Time travel in UNISON

I explained here earlier my reservations about proposals for the scheme of representation at the first Conference (in just under a year's time) of UNISON's new Community Service Group.

This is an important event for an important part of our Union. Our 61,000 members in this Sector - even allowing for UNITE's claim to a membership around 60,000 are joined by perhaps half a million workers who need - but do not have - union organisation.

UNISON needs the Community Service Group to get off to a good start. More importantly, hundreds of thousands of working people need our trade union to get its act together and organise them.

So I was - and am - concerned that we are proposing a scheme of representation which gives the best organised half of the membership access to little more than 10% of the delegates places at the Conference.

At Wednesday's meeting of the NEC Development and Organisation Committee I did not - in the end - push my opposition at the meeting to a vote which I could see that I would have lost because I was assured that the scheme before us had the approval of the UNISON National CVS Forum (as was indicated in the report circulated to us before our meeting on 11 November).

What I know now is that the CVS Forum did approve the proposals - at a meeting which began at 11am on Wednesday 11 November.

We were told that the CVS Forum had approved these proposals in a report circulated in advance of the D&O meeting - which began at 10am on Wednesday 11 November.

I can only conclude that a national official was able to travel back in time following the decision of the National CVS Forum on 11 November in order to inform the report circulated in advance of the D&O Committee meeting of the same date!

If UNISON officials have perfected time travel perhaps they will be looking to other events which they wish to influence...?

Building the Resistance

This Saturday I shall be off the Annual Conference of the Labour Representation Committee.

The LRC organises the principled leftwing of the Labour Party - and those outside the Labour Party who do not support standing candidates against Labour candidates - as part of the wider Left.

Unfortunately that wider Left is not particularly wide or large. We have not been able to assert ourselves effectively against the attacks from New Labour and are not in a strong position to mobilise our movement to fight back against the further attacks we can now expect from the Tories.

There is a hard year ahead and further hard years beyond. I hope to take some heart from meeting with hundreds of fellow socialists on Saturday, but I will take greater heart the more I hear from people facing up to the problems which now confront us.

Just because someone says it does not make it so..

A brief post to alert regular readers Sid and Doris Rule-Book-Anorak to look out for detailed reports from today's meeting of the Development and Organisation Committee - at which I learned an important lesson about the interpretation of the Union's Rules.

It was made clear that just because someone (a blogger perhaps?) says that something is in breach of the Rules that does not mean that it is.

However if someone else says that something is not in breach of the rules then that does mean that it is not.

The key factors in determining which is the authoritative interpretation of the Rules is that the true interpretation should be;

(a) louder;

(b) grumpier, and;

(c) delivered by someone sitting on the top table at the front of a meeting.

Forward to the late 1980s?

I suppose I have to get round eventually to apologising to every other delegate to last year's Local Government Service Group Conference - and now is as good a time as any.

Thanks to my interventions on behalf of my branch we won a card vote for a reference back of the report of the Standing Orders Committee.

(Please note that all those who - like me - enjoyed the last paragraph are plainly in need of medical help, along with regular readers Sid and Doris Pedant...)

Since Conference had been warned before agreeing the reference back that, were it do so, no business could be transacted until we had the vote, that threat had to be made good.

And so we were subject to a forty five minute presentation from delegates from Newcastle City (including Kenny) about their response to public spending cuts.

This amounted to telling us that they had discovered that sometimes you have to engage with the employer as they make spending cuts in order to limit the damage.

I first made myself unpopular with some comrades in Lambeth by advancing - and winning - that argument in 1988.

From my knowledge of employee relations in London local government in particular I know that this is what many of us have been doing for the last two decades. It's just that we don't normally go round in advance boasting about our bottom line in forthcoming negotiations. That is rarely helpful.

So, here comes the apology.

I am desperately sorry to hundreds of delegates that, because you rightly voted for reference back on my recommendation, you were subject to three quarters of an hour explaining why you have to do what you do already.

For those who are gluttons for punishment you can read more online.

