Dave Prentis is right

Regular readers of the blog will realise that the title of this post isn't really what is to be expected here.

However, I've had occasion to look at the responses from our three largest trade unions to Ed Miliband's silly little speech earlier today, in which he provided an object lesson in why we need far fewer career politicians with no genuine labour movement experience.

I can't really see the need to add to what I said yesterday in anticipation of this unfortunate episode (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/what-do-i-do-with-rosette-ed.html?m=1) (except to say that, after listening to the speech, I still went canvassing)(or "door knocking" as we now say).

At first glance the response from UNITE (http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/uniteandthepoliticallevy/) looks skillful. It's the sort of spin we would normally expect from Progress (the Tory fifth column within Labour) but in an opposite direction. Essentially, UNITE are trying to interpret what Ed Miliband said in the direction of what Len McCluskey wishes he had said, hoping to frame the debate in order to influence the outcome of forthcoming discussions about the detail.

Unfortunately, it's not persuasive to anyone who heard what Ed Miliband actually said. It's quite clear that, like the worst sort of employer, he wants to deal with trade unionists "as individuals"and not collectively, represented by the one with the biggest mouth (perhaps particularly if that mouth belongs to a Scouser).

A softly-softly approach to the talks which McCluskey welcomed so gushingly almost as soon as Miliband had sat down is unlikely to cut much ice. We can't out-spin Progress, we need to outnumber them and out-organise them if we are going to defeat their agenda, which is to neutralise what little is left of trade union power in the Labour Party.

Turning to the response from Paul Kenny and the GMB (http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-ballot-on-political-fund), this is also superficially welcome, being, as it is, characteristically "old school." The GMB position amounts to threatening a ballot on affiliation.

Such a ballot could, of course, only be won through a campaign backed enthusiastically from the top of the Union. Therefore, you could take the view that this is shrewd negotiating by a skilled tactician, showing what he is prepared to do if a compromise cannot be achieved.

Or not.

This might be effective if we were dealing with people who cared about the labour movement or the Labour Party - but the Party Leader aims now to become the willing prisoner of people who believe, as Tony Blair did (and does), that the Labour Party was a historic mistake. Given this, the GMB position will appear to our adversaries as Paul Kenny threatening to saw off the branch on which he is sitting. (The perception of our adversaries may be flawed, but it will influence their response to our actions).

I wondered briefly if these two General Secretaries were playing "good cop, bad cop" but decided that was the script for a low budget "straight to DVD" movie.

So it was something of a relief to come to the UNISON response (http://www.unison.org.uk/content/conBlogPost/25). Dave Prentis says, rightly, that this whole issue is a diversion from the real issues which our members expect us (and the Labour Party) to deal with.

It is.

Progress have eagerly led a (perhaps not unwilling) Labour Leader into a well signposted Tory bear trap which has the dual benefit, for a cruel and failing Government of dividing what we have at the moment instead of an Opposition whilst simultaneously diverting attention from their own failings.

If Miliband had felt he needed to comment further he could have responded with references to the many disgraces of Tory funding (as some of us tried to point out today's Standard - https://mobile.twitter.com/philewis/status/354662800959889408/photo/1).

He did not need to make today's speech. He chose to do it. In doing so he ignored the pressing priorities of working people to dance to a tune played by the media, in harmony with Progress and the Coalition.

The UNISON response is the best of the three both because it is right in its own terms and also because an inscrutable failure even to engage with or acknowledge proposals which you wish had not been made is very often the best opening gambit.

So there you are. Dave Prentis is right.

For anyone who's made it this far into the post, please rest assured that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, as I intend to review the history of UNISON's unique dual section political fund over the past twenty years.

I can't imagine I'll give that post the same title.

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What do I do with the Rosette Ed?

I'm off work tomorrow, and have been intending to do some work, as a Labour Party member, in a local Council by-election.

But the Leader of the Party appears not to want the union link any more (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23234340). He may say he wants to "mend" not "end" the link but if you look at what is being said that's not true.

Our latterday Kinnock says;

"I believe we need people to be able to make a more active, individual, choice on whether they affiliate to the Labour Party.

So we need to set a new direction in our relationship with trade union members in which they choose to join Labour through the affiliation fee: they would actively choose to be individually affiliated members of the Labour Party and they would no longer be automatically affiliated."

The key word here is "individual". The Party will happily take money from willing trade unionists, who will be able to participate in fundraising, door-knocking and generally promoting the political careers of the well-connected with wealthy backers, whilst enjoying all the power and influence which comes of being a Party member these days.

A good, socialist case can be made for the Labour-union link (http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/not-just-in-defence-of-the-union-link/) but that's not our Leader's politics. He has chosen the side of "Progress" and those who don't really want the union-link.

Because, if we all just choose as individuals whether or not to affiliate to Labour then there will be no more organic a link between our Union and our Party than there is between the Party and any other civil society organisation.

Individual UNISON members might join the Party, be active in it and even be selected to stand for office, but UNISON as a collective organisation would have no voice (and the fact that we have used our voice poorly and weakly too often is no argument for silence).

Without collective affiliation, how long will trade union delegations still attend Party Conference? Why would there be dedicated seats on the National Executive for bodies which did no more than happen to have in membership a number of disconnected and unorganised individual members of the Party?

Similarly, on Planet Miliband (which appears now to be a satellite of Planet Mandelson), since there would be no affiliation, there could be no disaffiliation and so "Progress" can deliver to the anti-Labour Left the prospect of trade union support for other candidates (which both parties to this unholy alliance have long sought).

It is an irony that Miliband may have been encouraged to believe that this approach to "opting-in" is something the Party could easily survive by a misunderstanding of how it is that as many as a third of UNISON members come to pay into the "affiliated" section of our political fund. If so, he has been very poorly advised - and anyone who thinks the UNISON system amounts to "contracting-in" needs a tutorial in UNISON Rules and processes.

For a son of his father Miliband also exhibits little comprehension of the history of Labourism. "Contracting-in", when it was introduced in 1927 by the Baldwin Government, cost Labour 1.3 Million affiliated members and a quarter of its income.

But that was "contracting-in" imposed upon us by our enemies as revenge for the General Strike, resisted by a united front of the Party and trade unions, and preserving the vital collective nature of union affiliation which anchors the Party to the wider movement. This would be an attack from our own Leader, dividing the Party and movement in order to individuate (and thereby neutralise) the union link.

The half-baked plans of Ed Miliband will do damage to the Labour Party of which Stanley Baldwin could only have dreamed.

The question confronting the trade unions is a much bigger dilemma than my parochial worry about whether I put on that Red Rosette tomorrow. The question is, shall we resist?

Ed Miliband is gambling that our desperation to oust the Coalition will mean that we will swallow anything. I don't think that any self-respecting trade unionist who has hope in the Labour Party should do that.

Any trade union leader who supports Ed Miliband on this question would be writing off the idea of a Party of Labour in this country.

If I wear that Rosette tomorrow, it will be because I am not yet ready to take that step.

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General Secretary's report to the UNISON NEC

Wednesday's meeting of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) was dominated by the allocation of NEC members to Committees, and the election of Committee Chairs for the next two years.

General Secretary, Dave Prentis, did however give his characteristically wide-ranging "state of the Union" report.

He began with the demonstration in defence of the National Health Service in Manchester on 29 September, emphasising that this is a priority for the Union. In response to subsequent questions, Dave confirmed that a note would be going out to our Regions the very next day.

Details of the demonstration are apparently set to be finalised at a meeting of the TUC Executive on 9 July. Within UNISON lead responsibility is being given to the North West Region, a decision which may these days have some political as well as geographical merit.

Dave also covered pay in his report, expressing his disappointment that members had not generally been stronger on this issue this year (rest assured that several questioners expressed the view that it might be the leadership who most need to show more strength!)

I was one of those confident that Dave did not intend the more downbeat interpretations of his remark that no one Union, nor one sector, could expect to breach the 1% pay policy for public servants.

With Scottish Local Government workers set to commence a strike ballot with just this aim in mind, and the Higher Education Service Group Executive (SGE) agreeing (at a meeting which - quite annoyingly - clashed with Wednesday's NEC meeting) to ballot for action also, it's clear that the best-led elements of our Union are fed up waiting for a pay dispute that always recedes into the future as time passes. The challenge to our NEC (and our General Secretary) is to give a clear and inspirational lead.

On a more positive note, Dave invited Assistant General Secretary Bronwyn McKenna to report on UNISON's application for judicial review of the Government's imposition of fees for claimants in employment tribunals. Whether or not we succeed in this legal challenge it has certainly been the right thing to do, as sometimes litigation is the only available response to injustice.

UNISON has separately referred to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the absurd legal restrictions on industrial action ballots imposed by UK law and has won a vitally important, precedent setting Supreme Court decision that school staff can use refuse collectors as comparators in equal pay claims.

