by Jerry Hicks
The turnout for the elections for one of the General Secretaries of Britain’s biggest union, Unite, may have been typically low at 15 percent, reflecting the poor morale in the union, but the result was extraordinary. It wasn’t so much a battle of ideas as a battle between no ideas, and a basic idea of what the unions need to do.
Derek Simpson, the incumbent, who had tried every way he could to prevent a ballot, and then used the full weight of the union machinery to promote his campaign, scraped home with a miserable 38% of the vote – less than 6% of the members.
When I began my campaign it was in a minority not far short of one, as a grassroots rank and file member with no access to the union’s resources, and pressing the case single-handed for an election to take place. So coming second, with nearly 40,000 votes, well ahead of the two right wing candidates, full time officials who boasted of their links with the Labour Party, was a magnificent achievment.
During the campaign there was the eruption a few weeks ago of the rumbling volcano of anger in the construction industry, with the unofficial strikes at the Lindsey oil re-finery. This is a very clear example of the frustration within the membership that I was raising at every meeting I attended.
As the construction workers ratcheted up their demands for action, the inadequacy of the union leaders became even more obvious. The Lindsey strike was unofficial – be-cause after three terms of a Labour government the Tory anti-union laws are still in place: but within five days, the members achieved more than they had in five months of delaying tactics from national leaders.
I attended a meeting of union members at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Aldgate in London. On the agenda was a newsletter for members and the election for General secretary. This was on the very day the RBS bosses were being put through the wringer in Parliament. The members newsletter headline was “Why should we pay for their mistakes?” – but the union officials would not let them put it out because it might compromise negotiations. So our members never received it and had to read about what was happening to them in the mass media rather than hear from their own union.
Anger is welling up. At Cowley’s BMW plant, where the management came in and sacked four shifts, 850 temporary staff – at an hour’s notice, with no redundancy pay – the management left the building, and furious members pelted the union reps with tomatoes, seeing the union as part of the problem instead of the solution. How could it get to this? How is it after three terms of a Labour government workers some of whom have worked for BMW for 4-5 years can still be treated like that?
We don’t just need a “campaigning union”, in these harsh times we need a fighting union, one that instils a confidence in members to resist employers’ attacks.
We will keep fighting until we win: and as the union leaders stand back passively and watch the recession rip through their membership, with redundancies, short time, downsizing and closures, it’s important for those in other unions to gain from what we have learnt and just achieved.
The bureaucracy will hang on in there until we build a movement strong enough to move them. But if you fight hard enough, with enough confidence, all things are possi-ble. In Unite we now have an amazing network of people who care and want something better for us. This is not the end but the beginning.
Expect the unexpected!
Jerry Hicks is a Respect National Council member
Read the full article by following the link below.
March ‘09 issue of the Respect Paper
