To avoid legal jeopardy do not read this blog post.

One of the things I will miss about UNISON is the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) for National Delegate Conference or, more precisely, some of the decisions which it takes on legal advice.

Decisions of the SOC cannot be overturned even by National Delegate Conference, and cannot be challenged to the Certification Officer (which we all know because it was tried).

Although the SOC, which consists of twelve lay members elected from the Regions and three members of the National Executive Council (NEC), are invariably an engaging bunch ever willing to listen to appeals from branches about motions ruled out of order (and occasionally to change their mind) there is no effective right of appeal when a proposed Amendment to Rule is ruled out of order.

This is because the Rules themselves (Rule N.3) require that any Amendment to Rule must appear in the Preliminary Agenda for Conference, and once that hasn’t happened nothing can be done for another year (even if the SOC were to consider that they had made a mistake).

This year the ever enthusiastic Lambeth branch submitted four Rule Amendments all of which have been ruled out of order on the grounds that they could bring the Union into legal jeopardy, and the text of all four Rule Amendments has not been printed (presumably on legal advice) as you can see from the Preliminary Agenda.

What can be the dangerous words which should not even be printed?

Well, if you are a reader of a nervous disposition I urge you to look away now, as I am about to tell you. 

This is your final warning to look away.

All four proposed Rule Amendments addressed the topical question of the role of UNISON employees as UNISON members and their rights to vote and campaign in internal UNISON elections.

The first proposed Amendment simply read “Delete Rule C.2.9” whilst the second, which would only have been relevant if the first were ruled out of order (or not carried) said “In Rule C.2.9.2.4 delete all after the word “vote” and replace with “in any internal union elections including for the post of General Secretary.””

The third proposed Amendment was to add a new paragraph 8 to Schedule C as follows;

“8 The National Executive Council shall ensure that employees of the Union do not campaign in any capacity for or against any candidate in an election to which this Schedule applies.”

The fourth, an alternative to the third, suggested a different new paragraph 8 to Schedule C as follows;

“8 The National Executive Council shall ensure that employees of the Union do not use any resources of the Union, including information obtained in the course of their employment, to campaign for or against any candidate in an election to which this Schedule applies.”

Having read these dangerous words I fear there is now no going back and I suggest you seek immediate legal advice about the legal jeopardy which you may now be in. Alternatively you could hand yourself in at a Police Station or at any UNISON Regional Office...

UNISON may, however, find that it is not possible to avoid a debate about the future conduct of members who are employees in internal elections given evidence in the public domain about the past conduct of some such employees.

Our trade unions are failing to increase our pay

We now live in a world in which unemployment can fall to a forty year low yet there is no pressure on wages because our trade union movement is, as someone once said, “timid and shackled and tame”.

With almost a million workers on zero hours contracts, and many hundreds of thousands more in faux self-employment, we now live in an economy in which the super-exploitation of casualised labour is as commonplace as it was on the docks in the late nineteenth century.

Back then workers built trade unions in order to ensure better outcomes for union members in the labour market, from which we got the trade union wage premium – the average amount by which the earnings of trade unionists exceeded those of non trade unionists.

Although the union wage premium may well arise as much from the differential age profile, or (which is not unrelated) the differential length of service profile, between union members and non-members in the workforce, the amount of the premium remains an indication of trade union effectiveness.

It is therefore worth looking at what has been happening to the union wage premium recently and this is set out in Table One.

Table One: The Union Wage Premium for selected years in the private and public sectors 1995-2015

Average hourly earnings (£ per hour)
		Trade union membership		Trade Union Wage Premium (%)
	All employees	Member	Non-members
All employees
1995	7.11	8.27	6.57	25.9
2000	8.77	9.64	8.30	16.1
2005	10.74	11.94	10.28	16.1
2010	12.55	14.05	12.02	16.9
2011	12.59	14.19	11.99	18.3
2012	12.92	14.41	12.43	15.9
2013	12.95	14.48	12.42	16.6
2014	13.20	14.78	12.67	16.7
2015	13.49	14.87	13.04	14.1
Change from 1995	6.38	6.60	6.47	-
Private Sector
1995	6.72	7.52	6.52	15.3
2000	8.47	8.77	8.30	5.7
2005	10.33	10.88	10.24	6.3
2010	12.04	12.65	11.95	5.9
2011	12.01	12.83	11.86	8.2
2012	12.40	13.06	12.31	6.1
2013	12.46	13.22	12.34	7.1
2014	12.81	13.68	12.65	8.2
2015	13.11	13.98	12.97	7.7
Change from 1995	6.39	6.46	6.45	-
Public Sector
1995	8.13	8.98	6.89	30.3
2000	9.64	10.44	8.25	26.5
2005	11.81	12.72	10.51	21.0
2010	13.83	14.89	12.41	20.0
2011	14.11	15.07	12.75	18.2
2012	14.32	15.30	13.10	16.8
2013	14.28	15.41	12.85	19.9
2014	14.31	15.56	12.80	21.6
2015	14.56	15.53	13.38	16.1
Change from 1995	6.43	6.55	6.49	-

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524901/Trade_Union_Membership_Statistics_2015_-_tables.xls

This data demonstrates that the benefit to workers of being a trade union member has declined very significantly over the past twenty years, albeit the great bulk of that decline in the private sector (where the majority of workers are employed) occurred in the previous century. In the public sector the decline has continued (unevenly) throughout this century.

For UNISON members in local government we can also compare what has been happening to our earnings compared to earnings in the economy as a whole. After 1 April 2009 a worker on spinal column point 28 on the National Joint Council pay spine earned £23,708. Seven years later, after 1 April 2016 a worker on the same pay point earned £24,904 (an increase of £1,196 or 5% over those seven years). Over the same period the Retail Price Index rose by 23% (meaning that the real value of the earnings of the worker on spine point 28 fell by 15%). Over the same period (April 2009 to April 2016), average weekly earnings across the economy as a whole rose by 12.8%, meaning that the decline in real wages across the economy (8.3%) was less than the decline in real wages in local government.

It is little wonder that the trade union wage premium is in decline when we are failing to increase the wages and salaries of workers in the largest union organised bargaining unit in the entire economy in line with either rising prices or rising wages and salaries in the economy as a whole. Under our current leadership our trade union movement is failing to demonstrate that we are worth being a part of to an entire generation of young workers facing exploitation we could hardly have imagined a generation ago.

I am therefore very pleased to have spent some of my afternoon, as Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party, supporting the striking workers at Brighton’s Duke of York Cinema in their entirely justified campaign for a living wage. Our current trade union movement (under its current leadership) is failing to deliver in the fight against low pay – but that does not mean that such failure is inevitable.