|
|
Unite, Transport and General, and Amicus rule-book
A vote is being held with one question: "Do you approve
the rule book of Unite the Union as set out in the accompanying
document?" Please place a cross (X) in one box only. YES
/ NO
Your ballot paper should be recieved by ... Electoral Reform
Service, London, N81 1ER no later than noon on Thursday  31 July 2008
A copy of the new rule book is enclosed in the postal ballot
but not the old one; an unusual glossy magazine with pictures
of people smiling has also been sent-out to remind members that
they do still belong to this union and to feel good about it.
Otherwise they might have no reason to to either unless they
read their payslips or bank statements carefully. The diagramme
on the right of merger votes (from DearUnite.com)
shows just how much people need to be coaxed to vote at all.
- http://www.employees.org.uk/rules.html
- old rules for T&G section: an unusually interesting document.
Rather than PDF, is is transcribed to a format that can be cut-and-pasted
into a Wiki
for comment among branch members, from which paragraphs can be
cut and emailed, put-on to small web sites, and so-on. The new
rules below have been put into plain text as well.
- http://www.employees.org.uk/new-rules.html
- proposed rules which will probably be voted-in on a small good-will
vote, like a vote of shareholders in a company. With recent turnout
for executive council elections under 10%, the glossy magazine
was necessary just to make the union look democratic by getting
some kind of turnout.
Here are some reasons for a protest "no",
like the Irish vote on the EU constitution.
- Is the new organisation about help at work, or a fundraising
organisation pretending to be about help at work?
The new rule book describes a fundraising organisation for
the central office of the labour party which is mentioned by
name and various cartels which are also mentioned by name.
Political contributions are limited by law but there is no bar
in the rule book on ways of getting around the law, such as investing
money at 0% interest in a bank that goes to the legal limit in
making soft loans to the Labour Party, making soft loans direct
writing to members asking them to vote labour, making soft loans
to labour (something they were caught doing recently), failing
to defend members against the state funded organisations that
can be bad employers, attempting unfair dismissals of staff who
step-out of labour-line, or turning a blind eye to money transfer
via various organisations like branches, trades councils and
charities that do not keep accounts and can in turn pay money
to anyone they like.
Surveys of why people join unions show two things. "help
at work" or similar phrases are top of the list (not
fundraising), and membership is falling. Membership is falling
because unions have become fundraising organisations. If you're
offered a chance to join an expensive organsation that gives
secretive amounts of money to the labour party, why not give
more efficiently and post the cheque direct?
- Funding politicians or PR in the new Unite rule book?
The old rule book allows members to donate collectively to sympathetic
politicians. In 1922 when the first draft was written, MPs weren't
paid. Those who could afford to be MPs seemed less likely to
be interested in a national health service, for example, than
union members wanted them to be. There is no bar to the union
funding break-away politicians like Ken Livingstone or Martin
Bell, regional parties or opposition parties.
Now MPs are well paid and donation to a central PR machine is
more likely to divert their attention onto "two or three
eye catching initiatives ... entirely conventional ... associated
with my name", as the prime minister explained in his
email to ministers in July 2000. The idea of funding a PR machine
is precisely the opposite of the original purpose of funding
practical MPs who wanted social insurance, a safety-net, and
individual rights.
- "From time to time": democracy in the Unite
rule book
The new rule book tries to do a good thing in encouraging branches
to be something to do with one trade or employer, and introducing
democratic rules "from time to time". This good thing
is done in a way that pours all power into the centre:
officals will "from time to time" choose a ballot system.
There are no checks and balances to say how or why. For example,
there is no way of going to arbitration.
This is odd because the current General Secretary and Deputy
General Secretary did a lot of work investigating people who
tried to change the voting system "from time to time"
in Scotland at another set of union elections. And they haven't
shown much interest in newer cheaper ballot systems for local
branches up till now. However much they ask governemnt for laws
allowing easy ballots for senior jobs, they don't ask themselves
for ballots on anything else.
Without good, cheap systems of democracy that fit-in with how
people live, it will continue to be hard to trust branches with
a share of the membership money, and most of the money will remain
in the ten regional offices or simpily donated-away, while the
executive council and conference will continue to be like Eurovision:
something you might see on television once in a blue moon but
have no great part of making.
