 1
Which
Union Spends 66p per member per year on employment lawyers &
uses no-win-no-fee solicitors?
2 Which system scored worst-equal among complaintants
at employment tribunals?
3 What is the most common complaint to workplace
bullying help lines?
4 Why don't unions respond to disgruntled members?
5 What did a county court judge say about NUT
service to a member?
6 Where does the money go? [There is no answer
to this but it isn't members]
7 What happens when union member democracy is
quashed into busy-body democracy?
The Collective Conditional Fee regulations have allowed organisations
like trades unions to use no-win no-fee lawyers for some time,
so, like any other no-win no-fee lawyer, they may put a much
higher priority on personal injury cases where they can make
money than messy unfair dismissal and employment law cases where
they can't. For example the new Unite union rule book mentions
personal injury cases directly and then goes-on to employment
as though an afterthought.
The best example of a union doing this is a motorcyclist's
trade-union set-up by a no-win no-fee personal injury lawyer,
called Rider Support Services Club.
Membership was free, including record-keeping, wipe-clean
membership cards and a free magazine called Grunt,
written by the same ghostwriters who write a magazine for Co-Op
members and quite likely for Unite T&G members just before
elections.
All of this was funded from the profits of a personal injury
lawyer doing regular high-value claims against bad drivers' insurance
companies. The regularity of the work made it possible to work
out how to do it cheaply and well.
If you or your surviving relatives have a card with the number
of a personal injury lawyer on it, you are more likely to ring
that firm when something goes wrong and enough people did so
to fund the magazine and the membership cards. Despite a general
name - rather like a breakdown service or a trades union - no
employment law help or break-down cover were provided because
these are messy and expensive and take a long time. Nobody minded
because the service was free although the Law Society have asked
the lawyer to be more transparent now and it's not clear what
will happen to the service. At the last count, the magazine was
sent to 35,000 people.
Large well-known trades unions can do just the same as Rider
Support Services and the Collective Conditional Fee regulations
make it clear that they can - getting commission from specialist
lawyers who know how to do a simple standard case with a high
payout like a claim to the miner's compensation scheme or a claim
for an accident at work, ranging from the vital and important
to the "I walked into a post that was not previously
signposted" kind of claim, and taxpayers pay vast amounts
to the Health and Safety Executive to write regulations making
the second kind of claim easier at all of our expense while judges
make case law on stress cases to make them almost un-arguable.
There is a regulation to say that if you employ someone to climb
a ladder without training in walking up stairs, and they claim
to have fallen off, it is your fault unless you can show that
you trained them in how to climb a ladder and got them to sign
that they had received training. Why not just get everyone to
sign "an amount of GDP will go to Labour party PR in
a way that is concealed from all of us" rather than
bother with the ladder/court/insurance thing? In contrast, the
French government doesn't bother with a Health and Safety Executive
that writes obscure regulations telling people not to take risks
and to sue their employers for doing so. Maybe this is because
France doesn't have a major political party funded neusance claims.
Part of the culture that comes of this scam is that people in
power think all claims are neusance claims. Faced with a problem
of too much money being spent on legal aid to low-income people
accused of crime, the government has recently cut the pay allowable
to their new franchised scheme of legal aid lawyers. The pay
is cut below what a qualified lawyer would work for. The implication
is that no legal case is really complicated, except the ones
manufactured to fund the governing political party.
2% of T&G members make claims like this each year and they
pay "from £11 a month" depending on the
branch rather than joining a free magazine subscription list
as RSS members do. Some unions are so keen on this kind of work
("we'll help you fill in a claim form and get a full standard
lawyer's fee from the government") that they allow associate
members to use their help. ASLEF uses the same call-centre legal
firm that works with the Vista print Rewards Scheme that some
people sign-up to by mistake after buying a cheap business card
off Amazon. It is all legal and above-board.
Meanwhile members of large well-known unions want more than
members of Rider Support Services and think they have paid for
them. "from £11 a month" was nearer £15
in my T&G branch and some unions like Unison have higher
rates for higher-paid employees. Employment rights have mushroomed
over the past decade, but only for those who can enforce the
law - articulate people, people who are on a proper contract,
people who cannot be bullied and so-on. When employers come to
prefer casual staff or staff who are not a threat to their careers,
ways are found to get rid of the established ones just as Mr Rachman
found ways to get rid of controlled-rent tenants in the 1960s,
and the reasons for bullying staff are endless.
