Aslef recently sent an “update on talks” to members.
Good stuff, you might think… the union is keeping members informed on the progress of negotiations so we can make informed decisions about the next steps in our dispute. We’ll learn exactly what arguments the bosses are putting forward, and how our officials are presenting our demands, so we can hold them to account.
Right?!
Well, not quite. The “update from talks” included the following, not-entirely-comprehensive information:
“We discussed specific issues for a national resolution and the arrangements and principles for additional and separate, bespoke TOC by TOC talks with company councils.
Our next meeting will be on 4 April.”
And that’s the lot. Not much of an “update”, is it?
Our leaders will undoubtedly tell us that these negotiations are a very complicated, sensitive business, in which all sorts of confidential information is being discussed; they couldn’t possibly tell us what’s going on, so we’ll just have to trust them.
But “trust your leaders” is no way to build an active, member-led campaign. Sure, negotiations sometimes involve discussing confidential items - but how hard is it to redact strictly confidential content from a fuller report?
We need to start expecting more from our leaders, and asserting ourselves within our unions a bit more. Instead of viewing our officials as people we elect to do things on our behalf (while we’re kept in the dark with little to no information about what’s actually going on), we need to see them as representatives who act on our instructions and report back as fully and as regularly as possible.
The phrase “knowledge is power” is a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true. It’s our pay and conditions that’re being negotiated, we have a right to know what’s being said.