- Black hole accounts: accountability in the Unite the Union
draft rule book
The old rule book assumed that members met each other in person
and could keep a pretty close eye on the union bank accounts
and budgets. The new rule book doesn't open-up the black hole
that is Unite accounting now. For example a due dilligence report
by Stoy Hayward accountants for Amicus into Transport and General
noticed that T&G "charged referral fees":
members pay a union for years and then get a no-win no-fee lawyer
who has to pay commission to their official. There are so few
officials per member that it's possible to believe that they're
paid for by these referral fees. The whole organisation is no
more than a claims managment
agency, but with a volunteer-co-ordinator role added-on to
the claims handling that the other firms do.
- Services to members: don't ask the Unite rule book
If the union is going to become a way of helping people at work
then it ought to say so in a sensible adult contract.
The 1922 rule book mentions "Schedule II: services to
members" but there is a mysterious absence where this
document should be because there are basically no services to
members. Employment Appeal tribunal cases where members have
been let down by large unions, won cases against their ex-employers
privately, and then tried to sue the union for discriminating
against them demonstrate the problem. There is a case like that
on this site, against Unison,
and another linked from it against University and College Union.
Until unions do something for the money they're given, they will
continue to sink and pull-down with them any volunteer effort
like rep work that's related.
- Someone else has done the work: why criticise the Unite
final draft rule book?
Wikipedia links to a thing called "Amicus Unity Gazette"
which is a political party controlling part of the Executive
Council. The Unite equivalent is called "Broad Left"
and more secretive. Members of the executive council who were
not part of these two groups did not even get to see the new
rule book until recently - after the last elections with their
less than 10% turnout. Members of the council who blow the whistle
are mysteriously not re-elected. So whoever and whatever a "Rules
Commission" was, it wasn't allowed to rock the boat,
and these rules are called "final draft". Whoever
did all the work of discussing these rules would probably like
a bit of an uprising. There are probably all sorts of things
they'd have liked to put-in if the weight of job and party hierachy
wasn't resting on them. The polite thing is to vote "no",
and bring the issues out into the open, as well as keeping
the union afloat in future. Otherwise you might have to start
your own union, which is another thing.
- Aspirations are for the Labour party - not for you members
according to the Unite rule book.
The 1922 rule book is for aspirational people who want to work
for an employee-owned firm, and encourage others to do so. They
also want help with student loans. Reading the rule book, you'd
expect the union to encourage members to buy from employee-owned
firms, union-recognising firms and good employers as this
site tries to do and possibly buy shares in firms and encourage
staff ownership as Baxi
Partnership does. Unite the union does not. The party it
backs does
not.
This site is not funded by any organisation and is written
in odd scraps of time.
Your ideas may be different and based on better knowledge but
in any case, vote No.
"To run a successful campaign to win a national T&G
election requires serious finance, once nominated.
Your financial support would be appreciated.
Cheques made payable to 'Friends of Tony Woodley'."
This from the ballot paper for national executive elections,
which doesn't tell you how you were meant to have stood for election,
or how to ask questions of the candidates:
"This page intentionally blank"
Most
internal union elections are not governed by specific laws,
nor are rule books enforced as contracts
- more as guides to an evolving tradition as the King
v TGWU case shows: the rule book insists on all members attending
a biannual branch meeting and electing on a show of hands; it
says that all members should have an equal say in the how the
property of the union is managed. The Certification Office says
that one part of the branch committee is keeping up appearances
by electing themselves on a show of hands round the table and
if they say that other committees of more or less the same people
with the same letterhead and bank account are different then
that's OK. And people like this draft the next edition of the
rule book. Obvously it isn't OK but they say it's OK and it is
not for us to criticise the learned. They sound like a theologians
-
"This is nonsense, obviously, but if we read it in
a way that suits our funders us we can keep our salaries".