In what may be totally unrelated news, UNISON's Northern Region is the worst performing Region when it comes to recruitment....

An online report from the Three Companies Project

It’s good to read some positive reporting of the work done in Sheffield last week as part of the “Three Companies” project with which the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is assisting UNISON in a drive to organise workers employed by Compass, Sodexho and Aramark.

In a few days the UNISON NEC Development and Organising Committee will receive a presentation on this project as we did not when we met in September (though others were better briefed).

After all the controversy surrounding inter-union disputes and the questionable conduct of the SEIU in the United States (and the dubious practices – such as agreements confidential from the membership - associated with similar organising drives on the other side of the Atlantic) it is refreshing to read something positive from one of the organisers on the ground.

I look forward to hearing how many workers we have recruited to UNISON in Sheffield last week and what our plans are to embed union organising and build the collective strength of employees in our target areas.

Recruitment - modest good news

I will blog in full after Wednesday's meeting of the Development and Organisation about the discussion which I hope we will have around recruitment.

The good news is that UNISON membership is increasing, albeit at a relatively modest rate. However, given the job losses which are occurring in some of the areas in which we organise, the fact that we may exceed our target of 1.5% net growth for the year is very welcome.

There are some interesting questions which arise from the data which will be considered at the Committee meeting, some of which I have asked in advance.

It is interesting to consider the Regional variations in recruitment performance. What is it about the East Midlands that makes it the Region which is recruiting best and growing strongly, whereas our worst performing Region (the Northern Region) which has the same annual turnover of membership as the East Midlands is projected to shrink this year?

I am also interested in the balance to be struck between reaching out to organise the unorganised and seeking to raise our density in our core areas (remember that a majority of the directly employed workforce of the London boroughs are not members of any trade union!). I worry that we sometimes get carried away being "forward looking" and facing up to the increasing fracturing of public service provision and so lose a focus on recruiting in our core employers.

If we want to be in a position to evaluate our organising efforts we cannot measure success purely in numbers. Trade union members do not join a union as an end in itself but as a means to the end of promoting our collective interests. We need to measure our effectiveness against a number of indicators, including density, developments on pay, pensions, conditions and job security and the breadth and depth of coverage of collective bargaining in the areas in which we organise.

The fact that potential trade union members are looking at the union for what collective organisation can deliver for their interests is borne out by the fact that the biggest spikes in recruitment occur around major national disputes.

The Tories are coming for the Local Government Pension Scheme. Last time our pension was attacked we took action - and we recruited many more members to our Union. This is an issue around which we should aim to recruit the many thousands of local government workers who are not in a trade union.

Three companies - more than one opinion

The semi-official and mostly anonymous "UNISON Active" blog has its undergarments entangled over a story in Tribune today and therefore manages to miss all the important points.

The unnamed blogger over at UNISON Active is all angry. Not at the employers who profit out of low paid labour, nor at the Government which keeps in place the labour legislation to permit that. No - the nameless blogger reserves their ire for Tribune who have dared to report on a letter sent to UNISON by US Union UNITE HERE (about which regular readers Sid and Doris Blogger know already).

The author of the anonymous contribution over at UNISON Active really needs to go and have a lie down.

The Three Companies Project appears to be a worthwhile initiative about which I have blogged before - albeit it would have been nice if the project had been reported back in UNISON's lay structures before it appeared ("semi-officially") online.

I am looking forward to a presentation about the project at Wednesday's meeting of the Development and Organisation Committee.

The dispute between UNITE HERE and the SEIU is not however irrelevant to the global trade union movement and we cannot simply ignore the compelling evidence of widespread support for UNITE HERE against the predatory behaviour of the larger union.

Service Group Autonomy?

Next week's meeting of the Development and Organisation Committee of the UNISON NEC will consider the annual report on the scheme of representation for delegates at UNISON National Delegate Conference (as we did last year and every year).

I shall probably be one of those who will ask colleagues to consider making that scheme a little more flexible, and I shall probably find myself in a minority on that question.

However this year the Committee is being asked to agree that the scheme of representation which we agree for National Delegate Conference shall apply also to Service Group Conferences.

