Union elections

Unison Health delegates protest

A fringe meeting on pay, organised by “Time for Real Change”, on the first day of this year’s Unison Health sector conference, attracted 40 delegates (17 April). It decided that we needed an ongoing network of health activists to continue organising on pay restoration. On 18 April the conference passed emergency motion 1 from the top table which noted the vote to accept the offer and which said the union will seek implementation. Speeches have been made against the Service Group Exec’s ballot recommendation to accept the offer, but we have been unable to get a vote on any wording about that...

Vote TFRC in Unison election

Unison National Executive (NEC) elections run from 17 April to 19 May against a backdrop of a ballot on whether to accept a poor offer in health, industrial action ballots in local government, and the failure so far since 2021 to transform members’ anger at real-wage cuts into large enough ballot turnouts to bring the majority of our members into action. The left won the NEC for the first time in 2021, but it was bound to take more than 18 months to turn round this large union with its entrenched bureaucracy. The right of the union, working with the Labour right, manufactured expulsions of...

Unite: disaffiliation attempts continue to simmer

Until 3 February Unite union branches will be nominating candidates for the union’s Executive. Voting is 27 March to 25 April. There are two slates: United Left (UL), and what could be called the Sharon Graham (SG) slate. The United Left, long dominant on the Executive, was always primarily an electoral machine in the tradition of the old Broad Lefts, dominated by the politics of the Morning Star . Apart from a sometimes substantial dissident minority, it was uncritical of Len McCluskey, general secretary 2011-21. It declined, then was thrown into disarray when Steve Turner, its candidate in...

Unison NEC elections

Workers’ Liberty members are involved in the Time For Real Change network in Unison, which won the majority on the National Executive (NEC) 18 months ago. The nomination period for new NEC elections opens on 9 January and closes 13 February. We urge Solidarity readers in Unison to push TFRC nominations in their January or February branch meetings. Candidates are listed here , and a guide to how branches nominate is here . The NEC ballot runs from 17 April to 19 May.

RMT election: vote Daniel Randall!

Solidarity contributor Daniel Randall is seeking nominations for the London Transport seat on the National Executive Committee of the rail union RMT. The ballot will run 31 October to 4 December. Daniel has worked on the Tube as a Customer Service Assistant at Oxford Circus since 2014, has held   several union positions, and is co-organiser of the Free Our Unions campaign. In his letter seeking nomination Daniel says he will work for “RMT’s culture of rank-and-file democracy [to be] deepened and extended, with as much power as possible in the hands of members, in the workplace”. He commits...

Speed up on 2022-23 pay!

The public services union Unison has been consulting on the local government pay claim for April 2022, with the results being fed through to Unison representatives on the National Joint Council alongside other public sector unions. Members haven’t yet been given a timeline for future decisions. The options given to members were a flat rate claim, or RPI plus 2% The claim is to be for pay from 1 April 2022, and yet hasn’t even been submitted yet. RPI inflation is currently 9.0%, so we have to build confidence in an urgent fight for a serious pay award. Many Unison members will receive the 1.75%...

John Leach for RMT AGS

The rail union RMT will hold an election for one of its Assistant General Secretary positions, after incumbent Steve Hedley retired, citing ill-health. Branch nominations close on 14 May, with voting from 27 June to 1 August. Workers’ Liberty members active in RMT will back John Leach, currently the union’s Regional Organiser in the London Transport region, which covers Transport for London (TfL) and subsidiary employers. Leach has been London Transport Regional Organiser since 2013, prior to which he worked as a station supervisor on London Underground. He has also been the union’s national...

From fear to fightback (John Moloney's column)

We need to learn from the result of our consultative ballot over cost-of-living issues. We will be able to break the data down to workplace and branch levels, and the places with higher rates of return will give us an indication of where we have stronger organisation. Around 70,000 members took part in the ballot, but that includes those who voted electronically and postally, as we have some members for whom we don’t have email addresses. As can be imagined, amongst those who voted electronically we had a higher turnout. It’s clear we didn’t sufficiently energise our activist base in this...

Vote Independent Left in PCS

Nominations for the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Group Executive Committee (GEC) elections in the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) closed on Thursday 10 March. Workers’ Liberty supporters in the PCS are part of Independent Left (IL). The other main groups in the union are Left Unity (LU), the dominant leadership faction, for many years run as an alliance between general secretary Mark Serwotka and the Socialist Party, and the Broad Left Network (BLN), the Socialist Party’s new vehicle created after they fell out with Serwotka and split from LU. All three networks – IL, LU...

Paul Holmes re-elected

Kirklees Unison has held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Paul Holmes has been re-elected as branch secretary in an online ballot of all members. The Huddersfield Examiner reports that Unison nationally has supported Holmes in holding the branch secretary position despite him being sacked recently by Kirklees council, as Solidarity has reported . Paul Holmes is appealing against his sacking, and believes it is victimisation due to his trade union activities. Paul Holmes was challenged by Socialist Party member Angie Waller, and the outgoing assistant branch secretary position was also...

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