A tale of two mergers...

Interesting to see two contrasting union mergers announced today. Over on the class struggle wing of the movement members of the OILC are joining forces with the RMT, meanwhile in the quieter pastures of social partnership ACM and ATL have come to an agreement which Brendan Barber describes as “an imaginative new form of union co-operation” although it looks like a carbon copy of the UNISON/FDA vehicle “Managers in Partnership” only for the education rather than the health sector.

Clearly there is room in the movement for both approaches to building trade unionism, but my heart is certainly with the comrades joining the RMT. Offshore workers had been badly let down by the union movement when they were forced to create their own union twenty years ago – and it is good to see the OILC coming back to a TUC affiliated union.