Dave also reported that every Region would be organising an event to mark the 65th anniversary of the NHS and covered the challenge which the Union faces to recruit more members and to shift resources from the Centre to the Regions.


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A series of unfortunate events...?

I will get, promptly, to a proper report from today's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) but first I need to comment upon the latest of a series of unfortunate events.
At the point today at which NEC members were travelling from the 9th and 1st floors to the ground floor of the UNISON Centre for an unanticipated run-off ballot in the election of NEC members to the National UNISON Labour Link Committee (an election in which your humble blogger was sadly not a winner), thirteen people spent an hour stuck in a lift.
The title of this blog post was suggested to me by one of the NEC members involved in this incident. It was unfortunate that this happened at all, and embarrassing to the Union that it happened on the day of an NEC meeting.
It was additionally embarrassing (I should imagine) that this happened on the day of the first full meeting of a new NEC following our biennial elections.
But, this was just the last in a series of unfortunate events (and that series of events help to explain why today's lift incident was even more embarrassing than might otherwise have been the case).
For the reason why so many people were in a lift travelling from the top to the bottom of the impressive erection of the Euston Road in the middle of a UNISON NEC was that we don't hold NEC meetings all together in one place.
We don't do that because the Ninth Floor of the UNISON Centre is not an accessible venue for all NEC members. So most NEC members meet at the top of the building, and a few participate (imperfectly) through a partial audio-visual link from the first floor.
We could meet - on the ground floor of the UNISON Centre - in a perfectly satisfactory venue accessible to all NEC members.
However, not only have successive Presidential Teams refused to consider any such relocation, repeated requests that the NEC be permitted at least to vote on where we should meet have been refused, most recently today.
Two years ago a UNISON NEC meeting took place on the ground floor of the UNISON Centre because of teething problems on the 9th floor - but since then the NEC has not been offered the opportunity to continue to meet in that entirely satisfactory venue, nor even the opportunity to vote on this.
So what was (perhaps) most unfortunate of all the series of unfortunate events was that UNISON NEC members were trapped in a lift precisely because they had not been given the opportunity even to vote on relocating their own meeting within their own building.
UNISON cannot be held responsible for the disgraceful approach implemented in our name (that an approach to making a "reasonable adjustment" which segregates the person for whom such an adjustment is made from the rest of the NEC is to be preferred to moving NEC meetings so that all members can participate equally).
UNISON cannot be held responsible for this disgraceful approach because the democratically elected ruling body of our trade union has had no opportunity to take such responsibility. However, our NEC can not deny responsibilty for allowing ourselves to be treated in this way.
Those of us who can no more stomach segregation in the name of "reasonable adjustment" than we would on grounds of race or gender (or any other reason) have had no opportunity to express our views within our trade union (even though we may be members of our Union's ruling NEC).
It will be yet another "unfortunate event" if this blatant breach of UNISON's proud commitment to equality has to be taken outside our trade union. However, those of us who believe in UNISON's values cannot permit a misplaced loyalty to those who claim to share that belief to get in the way of giving effect to our values.
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UNISON's Magnificent Seven Minus One

Before I get further into reporting from today's meeting of UNISON's National Executive Council I will report on a relatively minor item from the end of the meeting, but one which puts UNISON in a good light.

This concerns nominations to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). UNISON has - as all TUC affiliates have - the right to make nominations to various sections of the General Council which are elected by the whole of Congress. In one such we agreed to renominate Gloria Mills to represent black women trade unionists.

We also have the right, in Section A, to nominate seven direct representatives of UNISON on to the General Council. However, today, our NEC nodded through a recommendation that we make only six such nominations. This was not some error or oversight, but a thought out approach to demonstrating UNISON's commitment to the principle that the TUC should not simply be dominated by the biggest trade unions.

Therefore we agreed to nominate Jane Carolan, Eleanor Smith and Chris Tansley, from the NEC, and Karen Jennings, Dave Prentis and Liz Snape, from our senior management, to sit on the General Council of the TUC, whilst leaving our seventh seat vacant.

As a forthright critic of our leadership from time to time, it is only right that I pay tribute to the Presidential Team for having thought through, debated and recommended this gesture of respect for the smaller trade unions who are also an important part of our movement.

The dog that didn't (quite) bark at UNISON Conference

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will know that sometimes at a trade union Conference it's the decisions which don't get taken which tell you as much about what is going on as those that are.

The front page story of two of the four Conference bulletins produced for (rather than by) the National Executive Council (NEC) were devoted to attacks on a motion which never even got debated - Motion 107.

Opposition to this motion had included reference to cynical blog posts written late at night, so readers of this blog will no doubt take this post with a pinch of the salt which you will have scattered in a circle around yourself before reading this...

So what was Motion 107 about?

It sought to increase the proportion of UNISON's subscription income which goes to our branches from 23.5% to 25.5%, giving the increment directly only to those branches who have taken on the administration of our membership database.

This would have moved no more than £3.4 Million out of the Centre and to the branches. It provoked not just fillibustering but flattery, threats and procedural innovations. Perhaps if (or I should say when) UNISON Conference gets to vote on the allocation of funding between branches and the Centre it's pretty much inevitable we shall opt for some greater decentralisation?

Why is this so?

Partly it's that collective bargaining has been increasingly decentralised as our national trade union has proven incapable of defending much more than the shell of national bargaining.

Partly it's that our branches are facing up to organising a fragmenting workforce as our national trade union has proven insufficiently strong to prevent this fragmentation.

Partly it's that our branches face additional accommodation and staffing costs as our national trade union has been found wanting in defending trade union facilities.

All of these weaknesses of our national trade union flow (most recently) from the premature abandonment of the fight to defend our pensions and from its debilitating consequences, including those for local government pay this year in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

However, the roots of the decentralisation of employee relations in public services are deeper than the events of the past two years. It seems to be unavoidable that our national trade union has decreasing relevance to the interests of our members.

It follows that those who care for the future of our trade union will want to try to find an accommodation with those who, quite reasonably and responsibly, supported Motion 107.

Sometimes a motion that isn't even debated can be the beginning of a result.

But if you've read this far, you already knew that...

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29 September and the NHS. It's not how we got here, it's where we're going

Following my disappointment at the June meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) where a majority opposed all talk of a national demonstration, I'm pleased I was right to be optimistic that a better position would emerge at last week's UNISON Conference (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2013/06/unison-and-defence-of-our-national.html?m=1).



After the contributions of our own General Secretary last Tuesday and that of the General Secretary of the TUC a week ago today, it is clear that we shall be heading for Manchester on 29 September for a national demonstration in defence of the National Health Service, with further campaigning ahead in the months to follow.



Some on the left will be critical of the time taken to get to this point, they will warn that, if our only message is "vote Labour", we won't be saying enough, and they will question the extent to which we can rely upon our own leaders. On all three questions they will have a point.



However, now that the call for this demonstration has been made, the most important thing we can do is to make it massive - and use it to boost and bolster local campaigns in defence of the health service, and public services generally.



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If there are Councillors Against the Cuts, shouldn't we be too?

Continuing my catching up from the events of last week's UNISON Conferences, I want to say something about "Councillors Against the Cuts", which was the theme of a debate at Local Government Conference last Monday, and a fringe meeting at National Delegate Conference last Wednesday.



Attendance at the fringe suffered not only from a clash with the bedroom tax fringe but also from the fact that, in navigating the rapids of Rule P, the branch moving motions on this subject to both Conferences failed to foresee that the subject would be debated at the Conference at which it had originally been ruled out of order, but would not be prioritised for debate at the Conference at which it had originally been admitted to the agenda.



The debate at Local Government Conference was somewhat sidetracked by an amendment from the Service Group Executive (SGE) which asked Conference to acknowledge that any dialogue with Councillors Against the Cuts (for which the main motion called) would be in the context of a previous SGE circular opposing the advocacy of "no cuts" budgets.



Whilst this cackhanded wrecking amendment was deservedly trounced it was in any case unnecessary, since any dialogue in which our SGE participates will inevitably be informed by the timidity which is their guiding principle on this question.



The reality is that by passing Motion 47 we have unlocked a door which remains wedged shut, and to which we will have to apply our shoulder by way of model motions, and other initiatives, at branch and Regional level if we are to push UNISON towards the position of practical and meaningful opposition to all cuts which is the logic of so much of our current policy.

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The pay "debate" at UNISON Conference - leadership, "platform-bashing" and the future of national bargaining

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will know that sometimes in the past I have blogged throughout Conference week.

It may be my advancing years but this year I decided to focus on various goings-on at Conference rather than blogging away, to some of these goings-on I shall now turn and the first of these, chronologically and in terms of its importance to our members, is pay.

