UNISON General Secretary election -It'll be alright on the night?

‎I can authoritatively report that the question of how and when we shall organise an election for UNISON's General Secretary shall be a matter for the 2015/17 National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, having been told as much by the most senior person in our trade union.

This means that it will be July before we discuss a timetable to elect a General Secretary who will take office the following January (remembering that it is certain that there will be a legal challenge to any attempt to wriggle out of an election).

In making these observations I am saying nothing about which candidates may run in such an election, nor which I might support, nor how decisions about whom to support might be made. This blog has a position of armed neutrality in relation to the General Secretary election (and on each occasion when I participate in a discussion about this matter that position firms up).

I do, however, observe (as I shall endeavour to do at tomorrow's NEC meeting) that it is absurd that the obsequious stance taken by our lay leadership to the blatant failure of succession planning by our full-time leadership has left us (as NEC members) in the position in which we shall have precisely nothing to say to delegates at National Delegate Conference 2015 about who will have been elected as their General Secretary before National Delegate Conference 2016.

For the avoidance of doubt, this blog post reveals nothing of the discussion which took place at this evening's meeting of the NEC Left Caucus on this topic.‎ ‎Nor does it say anything about the even more frantic (and less productive) discussions going on in the Great White Elephant of the Euston Road...

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