the spur (or goad) of a timetable if the pensions issue is to remain at the top of my "to do" list.

Whilst activists will rightly lobby the NEC as the body responsible for the governance of our Union between Conferences, it is also true that the initiation of industrial action is a matter for Sector Committees (under the overall responsibility of Service Groups) and that approval for such attempts will depend upon the NEC's Industrial Action Committee.

As some disputes cross Service Group boundaries their management may fall to the Service Group Liaison Committee (SGLC)(which exists in a shadow realm beyond our Rule Book).

There are those who say that our arrangements for lay control of cross-Sector industrial action are clear, simple and transparent. They are wrong.

If our General Secretary has invited Regional Convenors to an extended SGLC meeting on the 19th (aka the Pensions "summit") then this pushes in a correct - inclusive - direction. Including representatives of each Regional Local Government Committee on the body dealing with negotiations on the Local Government Pension Scheme would be a further positive step.

We have more work yet to do if we are to ensure democratic control by the elected representatives of our members over the dispute which will define our Union. In the mean time, those who ask our NEC to "name the day" make a demand which correctly corresponds to the interests of those we represent.

I look forward to being lobbied in the morning!

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Tramp the dirt down

I remember, long ago, Tony Benn objecting to the coining of the phrase "Thatcherism" as it personalised a political philosophy we opposed.



It is pretty much axiomatic that Tony Benn is right, as he certainly was on that point.



However, individuals are not unimportant sometimes, and one individual who did as much as anyone to drive through the Thatcherite agenda in the 80s was Rupert Murdoch.



Therefore, as much as I look forward to celebrating Thatcher's death (remembering the Falklands, the Miners and the millions of wasted years of unemployment), I today also enjoy the fact that Murdoch has had to close a profitable newspaper in a doomed attempt to rescue his reputation.



It's impossible to celebrate the loss of hundreds of jobs by ordinary people employed to produce a newspaper (http://m.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notwmobile/home/). But it is absolutely right to look forward to dancing - soon - on the political grave, not only of the man himself but also, perhaps of those politicians who subordinated themselves to him.



What we need is an independent judicial inquiry into News Interrnational - and a labour movement enquiry into what successive Labour leaders thought they were doing sucking up to a gang of scoundrels.

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UNISON needs to act on pensions - lobby the NEC next Wednesday!

Our General Secretary, Dave Prentis issued a "call to arms" at our National Delegate Conference, and made clear our support for our sister unions' action last week.



Next week our newly elected National Executive Council meets - we need to step up preparations for united strike action across the public sector as a whole.



We need to be alive to the danger of "divide and rule" tactics from the Government. UNISON in particular, and our leadership most of all, have an obligation to inspire confidence across the movement that we will rise to the challenge which we face.



UNISON members can show our leaders that we will support the call to arms by attending a lobby of the NEC on Wednesday 13 July at 8.30am outside 130 Euston Road to show support for the setting of a timetable for action.



Any UNISON member who can get along to support our Union's fight for our pensions - I'll see you there!

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Freedom for Palestine

Later today I will attempt to purchase my first single since the days of vinyl at http://freedomoneworld.com/.



This is to get a track supporting the Palestinians up the charts (from #43). You can read more on the PSC website (http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=4&l2_id=106&Content_ID=1985).



If I do manage to purchase a download all I will then need to do is work out where to put the stylus...

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NHS - 63 and going strong

Tuesday is the "birthday" of our National Health Service which, at 63, may face premature retirement at the hands of a hostile Government.

UNISON nationally has been encouraging members to organise events to mark this occasion - and to underline our determination to defend our NHS. The various events which are taking place are identified on ;the TUC's excellent "false economy" site.

Were I able to do so, I would certainly attend the London demonstration called by UNITE and backed by the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). UNISON in London needs to learn the art of not letting other people take the lead which we should be taking to defend our Health Service - but most importantly we should support every action which mobilises support for our NHS.

Occasionally we win

As a rule I blog here about trade union work, but - like every trade unionist I am not only a worker but a citizen and, in my case, a parent.

In this capacity I have been pleased to play a modest role in the excellent campaign to defeat plans for Academy status of Varndean School, where my daughter is a student and my mother was "school captain" in the 50s (!)

On Friday, this campaign scored a significant victory for democracy and the defence of public services when the Headteacher and Chair of Governors declared that the school "was not for sale". This appeared to be a complete retreat from the decision taken three months by Governors to "express an interest" in Academy status.

Whilst the authors of this statement could not resist a couple of sly digs at the "unpleasantness" of "political campaigning" against their original expression of interest in Academy status, their statement is otherwise a complete vindication of the campaign waged by parents, students, staff and supporters to defend the school as it is, and to protect state education.

In a year of retreats and defeats, of redundancies and - all too often - despair, it's good to know that, just occasionally and maybe just for a while, we can win. No victory is certain or permanent, but each victory should be celebrated and built upon. I hope that the campaigners who have pushed one school away from considering Academy status (at least for a time) will broaden their efforts to protect state education more generally.

If those who use and rely upon public services stand together with those who provide them we can defend our services and catch a glimpse of how the world might be.

If you face the same challenge start with the website of the Anti-Academy Alliance to learn how to resist.

Intergenerational solidarity

With thanks to Harpymarx here you can see your blogger bearing the burden of future generations on Thursday's UCU picket line at the Brixton site of Lambeth College.

The Government are determined to destroy occupational pension provision (at least on a defined benefit basis) whatever they may say.

Their determination is such that they may well delay the destruction in one sector if that means that they can achieve their aims by dividing us sector from sector.

UNISON had to step up to the plate now. We are the biggest trade union and we need to lead and unify the trade union response in order to defeat the Government.