Who is taking action to protect UNISON members? Not the current leadership of the Greater London Region.

‎As is so often the case, I'm a bit behind with my report of last Wednesday's meeting of the UNISON NEC.

One point I'll pick up on is the report which we are now receiving regularly of industrial action ballots at branch level, of which there were 32 reported to our most recent meeting.

The majority of these are in two of our large Regions, Yorkshire and Humberside (9) and Scotland (8). There were three ballots in each of the North West and East Midlands Regions and two each in Northern, West Midlands and Wales.

In Greater London (as in each of the South East and South West Regions) only one ballot was reported (leaving the Northern Ireland and Eastern Regions reporting no ballots).

I know that London's one ballot is a tribute to rank and file activism at branch level - rather than any sort of sensible or strategic leadership from the Region - were it not for the sort of committed leftwing activists which officials at Congress House love to hate then we would be reporting a duck like the East Anglians and the Northern Irish.

It is lamentable that UNISON in Greater London, under its current Regional leadership, has shown itself unable to facilitate action by members in defence of our own interests. This is the hallmark of a dysfunctional UNISON Region which has not been capable of holding a quorate Regional Council meeting other than its AGM since 2005.

It is ironic that, at Tuesday's forthcoming Annual General Meeting of the Greater London Regional Council a motion from the Lambeth branch (in which I declare an interest!)‎ has been ruled out of order. The motion concerns industrial action, and seeks to address the right-wing antipathy to such action which infests UNISON's Greater London Regional office.

There can be little doubt that officials in UNISON's Greater London Region are routinely breaching UNISON Rule B.2.2, which defines UNISON as a "member-led" Union. This is nowhere as clear as in relation to industrial action, a vital tactical option which needs to be available to trade unionists in any dispute, but which is seemingly viewed with horror on the first floor of Congress House.

‎I salute the one competency of the officials at Regional Office (which is the ability to use all those full-time resources to control votes at the Regional AGM) but, with the greatest of respect to that ability, I would encourage all delegates at the Regional AGM to vote for the slate of candidates headed by Glenn Kelly for Convenor.

I have had my differences with Glenn over the years - but a vote for the slate he heads is a vote for an effective, responsive democratic UNISON in Greater London - and whatever the result on Tuesday we need a renewed effort at organisation by those of us with a principled, non-sectarian, commitment to effective trade unionism (which must - of necessity - mean unconditional commitment to support struggles against all forms of oppression).

I am proud to be a member of UNISON and of its Lambeth branch. I am fed up with having to be ashamed of the Region.

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Remembering Chavez

http://www.venezuelasolidarity.co.uk/the-inaugural-hugo-chavez-memorial-lecture-with-tariq-ali/

The comrades from the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign deserve congratulations‎ for organising the first Hugo Chavez memorial lecture this evening.

Tariq Ali spoke to a packed lecture theatre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, explaining the background and origins of the Bolivarian revolution and ‎identifying it's global historical significance.

‎With the tentacles of US imperialism manipulating their puppets in the Venezuelan opposition against the Government in the hope of destroying a beacon of hope to the world it is an important time to renew solidarity with progressive forces in Latin America.

‎Being reminded of the gains being made by the left in America's own "backyard" is also an important antidote to the depression which can easily set in when considering European politics - which Tariq Ali persuasively characterised as dominated by the "extreme Centre " (which is the coming together of the "centre-right" and "centre-left" around neo-liberal consensus - and which is "extreme" for the foreign wars it has waged and for the domestic war it fights against its own people under the banner of austerity).

‎When your "day job" is all about acting locally it's good to be challenged to think globally from time to time.

‎

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Someone did shoot the Deputy...

http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/did-not-shoot-deputy.html?m=1

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Borderline-Trot) may recollect my wanton expression of the dangerous opinion that 2014 could be the year when UNISON Conference might be able once more to debate the principle of the election of officials around the vacancy for a Deputy General Secretary.

‎For myself I only regret sharing this view, in person. In a recent chance encounter around Euston with a cordial acquaintance (who shares his name with a TV Channel).

For this morning, upon attending a special meeting of the Development and Organisation Committee of our National Executive Council (NEC) originally convened to give formal assent to some purely technical Rule Amendments required by the Certification Officer in anticipation of the forthcoming Political Fund ballot, I was confronted, along with other Committee members , with a hastily tabled proposal to amend our Rules in order to delete the position of Deputy General Secretary.

Whilst I felt we were being bounced, the majority of Committee members accepted the evidently persuasive argument that it was urgent to agree this Rule Amendment in order to save the money we haven't spent over the past eighteen months in which we have held the post vacant.

As one wag observed at lunchtime, it seems that if you propose election to a post it will be deleted before such a debate can take place.

I recall, at Conference 1996 and 1997, speaking in support of the election of Regional Secretaries. 

Whatever else you can say about this, it does at least show that our former Deputy General Secretary was, in the opinion of those who call the shots in our Union, literally irreplaceable!

‎

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Local Government pay - contemplating the furtherance of a trade dispute

https://www.unison.org.uk/about/local-government-dispute-declared

As confirmed yesterday in a bulletin to UNISON branches, there is now a trade dispute over pay between the trade unions representing the local government workforce in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the local government employers.

Any activist who has ever been cautioned that they should "wait for negotiations to break down" before declaring a dispute should take note that this is not the approach being adopted here - and quite right too.

The dispute has been declared because the employers have failed to make ‎a pay offer in response to the pay claim put to them in October. Given that the settlement date is 1 April, an offer worth considering (by means of our long established machinery for consulting via branches) would already be too late to be implemented on time.

What explains the employers' tardiness I do not know - although, having lobbied the London employers regional pay consultation event I know that the majority of London boroughs couldn't ‎even be bothered to turn up to discuss the largest item in their budget (though cheekily, Tory Bromley came along even though they have abandoned national pay bargaining!)

It's clear that the only hope we have of anything approaching a decent pay rise is if we can mobilise our members for national strike action - and that, of course, is why it is important that we have declared that there is a trade dispute.

‎The framework of (limited) legal protection for UK trade unions from civil liability for inducing breach of contract (by for example calling a strike) which was established by the 1906 Liberal Government is now to be found as section 219 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

In addition to all the legal restrictions around ballots and notification imposed in the 1980s (and retained by New Labour) the original restriction from 1906 also remains - in order for an act on behalf of a trade union to attract civil immunity (so no one can sue us) it has, first of all, to be carried out ‎"in contemplation or furtherance" of a trade dispute.

Although there is no formal legal requirement to "declare" a trade dispute it is a sensible step, and - in this case - an important moment in the 2014 Local Government pay campaign. 

We now need to contemplate how to further this dispute. The workforce covered by the National Joint Council is not only the largest bargaining unit within UNISON - it remains the largest single bargaining unit in the entire economy. This dispute is highly significant.

The Service Group Executive, and UNISON's National Joint Council Committee, need to take a leaf from the book of our sisters and brothers in Higher Education and give a bold lead.

The Union as a whole, at the very highest level and from the top down, then needs to apply the lesson of the period between the General Secretary's speech to the TUC in 2011 and the strike over pensions on 30 November of that year.

