Union democracy

Hold the Socialist Party and Mark Serwotka to account!

The Socialist Party (SP) has defended the PCS civil service union’s decision to “suspend” national and Group elections for up to a year. (Groups are the major sub-parts of the union.) The SP headlined its article: “PCS: Safeguarding its future in the face of vicious Tory attacks”. “Faced with a temporary but very sharp drop in income as a result of check-off ending, the PCS National Executive Commitee (NEC) has had to make difficult decisions to cut expenditure, including suspending for one year the union’s annual elections”. This is nonsense. Yes, the PCS is facing a financial tough time but...

PCS leadership suspend elections

The following (20 December) article comes from the website of the PCS activist network Independent Left , of which AWL members in the union are part. See the IL website for numerous other articles and updates on the crisis in PCS, and also the new PCS - Democracy Deferred blog. More on the campaign against this attack on trade union democracy soon. PCS LEADERSHIP ATTACK OUR UNION'S DEMOCRACY! In an unprecedented attack on the democracy of our union the rudderless leadership of PCS has announced the suspension of National and Group elections for possibly up to 12 months. The NEC decision – by...

PCS leadership attacks union democracy

From the website of the PCS Independent Left . In an unprecedented attack on the democracy of our union the rudderless leadership of PCS has announced the suspension of National and Group elections for possibly up to 12 months. The NEC decision – by the controlling group which risibly calls itself the Democracy Alliance – was on the basis of: • a mere 15-3 vote (there are 35 members and officers of the NEC); • without the pretence of consultation with members; • secrecy – there was not even a prior warning to Branches that an emergency NEC had been called to take this decision. This profoundly...

“Law” used to gag debate

The ill-defined threat of legal jeopardy dominated speeches at Unison conference (15-20 June), far more than the subject of the national pay dispute. At Local Government Conference two emergency motions on the pay dispute were ruled out of order on the ground that they might place the union in legal jeopardy. Given they were not printed on the agenda and no detail was allowed in appeals to the Standing Orders Committee from submitting branches, delegates were left with no idea what legal jeopardy the union was facing. Lambeth UNISON delegate Jon Rogers requested the conference went into...

What to do about union corruption?

The problem of corruption and misuse of union funds has plagued workers’ organisations almost from the heroic beginnings of trade unions. More than a hundred years ago my hero (we all have a few) Eugene Debs, in a famous speech about the emancipatory nature of organised labour, pleaded that the labour movement had been “betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches and sold out by leaders.” 100 years on it is time we of the left tackle this problem and use a powerful moral argument to start bringing this problem to heel. We need to put systems in place to stop corruption and end its bedfellow...

The Scab as Hero: The Miners Strike, 1984-5

"BY THEIR heroes ye shall know them... for in the individuals whom they exalt and glorify and hold up to the youth as example every class and every movement unfailingly reveals its standards of worth, its morality, its very soul. Thus, the communist workers of Germany glorified the name of the courageous and incorruptible Liebknecht who sacrificed his life in battle for a great cause. The degenerate Nazis countered with the dedication of their official hymn to Horst Wessel the pimp who was killed in a brawl... "The Southern (USA) slaveholders hanged John Brown. But the feet of the slave...

The Year of the Heroic Scab: The Miners Strike, 1984-5

"BY THEIR heroes ye shall know them... for in the individuals whom they exalt and glorify and hold up to the youth as example every class and every movement unfailingly reveals its standards of worth, its morality, its very soul. Thus, the communist workers of Germany glorified the name of the courageous and incorruptible Liebknecht who sacrificed his life in battle for a great cause. The degenerate Nazis countered with the dedication of their official hymn to Horst Wessel the pimp who was killed in a brawl... "The Southern (USA) slaveholders hanged John Brown. But the feet of the slave...

3 Cosas, independent unions, and transforming the labour movement

Earlier this summer, Max Watson, Chair of London Met Unison, and on the National Executive Council, wrote on his blog an article entitled “IWGB: Two small unions?” . Max documents the behaviour of the IWGB (Independent Workers union of Great Britain) trade union at London Met – claiming poaching, duplicity, and more. He goes on to draw parallels with a collection of workers and campaign I am heavily involved with at the University of London, based at Senate House in Bloomsbury (I am the Youth Officer of the Unison branch, and an IWGB member). The campaign is called "Tres Cosas” (“three things”...

Were the University of London outsourced workers right to leave Unison?

This article was written in response to a piece in Socialist Review. The author has also requested that it be published there. We host it in our website in the interests of furthering the debate. The move of Senate House cleaners, other outsourced staff, and their supporters to leave Unison en masse and form a University of London branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), after the annulment of their elections, has sparked heated debate within trade union circles, especially among Unison activists. Sandy Nicoll, branch secretary of SOAS Unison, contributed to this debate...

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