Under Rule D.1.3 it is for the NEC to draw up the scheme of representation for National Delegate Conference but under Rule D.3.4.5 it is for the Service Group Executive to draw up a scheme of representation for Service Group Conference to be approved by the Service Group Conference itself.

If the NEC were to seek to impose a scheme of representation upon Service Groups we would be negating this explicit provision of our Rule Book and infringing upon the autonomy of Service Groups.

Even if this year's Chairs and Secretaries of the Service Groups could be gathered together to assent to the NEC dictating to Service Groups how they should structure their Conferences in this way that would not rewrite the Rules which provide explicitly for the autonomy of Service Groups.

UNISON is a large trade union and our members need to be able to identify their Union with their own particular interests - this was part of the reason for the new Rule Book definition of an occupational group agreed at this year's Conference.

The Rule Change that the NEC could not even get a simple majority for (concerning the devolution of bargaining responsibility to Sectors before we had proper structures for democratic accountability) fell because UNISON members want devolved and democratic structures which don't just take the Union out to the members but also ensure that it is under their control.

That control cannot be exercised simply through the NEC, other parts of our democratic machinery also have their legitimate roles and spheres of influence.

It seems to me that an attempt by the NEC (in the name of "consistency") to dictate to Service Groups how they should be represented at their Conferences flies directly in the face of the message that Conference tried to give us in June.

I would be interested to know if any of you other UNISON members out there (including regular readers Sid and Doris Rule-Book-Anorak) are concerned about this point. I think you probably should be.

UNISON Community Service Group Conference

I have been reading my papers for next week's meeting of the Development and Organisation Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) and would be interested in the views of other UNISON members (particularly those working in the Community and Voluntary Sector) about proposals for the first Conference of the new Community Service Group.

UNISON has about 60,000 members in the new Service Group, half of whom are in 28 branches which have more than 500 members of the Service Group. The other half are scattered throughout 610 branches with fewer than 500 Service Group members (and an average of just 50).

Next week's Committee is going to be asked to support a proposal to allow one delegate per 500 members or part thereof, meaning that the best organised half of the membership of the Service Group would be entitled to just over ten per cent of the delegates at the Conference.

My initial view is that I think that this proposal falls down in terms both of equity and effectiveness and that a better option would be to group those branches with few members of the Service Group in Regional delegations.

Once the Service Group is established then under Rule it will be for the Service Group Executive to work out a scheme of representation for their Service Group Conference (to be approved by the Conference) but since there obviously is not a Service Group Executive for a newly formed Service Group the decision about the first Community Service Group Conference has to fall to the NEC.

I would be very interested in the views of UNISON members ahead of Wednesday's Committee meeting.

Not a penny off the pay! Not a minute on the day!

As I mentioned last week one of the stewards involved in the Leeds strike has been in London this week.

Glenn - the steward in question - has done three consecutive evenings of speaking at meetings about the dispute and has inspired and motivated a number of London trade unionists.

We need to get delegations of strikers down to London on a regular basis so that we can further publicise the dispute and raise funds to alleviate the hardship our members are experiencing on strike.

The Grauniad had a handle on the complexity of the dispute which the Council Leader didn't like but listening to Glenn I have been reminded how simple this dispute is.

Some workers are being expected to take a pay cut of up to one third - and the employer's latest offer is that they should work impossibly hard if they want to preserve their earnings.

I think there is a slogan for this...

Victimisation of UNISON activists - from Doncaster to Hammersmith

UNISON was absolutely right to threaten strike action when our Doncaster Branch Secretary was suspended - apart from anything else the threat worked and the suspension was lifted.

I won't be the first online commentator to compare the treatment of UNISON activists in Doncaster and Hammersmith and Fulham. Thanks to UNISON member John McDonnell MP the disgraceful treatment of UNISON activists in that Tory flagship authority is now firmly in the public domain.