A satisfactory outcome to this dispute depends upon the single-minded mobilisation of all of the resources of our Union in order to inspire and empower members and activists on the ground. 

Our membership in local government is falling as the sector is hammered with job losses, and defensive struggles played out locality by locality can only, at best, achieve some damage limitation.

This dispute is our opportunity to change things. This will require a clear and decisive lead from the top and dedicated and disciplined determination from every activist.

The first step taken by declaring a dispute is a step in the right direction.

‎

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Please take immediate action to prevent the deportation of Jermaine Strachan

‎I set out below an urgent message sent out today to members of Lambeth UNISON. If any of the readers of this blog can take a few moments to read this and send an email to the Home Secretary to help us try to stop a tragically unjust deportation due to take place on Sunday 16 February, please do!

‎

Dear Colleagues,
‎
I am writing to all members of Lambeth UNISON to ask you to take some immediate action to try to avert a tragic injustice.

A young father, the son of one of the members of our trade union branch, is facing deportation this Sunday because he lost his own father in a hit and run in 2004.

Jermaine Strachen was 14 at the time of his father's death and was dependent on his father (a British citizen) for his immigration status in the UK. Now 26 he faces deportation leaving his remaining family including a six year old son behind.

The Strachan family's tragedy starts at the Athens Olympics where Errol Strachan, 45, of Frant Road, Thornton Heath died of multiple injuries when a car driven by a Danish yachtsman struck him just hours before he was due to return home from the 2004  games, where he had been working as a catering contractor.

An inquest held at Croydon Coroner's Court  in 2013 heard witnesses say Nicklas Holm,  a member of Denmark's Olympic sailing team, had been driving at 80kmph when he hit and killed Mr Strachan.

The speed limit of the road was 50 kmph, which Mr Holm, who had been driving in a lane specially designated for those involved in the Olympics, insisted he had not exceeded. The yachtsman said he felt "no guilt" about Mr Strachan's death and competed in the games just six days later.

But in 2010 a Greek court convicted him of manslaughter by dangerous driving and sentenced him to eight months in prison. Judges overturned the verdict on appeal in April 2011.

Mr Strachan from Croydon had been crossing to get cash out of a machine on his last night in Athens, where he had been posted for four days by employer Admirable Crichton when he was hit. Lawyers for Mr Strachan's are to appeal in the civil court in February 2014.

Ms Hazel Strachan said her husbands death had been devastating for his two young children Jermaine and Sharnette, both from an earlier relationship - adding: "Jermaine was just a kid when it happened so it was especially hard for him."

Since his father's death Jermaine has been subject to reporting conditions, which he has complied with every Friday at Luna House in Croydon.

Ruth Cashman, Joint Secretary Lambeth UNISON stated "It defies belief that the Home Office would compound the Stachan family's tragedy by deporting  Jermaine. Jermaine lost his father at 14 and his six year old son Maliki also faces growing up without his father. We consider this a gross injustice and believe Jermaine Strachan should remain in the UK with his family and should be given full British Citizenship."

 Jermaine's reference number is S793967 and he is currently detained at Dover Immigration Centre.

We are asking members, please to send an email to the Home Secretary (mayt@parliament.uk) with a copy to the local MP (steve.reed.mp@parliament.uk) and to the branch (rcashman@lambeth.gov.uk), quoting Jermaine's reference number (S793967) and asking that he be granted leave to remain in this country.

If you have time to write this in your own words that would be great. If not you can cut and paste the email addresses and suggested text for the message below.

Thank you very much for anything which you can do to help us try to prevent Jermaine's deportation.

Best wishes,

Jon Rogers
BRANCH SECRETARY

Email addresses;

mayt@parliament.uk; steve.reed.mp@parliament.uk; rcashman@lambeth.gov.uk;

Title for the email;

Reference S79367 – stop the deportation of Jermaine Strachan

Suggested text;

I am writing to urge you to stop the deportation of Jermaine Strachan, a young father, who is facing deportation after losing his father in a hit-and-run during the Olympic Games. Mr Strachan, 14 years of age at the time of his father's death, was dependent on his father (a British citizen) for his immigration status.

The Strachan family have already been through considerable trauma. Errol Strachan, 45, Jermaine's father, died of multiple injuries when a car driven by a Danish yachtsman struck him just hours before he was due to return home from the games. At the time his wife, Ms Hazel Strachan, said her husband's death had been devastating for his children, son Jermaine and daughter Sharnette, both from an earlier relationship. She added "Jermaine was just a kid when it happened, so it was especially hard for him." Since his father's death, Jermaine has been subject to weekly reporting conditions, which he has consistently complied with at Luna House in Croydon. Despite this, he now faces deportation and leaving his remaining family, including six-year-old son Maliki, behind.

Maliki's teacher has written a letter of concern to the Home Office to highlight the effect of Jermaine's detention and possible deportation on the child, stating "Maliki is a naturally happy boy but I have seen his world turn upside down since November, when his father was taken to Dover. This naturally happy boy has become frequently tearful, complains that he misses his dad and finds it increasingly difficult to concentrate."

I join Maliki's teacher in calling on the Home Office to reunite him with his father, Jermaine. She adds in her letter that "I worry for the severe effect his father's deportation will have on him. Maliki is a British citizen and he needs his dad as he grows up. As a society, we should want the best for our children and should ensure they are not denied the role models they need to grow into well adjusted, emotionally stable adults. I implore you to reverse the decision to deport Maliki's father. As a teacher, I see the profound effect absent fathers have on children, both emotionally and educationally. Maliki's father need not be absent; please think of this boy's future and reverse your decision." As his teacher demonstrates, all too often, the rights and need to safeguard children are overlooked in immigration cases.

Just as Jermaine lost his father at 14 years old,  this family tragedy will only deepen by making Maliki grow up without his father. I consider the proposed deportation to be a gross injustice and believe Jermaine Strachan should remain in the UK with his family.

Tristram Hunt? No Thanks!

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-c261-Hunt-crosses-picket-line-to-lecture-on-Marx#.UvqLlmr_Rxs

‎Now that Tony Blair has mostly left UK politics in order to spend more time with his ego, there has been something of a vacancy for a really offensive public schoolboy, dripping with contempt for our movement, on the right wing of the Labour Party.

No longer.

Not content with alienating teachers, without winning any significant support from parents or students, with a half-baked hare-brained scheme to register all teachers, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt managed (as reported in the link above from the admirable Morning Star) to waltz across a UCU picket line in order to give a lecture on (of all things) Marxism!

Trade unionists have more than a century of putting up with a lot of nonsense from the political wing of our movement. Crossing a picket line to work in the trade of the workers on a picket line ‎is, however, entirely outside what is acceptable from an ostensibly "Labour" politician. It should be no more acceptable in our movement than the sort of foul-mouthed racism, misogyny or homophobia at which Tristram would doubtless express his horror if asked for a view at an agreeable dinner party.

As someone who has, in the past, got into a certain amount of if not hot, then at least more than tepid, water for using the word "scab", I suggest we could now replace that with the word "Tristram".‎ 

And as for the individual concerned?

