Unions ‘n’ strikes: looking ahead to 2010

Asked recently if the TUC was going to organise a general strike after more government talk of pay restraint, a trade unionist replied : “I think the TUC might go and organise a general panic”. They were joking of course, but next year is not likely to bring mass strikes.

Even if next year’s Budget brings in pay and job cuts for the public sector, unions concerned will not have the luxury of concentrating their energy on fighting for jobs and pay. The PCS, with over 200,000 civil service members, is busy plotting legal and industrial action over cuts to Whitehall redundancy pay, which is expected to form its main campaign at the start of next year.

Unison, Unite and the GMB have public sector members too, notably in local government and health, where pay deals are due to be thrashed out in about four months. But they also have a Labour Party to support and fund, and a general election in three to five months. I’m not saying there won’t be any public sector strikes – that would be a bit rude, it’s down to the members who vote in the end, But Unite is wary of the political implications, and I’d be surprised if the other big unions weren’t.

Two places you can expect strikes in are British Airways, where the cabin crew still want their strike, and… pubs. The GMB is confident that its newly acquired pub landlord members will vote for industrial action against their pubco overlords in a ballot due to be held next month. Incidentally, the GMB, unlike many unions, gained members last year instead of losing them like many others.

Speaking of British Airways, if we’re very lucky we might see the European Court of Justice deliver a verdict on unions’ right to strike vs. free movement of goods and services in the EU. Pilots’ union BALPA, whose members in BA wanted to strike last year but were prevented from doing so in the High Court, is awaiting the outcome.

Oh and did someone mention Royal Mail…?

Right, that’s enough, it’s Christmas Eve already. What do you mean what about the Conservatives. Go and read a proper blog why don’t you. I’ve got presents to wrap. Meanwhile here’s some Christmas cheer as we wait to come out of recession. Good night. This blog will return in the New Year. Probably.

Unite BA strike ballot: an accident waiting to happen?

Just been watching Newsnight’s take on the High Court’s decision to injunct Unite from sending BA cabin crew on strike. There was a bit of discussion about whether this had anything to do with the Unite general secrtary election but it was all speculation.

What’s a bare fact though is the following: the High Court granted the injunction on the basis that the ballot included workers who were leaving the company.

Frnkly I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before. Unite has long-standing difficulties in keeping track of its membership. Last year its annual return to the trade union certification officer showed that over 300,000 names had been wiped – much more than redundancies would allow for. Some of those names had undoubtedly left the union, died or both. Addresse don’t always get changed and email addresses are in short supply – less than a quarter of the membership have valid email details on record.

So keeping track of who’s in the bargaining pool and who isn’t is by no means an easy task, and BA spotted an opportunity. None of this can deny, of course, the overwhelming mandate for strike action delivered by the 92 per ceent strike vote. But time and again, when strike plans fail, they fail on a technicality.  It’s no indictment of Unite’s industrial relations policy to say that better record keeping would have prevented this.

L’affaire Christine Quigley: Labour at war with itself?

The Tory Bear blog is very excited about the online activities of Christine Quigley, a junior civil servant in the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Quigley was elected on Saturday as the new chair of London Young Labour, and is described by friends as being “soft left”. For people who don’t know the Labour party, that means emphatically not from Labour Students, which is traditionally more loyal to the leadership and (they might say) moderate. Quigley has been writing a blog and some articles on LabourList supporting Labour and attacking the Conservatives.

Anyway, her new position, and her writing, were pointed out to Harry Cole who runs the Tory Bear site, and now I hear the Telegraph is working on a story about this civil servant’s perceived failure to be impartial. (As Cole mentions on his blog, DEFRA have said Quigley does not work in a politically restricted post, so she is allowed to engage in some party political activity).

Meanwhile, Labour activists are puzzled as to who could have provided Tory Bear with the details of Quigley, who is not a famous face and whose job title is known to very few people outside the civil service.

It’s not gone unnoticed by them that Quigley’s victory over her opponent for chair of London Young Labour, the Labour Students candidate David Green, happened just two days before this revelation. Quigley didn’t actually win on votes, but on a coin toss: it was a dead heat.