Our brothers and sisters in Yorkshire showed how to support Jim Board in Doncaster and those of us in London need to apply the same approach to supporting activists in the Hammersmith and Fulham branch. John McDonnell's Early Day Motion notes that the council has derecognised the local elected officials of the Unison branch and is appalled at Hammersmith and Fulham council for its treatment of the elected Unison branch officers.

All UNISON members should encourage their MP to sign Early Day Motion 2116 and those of us who are active within the Union must press for a vigorous campaign to highlight the excesses of this Tory flagship.

The opening shots in the war to destroy our public services are being aimed at trade union activists who are in the front line of the defence of a decent society. All trade unionists must rally to defend our own.

UNISON Review of the effectiveness of our political funds

If regular readers Sid and Doris Blogger agree that you can give yourself a hat tip I will acknowledge that this story is already on the Lambeth UNISON blog.

All UNISON branches have until 13 November to send their comments in response to the consultation document (available online here).

1. The following are the comments from the Lambeth local government branch in response to the consultation questions in the document on the review of UNISON’s political funds, as agreed by our Branch Committee on 3 November 2009.

– what are the most important political and policy making processes affecting UNISON and its members?

– how will political, constitutional and policy changes impact on the union’s objectives and interests over the next five years?

– in what ways should branches, regions and the national union change their methods of campaigning and political organisation to meet these challenges?

2. The election of the UK Government, local authorities and devolved administrations are vitally important to UNISON members. The failure of New Labour and the likely election of a Conservative Government will presage serious attacks upon our members. At the same time the Labour Party is failing to adopt policies which reflect our members’ interests. The Union therefore needs to adopt a more independent approach politically.

– why do many branches not see the GPF and/or Labour Link as resources to help them lobby and campaign?

– how can we increase regional and branch engagement with the General Political Fund?

– how can we further strengthen regional and local Labour Link organisation?

3. The Union makes it unnecessarily difficult for branches to access political fund resources – branches should have an automatic entitlement to some political fund resources each year. Members will not engage with UNISON Labour Link whilst they see the Labour Party pursuing policies which attack the interests of our members.

– what resources and support do UNISON reps need to engage members and organise them to take political action?

– what kind of political education should be included in core training for stewards and organising staff?

– should we develop short courses for lead activists and organising staff on labour movement history and contemporary political issues?

4. UNISON needs to change its culture to one that encourages campaigning away from a “top down” officer-led culture which seeks to restrict campaigning by branches. The history of the trade union movement should be central to trade union education.

– what do members, branches, and lead activists need or want to know about the union’s political work, and how would this best be communicated to them?

– how could union communications better promote transparency and understanding of the operations of the General Political Fund and

Labour Link?

– how could union communications better encourage engagement and participation by members and branches in the union’s political work?

5. The Union should implement Conference policy and monitor and report on the voting record of politicians associated with our Union. Members need to know whether the politicians who benefit by their association with our Union support our policies. Members in local branches should have a direct input into decisions about which politicians UNISON supports and works with.

– is there more we need to do to ensure that subscription and allocation procedures are transparent?

– is there more we can do to encourage the greatest possible participation in the two sections of the political fund?

6. Members should not be allocated into the Affiliated Political Fund unless they make a deliberate choice to pay into the Labour Party. Branches should have direct control over some of the General Political Fund which should be available to be spent in accordance with the decisions of quorate Branch or Branch Committee meetings. The Union has to face up to the fact that if the proportion of members choosing to pay into the Affiliated Fund falls much below the present proportion (one third) it will no longer be tenable to maintain that UNISON is affiliated to the Labour Party.

– are existing structures for the governance of the General Political Fund adequate to ensure transparency, accountability and engagement?

– how can we encourage a higher level of participation in Labour Link structures at branch, regional and national level?

– are there ways in which we can improve the accountability and responsiveness of both Labour Link and the GPF to wider union

structures at local, regional, devolved and national levels?

7. There should be a single-section political fund under the control of National Delegate Conference and the separate structures for each section of the fund should be abolished. The existing structures were designed, prior to vesting day in 1993, specifically to avoid transparency, accountability and engagement and cannot be reformed.