Last Sunday's "debate" on pay at Local Government Conference attracted the ire of the grumpy post-Marxist-Leninists of the (occasionally) self-proclaimed "sensible left" (http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2013/06/platform-bashing-over-pay-papers-over.html?) for "platform-bashing."

Now it may be true that, if "platform-bashing" were an Olympic sport, your not-very-humble blogger would aspire to be a medal hopeful, but sometimes a platform deserves to be bashed, and in relation to this year's lamentable 1% pay rise the Local Government Service Group Executive (SGE) deserved the bashing they got (with numerous sound contributions, notably from a delegate from Bristol).

Incidentally, as seasoned Conference watchers will recall, although the relevant pay negotiations are handled by the sector Committee, accountability is still vested in the SGE as a result of the defeat of amendments proposed by the NEC in 2009 (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/rules-for-unison-delegates.html?m=1).

The Local Government Conference discussion on pay took the form of a post mortem, since local government members had already decided, by a margin of three to two across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, to accept 1%. Because this event was so recent, no Conference decision addressed it (indeed the pay "debate" was conducted largely by a series of speeches "for" a motion moved from the platform (on behalf of the NJC Committee) by a leftwinger (although one despicable individual "jumped the queue" by the device of speaking, but not voting against).

The clear mood of Conference was hostile to the pusillanimous position of putting an offer to members as "the best that can be achieved by negotiation" without a clear recommendation either way. Somehow in future years we must try to turn that mood into policy which will bind the SGE and its sector Committees (either that or elect more people prepared to show leadership).

Those who think the "platform-bashing" a futile diversion from building our strength for the fight next time ignore the evidence from Scottish Local Government, or Higher Education, where clear leadership offers members the real opportunity to reject real-terms pay cuts. Whilst the weakness of our leadership may well reflect their perception of our weakness on the ground, which may not be ill-informed, until the leadership start at least trying to turn this round we are stuck in a spiral of decline.

The different results of the consultation exercise in London and, even more, the North West Region, demonstrate that a different outcome to the 2013 pay round for local government workers south of the border was possible.

It no longer is.

However, if the anger expressed at the SGE on pay is to have been anything more than cathartic we need to start a campaign now, with leaflets and petitions to our members, lobbies of local authorities, and model motions to Regional Local Government Committees in support of a vigorous campaign for an identified flat-rate pay rise across the board in 2014. The resources of the UNISON Centre need to be devoted to researching the positive economic impact of a boost to the earnings of local government workers so that we can demonstrate that pay justice for us will bring wider social and economic benefits.

We also need to make this a joint union campaign at a local level, so that we can fight alongside low paid GMB members in particular to ensure that our sister union takes the sort of firm line nationally on pay which they have shown locally in the dispute in Brighton.

Whatever was said from the top table last week about building a fight on pay in 2014, in the year before a General Election there will inevitably be pressure applied against industrial action from those in the bureaucracy of our movement who think it might inhibit Labour's electoral prospects.

We therefore need to start building momentum now for the fight over pay which is not just our only chance to restore our living standards - but also our best chance of saving national bargaining.

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Out of the bubble

I'm back in the real world now after UNISON's Local Government and National Delegate Conferences and will catch up with blogging over the next few days (including some proper reports from Conference).

For the moment I'll share a few unconnected thoughts from a Conference which was at once inspiring and worrying.

There's a lot of anger amongst our activists, much of it directed at our leadership - but there's neither the confidence nor the organisation of the rank and file to make that anger count. That's why Local Government Conference gave the top table a kicking over a pay deal we had already accepted. We need to build rank and file organisation if we want a different outcome in 2014 (or ever).

The further-sighted elements of our leadership see the problems which our Union faces (and that this may require greater radicalism than is offered by their loyal supporters) - hence the call for the national demonstration to defend the NHS in Manchester on 29 September. However (as the Grand Old Duke of York may well eventually have discovered) it's not always easy to mobilise people. We have a lot of work to do and a lot of trains and coaches to book and fill.

One theme of this year across our movement may well be that a lamentably attenuated grasp of gender politics has become the "common sense of the age" - and the defeat of Amendment 8.1 at Conference showed the same lack of understanding of the specificity of male violence against women which had previously been exhibited elsewhere. Given that UNISON now has, for the first time, a Presidential Team (of the President and two Vice-Presidents) which is exclusively female, I continue to hope that those women (and men) who see the need for the Union with the most women members to be a feminist organisation shall prevail.

The "left" in UNISON, which once routinely punched above its weight at Conference has been marginalised as Conference has been sanitised. Looking back over twenty years of UNISON, it is easy to see how the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) has taken a progressively more restrictive approach, how the prioritisation process has been honed into a device to avoid controversy, and how those who want Conference to be a showcase rather than "the supreme Government" of the Union have become better and better at floor organising.

This last problem is but one aspect of the problem that there is no effective rank and file organisation within UNISON.

And that is a question to which I intend to return...

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Through the looking glass

En route to Liverpool for UNISON's National Local Government Conference I shall soon pass through the portal which separates Conference from reality.

I think that those colleagues who call the shots on our National Joint Council (NJC) Local Government Committee may have traveled several months ahead, since their policy at Conference is strangely different from their practice in the mundane world of everyday life.

One of the entertaining features of our Conference (well, entertaining to Conference anoraks and geeks such as myself) is that motions drafted weeks ahead of a February deadline appear on a June agenda like some sort of fossil record.

This can be tricky for the authors when "events" have intervened, as they sometimes do. If a week is a long time in politics, a few months can be a very long time in industrial relations. Long enough, perhaps, for an ice sculpture to melt even if it hadn't been smashed.

The NJC Committee's Motion 40 ("Calling a Halt to Poverty Pay in Local Government") is now part of Composite C which will be debated tomorrow afternoon. It "condemns the shameful state of pay and conditions for local government workers across the UK" and affirms that "we must continue to demand and campaign for a substantial pay increase that will return us to a position where our pay allows our members to have a decent standard of living."

All well and good.

But wouldn't this be the same NJC Committee which (by 14 votes to 13) refused to recommend members reject a 1% pay offer which the Committee itself described as an "insult" (Leading, as night follows day, to the reluctant acceptance of this insult by our members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland)?

I'm afraid it is.

There is much to be ashamed about in "the shameful state of pay and conditions for local government workers" - but who is it that should feel that shame?

Should it not be the lead national negotiators of the majority local government trade union?

Out in the real world, where tens of thousands of our members are losing their jobs and hundreds of thousands suffer attacks on pay and conditions, the answer to that question would certainly be "yes".

But through the looking glass in the parallel universe of Conference it will be a speaker on behalf of the NJC Committee who will lambast the shameful state of our pay and conditions as they speak to a Composite which will be passed unanimously.

The greatest threat to sector-level national bargaining in local government comes not from the hostility of the employers but from the pusillanimous trade union side.

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Pay fiasco shows it's time for a change?

Today, on behalf of the largest group of organised workers in the UK economy, our negotiators have signalled that we'll accept a 1% pay rise, way below the rate of inflation.



I beg to differ that our members should bend the knee to further decline in living standards.



I did say we should reject 1% (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2013/06/show-some-leadership-reject-1.html?m=1)



I foresaw that this might not happen (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2013/06/we-deserve-pay-rise-how-do-we-get-it.html?m=1)



I share the criticisms which are made of this outcome (http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/njc-pay-consultation-we-got-to-do.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&m=1).



Now, right now, what I want is a leadership prepared to fight.

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Solidarity with the GMB

I mostly blog here about my trade union work.



I am also a Labour Party Branch Officer and, in that capacity, am happy to have offered support today to the GMB strikers who won't be emptying my bins tomorrow (http://www.gmb-southern.org.uk/brighton-strike-tomorrow-and-rally-saturday/).



The implementation of single status pay and grading reviews has provoked more than one dispute, but in all such disputes the position of socialists is straightforward.



We are on the side of the workers.

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The best that can be achieved by negotiation?

After a three year pay freeze in which the living standards of local government workers have fallen by 16%, today's news is disappointing. Our pay will increase by 1% this year, whilst prices rise by 3%.

Our negotiators having forced the employers to offer the whole of the 1% which George Osborne had suggested in the first place, by a narrow majority UNISON's National Joint Council (NJC) Committee then failed to recommend that we reject a pay offer which they themselves described as "an insult."

In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that, by a margin of nearly three to two, UNISON members accepted an offer that they were told was "the best that can be achieved by negotiation." The NJC Committee copped out by failing to recommend either acceptance (an honest capitulation) or rejection (which would have been in line with the interests of our members).

The significance of this dereliction of duty by the narrow majority of the NJC Committee is underlined by the fact that the two Regions which returned a majority vote to reject (London and the North West) were also the two Regions in which the Regional Local Government Committee/Executive recommended rejection.