He should be reshuffled into well deserved oblivion at the earliest opportunity.

He may not be, because the Blairite machine is populating the Parliamentary Labour Party with far too many such creatures - but at the very least no trade unionist should lift a finger to secure the return to Parliament of this enemy of our movement.

If we have meant anything we have said in the fight to defend the link between our unions and the Party we created we must now take the fight to these Tory fifth columnists. 

Tristram Hunt is a disgrace.

‎

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Stop gagging local unions in Barnet Council - sign the petition!

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-gagging-local-unions-in-barnet-council

Hard right Tory MP Aiden Burley (forever to be associated with a "stag do" where one of the guests thought a Nazi uniform funny) may be standing down from Parliament at the next election, but the poisonous legacy of his anti-union views has not been eliminated.

Burley led the so-called "Trade Union Reform Campaign", a failed attempt by less civilised elements on the Tory right to gain respectability for their visceral hostility to the collective organisation of working people.

However, whilst Burley's antics helpfully discredited his own cause, hostility to trade unions is both broader and deeper than the right-wing fringe - as exemplified by Boris Johnson's perennial attempts to substitute anti-union rants for managerial responsibility.

For UNISON members the current attack upon Barnet UNISON is very much a case in point.‎ Having pressed ahead with an ill-advised scheme for mass privatisation (of which the citizens of Barnet now have no choice but to repent at leisure) the Tory Council appear determined to do as much damage as they can to workplace trade union organisation before they face the voters (and the risk of losing control of the Council) in May.

‎

Effective trade union organisation in all but the smallest local authorities has for some years generally been accompanied by sensible agreements on "trade union facility time". That's because the work of co-ordinating the representation of hundreds of workers needs one or more people available at any time (in a way that a shop steward who needs permission to "walk off the job" cannot be).

However, because the legal foundations for this customary arrangement are based upon the statutory right to paid time off work to deal with matters with one's own employer, mass privatisation (or the general diversification of service provision) opens a door through which reactionaries can charge in order to seek to undermine union organisation.

This is precisely what Barnet's Tory Council is now trying to do, and the link above is to an online petition in opposition to this attack which I would urge all readers to sign.‎ 

The trade unions across London need to give the highest priority to ousting Barnet's Tories in order to decapitate an attack upon public services and workers' rights which is of national significance (rather than, for example, devoting resources to Labour's campaign in Tower Hamlets, where the peculiar parochial politics of that borough are of no wider relevance whatsoever).

The front line in the battle to defend trade unions in local government is today in the London Borough of Barnet.

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A silver lining?

http://thejusticegap.com/2014/02/lord-chancellor-hoisted-petard/

The link above is to an analysis of the outcome of UNISON's challenge, by way of judicial review, to the outrageous decision of the Coalition Government to impose fees upon claimants in the employment tribunals.

This analysis was recommended to me by an informed source and puts into context the "headline" news - which is (as any reader of this blog is likely to be aware) that the court refused to overturn the imposition of fees.

‎

This was, quite obviously, a defeat.

However, not only did the Government concede that successful claimants will generally recover their fees (a concession to this legal challenge) but - more significantly - the key challenge on the question of whether tribunal fees will so discourage claimants as to render the law against discrimination ineffective - was defeated only because, at the point of the hearing, there was insufficient evidence that this is what was happening.

As further evidence becomes available a further legal challenge could be made - and I hope it will.

It's hard enough to challenge discrimination without the added hurdle of tribunal fees. Labour needs to make an immediate, high-profile and unequivocal pledge to repeal this pernicious restriction upon the rights of working people.

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Breaking the bullshit

http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2014/02/07/breaking-the-silence/

I have taken to shopping at Aldi rather more than Sainsbury's because you can get stuff that's just as good but it's cheaper. That's a sensible basis on which to choose a supermarket - but I wouldn't apply it to the planning and provision of public services.

The right-wing "Progress" faction within the Labour Party is pretty much funded by Sainsbury's - but they don't give little vouchers you can redeem on your next visit when you find they've said something stupid and you wish you'd listened instead to Compass or the LRC.

The link above shows the laughably poor quality of the politics (and "thinking") on which Lord Sainsbury is squandering the money extracted from his staff and customers.

In a thinly disguised defence of privatisation the author (whose name escapes me less than five minutes after I finished reading his drivel) promotes the idea of mutuals and cooperatives delivering public services.

Oh dear.

These post-Blair Blairites are a sorry shower.

At least their master knew how to make ideologically motivated reactionary nonsense look like "evidence-based" policy formulation (sometimes).

Progress appear to be ignorant of the fact that the most energetic approach to date to promote mutuals in the delivery of local government services has run into the sand.

‎They are reduced to promoting ideas of which the Adam Smith institute would be proud (that there should be "competition" to - for example - run local schools). Progress are a distorted mirror image of those ultra-leftists who will never permit experience and understanding to get in the way of what they "know" to be true.

If I were Lord Sainsbury, I'd find a better use for my money.

Public services cannot be improved by silly gimmicks, or "competition", or "new providers". What is required is the unglamorous reality of better management informed by hands-on experience and guided by the public service ethos (which the likes of Progress will never understand because it isn't driven by the profit motive).

‎

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Higher Education workers deserve a pay rise!

http://www.unison.org.uk/news/he-members-take-third-strike-day

Your bleary-eyed blogger is en route to work via a picket line, to support UNISON members striking today (alongside members of other unions) in Higher Education.

Higher Education employers have imposed a miserly 1% pay increase on staff, whilst Vice- Chancellors ‎(which is what they call their bosses) have enjoyed an 8% increase on top of their (already rather more generous) salaries.

Two days of strike action - in October and December - have not led to the employers seeing sense, leaving Higher Education trade unionists with no choice but to take further action. 

I do not underestimate the difficulties which our members in Higher Education face as a result of the necessity to take this further action. The workforce in the sector does not consist primarily of well-paid Professors!

As a local government worker, there are two things I can do (after I leave today's picket line to go to work). First, I can propose to my branch that we try to raise funds to assist members experiencing hardship.

Secondly - and most importantly - I can build the campaign for fair pay for local government workers in the aftermath of Tuesday's national day of protest. The more we can broaden the fight to reverse the driving down of our living standards the more likely we are to see a breakthrough.

Solidarity and good luck to all strikers today (in Higher Education and on the London Underground).

‎

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Solidarity with the tube strikers

As it's the day of protest about local government pay (see last post) I probably won't find time to blog again before the tube strike starts this evening.

http://m.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk/node/4830

Above is a link to the locations of RMT picket lines tomorrow and Thursday. All trade unionists should visit to show support to members of the RMT and TSSA unions striking in defence of staffed ticket offices on the tube - and the thousand jobs put at risk by their planned closure.

Those readers living or working in London in will be familiar with the demonisation of tube workers generally, the RMT particularly (and their General Secretary personally)‎. The rest of the trade union movement should show our support with vigour to match the venom spat by our opponents.

Solidarity!