Green has distanced himself from any involvement, and I imagine Labour Students (with whom I’ve left a message tonight) would do likewise. There is of course no evidence to link anyone to anything, and I don’t suggest otherwise for a moment. But such is the fractious nature of Labour’s internal politics, it would be disingenuous to say this doesn’t look at all like an inside job. After all, Labour sources are known to have given damaging material on enemies within the party to bloggers in the past.

Is the NHS closed to private sector? Up to a point…

Interesting story from the excellent Sam Coates in today’s Times about Health Secretary Andy Burnham falling out with Blairites like John Hutton over apparently planning to freeze the private and voluntary sector out of providing NHS services. Opponents of the move say the Government has “bowed to pressure from the unions”. I suspect the unions would have a good laugh at the suggestion, but that is neither here nor there.

I’m not sure how much of Burnham’s plan is new. He already said in a speech to the King’s Fund in September that the NHS was the “preferred provider” of health services and that outside providers should only take over where an NHS trust was failing badly. He then confirmed this in a letter to Brendan Barber and with NHS chief exec David Nicholson.

Moreover, there’s one big caveat to this policy – and one which is exercising the big unions at the moment.  As David Nicholson said in a subsequent letter, Burnham’s policy doesn’t change the ability of NHS trusts to exercise their “right to request” powers to become a social enterprise, run at arms’ length from NHS management.

Social enterprises as the Department of Health understands them can be for profit. And when the contract to run them runs out, after three years, they can be bought by a private company. I did a story about one such trust last month.

Unions like Unite complain that this move to a social enterprise contradicts government policy that the NHS should be the preferred provider. They seem to be overlooking, or ignoring, Nicholson’s letter. There is a government-approved way of privatising NHS trusts – and it’s not going anywhere.

Jerry Hicks and an ‘entente cordiale’

Yes yes, I know I’m late with this… sorry. The man who came a surprise second in the Unite Amicus election earlier this year has finally announced he will indeed stand for the big job in next year’s poll.

I spoke to Jerry today where he was canvassing (alongside Len McCluskey) at Unite’s sector conferences in Brighton. He reported an “entente cordiale” seemed to have broken out between himself and the leadership, whom he has gone out of his way to criticise in the past. And he’s still at it:

“As was with the last election it is likely that all the other candidates will be senior officials of the union… I have been a critic of Derek Simpson but truth is he has been allowed to get away with far too much with too little opposition from the same senior officials who would have us believe they should run our union. Our members deserve a better choice than simply more of the same.”

Mind you, he was quite restrained about Derek Simpson, attacking his pay package as “in excess of £130,000″ when it went through the £200,000 mark last year.

Is Brown under threat over the PLP vote after all?

Late breaking news on the Tribune website from my editor… it seems that – a few weeks after press speculation about this died down – backbench MP Barry Sheerman WILL challenge Gordon Brown by running for the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party next week on a Brown-must-go ticket. More details here.

Apparently it will be discussed among centre-left MPs at the Compass AGM tomorrow – where Jon Cruddas and Labour manifesto author Ed Miliband are speaking.

Also of interest is the possible candidacy of former energy minister (and sometime Tribune contributor) Malcolm Wicks, supported by the Labour’s Future group. Many MPs (as noted by Kevin Maguire here) don’t think Sheerman has the necessary support to win. The group was set up earlier this year to apparently float policy papers and includes notorious anti-Brownite Charles Clarke. Looks like its agenda could extend to sparking a leadership election after all.

Unite election: Dubbins wades in

Yesterday Simon Dubbins, the Unite union’s head of international affairs, announced his intention to stand in next year’s Unite general secretary election (see blogposts below passim ad nauseam). I picked this up through out-of-work chitchat with my burgeoning blog fan club (ahem) and thought I’d pass it on.