The Trades Union and Labour relations Act insists that some
elections are held by postal ballot and that no member should
be unreasonably excluded from standing and having a hundred word
statement printed for members. The way the papers are printed,
it's made to look as though you have to go-round loads of branches
getting nominated before you can stand and this may even be true:
you would have to ask a theologian. There has just been an election
to the first Unite General Executive Committee and the turnout
was under 10%, according to Electoral Reform Services' letters
to the General Secretary, published on the private activists
intranet and from there on the DearUnite.com web site. This large .pdf file shows the results.
This
Guardian article describes the few remaining branch committees
that meet and an enclosed world in which factions try to get
the votes of those at the tables. The answer - online voting
- is easy and ways of doing it are listed at the end
of the page. If individual union activists don't get nerdy
and invite colleagues to vote, then unions will get dodgier and
dodgier, failing ones will merge, and younger people will prefer
to buy insurance off PLCs or probably go without. An immediate
problem is dirty tricks like overwork, bullying and goal-post
moving played on just the people I most disagree with according
to the DearUnite site, but the principal that union officials
should have the tools for the job , a controlled workload known
to their members and to be chosen in a rational way on merit
are common to all union officals and people in the voluntary
sector who they (except mine) try to help.
This from http://truckdriver.blog-city.com
Tuesday, 25 March 2008, written by someone who has held-down
a real job and been a branch chair and been elected to the National
Executive Council's quarterly four-day conferences until just
now. She has a special interest in democracy because truck drivers,
like cab drivers, are obviously not going to assemble in a car
park and elect on a show of hands while loosing trade as the
rule book suggests and are more intersted in things like an online
blog.
Can Democracy survive in Unite?
As the elections for the national Executive Committee in Unite
draw to a close, questions are being asked about the role of
the Broad Left, the Amicus Unity Gazette and other groupings
in the union. These factions are officially banned but tolerated
within the TGWU Section, but formerly permitted in the Amicus
Section. The new Unite Rule Book is presently known only to a
few at the top of the union. Early indications are that it will
further reduce democracy in the union. The problems start at
the local level but manifest themselves right up to the top.
We understand that there is a sub-committee of the GEC taking
responsibility but members do not appear to have access to minutes,
further the GEC, to whom the sub-committee reports does not have
a Published Agenda so delegates arrive from Ireland, the UK,
Channel Islands and Gibraltar for a four day meeting without
proper documentation which would allow them to consult their
members before the GEC, this includes Rule Book drafts. Examples
of our Concerns:
Case Study 1. Rigged Voting.
Like the Monty Python film "Life of Brian" each
of the union factions portray themselves as the "goodies"
and all other factions as the "baddies," Delegates
elected to a Trade Groups in Region 1 attending their first meetings
in February, (which were due themselves to elect delegates to
other Regional and National Committees), were recently bombarded
with phone calls from the so-called Broad Left just as meetings
started and urged to support and oppose a whole series of representatives
merely on the say-so of key people, thereby diverting the democracy
of the union. Where did the BL get elected delegates mobile phone
numbers from? Surely only from within the union, in clear breach
of the rules. So this amounts to rigged voting, with members
being pressurised and perhaps bullied, with candidates possibly
smeared. About as democratic as fraudulent filling in of ballot
papers en masse. Monty Python would never dream of a situation
where there were about three organisations in the T&G calling
themselves "Broad Left", as far as we can discover
none is broad and none is left, this must be a first - a two
word title with two lies in it?
Subsequent voting within the trade groups followed a pattern
that was remarkably consistent for people some of whom had never
met before. (The temporary acting Chairs never invited those
seeking office to state their policies). The Broad Left is also
suspected of using the official union mailing database and Steve
Hart, Region 1 Regional Secretary is presently investigating
this. We do not disagree with factions in principle and totally
oppose the current T&G Rule on factions which was drafted
to enable witch hunts against Communist Party members, however,
at the moment we in the T&G get the worst of both worlds,
factions and currents are forced underground and have become
secret societies lacking accountability and lacking any responsibility
to the membership.
Case Study 2. Broad Left becomes New Right.
The Woodley supporting Broad Left has long since abandoned
any political principles or policies in favour of promoting people
because they are "good people", ie "one of us";
who just happen to know one another, (and be trusted to vote
according to personal wishes of the group "leaders"),
rather than people who share any common political objectives.
Social anthropologists would have a field-day if set loose on
the TGWU Broad Left.