‎

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Making the weather on local government pay

The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Today - and particularly this lunchtime - it will fall upon many local government workers protesting in support of our pay claim.

http://www.unison.org.uk/at-work/local-government/key-issues/local-government-pay/take-action/

Good luck to all those members of UNISON, and the other local government trade unions, organising events as part of the national day of protest about local government pay.

There can be no doubt that this action, in support of a reasonable pay claim for an increase of at least a pound an hour for local government workers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is a necessary early step in a campaign which must, if it is to deliver a worthwhile outcome, lead to national industrial action on a scale not seen since 30 November 2011.

Hundreds of thousands of local government workers (including school support staff whose pay is governed by the same bargaining machinery) earn below the living wage - and all local government workers have seen our living standards fall by 18% over the past five years as prices have raced ahead of wages.

The misery of pay restraint hasn't protected jobs or services in local government as widespread redundancies attest. A union movement which has not taken on the pay freeze and - in too many cases - has engaged in concession bargaining over conditions of service has proven generally inadequate in resisting the tidal wave of cuts and privatisation.

Where, however, trade unions have given a lead which members have been prepared to follow and have taken a firm line then there have been local victories in defensive struggles.

‎

This is the lesson which we must now apply to the fight for fair pay for local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We are the largest bargaining group in the UK economy and, whilst we may not be able to alter today's weather from a meteorological standpoint, we do have the power to make the weather politically.

The Labour leadership talk about a cost of living crisis - our pay claim is an opportunity for them to offer support to workers doing something about it.

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I don’t begrudge Boris Johnson his newspaper column but I do mind his ill-considered, hypocritical anti-union tirade

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10613610/I-dont-begrudge-Bob-Crow-his-holiday-but-I-do-mind-his-strike.html

London Mayor, Boris Johnson has taken time off from his busy schedule to share with readers of the Daily Torygraph his views on this week's tube strike.

Predictably he returns to his favourite demand - that strike ballots should be subject to a 50% turnout threshold in order to provide unions with civil immunity (he doesn't explain his demand that way but that's what he means).

The Colonel Bufton-Tuftons reading this out in the stockbroker belt are probably now harrumphing their agreement over the marmalade, but Boris Johnson clearly cannot be defeated by simple mockery (indeed it created him).

Given the superficially "democratic" appearance of this fundamentally anti-democratic proposal it is worth reminding ourselves of the arguments - in practice and in principle - against this proposal.

There are a large number of factors which depress turnouts in strike ballots which, by law, have to be conducted by post to home addresses. Low paid workers, perhaps living in houses in multiple occupation, moving frequently as their tenure is insecure may never even see their ballot paper.

Others still, juggling bills and trying to avoid turning to a legal loan shark at the end of each pay month, may not open all official correspondence promptly. In other cases, well, all sorts of things can happen (we had a member whose young child once turned their ballot paper into a work of art).

‎

Whatever the reasons, very many industrial action ballots produce a turnout of less than 50% - and yet can still lead to well-supported action. On planet Boris, UNISON members would not have been able to take the official action for which we voted on 30 November 2011.

And, in principle, why should there be such a threshold uniquely for industrial action ballots? Management face no "threshold" when deciding to cut jobs, or hold down pay (because they have no vote at all of course). Underpinning Boris's argument is a model in which industrial action is a disruptive exception to the normal rule of workers by bosses.

One might equally observe though that conflict of interest is embedded in the employment relationship and that one-sided restrictions on the ability of workers to take action in support of our interests is no more than old-fashioned class politics, pure and simple.

Perhaps the critical point to bear in mind though is that Boris Johnson was elected with 51.53% of the vote in 2012, but on a 38% turnout. He therefore commanded the positive support of less than a fifth of London's electorate - and yet considers that a mandate not for a few days strike action but for four years rule - including the permanent closure of local fire stations, putting lives at risk.

Whatever disruption and inconvenience Londoners may experience as a result of the forthcoming tube strike it will be as nothing compared to the harm being done by our hard-right reactionary Mayor, attacking public services on the back of less than 20% support.

Trade unionists and democrats need to make the case against further restrictions on our rights.

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Ed Miliband's Dog's Breakfast

The unseemly haste which has been the hallmark of the unnecessary interference with the Labour Party constitution initiated by the Leader’s July speech has been reasserted this weekend with the publication of Ed Miliband’s proposals, arising from the Collins Review, just days before Tuesday’s meeting of Labour’s National Executive Council (NEC).

It seems likely that the NEC, including its trade union members, may be about to allow themselves to be "bounced" by a Leader prepared to put his authority on the line in order to pursue his long term goal of greater state funding for political parties (under cover of an implausible claim to be seeking mass membership).

A lot of media attention is focused on the proposal to move from the current "electoral college" to one "member" one vote for the election of the Leader, with no separate voting by affiliated trade union members, nor by Members of Parliament. The apparent democracy of this move is undermined somewhat by the proposal to increase significantly the minimum number of MPs required to nominate a candidate before they can get on the ballot paper.

As Jon Lansman has pointed out this arrangement would have meant that many past Leaders (including Wilson and Callaghan) would not have been elected. As a Labour Party member I think an electoral system which is likely only ever to deliver two candidates to the members to vote for will not be good for the Party.

However, the proposed method for electing the Leader would still be more democratic than the position in the 1970s, when MPs alone elected the Leader – and that system coexisted with a firm link between Labour and trade unions (who at that time commanded the vast majority of all votes at Labour Party Conference, not the 50% share which Miliband is not threatening)(yet).

Raising the bar to leadership candidates would be bad for the Labour Party, as would the foolish and unwanted proposal for a primary for our Mayoral candidate in London which could, in the worst case scenario, lead to our standing a comedian with views safely within the neoliberal consensus against a comedian with views safely within the neoliberal consensus.

The real danger to the nature of the Labour Party as a Party linked to the organised working class is in the gradual shift in the nature of union affiliation to the Party over the next five years.

Miliband proposes a gradual shift from "opting-out" of paying the political levy to "opting-in" to a status as "affiliated member" (for payment of an additional fee). These "affiliated members" would become a second-tier of Labour Party member, invited to branch and member meetings but booted out when the meeting was to select a candidate.

Over time the level of a union’s collective affiliation will be adjusted (reduced) to the level of those members who have (individually) opted to be second-class individual Party members. It can reasonably be foreseen that this will mean that the representation of trade unions within the Party will be revisited by those (in "Progress", the Tory fifth column) who do not really believe in a political role for trade unions (other than as lobbyists like those who fund them).

The unions may find that all we have achieved is to have postponed the struggle to retain the link (to return to the issue in future from a position of greater weakness).

These proposals also offer the prospect of bankruptcy postponed for the Labour Party, clearly signifying (as I have argued elsewhere) that this exercise is part of a medium term plan to secure more, and more stable, state funding for political parties.

There is, of course, already far more state funding than a generation ago, though some of it is camouflaged. I heard a Labour Group Leader arguing that local Councillors needed a larger voice on the Party NEC because they contribute a lot of funds (!) These funds are provided from the virtual salaries now paid to local politicians and amount to surrogate state funding.

