McCluskey wins in Unite

Submitted by martin on 21 November, 2010 - 2:49
Unite

Len McCluskey has been elected as the first general secretary of the Unite union, formed by the merger of TGWU and Amicus.

The count was:

Len McCluskey 101,000

Jerry Hicks (the other left candidate) 52,000

Les Bayliss (the main right-wing candidate) 46,000

Gail Cartmail (another right-wing candidate) 39,000

McCluskey has long been a close associate of Tony Woodley, who is currently joint general secretary with Derek Simpson.

McCluskey will now be joint general secretary with Woodley through 2011, and become the union's first sole general secretary at the end of 2011.

Woodley's record gives no grounds for complacency about the tasks and prospects for the left under a McCluskey leadership. But it does indicate that the doors for pushing Unite towards organising, towards democracy, and towards fighting policies will be a lot more open than they would have been with a Bayliss victory.

AWL backed McCluskey, although Jerry Hicks had a better platform on issues like election and pay of officials, in part because McCluskey was the chosen candidate of the established Unite United Left; in part to keep out Bayliss; in part because Hicks's platform also had some flaws, and Hicks's campaign was very much a maverick effort, laying no basis for building a new left grouping in the union.

Nevertheless, the good vote for Hicks, and the fact that the total vote for the two left candidates was far bigger than that for the two right-wing candidates, are welcome news.

Less welcome is the very low turnout, about 16%.

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