- Staff can be on incremental points for staying in the same
job a few years
- Staff who have been in the job a while may be best at it,
but not want to be managers, undermining the social fabric
- Staff can be popular and make managers nervous
- Staff can be unpopular and make managers nervous
- Staff can be neither popular nor unpopular, but just get
on with what they are paid to do, and make managers nervous
- Staff can be next on the list after a manager has grown to
like serial bullying
- Staff can claim maternity leave which is very expensive and
gets no subsidy from the government
- Staff can claim reasonable adjustments to a temporary or
permanent disability: tricky for a feckless employer who can't
do things like "supervision" that the law requires.
- Staff can sue for whistle blowers discrimination
- Staff can sue for trades union members discrimination
All of these employment rights have employment wrongs to balance
them like the tendency to hire on short term contracts, on commission,
with frequent assessments or re-organisations. Often private
sector employers simply get around all employment law while public
sector ones operate in more of a mess - where a feckless employee
may be hard to sack on one desk but another good employee is
easier to sack on another because a human resource department
is paid to smooth over the contradictions of an employer's position.
If unions were any good, there should be a wave of trades
union revival and headline cases in which their core membership
of long-term public sector employees fight back with all these
new employment laws against Rachman management. The legal director
of the Transport and General Workers Union says that this has
not happened: that less than 10% of his legal budget is spent
on messy machiavellian employment law claims and ninety percent
is spent on simple health and safety law.
It is not reported that more people are physically hurt at
work than are unfairly dismissed, bullied, harassed or discriminated
against. Obviously they are not, and that's a big reason why
people join unoins rather than relying on no-win no-fee lawyers
who only cover the simple cases with high-payouts. It is reported
that the
TGWU charged solicitors referral fees. Dispite appearing
to be a trades union that fits the reasons why people want to
join trades unions, Unite the Union is a claims handling agency
with a speciality in co-ordinating volunteer reps. The report
comes from Stoy Hayward accountants, commissioned to write a
report on a proposed merger partner above. The same Executive
Council notes "repudiations" of strikes as a routine
item without saying whether they get a fee for that as well.
One sign of a union trying to divert money away from helping
members is when the solicitor is provided at the very last minute
- late enough to use the member's own work but too late to do
any more and early enough to settle and take a success fee. The
typical scam is that there is no
clear contract about what's available to members, so an official
has to nominate a case to the organisation's solicitor. The T&G
rule book states that there is a Schedule of services available
to members. No such schedule exists, unless it is the membership
leaflet which just says "legal representation".
The member's status is so low in the union hierarchy that s/he
might not even meet the official: rejection
might be passed via a volunteer, even in a case is strong
enough for a private lawyer to win. Or, after pretended misunderstandings
and difficulties getting clear answers, there is a sudden change
of mind and the member is referred to a named solicitor. A rep
reported to me that the union would back me if I submitted by
own complaint form to the tribunal. I was given an hours' interview.
I asked for my own choice of lawyer but was forced to use one
on the other side of town that an ex-colleague had complained
about before. This inflexibility meant something, but I was not
sure what it meant and vaguely gave the union the benefit of
my doubt. The union had missed basic time limits, and during
this interview the lawyer did not want the hassle of reading
the disability discrimination questionnaire, the grievance letter,
understanding time limits or looking at the evidence which I
had in bags full. Nor of course did he tell me the the union
had missed basic time limits - he simply advised me not to attend
the pre-hearing review so that I wouldn't see the mess that the
union had got-in to.
It's likely that solicitors firms are pressured
to pretend they can handle employment work cheaply in order to
get the union's personal injury work, leaving their employment
lawyers over-worked & pressured to cut corners. The quote
below shows pressure - resisted - on unqualified union officials
to represent more of their members in tribunals. This pressure
on officials to work beyond available time, qualification, and
inclination when the union has been paid for a proper legal service
may be passed-on-down to volunteer reps and to members themselves,
even when off-sick, over-worked by the employer or on maternity
leave.
A Unison document baldly states that union lawyers are paid
for by the loosing side through costs awards and that if the
system were changed there is a "real danger" that Unison
would not even back personal injury cases.
 Less
than 10% of the union law budget quoted below goes on employment
law; 90% goes on the cases that are easy to fund from costs awards.