The semi-clandestine Broad Left has no open record of members.
Like the Freemasons, individual union members are invited to
join based on recommendation. Divided into regions to reflect
the TGWU regions, each has its own unelected Chair and Co-ordinator
and the BL nationally has an unelected Chair, currently Martin
Mayer a GEC member.
BL policies are largely handed down from the GEC BL members
to the BL membership which is ruthlessly policed by regional
trusties, some of whom regularly milk the union of attendance
allowances and "stand-down" money supposedly paid in
place of pay lost but often within the gift of Broad Left union
Regional Industrial Officers. The Broad Left has become a secret
union within the union.
The Broad Left took over control from the old corrupt Right
Wing of our union, (also called the Broad Left), culminating
with the election of the then Left candidate Tony Woodley at
the last elections for GC. Without any checks and balances, the
Woodley supporting Broad Left has mutated to become a controlling
network for an increasingly New Labour-style union leadership.
25 of the 40 TGWU executive seats were uncontested, reportedly,
the result of a secret deal between the BL and all the other
factions. Democracy?
Case Study 3 - Broad Left starts expulsions.
Activist Andy Erlam was expelled
from the Region 1 Broad Left, without the right to appeal, apparently
for questioning the transparency of the BL Slate. Standing against
the BL candidate, Erlam beat the slate decisively. Activists
Rachael Webb and Ian Lidbetter also stood successfully against
Broad Left Regionally, with the former securing 5 times the number
of votes as the BL rival. All three are currently standing as
independent Left candidates in the GEC elections, suspecting
a groundswell of support for principled, accountable and determined
socialists on the union's executive.Case Study 4 AUG. The same
trend has occurred within the Amicus Unity Gazette, previously
a relatively enlightened grouping of the Left and allowed under
Amicus rules.
Increasingly, the AUG, with the exception of the London Region
and isolated pockets of members, acts as a support network for
Derek Simpson the dominant Joint General Secretary of Unite.
Case Study 5. Des Heemskerk. Former Simpson Campaign Manager,
Des Heemskerk, a candidate for the Amicus Executive was recently
and mysteriously sacked from his job at Honda despite being a
model employee. There no evidence that the Amicus organised this
sacking but Hemskeerk is now unable to stand for the Executive
because rules dictate that candidates must be actually employed
in the relevant sector. These rules must be changed. Case Study
6. Swissport. 1,000 bag handlers at Heathrow airport have been
let down very badly by the union by being mis-led into agreeing
to a transfer of undertakings in 2001. Hundreds lost their employment
as a result and more have had pensions affected. The union response?
Closing down their Branch and refusing to talk about the problems
at every level of Unite. Protecting Tony Woodley, the Broad Left
in Region 1 refused to listen to Swissport leader Eugene Findlay
and has refused outright to support the Swissport Workers, presumably
because it might embarrass the Woodley leadership of our union?
A recent Swissport request for details of meetings in Region
1 was met with an insulting reply from the co-ordinator full
of foreign language lettering. Is this democracy and the intelligent
Left? What is the difference between this sell out of our members
and the sell out of the Liverpool dockers?
BL is now based on confidence trickery, lies and misrepresentations.
However, we must not ignore the good intentions of those involved
when it started and the good intentions of the majority who remain
in it, they just don't happen to be the ones who can afford hour
long telephone conversations and have access to lists of delegates
telephone numbers.
Case Study 7. Branch Political Corruption.
Take the case of a branch where the Branch Secretary pays
herself an annual sum of money in excess of £25,000 and
is protected by a Broad Left activist. There are apparently several
examples of Branch officials taking all the Branch income personally.
Case Study 8. - Broad Left pulling the wool over the eyes of
union democracy. Recently a disabled woman delegate to her Trade
Group last bi-annual period was told in her Branch meeting by
the Broad Left Branch Secretary that "she wasn't eligible
for reconsideration for election as Delegate to Regional Trade
Group (Woman's Reserve Seat) because she had stepped down as
Shop Steward". There is no such ruling in our Rule Book.
Case Study 9. John McDonnell.