In the same way, in Scotland, members have responded to a clear lead by rejecting the 1% insult which local government workers south of the border will now be swallowing - they are now rightly preparing for a strike ballot with a definite plan of action. I wish them luck.

Workers are rarely keen to strike - and to be asked to consider doing so by a visibly unenthusiastic leadership is always likely to elicit a negative response. Those who want to accept a real terms pay cut on behalf of some of the lowest paid trade unionists are never likely positively to propose this - that's where the weasel words ("the best that can be achieved by negotiation") come into their own.

What does this mean?

It means "the best that can be achieved by negotiation without either the reality or credible threat of action".

If we ballot for action, if we take action, then we can find that we negotiate a better deal than we could have done before we threatened, or before we took that action.

Locally, at branch level, we have used the threat of action to get better deals several times in recent years. Thus far we've not got to the point of taking action. A credible threat can be a useful tool - but a credible threat can only be issued by a leadership who look like they mean it.

To do this you have to start with a hard conversation with union members, in which you tell members things they may not want to hear.

You have to tell people the truth - that they have an interest in fighting to defend their interests (and sometimes also a duty to their current and future colleagues). You have to do what you can to force members to prepare for sacrifices that will hurt them and which they may be unenthusiastic to make.

It's not an argument you always win - and you run the risk of unpopularity.

But that's what leadership is.

Leadership is not telling people what they want to hear, reflecting back passivity and unwillingness to take risks and make sacrifices.

I think that the North West and London Regions showed leadership in the local government pay dispute.

The only way we will ever really get to "the best that can be achieved by negotiation" is by threatening, - if necessary - balloting for and -if possible - taking industrial action.

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UNISON NEC elections revisited

A comrade in the branch asked me earlier if there was any analysis of the outcome of the UNISON NEC elections. I could have said, "I refer my honourable friend to the answer I gave some moments ago" (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/unison-nec-elections-plus-ca-change.html?m=1) but that would have been silly.



I could have referred to the comment of a senior official who, when I said the elections demonstrated little change, observed "that's how we like it", but that would also have been silly.



So I went back and looked at the detailed results.



And they do lead to a few clear conclusions.



First, the turnout remains depressingly low. This has remained more or less consistent throughout my decade on the NEC. This occasionally provokes a bit of soul-searching, but - objectively - UNISON election turnouts are not exceptional in the movement and - subjectively - the combined forces of national officials and incumbent NEC members tend to find other priorities than transforming how we elect our NEC.



Secondly, the benefit of incumbency in trade union elections, which is a fairly well-established historically, was demonstrated fairly clearly in these elections.



In only four cases were incumbents seeking re-election defeated (and in one of these cases the incumbent had already resigned and did not campaign, while in another the Region had lost representation compared to the last election).



Finally, as to the political balance on the NEC, that is pretty much unchanged in general, as left-wingers retiring or defeated have been replaced by newcomers, albeit in different constituencies.



If we're going to see the changed approach to leadership which our trade union needs then we're going to have to achieve this through dialogue and persuasion of NEC colleages.



So optimism of the will could come in handy...

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We deserve a pay rise. How do we get it?

The TUC are quite right that we need a pay rise (http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/britainneedsapayrise.cfm) - the question for trade unions, and trade unionists is, as ever "what is to be done?"

Over recent years our leaders have been predicting the anger that would end the pay freeze. This anger seems now like a mirage, forever shimmering on the horizon and always beyond our reach. Always this wasn't the year to fight (but soon!) Then it was. Then it wasn't again. Now? Now we shall see.

Clearly events have not unfolded as expected. It's broadly true that, for decades (generations even) every episode of pay restraint has been defeated by an upsurge in industrial action, often driven by unofficial rank and file pressure in the first instance.

But now, after the longest and deepest fall in real wages in living memory, this still hasn't happened (yet). Why?

I think there are a number of factors which mark the current period out from earlier waves of industrial conflict provoked by pay restraint.

Fears for job security are obviously real for many of our members but - historically and currently - these fears are not of themselves an insurmountable obstacle to fighting for higher pay.

Certainly the political context is less favourable than (say) a generation ago. There is no global alternative to capitalism. There is no visible Parliamentary alternative to austerity. There is a generation of workers with no memory of such things or much knowledge of trade unionism.

A generation of anti-union legislation has also trained trade union officialdom to play a key role in policing workplace militancy - and this has had a cumulative deadening effect upon the vigour and combativity of the movement, as well as the confidence of the rank and file.

This context doesn't mean it is impossible to fight as was shown by the public sector pensions dispute or, very differently, by the electricians. The modest recent increase in trade union membership may even indicate a turning of the tide.

However, rebuilding confidence and combativity cannot be done by sitting and waiting for the tide to turn so we can surf on the crest of a wave of rank and file militancy. In these times, leadership cannot consist of passively reflecting back the mood of the membership in the hope that it will improve.

That's why, whatever the outcome of tomorrow's UNISON National Joint Council (NJC) Committee and of the pay consultation exercise which will be reported to it, the approach of the North West Regional Local Government Committee (to make a positive recommendation to reject a further real terms pay cut) was correct, and the approach of the (narrow) majority of the NJC Committee itself was wrong.

We won't revive our movement until we start leading a fight for the interests of our class like we mean it.

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UNISON and the defence of our National Health Service

At the front line of public service delivery, in health, local government and across public services, many trade unionists are ground down by falling living standards, increasing workloads and job insecurity.



Even the most politically motivated of us can be constrained by this everyday reality - too busy dealing with constant pressure of redundancy and reorganisation to raise our eyes from our local concerns.



In these circumstances it's all too easy, when asked to imagine the challenge of bold and decisive action (whether a national strike or a national demonstration) to shrink back to dealing with pressing local concerns, unable even to believe that more is possible in the here and now.



That's why an event like UNISON Conference, next week in Liverpool, can be an important occasion in the battle to defend our National Health Service. We must and will fight locally to defend our health service, but this war cannot be won only with local skirmishes.



Next week, UNISON's leadership will have the opportunity to give a bold lead to the next step in a national fight to save the NHS, leading a united Conference to engender confidence and enthusiasm among local activists.



We know this is possible, we saw the potential of the Union when decisively led in this spring's recruitment campaign, and eighteen months previously in the run up to the pensions strike.



A national mobilisation in defence of the NHS can provide a vital focus for essential local campaigns - and an opportunity to shift popular opinion and electoral politics in our direction.



In Liverpool next week, UNISON has an opportunity to give a united lead.

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Recruitment, Organisation and Industrial Action

One rather odd debate, which popped up more than once at today's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) concerned the relationship between recruitment, organisation and industrial action.

It was good to hear once more that, in the target period of this spring's recruitment drive we recruited 44% more members than we had in the comparable period last year. This does indeed demonstrate that an effort of will, backed up with resources, can deliver results.

However, this recent experience does not alter the compelling historical evidence, which is that major "spikes" in recruitment figures are often associated with popular and well-supported industrial action.

Delegates at Conference may therefore find it odd that the NEC decided (on the recommendation of the Development and Organisation Committee, of which I am a member) to oppose Amendment 1.3 at National Delegate Conference.

This amendment, moved by the Southwark Branch to an NEC motion on Organising, and timetabled for debate, essentially makes the point that industrial action can be beneficial for recruitment.

Opponents of the amendment, who carried the day at the NEC, denied the existence of any such relationship. Their argument (which I have heard before from officers) was that it is not that the Union is fighting in our members' (and potential members') interests which helps us to recruit.

Rather it is other activity, incidentally associated with industrial action (and described by one of my fellow NEC members as "talking to our members") which boosts recruitment.

I fear this line of argument is as unpersuasive as it is ill-informed. Supporters of Amendment 1.3 didn't and don't argue that industrial action is the only way to boost recruitment. The amendment simply makes the point that industrial action can be, and often is, associated with trade union growth.

The NEC policy of opposing Amendment 1.3 may well prove as counter-productive as it is misguided, since it could see the debate on organising at Conference dominated by an entirely unnecessary disagreement.

As a member of a minority on an NEC Committee I've done all I can - it's up to Conference delegates to determine UNISON policy now.

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Scottish local government strike

In a debate on pay at today's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) it was left to Scottish NEC member, Jane Carolan, to report on today's biggest UNISON news (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=8564).



Our members in Scottish local government are to ballot for strike action alongside members of UNITE (GMB having decided to accept the below-inflation 1% pay offer). There are plans for two national one-day strikes and a rolling programme of regional strikes.



This positive news should encourage local government workers in England Wales and Northern Ireland to reject the similar offer before us - and for Higher Education staff to do likewise.