The "professionalisation" of politics, with Labour Groups increasingly dominated by small groups of middle class full-time career politicians is part of the problem of the alienation of much of the population from a "political class" increasingly isolated from the experiences of the rest of us. This alienation ought not to be answered by further insulating politicians from dependence upon civil society through the provision of greater state funding.

Socialists and trade unionists on the NEC face an unappealing choice. Either support a dog’s breakfast warmed up by Ray Collins for us, to be consumed over the next five years, or vote down a Leader we need to win the next General Election.

At the very least the brakes need somehow to be applied to give ordinary trade union and Labour Party members a chance to consider the exact composition of this dog’s breakfast.

How could each trade union actually deliver the Collins proposals within their own Rules? If Rule Amendments are required, what guarantee is there that Union Conferences will support them?

What data will unions be required to pass over to the Party about members who "opt-in"? How will that data be linked so that changes in membership information are communicated between the two organisations?

Given the work which we already face in order to comply with the provisions of Part Three of the Lobbying Bill trade unions don’t need to be saddled with further administrative burdens in connection with our membership data.

Are we seriously supposed to promote to fellow trade unionists an opportunity to enjoy second-class Labour Party membership? 

Certainly there is no good case for being bounced into backing Miliband at Tuesday’s NEC – and (if the Party’s decision making process is to have credibility) affiliates and Constituency Labour Parties should have the right to move amendments to the proposals.

Storm in claret glass abates?

http://www.leftfutures.org/2014/01/party-reform-explained-or-why-sack-anyone-who-suggests-a-clause-iv-moment/#more-22359

I cannot do better, in commenting upon developments in relation to the Collins Review and the Labour-Union Link than draw the attention of readers (Sid and Doris Lefty) to this link to comments from Jon Lansman.

The essence of the assault upon the union link pushed forward by the Tory fifth column in the odious "Progress" group (delivered to you by Sainsburys) has been seen off for now, but at the price of an unwanted "primary" to select our next candidate for London Mayor.

A shift to "one member one vote" for Labour Leader takes us to a better and more democratic place than that which the Party occupied before the electoral college - when the Leader was elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party.

We need to see more of the detail of what is proposed - and we cannot relax vigilance as long as the Labour Party remains infested with Latter Day Blairites who believe in privatisation, performance related pay and a reduction in trade union influence.

At least there is still a battle to be had.

Of which more later.

Organising in the Private Sector

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1999/1269_98_1406.html

I've not blogged since the Branch Annual General Meeting last week and now I'm posting up a reference to a fifteen year old Employment Appeal Tribunal decision. Why?

Well, I've not blogged because I've been busy with various matters, including attending a meeting last week of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) Development and Organisation Committee (D&O) at which we received an excellent presentation on organising the increasingly fragmented public service workforce. Locally the branch is alive to this issue as we have private sector members working in intolerable conditions.

And I'm posting up this relatively ancient decision (which I fear is still, as they say, "good law") because it is a reminder of the risks we must be prepared to run if we wish to take trade union organisation out into the "precariat" who work in this fragmented workforce.

The "point of law" in the case of Beynon -v- Scadden is whether an employment tribunal can take account of the means of a trade union in determining the ability of workers represented by that union to pay an award of costs made against them. The real point of the case was an attempt to organise a small private sector social care employer whose workers wanted a trade union, but which refused to recognise the union (in the days before statutory recognition).

I was intimately involved in the case, in which a tribunal criticised the Union for using TUPE litigation to try to cajole a reluctant employer into recognising the Union. The Union lost the case, and bore non-negligible costs as a result but (as far as I am aware) no one (not even myself) was criticised within UNISON as a result. Nor should we have been. (The original tribunal, as I recollect, accused me of "abuse of process" - but sometimes that is what is necessary, and losing no more proves you were wrong than winning proves you were right).

We will not recruit low-paid private sector workers on insecure (often zero hours) contracts on the basis that we have a good individual "offer" (for as little as £1.30 a month). We have to show how organising can deliver immediate improvement to their working lives.

We have to adopt a multi-faceted approach in which we use every legal and political avenue open to us to try to build the capacity which will be needed to develop effective collective organisation. The tools we have now, more than fifteen years after the events leading to that legal decision, include not only the statutory recognition provisions but also the legal right to be accompanied at disciplinary and grievance hearings.

To these legal rights we can add the law on consultation on health and safety, transfers and collective redundancies (as it applies where there is no trade union recognition). The (not otherwise very welcome) departure from the traditional Committee structure in local government has also created a Scrutiny function, the gaze of which we can, with the help of sympathetic politicians, turn to such questions as working conditions in a private social care sector almost entirely dependent upon public expenditure.

The approach of UNISON's admirable Ethical Care Charter can be applied beyond Homecare - and we must see that it is.

At the end of the day (a day in which some private social care workers may well have done a 24 hour shift) we do, however, have to recognise that the workers who we persuade to build the Union in these workplaces will be putting their jobs on the line.

We can only repay this courage by offering the same willingness to take risks and invest resources. I hope we shall.

Part time revolutionaries and full time trade unionists

Continuing the theme of comment upon (apparently left-wing) motions which may come up for discussion at my branch Annual General Meeting, I was really pleased (as a former student of Industrial Relations) to be reminded of the "incorporation thesis" associated (long ago) with Richard Hyman.

A proposal has been made that the branch should seek to renegotiate trade union "facility" arrangements so that no one would be on full-time release to the trade union. This proposal comes not from readers of the Daily Mail, or supporters of the (Tory right-wing) Trade Union Reform Campaign but from admirable comrades who would position themselves well to the left as such doubtful newspapers as the "Socialist" (or "Socialist Worker").

There is something of a socialist tradition informing this position if you look back into arguments from the 1970s and 1980s. Richard Hyman, the most prominent - if heterodox - Marxist academic in the field of industrial relations in the 1980s, advanced an argument that the spread of full time release of trade union lay officials in manufacturing industry led to the "incorporation" of workplace union organisation by the employers.

I would recommend readers dig out John Kelly's "Trade Unions and Socialist Politics" to read the chapter which convincingly rebuts this misconceived argument. Although an argument can be made that those released full-time from their normal work are thereby distanced from their class interests and  are at risk of becoming "bureaucratised" (as fledgling full-time officials) there is not a shred of empirical evidence to support the thesis that having lay officials on full-time release makes trades unions less militant.

Since Marxists (including all varieties of Trotskyist) have been studying industrial relations for more than a generation one would think that if there were evidence to support the view that full-time release of union activists is bad for union organisation someone would have published it by now.

As a Marxist I am impressed by the approach of a bewhiskered nineteenth century German bloke who spent a lot of time in the British Library and based his politics upon study of social reality. 

No such study informs the lazy assumption that it would be a good thing to dispense with arrangements for the full-time release from their other duties of elected lay union officials whose duties take up all (or often more than) the time for which the employer pays them.

As with the proposal for term limits for branch officers about which I blogged earlier this suggestion is superficially radical. It appears to speak to a desire to spread and share responsibility (as if trade unions, and the participation of activists within them, were ends in themselves).

The formulaic approach of those who think that the main thing is to "share" "facility time" (which approach is eagerly shared in the national offices of our trade unions by those with an equal lack of practical experience) is of no help whatsoever in trying to use the legal rights we have to secure the time we need to do the work which has to be done.