This is Mr Whitty, legal director of Unite the Union's Transport
and General section explaining to The Lawyer magazine:
From http://www.TheLawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=77161 (underlining added)
From the glory days of two million members to the doldrums
of the Thatcher years, Fergus Whitty has seen it all during his
time as Transport and General Workers Union legal director. Steve
Hoare finds out where it's at now
"I'd say that the Labour Government has done tremendous
things,” states Whitty. “... it introduced the
- collective conditional fee agreement, which
is a very helpful way of funding the personal injury claims...
very helpful to trade unions.”
- ...personal injury claims take [...]
Ninety per cent of the department’s £5m
expenditure [£6.66 per member per year] [...]. Last
year Whitty, his team and its 60 law firms supported around 15,000
claims and recovered £74m for people injured [...]
[plus lawyer's costs back from the other side]. [This is 2% of
T&G members using the service a year]
 The
T&G also supports members at employment tribunals.
[out of 10% or 66p per member per year]
Generally, the local union official will give the member advice
about the tribunal and take the matter to the employment tribunal.
If the local official is overloaded with claims, or a claim is
particularly complex, the department has an arrangement to use
local solicitors. Last year, £5m was recovered for members
through employment tribunal claims. [plus lawyers costs but nothing
like the true cost of a well-argued employment law case]
- Other issues that Whitty faces include legal challenges
to the way the union’s rule book is interpreted from solicitors
acting for disgruntled members." [also
out of the 66p per member per year]
£6 per member per year or 90% of the legal budget is paid
to solicitors who can pay it back again for lucrative personal
injury cases in a way that isn't made clear to you, me, this
web site or the press, but Stoy Hayward accountants tried to
make sense of the books for Amicus before the merger. These are
the minutes of Amicus
National Executive Conference, November 2006:
A summary of the due diligence report from BDO Stoy Hayward
had been circulated. This had reviewed all the available financial
information which had been adjusted to place the information
on a comparable basis. After pension deficits the new union would
have net assets of over £200 million formed equally from
the two sections. Contribution income was also very similar although
Amicus had more paying members. TGWU branch costs were higher.
Staff numbers were similar. Legal procedures were different in
a number of ways - the TGWU charged solicitors’ referral
fees, for example.
BDO suggested TGWU financial controls needed improving. In the
TGWU membership processing and payroll were decentralised.
So the ratio of personal injury to employment law is very much
like the no-win no-fee lawyer adverts in the column on the right:
mainly personal injury, sometimes simple employment law. The
method of funding is said to be £6.66 per member per year
but accountants report that the lawyers are paying the union
for the privelage of having late claims dumped on their desks.
Accountants also report that the books are hard to make sense
of.
The union advertises membership from £11 a month and the
Parliamentary
Branch get it down to £9.35. I have a feeling I was
being charged £15 a month. Taking the union's figure of
£132 a year, £0.66p goes on:
1) employment law.
2) defending the union against disgruntled members.
It isn't said what proportion of each takes more of the £1
annual budget per member, but a clue is that the government's
certification office warns against complaints about "failure
to represent" on its web site and it's own little tribunal
has decided in Foster
v Musician's union that the legal right of a member to see
lawyer's receipts doesn't mean receipts but "an intermediate
ledger".
- Factual note 1:
"Dear [name of solicitor] Last time I contacted my union's
legal director for details of how their legal service is funded,
he wrote
>>>Dear Member,
>>>The solicitors should send this to your direct.
>>>If you have any difficulties please contact me again.
>>>FERGUS WHITTY
>>>LEGAL DIRECTOR
I got my MP to write to him next (with a reminder) but have had
no response. I've also emailed reception:
Can you confirm that you still do not have authority to let me
know how my branch's legal service is funded?"
"Dear [name of union member and client]We were told categorically
by Mr Whitty that we should not release the documentation to
you.Yours sincerely [name of compliance officer for solicitor]"
My MP has tried writing to him to ask how legal services
are funded, given the bad service, and has had no reply despite
reminders.
Without facts from Unite-Transport and General about how they
do their claims-handling, it makes sense to look for ex-panel
solicitors describing other claims handlers for background. This one describes the
claims handling industry a few years ago, probably describing
a firm that has closed. He describes a naive market that needs
more transparency: nobody is sure who ought to be paying who
and how much. Sometimes even a simple case with a high payout
like a claim on insurers for a road traffic accident causing
an injury can be badly handled because it's thought to cost a
thousand pounds to argue and most of the money has gone to a
claims handling agency. A system that has trouble coping with
simple, high-value cases is likely to have more trouble coping
with the complex, low-value cases of employment law.
