The website
of the Government’s Certification
Officer repays the occasional visit. Last month the annual
list of registered trade unions was published, giving information about
every trade union which has asked to be listed.
Before
making any other observation, I wish to pay tribute to the five (yes, 5)
members of a small, but doubtless perfectly formed, trade union with a name
which must surely have originated as a toungue-twister –
The Association of Somerset Inseminators (ASI).
It is
reassuring to know that, in an age dominated by giant trade unions often
distant from their members, the steady hands of the diligent members of the
Association are protected by their General Secretary – and that there can be a
trade union with both zero administrative expenses and reserves equivalent to
almost one hundred times the annual income.
At the other
end of the scale, as at 31 December 2013, UNITE
had 1,405,071 members, of whom 1,134,320 were contributing and UNISON
had (at 31 December 2013) 1,282,560 members, of whom 1,266,750 were
contributing (so that whereas UNITE had 122,511 more members than UNISON,
UNISON had 132,430 more paying
members than UNITE).
It would (of
course) be unbelievably crass to observe that the sort of competition about
size that one sees from time to time between the General Secretaries of the two
largest trade unions would probably not impress the experienced members of the
Association of Somerset Inseminators. I won’t dwell on this point.
UNITE’s
problems with non-contributing members recently contributed to a
finding against them by the Certification Officer in a case brought by
defeated General Secretary candidate Jerry Hicks. Although most of the
complaints brought by Jerry Hicks (relating to the last election in which he
came second to Len McCluskey) were dismissed, the Certification Officer found
that the Union was failing in its duty to keep its membership records up to date
by not lapsing members in arrears of subscriptions.
The
Certification Officer also found that the Union had subsequently taken action
to resolve this – but the case highlights the dangers posed for our trade
unions by the pernicious Part
Three of the Lobbying Act – which introduces new requirements for the
independent auditing of the accuracy of our membership records.
There can be
little doubt that those provisions, had they been in force at the time of the
last UNITE General Secretary election, could have been used by any mischievous employer
to mount legal challenges to industrial action ballots by that union.
There is
still time to respond to consultation
on how the Government should implement these provisions – and if Labour
politicians could stop squabbling and fight to win the General Election perhaps
we won’t have to suffer from them.
Elsewhere in
the reports published by the Certification Officer one can find that the 2012
accounts of the Society of Union Employees (SUE) the non-TUC trade union to
which a minority of UNISON employees belong, were qualified by their auditors
because of the practice of one cheque signatory signing blank cheques. UNISON
Branch Officers taken to task for the same undesirable practice may wish to
take note!
One can also
find out that the pitiable “Social Workers
Union” created by a the British Association of Social Workers (and which
all members of that Association are eligible to join) still fails
to attract the majority of BASW members. UNISON remains the organisation
for social workers who want a trade union – though UNISON activists must be
alert to the importance of ensuring that our trade union attends to the views
and interests of our members.
It is also
worth noting that the grandly titled Industrial
Workers of the World have 750 members, but none of these are in Northern
Ireland, the Republic of Ireland or “elsewhere abroad” – giving a peculiarly
domestic spin on international syndicalism. In another part of our marvellously
diverse trade union movement, the considerably smaller Association
of Local Authority Chief Executives (ALACE) suffered a 6.8% decline in
membership during 2013.
All of which
observations probably only go to reinforce the views of some regular readers of
this blog (Sid and Doris Cynic) that my blogging is no more than a non-bovine
equivalent to the necessary prerequisite to the work of the admirable ASI.
1 comment:
When the amusement of oneself is of primary importance!
Post a Comment