Having previously stated that the Broad Left in TGWU would
support John McDonnell as Labour Leadership candidate, the BL
members of the GEC refused to back McDonnell in the final nomination
vote and voting records from that meeting still remain unpublished
despite previous assurances that they would be. It was sickening
to hear the self-appointed Broad Left Chair of the Broad Left
recently announce to the Labour Representation Committee, (which
effectively ran McDonnell's campaign), that it would affiliate
to the LRC. Some support! The Broad Left is exactly the sort
of trade union organisation that MI5 would help organise - control
and contain the Left, in case it finds the confidence to act
in genuine solidarity.
Case Study 10. Apprx 6 years ago two members of what is now
1/888 Branch campaigned against cheap labour from Eastern Europe
threatening hard won pay, terms and conditions under circumstances
where Willi Betz, using Bulgarian drivers at very low wages,
encouraged racism and national chauvinism amongst British drivers.
The 1/888 members campaigned under the slogan "fight
Will Betz, not the drivers". They linked up with Danish
Trade Unionists who set up a series of meetings of rank and file
drivers paid for by European Union Funding, one of the 1/888
activists was criticised for "being too open and putting
everything on her Branch Blog". Both the 1/888 activists
were sidelined by a current B/L member and now we hear nothing
of the project which showed signs of becoming a genuine rank
and file workers pressure group within the existing union structure
when it started. If any work is done it must be being done in
secret. We state unequivocally there is no such thing as secret
negotiations in our movement, no secret diplomacy, no secret
negotiations behind the members backs and no "working in
the background". Either the members know what is happening
or the "ordinary" members will not be there when they
are asked to support union calls for action.
What is to be done?
We must fight like hell for the democratic worker-led fighting
union that the T&G was more like when
the Rule Book was written. At one time we fought for the
Broad Left. Now the Woodley-ite Broad Left reminds one of Legs
Diamond when attacking other factions when he said of Bugsy Malone:
"it's bums like him what gives honest hoods like me a
bad name".
We must now demand a Special Re-call BDC to examine ways in
which we can re-involve members in running our union. At such
a Conference, we would be ask Conference to endorse new requirements
that factions are democratic, transparent and act within the
constitution of our union, publishing their minutes for all to
see?
Is there any reason why National Executive Council meetings
can not be broadcast, via the internet, to all members so that
they can see at the time what is being decided in their names?
Videocasting is now cheap and high quality. The TU movement must
use all available technology
to spread union democracy.
PRESS RELEASE FROM TGWU BRANCH 1/888
Rachael Webb :: email
posted Monday, 3 March 2008
Release date: immediate
"Rebel" Unite Candidates bid for union national
General Executive Council (GEC)*
Three rebel union candidates may win places on the executive
of Unite, the new union which combines the Transport and General
Workers' Union and Amicus in protest at the "New Labour-type"
leadership of the union.
The candidates, all life-long union activists, who describe
themselves as "independent", are within striking distance
of national success following big regional election wins. If
elected, they are likely to be sharp critics of the two Joint-General
Secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley's drift away from
"lay-member democracy" in the new Unite union. The
influential TGWU Truck Drivers' Branch (Branch 1/888) is supporting
the 3 Candidates: Rachael Webb, Ian Lidbetter and Andy Erlam.
While each of the candidates is "fiercely independently-minded",
they are all furious about what they see as the closing down
of democracy and transparency in the union and last year's crucial
executives' decision to back Gordon Brown for Labour Leader rather
than the Left firebrand John McDonnell.
Union leaders are also secretly drawing up a new Rule Book
which many fear will end members' democracy. Apparently, the
new rules will not include an effective grievance procedure for
members with a complaint about the union. The candidates are
also challenging the informal "machines" called The
Broad Left and the Amicus Unity Gazette" (AUG) which fix
the elections, undermining genuine union democracy. The candidates
are also backing members of the Swissport Branch*, 1,000 baggage
handlers from Heathrow, who have been "badly let down by
the union" in a scandal which has rumbled on from 7 years.