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Support Yorkshire Health strikers

At today's meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) NEC members from local government (Paul Holmes) and Yorkshire (Vicky Perrin) asked General Secretary Dave Prentis about the dispute in our Mid-Yorkshire Health Branch (http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=8561).



Dave Prentis confirmed UNISON's full support for our members who are preparing for further strike action in a continuing battle against job and pay cuts from an employer happy to spend public money on external consultants rather than public service. The employers are threatening the Branch Secretaries of UNISON and UNITE with redundancy - and UNISON needs to match their escalation with increased support for the branch.

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UNISON and Labour - what next?

General Secretary, Dave Prentis, gave his characteristically wide-ranging report to the National Executive Council (NEC) this morning.



He started with the news that UNISON's new website will go live next week - so look out for that.



It sounds as if there will be plenty to report on the website since the Tories are ratcheting up attacks on the trade unions.



The Government are attacking the role of teaching assistants - vital low-paid public servants - whilst implementing tax cuts for the rich.



The Tory right have "check-off" arrangements in their sights - and the Government are trying to turn a crisis of sleaze in Parliament into an opportunity to restrict political campaigning by the trade unions.



Questions to Dave revolved very much around the disappointing response from the Labour leadership, whose consistent failure to offer a radical and coherent alternative (in line with the progressive policies of the trade unions) may well be the greatest threat to the prospect of a majority Labour Government.



Labour Link Chair, Steve Warwick, and Labour Party NEC member, Wendy Nicholls both responded to the debate. I'd like to say that we arrived at a conclusion about how UNISON should exert a positive political influence upon the Labour Party.



But you can't always have what you like.

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Should we march to save our NHS?

UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) met today. The first debates focused on NEC policy on amendments to motions for our National Delegate Conference in Liverpool in a fortnight's time.



The most heated and important debate focused on a recommendation from our Policy Committee that the NEC should oppose calls for a national demonstration in defence of our National Health Service.



I was among a minority who opposed this recommendation, believing that UNISON should take a bold lead to give a national focus for the growing number of local campaigns defending our health service.



Unfortunately a majority were won to the view that "now is not the time" for such a national demonstration as there isn't a "mood" for it - a view which, we were told, had been taken by delegates at Health Conference.



The future of the NHS is a citizenship, not a service group, issue - and the 25,000 recently on the streets of Lewisham demonstrate the support that will be shown for the national demonstration in defence of the National Health Service when (not if) it is called.



Our General Secretary, Dave Prentis, made the sound point that UNISON may well find ourselves having to decide to support such a national demonstration called by others.



UNISON Conference will have the final say on UNISON policy.

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Show some leadership - reject 1%

Back to work after Whitsun and a key priority is encouraging UNISON members to respond to the consultation on local government pay and - I hope - to reject the 1% pay insult (in line with the policy agreed by UNISON's Local Government Service Group in the Greater London and North West Regions).



However, since rejection requires a serious commitment to strike action, some members will - no doubt - opt to accept a below-inflation pay increase. That's their right and I respect their views. Above all, trade unionists should express a view.



Opinions are not, however, static more than dynamic. Nor are they individual more than they are collective. The fallacy of the opinion-poll driven politics of my generation has been a politics which aspires to no more than reflecting back at people their own individual answers to loaded questions. Blairites call its consequences "triangulation" and hold it to be the highest wisdom.



They are wrong.



Leadership can play a role in forming consciousness - which is why it is such a shame that, by such a narrow majority, 14 members of the National Joint Council Committee rejected the wisdom of another 13. A clear national recommendation to reject a pay offer, described as "an insult" by the very Committee that failed to recommend its rejection, would have emboldened our members to deliver a decisive rejection.



We saw, in the run up to 30 November 2011, how - in UNISON - leadership could function to make our trade union an organisation deserving of our pride. In its own way the positive results of this spring's recruitment drive has shown something similar.



In the absence of a positive national lead from the Local Government Service Group (outside Scotland) it falls to Regions and Branches to try to demonstrate such leadership. It's harder to do this successfully at a more local level.



But we have to try.

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Balls!

So Labour will commit to means-test Winter Fuel Allowance in order to prove the "iron discipline" that will be shown to public finances if we win a majority in 2015 (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22748914).



This stupid departure from social democratic principle is supposedly symbolic of our response to the challenge of proving Labour's "economic competency" but can do no such thing. We'll always lose a dutch auction on social welfare with the Tories.



As long as Labour remains within a narrative led by the Coalition and defined within the Westminster bubble we shall continue to fail even to be relevant to the popular hunger for an alternative reflected in (for example) by the impressive attendances at preparatory meetings for the forthcoming Peoples' Assembly (http://thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/).



A promise of "iron discipline" on public spending won't secure the endorsement of the Mail, Express or Telegraph but it will confirm to civil servants striking in the front line against austerity this week (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/pcs_comment/index.cfm/id/1D9CB666-1DC1-46AE-95D2D9BB86FAC012) that Labour doesn't plan to ride to the rescue of public services.



Whether our leadership are just naturally too timid, or whether they are hamstrung by the continuing influence of the well-funded Blairite cabal, Labour is missing an opportunity to inspire, mobilise and lead opposition to the Coalition.

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GUMBISON ruled out?

Back to work tomorrow after half term so back to blogging just in time to learn that Brian Strutton has told the GMB Congress categorically that there are no merger talks with UNISON.



As a UNISON NEC member I'd like to think that, having heard of no such talks, there have indeed been none, but it's as well to have these things confirmed.



UNISON and GMB have been making eyes at each other in public at recent TUCs - but it does now seem we were only ever trying to make UNITE jealous...



Given that our Development and Organisation Committee threw out a protocol developed between officials of the two unions to reduce membership "poaching" it's clear there's little appetite for merger among lay members of either Union.



Joint working between rank and file representatives of UNISON and GMB at a local level is essential to protect workers' interests - mutual hostility only ever ends up strengthening the employers. We should be far quicker to support each other's disputes.



In the long run, the existence of any particular trade union isn't written in stone. We made UNISON twenty years ago - but it is inevitably an open question whether it will exist in the same form to receive my application to be a retired member in another twenty years time.



However, for now, a merger with the GMB would be (for both unions I should imagine) a massive distraction from the task of rebuilding our membership and our strength in the workplace. The one merger which would have had compelling industrial logic and significant political benefits over the past decade is the one which, it now seems, will never happen (at least not with UNISON).



With trade union membership figures edging upwards, and positive news from UNISON's spring recruitment drive, we need to focus outwards to the interests of members and potential members.



And at least now we know we will never have the misfortune to become part of an organisation which would inevitably have been called "GUMBISON"...



Hat tip Andy Newman on twitter.

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Rudderless in a storm?

As the Government of millionaires attacks on one front after another, the political left is bereft of direction.

The catalogue of brutality unleashed by the side currently winning the class war would have been unimaginable even three years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs have gone over the same period as real wages have continued to fall in an unprecedented way.

The tide of privatisation rising across the public sector has begun irreversibly to engulf the health service and now laps at the feet of postal workers.

The demonisation of claimants is gradually capturing the popular imagination as benefit cuts force us back to the nineteenth century.

Legal aid cuts and employment tribunal fees (coupled with changes to rules on remission), together with other changes to employment law further hobble workers individually and collectively.

Even the seemingly solid social gains of a generation of progress towards equality are fragile in this most reactionary century. The defence of the public sector equality duty will be of totemic importance.

So where is the opposition?

The (capital "O") Opposition are sporadically present - unfortunately their official backing is as much an unavoidable necessity as it is generally unavailable for effective national resistance.

Labour can still mobilise some meaningful opposition to "Tory cuts" (as in the London Fire Service) but is hamstrung by the Party's collusion in many cuts in its quest for "credibility" on the economy.

In large part the absence of our Labour Party where we so badly need it is a function of a generation of timidity and inadequacy on the part of the trade union leadership.

The strategic error of supporting New Labour in the 1990s has had cumulative, calamitous political consequences for the trade union movement which are still playing themselves out.

Since the General Election the unions have been pushed into mobilising us as a stage army on three occasions, as if we could still play by rules written decades ago. We can't and it hasn't worked.

Even the largest strike since the General Strike secured next to nothing in the way of meaningful concessions on public service pensions. Laughable attempts to pretend otherwise did nothing other than undermine the morale and motivation of our activists.

The General Secretaries are staring into the abyss and have no more idea what to do than I have.

Out on the further reaches of the left (where I have always found my friends, comrades and spiritual home) there is no more direction or purpose.

Those who hoped the Green Party was a new road to a new Jerusalem can pick their way through the litter strewn streets of Brighton as they contemplate their error.

The largest far left political party has imploded, and those clinging to its wreckage simply haven't noticed yet that it is over (though it may not be dead for years - some people still sell the "Newsline").