- Factual note 2: Unite The
Union Transport and General accounts for the year of the article,
2003
- Factual note 3: The research below does not mention any official
representing at a tribunal.
The full article does not mention any separate panel of employment
law solicitors; the "arrangement to use local solicitors"
may be something expected of those who bid to do the trade-union's
more profitable work as a kind of freebie.
My union's panel solicitor was two hours from me and an hour
away from the tribunal, with London (and its other solicitors)
in the middle or the triangle. The branch was called South London
but the solicitor wasn't in the south of London. His performance
makes me suspect that his boss was the cheapest bidder, not the
best in tribunals and when I asked if he had been to one before
he said
"Oh yes. But usually the Central London"
...and his online CV says that years ago he worked for some
firm closer to the centre of London that handled employment tribunal
cases.
If a union-referred case did go to a tribunal, two hours would
be spent commuting for which the solicitor would bill £200.
If his success fee is 20% and he expects to win 50% of cases,
he would have to win £2,000 per successful tribunal case
just to pay travel. According to this
graph, the most common payouts for unfair dismissal cluster
around £1-3,000 with a tail of higher payouts for some
types of well-argued case. Median awards are higher for my type
of case - disability discrimination - but this lawyer wasn't
a specialist in discrimination and of course these costs don't
allow for time reading evidence to put a well-argued case or
prepare a bundle of documents. I expect there were admin workers
at this office but all the notes I saw from the solicitor were
written in longhand: I doubt he had a secretary and I doubt he
could touch-type. I doubt the bid which his employer had made
to get union business was viable and I know that the process
isn't transparent.
- Factual note 4: There is no way of knowing how much of the
10% of the legal budget is spent on employment law, and how much
on "disgruntled members", but the UnisonLawyers.html
page gives an example at another union of a lot of money being
spent on disgruntlement and none at all on employment law.
- Factual note 5: Small
Claims, Big Deal , Thompsons Solicitors for Unison, 2005
:
"The problem for those bringing personal injury cases
is that the Small Claims Court does not award costs in cases
brought before it. There is a real possibility that this could
result in fewer cases having legal representation from a trade
union lawyer (who is paid out of costs received from the
employers’ insurance companies)".
This from http://www.Britsoc.co.uk/user_doc/Hammersley.pdf p12 about people at employment tribunals /back
There appeared to be a slight differentiation between satisfaction
levels and types of representatives used, with those applicants
using trades union to represent them being the least happy. Several
applicants identified instances of inherent conflict:
“I found the union too happy to appease employer to my
detriment.”
This can possibly be explained by the move to a partnership approach
between employers and employee representative bodies and may
have resulted in individual union members losing out in terms
of the quality of the advice or representation provided by union
officials at local and regional level. There was evidence of
a clear belief that political factors had affected the situation:
“ I think there was a political agenda because I understand
there were conversations between my union representative, the
head of HR and the Mayor’s advisor. I did think there was
a political agenda to try and get it stopped. I felt very let
down, when it came to twenty four hours before we were due
to go to tribunal and he phoned me to say he hadn’t taken
any statements from my witnesses. He said this offer is on
the table. I am going to see the Councils legal department, I
can accept on your behalf but I would prefer it to come from
you. Basically if you don't accept you are by yourself tomorrow.
He told me he could accept without my authority, he could go
in to a meeting and say I am settling.”
This applicants experience indicates that the role of a trade
union representative has become that of arbitrator rather than
ensuring employees’ interests are paramount. This is compounded
by many public sector organisations determination to preserve
their reputations at all costs, thereby applying undue pressure
on the trade union to settle cases prior to a public hearing
wherever possible. For one union member it resulted in a damaged
view of their union:
“ I would never ever again go to a trade union for assistance,
nor will I ever join a union again.”
There was only a marginal difference between these applicants
and those who used a solicitor on a no win no fee basis. In these
cases interviewees had frequently felt pressurised into accepting
settlements
Factual note: There are instances of employer's solicitors
advising a settlement if the other side is represented, otherwise
not. This knowledge prevents individuals from benefiting from
ACAS's service, which would
otherwise be a taxpayer-funded settlement service for people
who's claims have already gone to a tribunal.