- International lorry driver Rachael
Webb, the women's candidate for London, the South East
and Eastern England said:
"Most women members, apart from those with union careers,
are still sidelined in the union. I want to see good socialist
women running about half the union at every level in every region
based on merit not on being patronized. I'm a woman working in
a man's world - the road transport industry - so my decades of
experience will be very useful, if elected. Tony Woodley and
Derek Simpson, (once heroes of the Left), have both been huge
disappointments in office."
- Andy Erlam, Chair of
the large Central London Branch said:
"The Unite union leaders increasingly make the important
decisions, such as supporting Gordon Brown, behind closed doors.
Debate is stifled and "slates" of candidates produced
by self-styled informal leaders of the Left are like rabbits
out of a hat. There is no discussion. The semi-clandestine Broad
Left in the TGWU and the AUG in Amicus are as about democratic
as the freemasons and about as progressive as Opus Dei. It's
now time for political change." Andy is London's candidate
for the GEC.
- Ian
Lidbetter, another truck driver said:
"The average union member doesn't know how the union
works or how to influence it. That suits the powers that be.
Those members aren't stupid, they just haven't been encouraged
to really own the union. There is a wealth of experience and
power to utilize - that's my mission. Disabled members, including
so many injured at work like myself, must be a real priority
for the union. No-one else is taking up the challenge."
The three also said:
"The TGWU is a great union doing some great work,
such as defending migrant workers. Unite will only be a great
union if the members rise up and demand to be involved in all
major decisions. This is our mission."
Further information:
Rachael Webb 07989 851602
rachael dot webb at bbnet dot ie
Ian Lidbetter: 07838 381998 iglidbetter at y ahoo dot
co dot u k
Andy Erlam 07518 743 007 or 07795 547033 or hm 01273
841827 andyerlam at y ahoo dot co dot uk
Eugene Finlay (Swissport) 07985 800019 eugene dot finlay
at y ahoo do co dot uk
Note to Editors.
*The General
Executive Council (GEC) is the top national ruling body of the
TGWU Section of Unite with 40 seats.
26 of the 40 seats are not being challenged with just one candidate.
The Amicus Section has an additional 40 seats. (Controversy surrounds
Amicus candidates being disqualified).
The combined 80 seat Unite executive soon to be elected will
probably run the union for the next 3 or more years.
Webb and Erlam are candidates for Region 1: London, the South
East and Eastern England.
Lidbetter is a national candidate for truck drivers (Road Transport
Commercial Trade Group).
Unite represents over 2½ millions workers. The national
postal ballot for the GEC begins now (on Monday 3rd March and
runs to 28th March). Ballot papers will be dropping on members'
doorsteps at home this coming Monday.
----- ENDS -----
About Googling for online voting systems
if you want to run a ballot
Free online vote systems come-&-go over time. Some of
the sites that come-up on a Google search are voting-enthusiast's
sites or government-backed ones that never get to a solution
and list dozens of dud links.
Free commercial sites tend to be ugly and short-lived. Sites
that offer surveys with roughly one vote per computer tend to
come-up on the same google searches as these rarer voting sites
that offer roughly one vote per code - which can be sent by letter or email or whatever
method by anyone who can be trusted not to make-up extra members
or leave some off the list.
Fraud gets mentioned on the web. The main difficulty with
a small election is whether the secretary and chair are simply
making-up email addresses from distant branch members, as the
union law about a register of addresses is about postal addresses.
In my branch the membership database didn't always work, was
kept in Manchester for the whole union, and didn't have a way
that branch secretaries could log-on: they have to ask the few
paid staff and wait. To convert postal addresses all over the
UK to a decent email list could take a long time but presumably
most branches have some sort of email list. The next stage is
trying to get at least as many people to vote online after a
meeting as turn up to meetings. That can't be hard. The problem
of a register of voters is solved if all members want to join
something like CollectiveX or a Yahoo Group and there may be
similar things like Facebook or Meetup that I know nothing about.
The UK
government names upmarket firms authorised to ballot and
scrutenize under the Trades Union and Labour Relations Act, which
covers a few votes for the most senior union jobs and insists
on paper ballots sent to physical addresses rather than email
ballots, so the posh end of the market has no privilages over
the free firms above when it comes to email voting. Some of the
firms are listed on the BERR
page about these ballots. One, Polaris,
has partnered with the expensive-looking firm
|
|