The latest electoral project of the far left has broken all records for tragic irrelevance. Socialists might as well practice "entryism" in the Monster Raving Loony Party as continue to place hope in TUSC.

Such is the lack of hope that an excellent film maker has managed to lever his deserved reputation to promote the "Left Unity" project (which falls somewhere between Sir Richard Acland's Common Wealth Party and the political equivalent of vanity publishing).

I too wish their were an alternative to the Labour Party - but no matter how many lamps I rub no such alternative appears.

The political problem confronting the working class in this country, as throughout Europe, over the last generation is the political inadequacy of our trade unions, not the political label of the politicians we can vote for.

This time of weakness and disorientation provokes and encourages infighting. Unable to make a difference in the wider world, comrades retreat into squabbles they believe they can win.

Internicine strife between and within groups on the left will continue to get worse as long as we fail to change the script of this tale of retreats and defeats.

So what do we do?

We fight back.

Wherever you are, working or unemployed, you can organise collectively to resist the ruling class offensive as best you can.

We have suffered many defeats and will suffer more. Lives are being ruined - and ended - and we, who should lead the resistance, are continuing to fail.

So we must rethink, regroup and redouble our efforts.

We may be rudderless in a storm but that is no excuse for failing to keep the boat afloat.

Our trade union movement, the oldest in the world, remains the largest voluntary organisation in UK civil society by a country mile.

We are not weak.

We are not powerless.

We need not be ineffective.

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Fire Cuts Should Burn Boris

I was proud to be among the 200 people who marched through Brixton to Lambeth Town Hall on the evening of Thursday 16 May to express our opposition to the closure of Clapham Fire Station (http://www.saveclapham.com/).



The subsequent public consultation reflected local feeling in that it was dominated by opposition to cuts and closures in our fire service. Having had the unique experience of speaking on top of a fire engine in order to address protestors, I was also lucky to be called to ask a question in a packed Assembly Hall.



I asked about the Equality Impact Assessment, copies of which were not available at the meeting and are only available online (http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/Documents/Sup16-Equality-analyses.pdf). This impact assessment is clearly a very important document, since the fire cuts being pushed by Mayor Boris increase response times to fires in Inner London whilst improving response times in much of Outer London.



The Commissioner didn't answer my question, but offered a meeting with the people who did the Equality Impact Assessment. I'm sure he didn't offer that hoping that I wouldn't bother - but if he did that was a poor judgment.



Lambeth UNISON will hold London's Fire Service to the promise from its most senior official of a proper dialogue about equalities. We certainly need to see - for example - a disaggregation of changes in response times as between those in "high-rise" flats and those who are not, which should be cross referenced with information about "protected characteristics".



We don't make idle criticisms - and if we need to assert our criticism we shall do so on the basis of evidence. We need rid of the current Mayor - whose fire cut plans are as poorly justified as they are intolerable.

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A good day for UNISON in South East London

A little over three years ago I became quite irate when UNISON's Greenwich and Bromley branches were taken into regional supervision (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/unisons-suburban-sigurimi.html?m=1).

So I am pleased to have been today at a meeting of the Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) to hear it formally reported that neither of these branches is any longer under supervision.

There are - exceptionally - circumstances in which a trade union may need to take over the affairs of one of its constituent branches (where there may have been fraud for example). No such circumstances ever existed in either Bromley or Greenwich.

The three years in which UNISON members in two South East London boroughs were needlessly denied their democratic rights witnessed poor performance by our Union in those boroughs. This wasn't because of any failings on the part of the staff dragged away from other duties to take over the branches - it was because gratuitous and unnecessary takeovers of branches is directly contrary to the best ethos of our Union.

UNISON at it's best is a lay-led trade union in which a solid partnership between lay and full-time officials is founded on mutual respect. At it's worse, our Union is capable of being much less than that, and the regional supervision of these branches showed us, unfortunately, at our worst.

It's not as if we weren't warned. Tom Snow had described the state of the Greater London Regional office on the occasion of his retirement just week's before the dawn raids in Woolwich and Bromley (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/thoughts-of-regional-organiser.html?m=1).

It's sadly still true that the Regional Office has a greater focus on bolstering power within the Union than on building the power of the Union. As long as the office can maintain its internal focus on ensuring that the lay structures never challenge it or hold it to account it doesn't seem to matter that UNISON's Greater London Region has no profile and no worthwhile influence.

Just in recent weeks members have approached me about a branch where - encouraged by the Region - officers excluded a member from their Annual General Meeting and a branch where - guided by the Region - officers managed to secure massive disaffection and significant resignations from amongst a recently organised and militant section of the workforce (the Region are trying to turn that situation on its head by misleading the Centre into focusing on the issue of a protest by low paid workers at the UNISON Centre, when the real issue is the attitude of the UNISON Region to those low paid workers in the first place).

I encourage our members to express their concerns appropriately within our Union, but I often doubt whether, when doing so, I am giving good advice. Even after the experience of the pensions dispute, I do not believe that there is a sufficiently powerful will at the UNISON Centre to hold renegade Regions to account. If UNISON fails to provide an effective in-house laundromat we will inevitably and unfortunately end up washing our dirty laundry in public.

At least though, our members in Bromley and Greenwich local government branches can face their daily challenges now as the masters and mistresses of their own fate, no longer under the unhelpful direction of the Region.

Now they can build back to being UNISON at its best.

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Out of order?

I owe my apologies to the Dudley Branch for having expressed my support for their Motion 111, on the election of paid officials, which made it on to the Preliminary Agenda for UNISON Conference (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/unison-support-for-election-of-officials.html?m=1).

Clearly a curse afflicts all expressions of support for greater democracy in our trade union, as the Motion has now been ruled out of order, following the decision of the National Executive Council (NEC) to ask the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) to change its mind.

However, the SOC may be keen that a casual observer would not think that they are easily pressured by the NEC (by which I mean, pressured by those whose bidding the NEC does).

For Motion 111 is not the only motion to suffer from the rare but potentially lethal "retrospective ruling out virus." Another motion, seemingly beloved of the NEC, is stricken with the same affiliction - Motion 106 (from the NEC itself) on Branch Funding has also disappeared from the Final Agenda, having flourished in apparently rude health on the Preliminary Agenda.

Could it be that the SOC, having given the NEC the void it wanted in place of a sensible debate on union democracy felt obliged to assert its robust independence by pointing out that Motion 106 did not in fact meet the terms of the previous instruction from our Conference which it was meant to address?

Maybe...

On the other hand, perhaps Motion 106 (which had hitherto been timetabled for debate without any need for prioritisation) had attracted sufficient competent amendments that it threatened an unavoidable and unpredictable debate which might have led to a (necessary and desirable - but not from the perspective of the Centre) devolution of resources?

Perhaps, as I blog, some at the UNISON Centre are celebrating the ruling out of order of Motion 106 even more than that of Motion 111...

Perhaps the celebration is taking place on the empty sixth floor? Or the empty seventh? (Or the roof garden on the essentially empty fifth?)

The eighth is empty most of the time too and would do as well.

The ninth is just empty prestige when we have better facilities elsewhere but might suit such a celebration.

Some things really are out of order.

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Monkeying about with pay consultation on the 1% pay insult

UNISON activists - and many officers - are preparing to throw ourselves in to maximising member participation in the important consultation over the 1% pay offer to local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (rightly described by the National Joint Council as an insult).

Unfortunately, the sensible, imaginative and pragmatic approach of using electronic communication to supplement other forms of communication with members is being obstructed and frustrated by ill-judged advice in Pay Bulletin 11.

The bulletin's author was driven to dip their quill pen into the inkwell by the news that branches might use the "survey monkey" site (rather as the national union did during the pensions dispute...)

I am grateful to officers of the Camden local government branch for what follows, as they have considered the bulletin point by point.

Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"The agreed Service Group Pay Consultation Procedures agreed at conference suggest 'flexibility', but do not provide for electronic consultation. (We will look at this with a view to a potential safe means of electronic consultation for future consultations, but this would need to be agreed by Conference)."
 
Camden say;

"We have used electronic consultation before to feed into national union decisions, for example in consultation on initial pay claim, where I believe we had the biggest response of any branch in London. Furthermore even official industrial action ballots, such as the Unison ballot for the November 30 pension strike, had the ability to vote online, despite the restrictive legislation around industrial action.
 
In 2013, when over 80% of UK households have internet connections, and 70% of people use a computer every day, not to mention the millions of people with smartphones - including vast majority of our members - it is inconceivable that we should be denied this avenue for communicating with our members."
 
Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"There is significant scope for abuse of the consultation process through multiple voting using Survey Monkey or other electronic means and it is therefore not appropriate to use it."