Below is Dubbins’ statement of intent. I republish it unedited and without comment. Two factual observations though, again gained off duty:

1) Dubbins is son of Tony Dubbins, former general secretary of the GPMU union which merged to form Amicus, which then merged to form Unite. Dubbins senior attacked Derek Simpson earlier this year during the Amicus GS campaign, and the Simpson camp wrote off his attack as “bizarre”.

2) When he heard about Dubbins’ intentions, Derek Simpson sought to persuade him not to stand. Simpson is thought to support assistant gen sec Les Bayliss, though whether it’s just because of that I do not know.

Statement of intention to stand for the position of UNITE General Secretary 2010
 
Dear Colleagues,
During the last few weeks and months I have been approached by numerous people asking whether I would be prepared to stand in the forthcoming election for UNITE General Secretary.
I have been very moved and encouraged by the number of people that have urged me to go ahead, and have been equally encouraged by the range of reps from different sectors and regions that have expressed this view.
The common theme that has been emerging is the need for a new start for UNITE, to end the internal divisions, to build unity, and to get on with building the great union that UNITE is capable of becoming.
Many have referred to their frustration that the next General Secretary election is already becoming defined as an Amicus v T&G show down.
I have therefore decided that I will seek nominations for the position of General Secretary when the election takes place next year.
In order to avoid becoming labeled as an Amicus candidate I have decided not to seek the nomination of the Workers Uniting Group and will instead candidate outside of this group and on the basis of a Unity Campaign.
With a group of committed supporters I have already been working on a set of policies for the key areas of the unions work. The intention is to put these forward in the coming weeks and to engage in a comprehensive discussion with members, activists and officers concerning their content. Any suggestions and inputs into these ideas will be warmly received.
Aged 42 and already with a wealth of experience, I believe that I can inject fresh impetuous and bring new ideas into UNITE, which will shape the future policies, structure and direction of the Union.
We have been advised that this is an open, honest and fair election and that no repercussions or reprisals will take place against anyone for simply deciding to stand in this election.
We trust that this is the case and look forward to the coming campaign.
I will be launching a new interactive web site shortly, which will provide a platform for debate and discussion.
Kindest Regards
 
Simon

Update: Further to Dr S. Pin’s comment below*, and since (s)he doesn’t mention it, I should point out that Paul Reuter’s blog is here. He’s put a bit of an essay on it here. Would be nice to see some speeches.

*the doctor is kind, but I suspect I have not made much of a contribution to “industrial relations”. Well, not in the sense of calming them…

“Please Ed, can we have Warwick III?”

I haven’t noticed any discussion anywhere else – not even among the usual suspects – about Labour’s last official chance before the next election to give its grassroots a say in the manifesto. I wrote about it in Tribune this week, focusing on the Local Government Association Labour group’s manifesto.

The manifesto has already been reported on elsewhere recently, but what reports tended to ignore was the anoraky bit, i.e. the context of Labour’s much-vexed policymaking process. But this is important because it’s all up in the air at the moment. The so-called second Warwick agreement on policy was thrashed out at a three-day meeting of the national policy forum, made up of 184 MPs, MEPS, councillors, union officials and constituency representatives.

It was widely expected that there’d be another national policy forum meeting in a matter of months.  In fact, I began writing my story with the words “expected in February”. But by the time I’d finished, I’d had to cut them out.

Who knows when the next NPF will be? The constituency reps,who like to fret over such matters, don’t know. The unions, whom the constituency reps fondly or not so fondly believe to be pulling all the strings, don’t know either. This leads me to a conclusion: nobody knows.

Ed Miliband, writer of the election manifesto and believed to have a say, is not thought to have expressed a view. Miliband is currently collecting responses to a policy document he put out at conference time. But he hasn’t said what the deadline for responses is. Mystery.

Meanwhile time is running out. There’s a meeting of the national executive committee this coming weekend where the subject is bound to arise. Someone recently suggested having an NPF on 5 December, but that would lead to an absurdly short time to prepare and gather views from the grassroots.

