Following the departure of disgraced former general secretary Manuel Cortes, and the shocking exposure of an endemic culture of sexist harassment and bullying, TSSA is due to elect a new general secretary.
But you don't have to be a TSSA member to stand. You don't even have to be a railway worker. You can simply apply. The post will still be elected, but external applicants will be on the ballot paper alongside internal candidates nominated by TSSA branches.
This unusual state of affairs is one of the outcomes of the Kennedy Report into TSSA's culture, which recommended that future candidates for officer positions be sought from outside the union. The motivation is understandable; the concern was clearly that any internal candidate would not be sufficiently independent from the appalling cultures the report exposed.
But being able to stand for election to a representative post in an organisation you're not a member of is not really compatible with democracy. With "internal" candidates, TSSA members can judge them by their activity within the union. But members have no means of properly scrutinising the record of external candidates, they'll only have their CVs - and whatever they say about themselves in hustings - to go on.
One could argue that Cortes himself was an "external candidate", given that he never actually worked in a job organised by TSSA and was never a rank-and-file member of the union. TSSA, like many other unions, allows staff appointees to be members of the union and stand for election. This is also an affront to democracy.
On this one, the Kennedy Report's recommendation is wrong. Allowing external applicants - effectively an "open primary" system - erodes democracy rather than strengthening it. Better to put in place stronger democratic checks and balances on the power of officials: expanding the number of elected posts; shortening terms of office; and putting a limit on consecutive terms.
It's also noteworthy that the GS post comes with a six-figure salary of £103,523, considerably in excess of what the vast majority of TSSA members will earn. Another way of strengthening democracy in unions would be to peg officers' pay to average workers' wages, ensuring officers can't become a financially privileged elite.