Which does beg the question about national use of the site last year, but anyway, Camden say;

"This is completely inaccurate and based on a misunderstanding or inadequate knowledge of surveymonkey or other electronic survey systems. The most common type of online survey used by Unison nationally is an open survey. However we use surveymonkey's closed surveys where personalised individual ballots are e-mailed to each individual member who can then make their individual vote through a secured encrypted connection. This ensures that only active members can vote and that each member only has one vote. The system records every member who does vote and every member who doesn't.
 
This is much more secure than workplace meetings or workplace ballots - as with the former members can attend multiple workplace meetings and vote multiple times, and with the latter ballot papers are not individualised so members or even non-members could fill in and return ballots from people's pigeonholes or inboxes."
 
Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"Our own experience shows overwhelmingly that electronic surveys result in substantial under-representation of 'hard to reach', front-line, low paid and part-time staff. This was borne out in our survey of local government workers earlier in the year. While part-time workers are 55% of the local government workforce, 75% of survey respondents were full-time and skewed towards higher earners. This is presumably because they have access to IT in their jobs and are more likely to be conversant with it."

Camden say;

"Again, this is referring to open surveys, not individualised ballots. In our experience, electronic ballots have much higher turnout than paper ones. In a recent branch indicative ballot turnout from 1700 members over e-mail was 43% but turnout from paper ballots sent to work or home addresses was only 12%. It is true that more low-paid staff in general have less internet access than the better paid but amongst those that do have internet access they are more likely to vote electronically than ones surveyed on paper.
 
And this is not an argument against our preferred method consultation, which is to:
- consult those members whose e-mail addresses we have by e-mail
- consult those whose e-mail addresses we do not have by post to home or workplace addresses."

Pay Bulletin 11 says:

"On-line consultation alone could mitigate against recruiting and organising around pay. Branches are being encouraged to hold branch and workplace meetings."

Camden, tiring perhaps a liitle at having to respond to such foolishness, say;

"This is a non sequitur. You could equally argue that e-mailing members at all "mitigates against recruiting and organising…". Not recruiting or organising of course mitigates against recruiting and organising. The best strategy is to combine recruitment and organising activity like shop meetings with the most effective method of consulting, and shop meetings can be used to increase turnout in the consultation and recruit more members."

Finally (at last!) Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"It is very important that all members receive the same questions, in the same format and that the consultation is  carried out consistently. Use of Survey Monkey could undermine this."

Camden, quite rightly, say;

"In fact, using an electronic survey makes this much easier to do, as questions and answer options can be presented uniformly much more easily than can be guaranteed in shop meetings."

Overall then, Pay Bulletin 11 has to be awarded a grade "F" as a poor piece of work, founded upon misunderstanding and pushing in exactly the wrong direction. The spirit and intent of Conference policy is clearly to encourage branches to use all suitably robust means of consultation to maximise member participation.

There will doubtless those who perceive here a deliberate ploy to reduce participation in branches likely to return majorities to reject. It may be that there are those at the UNISON Centre who no longer believe in national strike action and would be happy to avert it.

However, this smacks more of "cock-up" than conspiracy. It's fairly obvious that our active local government branches have more relevant skills and experience to conduct ballots (outside the strict and specific laws around industrial action or union elections) than can be found at the UNISON Centre. (Who is it, after all, who counts the votes in a General Election?) It's equally obvious (to me at least) that the Camden branch (for one) have a better understanding of the use of electronic consultation than that upon which the author of Pay Bulletin 11 was able to draw.

Service Group Executive members should probably try to assert themselves and bring some common sense to bear on the situation.

In the mean time, activists need to crack on with securing maximum participation in consultation - and maximum rejection of the 1% pay insult.

And the author of Pay Bulletin 11 should pop out for some more blotting paper...

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Labour Link elections - an opportunity for the left?

Tomorrow nominations open for elections to the UNISON Labour Link Committee (http://www.unison.org.uk/elections/pages_view.asp?did=15639) - this is an area of our trade union's work which desperately needs to be improved - and capable socialist candidates are vitally needed!

The National Labour Link Committee is a little-known body which has seemingly existed to ensure that, in the twenty years of UNISON's existence, our Union has been generally ineffective in our intervention in the Labour Party.

The pinnacle of the worthlessness of UNISON Labour Link was probably the vote on Foundation Hospitals during Blair's second-term, when the Government's majority (against UNISON policy - and all real Labour principle) amongst the "UNISON group" of MPs was higher than its overall majority - had the entire UNISON group, on both sides of the Division, been absent from the Commons, the Government would have lost the vote.

The mind-numbing idiocy which appears to have been the hallmark of UNISON's strategic approach to the Labour Party ever since our Union did Blair's bidding in Opposition by moving the "Partnership" proposals to undermine the power of Party Conference (and the unions) is still going strong, as UNISON Labour Link has determinedly set its face against learning from the Foundation Hospital vote fiasco over the intervening years.

Labour Link seriously advances the proposition that we should support, in a Parliamentary selection, any UNISON member, regardless of their politics or record. This approach may create the illusion of influence on the basis that we are on nodding terms with Members of Parliament - but it is genuinely foolish if what we want out of our political work is support for our policies and values. (It may be less foolish if we see our Labour Party affiliation as essentially a vehicle to advance the political careers of a lucky few, or to provide a retirement option for those of our senior officials prepared to sit in the House of Lords).

The "democratic" structures of UNISON's autonomous Affiliated Political Fund (UNISON Labour Link) were designed to insulate our Labour Party work from accountability to rank and file members and - with some noteworthy exceptions - they have proven their effectiveness by ensuring our wider political ineffectiveness in the Labour Party over the years.

UNISON members have voted with their feet, as the proportion of members choosing not to pay into the affiliated section of our political fund has risen over the years. Walking away from the possibility of influence over a potential Party of Government would amount, however, to letting the authors of our political weakness have a final victory.

Whilst the Labour Link Committee may well deserve its obscurity, UNISON members don't deserve a continuation of two decades of relative uselessness.

Socialist candidates - who must be both UNISON Labour Link payers and individual Labour Party members - should seek nomination and campaign for election to the National Labour Link Committee.

Good luck comrades!

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More and more reject the 1% pay insult

There's a growing body of support for the sensible view that local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should join our brothers and sisters in Scotland and reject the employers' pay offer of a miserly 1% (2% below the current rate of price inflation after our living standards have fallen by 16% over the three years of the pay freeze).

A couple of days ago the semi-official "UNISON Active" blog took a clear position (http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/1-in-local-government-only-credible.html?m=1). The position expressed in that blog post - to campaign for rejection of 1% - which reflected the previously agreed position of the Regional Local Government Executive in Greater London - has since been forcefully reiterated in the influential North West Region (whose representatives had originally moved the position that pointed us in the direction of a dispute over pay in 2013).

Such forthright views seem also to have informed the official UNISON leaflet issued today to accompany the branch-issued consultative ballot papers (http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6296a.pdf), which clearly states that the NJC Committee viewed the 1% offer as an insult.

It would be churlish in the face of such excellent campaign materials even to wonder aloud how it was that, whereas 13 Committee members rightly concluded that an insult should be rejected, another 14 couldn't join the dots to that formal conclusion.

It might be equally churlish to pick holes in the threadbare arguments against using electronic means to consult members as expressed (electronically) in Pay Matters 11 (http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6296.pdf). However - since I think there may still be elements around the UNISON Centre who haven't been won to the sensible, reasoned and pragmatic position of rejecting 1% - I can't promise not to be churlish on this point over the weekend.

In the twenty-first century, using all available technologies to mobilise our members against declining living standards strikes me as quite reasonable (rather as a strike over this issue does...)

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The best that can be achieved by negotiation...

Well done to the 13 members of UNISON's National Joint Council (NJC) Committee who supported a sensible proposal yesterday to recommend rejection of the local government employers 1% pay "offer".

I'm less enamoured of the 14 members of the Committee who opposed that call and left us going out to consult UNISON members in local authorities, and related employers, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on the basis that "this is the best that can be achieved by negotiation" and that it would take "sustained all-out action" to get more.

Yes.

Of course.

Tell us something we don't know.

Those weasel words "the best that can be achieved by negotiation" can be translated (when expressed with no other recommendation) as "we hope you'll accept this lousy offer because we don't think we're up to leading a fight for something better but we don't want to admit our inadequacy as your leaders and would be grateful if you would be so kind as to take responsibility for our failure."

After three years of pay freeze - in which the living standards of local government workers have fallen by one sixth (16%) it is truly pathetic that some of those who aspire to lead our trade union are content to acquiesce in a further fall in our standard of living (as long as they can find a form of words which means it's not their fault).

Our movement will not escape from its current decline until all our leaders can show the pragmatic determination and reasoned courage of the large minority of the NJC Committee who backed a recommendation to reject.

Those of us who agree with the wise 13 and reject the timidity of the feeble 14 should not give up.

