The delegate
from Brighton and Hove who spoke against an inoffensive motion on public
services from the Northern Region on the grounds that it was a “business as
usual” motion summed up the crisis which confronts UNISON.
Of course
delegates did not, in their great majority, follow his lead. Faced with the
opportunity to vote only on motions which have jumped the hurdle of standing
orders and then crawled through the tunnel of prioritisation Conference did
what it so often does and passed a motion noting what we are already doing and
congratulating us on our perspicacity and diligence, whilst suggesting that we
carry on.
I mean no
disrespect to the authors of that particular motion, nor to any of the lay
authors of any of the motions which we are getting to debate in Glasgow.
However, I am utterly alarmed at the prospect that our approach to the election
of this Government may well turn out to be “steady as she goes.”
Our General
Secretary (who all but announced his fourth candidacy in the forthcoming
election in his speech to Conference) lauded the survival of our trade union
over the past five years. Our recruitment performance has indeed been positive –
but then that has been necessary as we have failed to protect hundreds of
thousands of our members’ jobs, just as we have failed to smash the pay freeze
and failed (for want of trying) to properly protect all our public service
pension schemes.
It is not
enough to say that we have survived (not, at least, if one’s concern is with
the interests of workers as distinct from the institutional interests of
workers’ organisations). If there were inspections of trade unions’ resistance
to the Coalition Government UNISON would get, at best “requires improvement.”
The
Emergency Composite on an organising response to the election result agreed
yesterday, and the Emergency Composite on a campaigning response to be debated
tomorrow map out some elements of a constructive approach – but the vigour with
which these will be implemented is open to question.
The
determining moment of the last Parliament came in December 2011 when UNISON led
the climb down on pensions by the public service trade unions. Having been led
to the top of the hill, and then back down, our members were notably less
enthusiastic about being led back up again to (fail to) smash the pay freeze.
Had it not
been for the boosts to recruitment given by both those national disputes we
probably would not have such a good story to tell about maintaining our
membership levels (so whilst we preserved neither the pensions nor the living
standards of our members we did maintain our solvency...)
It is
evident that we need a change of approach if we are to face the challenge of a
genuinely Tory Government in a way which corresponds with the interests of our
members (and if we want to preserve our trade union as an organisation for the
long term).
To debate
what that change of approach needs to be is beyond the capacity of a Conference
which has been all but stage-managed to death (and those of us who are
committed to reversing this pernicious tendency know that we have a task before
us which will take more than one or two years).
The election
for General Secretary could create an opportunity for such a debate – but if
the incumbent decides to stand again it is unlikely that this opportunity will
be taken.
The official
structure of the Union will not produce a challenger to an incumbent General
Secretary – and the “outside Left” (of which I have long been a part) seems
unlikely to find a candidate who will present a credible new challenge to that
incumbent (or even to find a single candidate).
UNISON needs
to renew and rejuvenate itself if it is to face the challenge of the most
reactionary Government in a hundred years. One man can decide – by stepping
down from a job he has now done for fifteen years – to begin to enable the
debate that could lead to that renewal.
1 comment:
Is this why you support Eddy Redmond for General Secretary?
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