It might well be better, in any particular set of circumstances, to have two activists sharing an amount of time off work to carry out defined trade union duties (or to have three, or four or five!) However, whether this is in fact a better way to represent workers' interests is a practical question to be decided on the basis of an analysis of those particular concrete circumstances.

To adopt - as a principle - the idea that no one should be on full-time release echoes the approach of the anarchists who sought trade unions which would employ no staff. This was a position which was principled, consistent and coherent. Its relevance to our movement today can be seen by the number of workers who have chosen to belong to organisations which apply such principles.

Not a lot.

The real problem of ensuring the accountability of elected lay leaders to the workers they represent can only be resolved politically, by democratic challenge, not administratively be dictating in advance formulas composed on the back of a beer mat.

Once more, addressing my friends and comrades who are Lambeth Activists I suggest that the practical way to deal with the distribution of trade union time off is to stand candidates for election to union positions who wish to adopt your preferred approach.

If there aren't two (or more) people willing to share some duties (so that no one needs to be released full-time) than a "principled" approach to refusing full-time release is an untimely gift to the employers, simultaneously hobbling the rank and file in their interaction with the trade union bureaucracy.

And if there are two (or more) such people, and if rank and file trade unionists are persuaded by them that they, sharing work out, will be better than a solo incumbent, then they will win election without the need for administrative manoeuvres to prevent full-time release.

The answers to political problems is political, not administrative and the way to win workers to a different leadership is to show leadership.

The amount of time off work required by any union representative is a practical, tactical question, not one of principle. To advance an argument (of principle) against full-time release at a time when the Government and its outriders are encouraging attacks upon trade union time off could justly be described as foolish.

Term limits for branch officers

For the past sixteen years my trade union branch has held our Annual General Meeting in January, and usually quite early in January.

This means that the return to work after Xmas and New Year is never uneventful - and in particular there are always motions to consider.

This year some comrades have taken a leaf out of the book of the leadership of the Lewisham Hospital branch and are proposing "term limits" for branch officers.

Diligent readers of this blog (Sid and Doris  Rule-Book) may recollect past posts responding to the proposal advanced on several occasions by that branch to our Conference, that NEC members ought not to serve more than three terms.

I never took it personally that such proposals began to be made as I embarked upon a third term on our National Executive.

Now some branch comrades propose that no branch officer should serve more than three years (unless there is no other candidate). 

That this proposal appears superficially radical is a testament to the fact that it does have a (fairly ancient) left-wing pedigree.

The healthy mistrust of leaders in the trade union movement found its purest expression around a hundred years ago in syndicalism. The RMT Union retains a tradition of term limits for lay activists because of the syndicalist origins of the former National Union of Railwaymen (NUR).

Term limits have an older legacy in eighteenth century democratic discourse, leading to the two term limit on US Presidents. They may be an appropriate check to the potential for a Head of State to accumulate excessive power over time. Syndicalists applied this insight, rightly or wrongly, to early twentieth century trade unions.

Syndicalism never really made headway because of the contradiction between faith in trade unions and mistrust of trade unions which was always at its heart. Whatever criticisms one might make of the Communist (and subsequent Trotskyist) traditions which subsequently won the allegiance of the most radical of working class militants, they did at least have a more sophisticated understanding of the role of leadership in the workers movement.

Such sophistication is not shown by those who propose term limits for UNISON branch officers. Were we in a trade union in which all power was vested in lay activists then an argument might be had that term limits could provide a check upon that power.

It would be a very weak argument, since the check upon such power would better be provided by democratic challenge than administrative manoeuvre, but it would be an argument nonetheless.

In the reality in which (Rule B.2.2 notwithstanding) much real power is in the hands of paid officials (who face no term limits of course) the argument for term limits on lay UNISON office holders (whether at national or branch level) is really an argument for the relative empowerment of the full time machinery at the expense of the rank and file.

A healthy and vibrant trade union in a period of rising struggle would be likely to replace its elected leadership in large part as newly radicalised layers of activists came into action, displacing those whose past experience might make them more conservative. 

This would happen as a result of real responses to concrete circumstances, not as a result of the bureaucratic imposition of anti-democratic rules at a time of relatively low struggle. 

The decisive argument against term limits is always an elementary democratic argument. Members should have an unconstrained choice as to who to vote for.  The formulation which says that no one may serve more than a certain number of terms "unless there is no other candidate" in a movement and at a time when positions are often either unopposed or even left vacant is a recipie for random outcomes.

If a Tory stood against a long serving incumbent they would automatically be elected regardless of the views of the electorate.

Trade unions are a means to an end (the representation of working class interests) not an end in themselves. Likewise trade union democracy is a means to the end of more effective representation.

Among the things that are wrong with our movement are the shortage of elections and democratic choice. The solution is clearly not to limit the democratic choices of our members in the elections which we do have, whilst empowering those who never face election.

Speaking personally to my friends and comrades who are Lambeth Activists I would say that if you want to change a branch officer you should submit a nomination, and if you value elections you should perhaps not withdraw nominations once made.

Local Government Day of Protest - Tuesday 4 February - the fight on pay is paramount

UNISON is urging all local government branches to participate in a day of protest on Tuesday 4 February.

This will be both to support our reasonable claim for a fair flat-rate pay rise of at least a pound an hour (ahead of the employers' side meeting to agree a response to that claim the following week) and to express opposition to yet another year of savage cuts in local government spending. 

The call is not for strike action but for protests at lunchtime or after work. There are (of course) ways to support a protest at work too (for example by wearing UNISON colours) and in the four weeks we now have to plan there is time to organise the leaflets and stickers we need to get our message across.

The coming defensive struggles against the cuts may well have the highest profile in particular localities - and we need to mobilise our members to fight defensively (not least because such struggles are proven to limit the damage to jobs and services).

However, the challenge facing UNISON (and other union) activists in local government is to prioritise the fight for better pay. The best that ever comes from purely defensive struggle (which can be very very good) is damage limitation at a local level. The fight to reverse the declining living standards of workers covered by the largest bargaining group in the economy represents our last chance in this Parliament to inflict a defeat on the Government and to turn the tide which has been flowing so heavily against us for so long.

A serious attempt to secure a decent pay rise for a massive (and predominantly low paid) workforce in local government would deliver economic stimulus just where it is required - and the political circumstances in which we achieved such an outcome would be those in which we defeated the advocates of austerity (for workers and the poor - they never advocate austerity for the rich!)

A combative union movement (such as would be encouraged by a local government pay fight worth pursuing) would also be the best chance we have of pushing the Labour Government, for which we have no choice but to hope, into being a Government worthy of that hope.
 

Clever cynics will say this strong lead from the top of our union is two years too late to do any good. Cleverer people will know that it is never too late to try to mobilise working people to fight in our interests. 

Let's plan to make the biggest splash we can on 4 February, building for the further action we know we're going to need. 

I do not believe it!

Imagine, if you will, a large public service trade union in the second decade of the twenty-first century, it's members under attack from a Government utterly hostile to everything the union stands for.