Factual note: Unison v Jervis
shows an example of what people complain about. A member was
told his case was weak by memo from a volunteer who had "spoken
to" a paid official. Mr Jervis paid for his own case and
won it despite the volunteer and official turning-up as witnesses
for the other side and not thinking to warn him first. When he
and asked for Unison to pay his legal costs again, and complained,
they hired a London city solicitor and a team of two barristers
to fight him at every stage up to an appeal tribunal. Worryingly,
I got the same tribunal chair that had heard Mr Jervis' case
a few months later. The union did so badly that I told him my
case was now against the union and asked if he could bear that
in mind while writing his judgment. The chair replied:
"I cannot do that and I think you know the reason
why not"
I guess this means that people in the legal trade like tribunal
chairs know how bad union representation is, but are under political
pressure to say nothing. That's why employer's solicitors often
call union reps as witnesses, knowing that the rep or the official
will be badly-briefed, will not contact the member, and will
possibly have lunch with the employer's side. The case I saw
just to see how the system worked was of a finance clerk from
a housing association who had got the sack after being a bit
strange.
"why hasn't the union rep taken your case here?"
The other side asked. It's nasty.
This from BullyOffline.org/WorkBully/Public.htm : [picture © Photogenic
Photography]
The number one complaint of those contacting my UK National
Workplace Bullying Advice Line [ now closed after a libel action
funded by the NUT ] and Bully Online and similar organisations
including DAWN, OXBOW, Andrea Adams Trust and Freedom to Care
has been the refusal of trade unions to support their members
in cases of bullying and stress.
The trade unions in the UK whose names most commonly crop
up are:
1) National Union of
Teachers (NUT)
2) Unison
3) Amicus-MSF [now
slowly merging with the Transport and General Workers Union to
become Unite the Union - link is to comments about their service
EO]
4) Royal College of Nursing
(RCN)
5) NATFHE [NATFHE joined with the AUT to form the University
and College Union (UCU) - link is to comments about their
service - link to what an established
rep is doing]
6) To a lesser extent, most other trade unions, especially public
sector
Sometimes the local (unpaid) trade union officer is helpful
and supportive, but once the case moves up to a paid union official,
the member finds their case frustrated. Many people report that
their paid trade union official appears indistinguishable from
the management and that their trade union, despite the rhetoric,
appears to be more interested in maintaining its good relationship
with the employer than meeting the legally-binding contractual
obligations to its members. [...] The notion that trade
unions exist to support, protect and fight for the rights of
their members seems to have fallen by the wayside - especially
if bullying and stress are the core issues.
Factual note 1: DearUnite.com:
click "employment tribunals"
One reason for union misbehaviour is that disgruntled members
are often exhausted, sometimes sick, sometimes looking after
new babies, or hoping to keep up appearances at the next employer.
They are as unlikely to sue as people who buy fake viagra, and
unions know this. In commercial terms, these members are often
at the end or their relationship with the union and out of touch
with new recruits. Unions know this too. A vague little implied
contract is all unions need to make it very unlikely they will
be sued.
So there is little commercial market pressure from members
to make a union do more, hire more and better officials or increase
a legal budget, even for those decision-makers in the union hierarchy
who believe in keeping themselves in business by competing well
with other types of employment law help or providing help to
people still in work. The problem is recognised in the annual-report-TGWU.html article quoted here, but
union decision-makers find it hard for some reason to distinguish
between paying to back-up good volunteer support and paying to
back-up student union politics. They certainly don't want more
good staff: the till is raided enough as it is and the article
warns that "tough choices" are necessary which
won't help "individual" services to members.
The author - Sharon Graham - sees herself as a volunteer co-ordinator
to employees, encouraging them to do ever more unpaid work while
the union gets £15 a month.
In contrast there is plenty of pressure to provide a bad service.
- Union directors can vote money to a political party they
think most favourable to their unasked members, and unions that
do this have chosen the same party for 100 years, suggesting
closeness beyond the public & rational. Those unions which
have tried to break-away from subsidising the same old party
like ASLEF or the Welsh part of Unison have been criticised.