UNISON's Rules and Conference policy give a clear right to branches to campaign for rejection of the 1% pay insult. We should use the official national ballot paper in branch consultative ballots, accompanied with clear, simple, persuasive and well-argued recommendations to reject.

If control-freaks try to stop us we must resist. Those who vote to accept a further cut in our living standards by accepting a below-inflation pay rise are on the side of David Cameron - and anyone who tries to prevent branches recommending rejection is doing the work of the Tory Party.

It is never easy to persuade members to take strike action - as we must if we want a decent pay rise. But the lesson of history is that it is only ever when local government workers take national strike action that we secure better pay.

We know 1% is "the best that can be achieved by negotiation".

Now is not the time for negotiation.

Now is the time to reject 1% and campaign for strike action.

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No Right Turn

While the Tory right-wing are seizing on UKIP's performance in the local elections to promote their obsessions, those who want to insulate Labour from any possibility of posing a radical alternative to austerity aren't keeping quiet either.

The "Blue Labour" boys club recommend we embrace social conservatism, believing that this is UKIP's appeal to its working class supporters (http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2013/05/05/henry-g-manson-on-the-ukip-challenge-to-labour/). This perhaps misses the point that there have always been socially conservative working class voters - and that they have voted Conservative.

Progress, who prefer some social liberalism as it makes them feel better about their craven capitulation to economic liberalism are less prescriptive, but equally pessimistic, Paul Richards arguing that; "UKIP took votes, not only from disgruntled Tories, but white working-class voters in hitherto Labour areas. There's an important lesson there for Labour too. The surge in South Shields should not just worry the Tories. If white working-class voters desert Labour in the heartlands for the UKIP, it will dent Ed Miliband's chances in 2015. It certainly should kill stone dead any notion of a 'progressive majority' just waiting to be led to the New Jerusalem." (http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/05/03/not-just-gin-and-jag/).

Typically, Progress watch as the political right try to shift the centre of political gravity in a reactionary direction and then consider how to accommodate this (in the interests of their political careers?) They also join "Blue Labour" in missing the point that not all "white working class voters in hitherto Labour areas" have necessarily been Labour voters.

The fact that Labour lost no seats (and probably - directly - very few votes) to UKIP does not mean that we should sit back and simply enjoy the Tories losing votes. If we do that, Farage will pull Cameron to the right and Progress will link arms with "Blue Labour" to push the Shadow Cabinet in the same direction. That way leads away from the path to popular support for a Government carrying out policies in the interests of working people.

Socialists within the Labour Party and trade unions need to organise far more effectively to mobilise support for a radical alternative to austerity, the formal basis for which can be found in the policies of the trade unions - who need, as I was saying (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/unions-need-to-answer-ukip.html?m=1) massively to raise our political game.

As implausible as this may seem to some, we need to try to do this from within the Labour Party. Attempts to build a "UKIP of the left" outside Labour's ranks are proving lamentably unsuccesful.

The candidate of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) standing for Hampshire County Council in Eastleigh who was beaten by the candidate of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (http://election.hants.gov.uk/hwdivisionresult.aspx?year=2013&id=175&distid=2&divelecid=4423) may have been particularly unfortunate, but anyone who came away from last week's elections thinking that the time is right for a socialist electoral challenge to Labour probably wasn't paying attention.

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Unions need to answer UKIP

The local election results are not good.

Our Party is not where it needs to be now to win a General Election in 2015 (http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/local-elections-labour-isnt-where-it-needs-be-win).

Opposition to austerity is being drawn around Farage (our very own Poujade - http://m.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/aug/28/guardianobituaries1), and around the poisonous nostalgia of the populist right. UKIP is clearly an "English" manifestation of the anti-political feeling expressed elsewhere is support for the Five Stars or Syriza.

The labour movement needs to find a way to articulate the anger and disillusionment which UKIP are channeling - which means that we need a clear and assertive statement of the progressive anti-austerity policies supported by the trade unions - in opposition to the neo-liberal policies of both this Government and its predecessor.

The polished moderation of "Progress" types in suits is the exact opposite of what we need from the Labour Party - but we may well be consigned to more of that if the trade unions continue to be as useless in influencing the Party as we are now.

UNISON's laughable approach of backing any UNISON member going for a Parliamentary selection, regardless of their politics, is simply one expression of the almost apolitical nature of the practical intervention in the Party by the big unions.

There's no point making headline-grabbing speeches to win votes at Party Conference if the unions aren't populating the Parliamentary Labour Party with people who will fight to put policies into effect.

With so many thousands having voted for the right-wing populism of UKIP, unions like UNISON also have to recognise that some of our members will have been among those voters.

If the labour movement cannot articulate the anger of our members with a progressive voice, criticising the political establishment from a working-class point of view, then we'll cede that role to the populist right.

We need to embark upon a self-confident programme of political education to build support for our policies, to politicise our trade unions and democratise our political work.

On several occasions since the General Election we have caught a glimpse of the potential political power of our labour movement (in March 2011, October 2012 and - above all - November 2011).

It is because we have repeatedly failed to capitalise on these opportunities or to sustain the momentum of our struggles, that we have allowed the political space to be created in which anger at austerity can be translated into votes for a return to an imagined 1950s.

The sense of identity to which UKIP speaks and from which it draws strength is reactionary, xenophobic and homophobic. It's "little Englandism" shades into racism and is socially conservative in every way. Yet it clearly appeals to many whose interests would be better served by the progressive policies of our movement.

The trade unions must become more vocal, more radical and more assertive if we are to draw people - including our own members - around a positive alternative to austerity.

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Vote Labour

There are no local elections tomorrow where I live or where I work, but in much of England a minority of the electorate will cast votes for local Councillors.



The option which ought to be open to us is to vote Labour. Working people need a political voice and that is what the Labour Party was created to be.



It's not much of that right now of course, and hasn't been for some time. The key problem is not so much the infestation of Blairite careerists from "Progress" - it's more the consistent inability of the trade unions to use our influence effectively.



My own trade union has a risible approach of backing anyone in a Parliamentary selection if they are members of our Union.



Given that UNISON members in Parliament delivered a bigger majority for Foundation Hospitals - against UNISON policy - than the Government could then command in the Commons as a whole, it is clear that the current approach of the big unions to the Labour Party is almost the exact opposite of that which you would adopt if you sought real influence and power.



Nevertheless, the trade unions could still one day seek to do real and useful political work on behalf of our members. Labour retains the potential to be a party of and for working people. Particularly if we shifted the leadership of our trade unions we might then have a Party worthy of support.



No credible electoral alternative exists or is in prospect for working people. As mind-bendingly impossible as it may seem that we should be able to turn the Labour Party into a vehicle for socialist politics, this prospect is less remote (by an order of magnitude) than the abiding fantasy that some other, better, Party can be built to the left.



Vote Labour.

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May Day solidarity with mid-Yorkshire

Today, May Day, is a day for solidarity.

UNISON members employed at the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust - where the Union is balloting all our members for strike action, need that solidarity today (http://m.morleyobserver.co.uk/news/local/unison-to-ballot-3-000-members-at-mid-yorkshire-hospitals-trust-1-5626886) as they prepare for a branch-wide ballot.

Adrian O'Malley, Unison Mid Yorkshire branch secretary, said: "As we expected the Trust is pushing forward with more downbandings and job losses in other departments. Clinical Nurse Specialists, Dental Nurses and more Admin staff are at risk of job and pay cuts. At the same time the Trust is employing more senior managers and has given over £4 million to private management consultants Ernst and Young.

"We have been forced into balloting our whole membership as the Trust is unwilling to discuss any alternatives to the downbandings (pay cuts)."

"The Trust is holding a gun to its staff's heads and saying take a pay cut or your sacked. We cannot allow this to continue. Industrial relations within the Trust have broken down due to the senior managements bullying."

Our members in mid-Yorkshire offer a refreshing alternative to the failed approach of swallowing attacks on pay and conditions to save jobs. As the North West Region pointed out to the National Joint Council Committee in local government, we've had both a pay freeze and massive job losses in local government over recent years. The health service faces similar medicine.

After the premature ending of the public service pensions dispute (following the biggest strike action for decades on 30 November 2011), last year - 2012 - saw the lowest level of official strike action since records began. In the twelve months to November 2012 only 250,000 working days were lost to strike action (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/january-2013/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Labour-disputes--not-seasonally-adjusted-).

(Which is to say, in the whole year that followed the strike action on 30 November 2011, the sum total of all the officially recorded strike action was perhaps a quarter of the action which took place on that single day.)

However, 2013 has seen a modest resurgence of action, including by the CWU and PCS.

The decision of UNISON health workers in mid-Yorkshire to ballot for branch-wide action is a timely inspiration to us all - particularly in UNISON.

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