Now imagine that members in one branch get to hear about the severe attacks being faced by members in another branch and seek to submit a motion to their Regional Service Group to send solidarity and support to the second branch.

Would you believe that in such circumstances the first branch might be told that the union's "democracy guidelines" precluded them making any proposals relating to the second branch?

(It might be an academic question if you also imagine that the Secretary of the first branch has training needs in relation to sending faxes via a Multi-Functional Device, but still, would you believe it?)

As I enter my second half-century I worry that I may experience more and more such "Victor Meldrew moments". Readers concerned for my mental well-being are invited to send brandy (or clear instructions on sending faxes via a Multi-Functional Device...)

On a serious note, the need for support and solidarity between and across UNISON branches is one of the reasons why I and other activists are starting a new discussion about how we can organise to support each other. An initial chat will take place on Thursday lunchtime in the Euston area, email if you would like to be kept in touch.

Lost database spotted in cyberspace!

Having alarmed regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Conference-Anorak) with the news that UNISON's online database of previous Conference decisions was missing online, I am pleased now to report better news thanks to a prompt and helpful response to enquiries from colleagues at the UNISON Centre. 

I had been worried that our Conference database might have been swept out to sea by one of the storms of irritation at not being able to find anything on the new website. Happily this is not so.

The Conference database was part of our previous Conference Management System (CMS) which has now been replaced by the Online Conference System (OCS). It cannot currently be accessed through the new website due to technical issues but it does still exist. It's just that we can't access it.

However work is underway to make a searchable database of Conference decisions (back to 2000) accessible to UNISON activists through the OCS. I am advised that it is hoped that this will be available by the end of next month.

Bearing in mind the deadline for submission of motions to National Delegate Conference surely only a pedant would want to submit a Conference motion instructing our National Executive Council to take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure. continuous future access to the database of Conference decisions.

If any pedants are reading this perhaps they could get in touch?

Has anyone seen a Conference database?

This is a blog post for all my friends and readers at the UNISON Centre.

I'm worried about a missing database. 

This is how I realised it was missing.

Like anyone who is as arrogant as they are self-obsessed I sometimes read old blog posts.

Back in 2009 I blogged with characteristic intemperance concerning my views about a decision taken by our TUC delegation that year (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/tuc-delegation-meeting-fails-to.html).

In that blog post I referred to a Conference decision which I felt the delegation were in breach of.  Upon looking back at this blog post I couldn’t remember the decision but, knowing that UNISON’s website has for many years provided public access to a database of Conference decisions, I knew I could follow the link I had blogged at that time.

So I followed the link in that blog post to http://cms.unison.co.uk/MotionText.asp?DocumentID=1000229.

And this is what I found;

“The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

Where is the Conference database? Search our new (all singing, all dancing) website for the phrase “Conference database” (once you’ve logged in of course) and you’ll be told;

Your search - Conference database - did not match any documents.

o                 Are all words spelled correctly?

o                 Try searching again with different, more general or fewer keywords

o                 Start from the UNISON homepage or why not Browse the UNISON knowledge base.”

The availability in public to all UNISON members of a database of all our past Conference decisions is a vital part of trade union democracy. For a database to be available it has to be easy to find.

Where is it?

Resist fear and insecurity

http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/management/2013/11/27/job-security-in-the-public-sector-is-dwindling/

I have yet to spend my Xmas book tokens on the full write up of the findings of the 2011 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS), which was published slightly before the holidays. However, the link above shows one of the authors of that work picking out one of the more dramatic changes in our working lives between 2004 (when the last such survey was carried out) and 2011.

Employees' perceptions of our job security, which remained stable in the private sector, have collapsed in the public sector. Whereas in 2004 almost two thirds of public sector workers believed their job to be secure, this had fallen to less than half by the time interviews were carried out for the 2011 survey.

These perceptions don't necessarily reflect real experience. In the same year as the fieldwork for the latest WERS was being carried out, a survey of employers from XpertHR found that public sector organisations had a turnover rate of 12.6%, compared with 17.4% in the private sector. 

So, in the public sector (where only a minority felt secure) just one in eight workers actually left their jobs over the course of a year, whereas in the private sector (where two thirds of workers felt secure) the equivalent proportion was more than one in six.

Public sector workers feel less secure but are not, in fact, at that much greater risk.

I don't think that the resolution of this paradox is necessarily that complex. Since the General Election (and before), as the political right won the battle to control the narrative of the economic crisis, we have lived through a period of "public sector worker bashing" unprecedented in living memory.

An important part of this offensive has been to instil fear in the public sector workforce. Some part of this may be motivated by a deliberate intent to provoke feelings of insecurity to undermine the combativity of the workforce, but the relative extent of job insecurity compared to real risk also has a material basis in the way in which large groups of workers are continually pushed through reorganisations to achieve the redundancy dismissals of only a minority.

The economy cannot sustain recovery without an increase in real wages - and if the trade union movement is to play the part it should in achieving this outcome we need to mobilise and motivate public sector workers to fight for higher pay. To do this (to do anything very much worthwhile) we need to change the climate of fear and insecurity in our public services.

Trade union leaders don't have a magic wand to change this with overnight (it's not an ice sculpture, one might say) but the sort of resolute leadership being shown currently by the Higher Education Service Group Executive points in the right direction.

Did not shoot the Deputy...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Dawg

Those for whom the UNISON Rule Book has a status somewhere between a favourite book and erotic literature will know that UNISON is required to have a Deputy General Secretary.

This is a Rule Book requirement with which we have now been failing to comply for some eighteen months.

As an inquisitive soul, I have been asking about this and, along with the Xmas cards from those of my NEC colleagues inclined to send me such, I was pleased to receive, just before Xmas, a letter explaining what is going on.

It appears that a decision has been taken to defer recruitment to a Deputy General Secretary while we get used to having enough Assistant General Secretaries to field a five-a-side football team.

Those UNISON activists who have, in the past, tried to get a debate about the election (rather than appointment) of our Deputy General Secretary before UNISON National Delegate Conference may wish to take note of this.

In the past, our Standing Orders Committee (SOC) have felt constrained to rule such attempts out of order for fear that they would breach the contracts of employment of the holder of the post.

There is no such person now.

A more imaginative argument to seek to rule out extending the principle of election to more senior officials in UNISON has been that it would breach an implied term of the contracts of other staff that they should be able to apply for such posts as promotion opportunities without the peril of an election.

Since our Union now accepts that it may consider dispensing with the role of Deputy General Secretary (notwithstanding that such a decision would require a Rule Amendment quite as significant as one which proposed election to the post)  this inventive argument must too now be discounted.

If someone wanted to propose the election of UNISON's Deputy General Secretary, 2014 would be the year to do it.

As to whether that would be a good idea, a future blog post appears called for...

TUPE protection massively weakened

http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/EUECJ/2013/C42611.html

This blog post comes with a warning (I believe these may now be called "trigger alerts" in informed circles). It concerns employment law and may provoke tedium. If you're a trade union activist you need to know this though.