It’s not just the grassroots who want to know, it’s the unions too. As far as they’re concerned, Warwick II is unfinished business and they were always promised another bite at the policy cherry before polling day. They want plenty of things. In fact the all-seeing Jim Pickard’s take on the subject last September is looking very prescient. The manifesto may well be wrapped up only in the last six months – or even less.

This isn’t just about having a manifesto to win the election, of course. It’s also about positioning Labour for after that election if (or as increasing numbers of activists says, when) they lose. Whether or not it’s fair to characterise this as a lefty-activists-vs-centre-right-government battle, the current atmosphere seems to be one of standoff.

Higson vs Unite: Royal Mail’s climbdown over orders to managers

Last week I did a piece for Tribune about how Royal Mail was ordering managers to do postmens’ (and womens, thanks Enoch Was Right) work for them during the CWU strike. Royal Mail managers are represented by the union Unite. Now I learn it seems they’ve backtracked.

In response to my questions for last week’s article, Royal Mail emailed a statement saying: “Anyone who is not able to work directly in the operation for whatever reason is not required to do so”. A complete contradiction, it seems to me, of managing director (letters) Mark Higson’s words in his letter, to wit:

“You will recall, I wrote to you back in September, explaining that two days’ support per week would be the minimum expected level. The need to provide a service for customers relying on us means this can no longer be optional .”

What changed? Well, Unite’s Paul Reuter wasn’t happy with the order, as I said in my article. Managers have a flexibility clause in their contracts that means they have to cover for lower grade staff, but Higson’s order went too far for the liking of the union, who asked him to rescind it.

Moreover, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley wrote to their own members expressing solidarity with the CWU this week. Unite members can’t legally take unofficial strike action – there’s no dispute between them and Royal Mail – but it seems they can refuse to do postpersons’ work after a certain point of flexibility.

It seems Royal Mail have decided they can’t win this one. Managers’ cover could never break the  strike on its own – there aren’t enough of them, 12,000 out of 120,000 – but they could have damaged morale amongst the strikers.

The machine behind the Royal Mail strike

Solystic MARS mail sequencing machine (pic: Solystic)

Sometimes it feels like there’s nobody so ignorant as the British media. There is precious little explanation in today’s papers about what the national postal strike is actually about.

This is one of those whats. On the left is a mail sorting machine made by French firm Solystic. It’s Solystic machines which Royal Mail has been trying to introduce into mail centres, and whose adoption were a key part of the 2007 modernisation agreement. So why haven’t they been rolled out yet? Is it as simple as a Luddite union standing in the way of modern technology?

Er, not necessarily.

Walk sequencing machines are so called because they arrange mail in the correct sequence for a postperson’s walk. Business plans drawn up over a year ago envision rolling out the machines across the country, but a document last year suggests this had to be delayed.

In 2007, the then trade and industry secretary, a certain Alistair Darling, gave Royal Mail a £1.2 billion loan for modernisation. This money still hasn’t all been spent. Royal Mail planned to buy 1000 walk sequencing machines, but they never have. Current plans would only see 33 machines nationwide by April 2010.

Two months ago I reported on Communication Workers Union officials saying that the machines were being mothballed instead of trialled. CWU London divisional rep Mark Palfrey said Royal Mail were having second thoughts over the machines. As he said in my article:

“Do the machines do the job? Yes they do. Do they do it as quick as the current machinery? No they do not.”

“Distance mail [from distant parts of the country] does not arrive in inward mail centres till four o’clock in the morning… That mail would not now land in delivery offices till ten o’clock.”

“Royal Mail is having a debate. That’s clearly what’s going on, hence the attack on the front line postmen to reduce the cost, where they thought machinery was going to do that.”

If the machines are rolled out nationwide, he said, the public will have to get used to getting their mail even later than they do now.

Here’s the thing. Machines mean job losses. The CWU knows and accepts there have to be job losses. What they’ve told me (and I’ve no way of proving this as yet) is that Royal Mail are deliberately failing to consult on modernisation in order to justify a larger scale attack on jobs, and possibly union recognition, occasioned by a painful period of fallout and national strike.

It would be nice to have some sort of answer from Royal Mail to all this. Answer came there none.