The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, in their various guises, have implemented the different versions of the European Union's "Acquired Rights Directive". The extension of the Regulations (TUPE) to cover transfers from the public sector (in the 1990s) formed a vital part of the Blairite plan to outsource and privatise services, buying off trade union opposition with the promise that pay and conditions would be protected. Case law was vitally important to that extension of the understanding of TUPE.

In what might almost be a textbook example of the determination of the superstructure by the base, whereas when it might have been feared that our unions would block privatisation, case law ensured a generous interpretation of the regulations (from the point of view of workers' rights), now that there is less fear, the case of Packwood -v- Alemo Herron (the link above) has now bequeathed us a much more restrictive interpretation.

In a nutshell, this unanticipated decision, detrimental to workers' rights, lays to rest the previous "dynamic" interpretation of the meaning of TUPE for the impact on employment contracts of collective agreements in favour of a "static" interpretation. This means that if - for example - local government workers whose pay is determined by negotiations in the National Joint Council (NJC) are privatised, they can no longer expect (simply by operation of the law) that they will receive future NJC pay increases.

For those already transferred out of local government, and whose terms and conditions have been shaped by the previous (now incorrect) "dynamic" interpretation of TUPE, this legal decision creates a complexity which is probably best resolved (where possible) by collective bargaining and a retrospective agreement with the new employer that they will observe (at least) NJC pay increases. I won't go further into this question in this post because, like many other UNISON Branch Secretaries, I am awaiting guidance (which may well be to let sleeping dogs lie).

For future transfers however, Parkwood -v- Alemo-Herron raises (at least) two vital questions. First, if the law won't give us a "dynamic" interpretation of the impact of collective agreements upon contracts of employment, we need to decide whether or not to bargain for one through a "TUPE plus" Agreement. 

Secondly, this decision makes it much easier to formulate a trade dispute around a transfer, since it is now at least arguable that a transfer involves a materially detrimental change so that, under Regulation 4(9) of the 2006 Regulations, employees facing transfer could treat themselves as having been dismissed.

Trade unions have been perfectly entitled to wage campaigns against privatisation, including campaigns in which industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate trade dispute plays a part, ever since we won that point (yes, won) in the case of UCLH -v- UNISON many years ago.

This legal decision (Parkwood -v- Alemo-Herron) is a defeat and a setback. It undermines workers' rights and worsens the prospective experience of those who are privatised and outsourced.

It does, however, serve as a timely reminder that such legal decisions reflect, albeit in a complicated and mediated way, the state of play in the class struggle. 

Our acquiescence in privatisation and outsourcing has laid the foundations for the law to move (as it now has) against our members' interests. 

I've been wondering when would be a good time to step up our opposition to privatisation and outsourcing. 

It occurs to me that it's quite clear when that time would be.

Now. 2014.

Not dead yet!

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=20167

I've been taking a break from blogging for the holidays, but as another year approaches the thoughts of trade union activists inevitably turn to the state of our movement and our fitness to face the challenges ahead of us.

The link above puts the most important indicator of trade union strength (our "density"; the proportion of employees who are union members) in both (recent) historical and international perspective.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) UK union density has fallen from 30.2% at the turn of the century to 25.8% in 2012. This isn't good. The large majority of UK employees are now outside our ranks, whereas at our peak in 1979, almost half of all workers were union members.

At the same time however, the OECD average trade union density has fallen from 20.2% to 17%. This is a slightly faster fall from a lower starting point. Among the nations for which the OECD publishes data, only Austria, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and the Scandinavian nations have higher levels of union density than the UK.

We have higher union density than France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and, of course, the USA.

Our movement may not welcome 2014 at the peak of strength and fitness, but we are certainly not dead. Indeed, measured by union density, we are in a stronger position than the unions in the larger capitalist economies.

Our trade unions also retain the particular strength of a single trade union centre (rather than a trade union movement divided by politics) and we are (just about) clinging on to an organic political relationship with a (still just barely) social democratic political party which could credibly form a Government.

We face a continuing assault upon our living standards, our jobs and our collective and individual rights from a Government which is going further faster in reversing the social gains of the past two generations. However, we face this assault from a position relatively stronger than that of our counterparts in most other comparable capitalist economies.

Which does suggest we could perhaps be doing better at resisting redundancies and maintaining the union wage differential.

It may be time to stop battening down the hatches and showing purely symbolic opposition. 

With friends like these...

I am indebted to a friend in UNISON for forwarding me the response to the Collins Review from the lobby group for insipid political careerist funded by Lord Sainsbury ("Progress").

(http://www.progressonline.org.uk/campaigns/party-reform/collins/)

I see that the Church of the Latter-Day Blairites are lauding UNISON's two section political fund model (without, it would appear, understanding it).

However, their real agenda (and hostility to collectivism) keeps showing. First, they propose that Labour should require that all unions establish two section political funds.

This is the arrogance which is familiar to those of us required to deal with Progress people, but is plainly calculated to antagonise and drive away trade union affiliates. The UNISON model was created to cater for very particular circumstances and may not appeal to all affiliates. Anyone who has read this blog over the years will have read many criticisms of the structure and use of UNISON's political fund.

Secondly, Progress want to prohibit members of other political parties from being members of "affiliated" funds. UNISON Labour Link retains (regrettably in my view) the "UNISON Berufsverbot" to prevent those who are not individual Party members from holding office within our APF - but we cannot ask our members what Parties they are members of!

Given that the author of anything published by Progress can be assumed to be a PPE graduate from Oxford whose parents can afford to support them as they work (unpaid) as a political intern I would hope that they know that trade unions cannot interrogate our members about their party affiliation except in tightly circumscribed circumstances. If they do, then they know that they are setting up conditions which cannot be met, which would only make sense if their long term aim were to dissolve the collective relationship between trade unions and the Labour Party.

The third - and most revealing - of the attacks upon trade unionism advanced by Progress is their demand for an end to the "block vote." They want trade union delegates to vote individually (in a secret ballot) - which would certainly prolong Conference debates (or, which may be the intention, ensure Conference has almost no time for debate).

The so-called "block vote" is simply the concrete expression of collective affiliation, which is the manifestation in the political sphere of the core trade union principle of collectivism.

It is true that the call for "collective responsibility" can be abused (and is sometimes within UNISON as I have often commented on this blog). The application of "collective responsibility" to the elected leadership of a trade union in relation to internal union affairs is, for example, an undemocratic perversion of collectivism.

However, the application of collective responsibility for the pursuit of the policies of a trade union by delegates representing the union (to, for example, the TUC, the Labour Party or a joint trade union side) is simply the proper and democratic application of collectivism.

Because Progress is an organisation created to promote the individual political careers of politicians who are fundamentally individualist rather than collectivist in outlook, they believe that the application of democratic collectivism is undemocratic. 

They believe that the unaccountable action of an individual delegate casting a secret ballot according to a personal whim is a more democratic way of representing the interests of working people than for elected delegates to abide by the policies agreed, through democratic structures, by those whom they represent.

But then, as their fervent support for "primaries" reveals, Progress are in the camp of those who want to make twenty first century politics in the image of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries free from the burden of parties in general, and of a working class party in particular.

As a UNISON member I already have enough enemies not to need friends like these.