- Most big union's directors met government ministers at the
Warwick University campus a few years ago for a public pact,
and Amicus
boasts of the great things offered by government after the "Warwick
Agreement" like good government, with some surprisingly
detailed twists that look as though they came from hard negotiation
in long committee meetings. Other favours include a cap on damages
that can be claimed against unions in court and an abolition
of an obscure quango, the Commission for the Rights of Trades
Union Members, a small government office that could considered
funding about one request a month by ex-union members wanting
to sue unions. If there was negotiation, delegates from big TUC
unions must have packed detailed concessions in their briefcases
as they went home on the train. Unfortunately these must be on
the back of the leaflet because they don't show on the Unite-Amicus
website, and the TUC claims to migrant workers above that it
is "independent of any political party" but
the BullyOffline
link above gives good grounds for guesswork including a TUC boast
that 90% of TUC-Union-backed tribunal claims win. So they
don't take cases without 90% chance of success, even with a no-win
no-fee budget and volunteer support from reps according to Unite-T&G
and Unison.
This is a giveaway because my Unite-T&G union official claimed
that they backed claims with a 50% chance of success. My membership
leaflet says the union offers legal help and advice for
money - not highly restricted legal help - and few people would
join a union that said "if your case is 90% certain and
any no-win no-fee lawyer would take it even in employment law,
we'll take it as well and possibly get a kick-back from the lawyer".
If the intention were true, something similar would show in the
statistics of how many union-backed tribunal claims win or loose,
which is a hard fact to research because the tribunal service
library in Bury St Edmonds only allows personal callers to see
the summery data. You would have to have some time and at least
the cost of a train ticket to find how many cases unions win,
but Brendan Barbour, president of the TUC, backed this press
release to the BBC:
Unions won or settled nine out of ten of the 2,619 tribunal
applications recorded in the survey, and won four of five cases
that went all the way to a hearing, compared with a 13 per cent
average for all tribunals. And unions won an estimated £16.2
million in compensation for their members - in unfair dismissal
cases, which still account for over 40 per cent of all claims,
compensation to union members was three times higher than the
average award.
At the 2005 Election, Unite-T&G declared
a £20,128.00 donation to the Labour Party's central election
expenses, but there is another explanation. Maybe Unite-T&G
are not failing to represent members and paying money to Labour
instead. Maybe tribunal judges like mine appointed by Labour
ministers have to be biassed towards
the dignity of trades unions - and not their members - to hold
down their jobs. Or not.
As the BullyOffline website notes -
 Brendan
Barber who has recently announced the trade union's achievements
in reducing the number of cases taken to employment tribunal
and how unions are good for you but who must now answer allegations
of why some trade unions appear to limit their interest in cases
to cherry-picking those members with interesting cases which,
if successful, can be used in press releases to trumpet union
achievement. What this means in practice is that any trade union
member with a run-of-the-mill everyday case of bullying and stress
resulting in loss of job, career, income, livelihood, health
and detriment to home and family life will, regardless of how
many years they've being paying subscriptions in expectation
of services in time of need, be rejected in favour of the few
sexy cases. Whatever happened to original trade union principles?
Some people devote their lives to unearthing the history
of trade union principals and they know better than me, but my
guess is that the TUC was always in part a cartel to reduce the
choice of members between different unions and so increase the
power of union central offices to hike the price.
After the agreement, government ministers have continued to decide
which unions get Union Modernisation Grants from the EU, or make
speeches like the recent one on Remploy to suggest that they
are being
influenced by union contacts. In both cases there may be
no connection, but the suspicion
may effect behaviour by unions and ministers, encouraging unions
to stick to the Warwick Agreement. Since I wrote that, Peter
Hain has resigned as minister. If union directors can give-away
your money, it's hard for them to prevent the next problem.
 Activists can propose giving union money
away, leaving less for the rest.
In large TUC unions they think it's normal to give money away.
There is a political fund which takes something over two pounds
from a monthly full-time subscription of eleven to fifteen pounds,
and different unions have more or less off-the books donation.
Several claim that more than 100% of their members subscribe
to the political fund. Mine writes to me personally to urge support
for Labour Ken Livingstone (although not when he was independant,
and they didn't write personally in response to complaint about
bad union service or funding of lawyers - my MP is on her third
reminder). Whether members get about £10-worth of service
is less clear, when the diagram below shows fifteen internal
committees per member and the Unite-T&G region one web site
lists twenty two external organisations that the region one office
funds, alongside a similar overlapping list funded by branch
1/1148. In the middle of the organisation, just as in the branches
there are people who think unions are fund-raising organisations
and that it's normal to give members' money to a campaign. In
an organisation where local committees "may" hold a
ballot for re-election (Rules.html#10.4 b) or just re-elect themselves
on a show of hands it's easy to see why the activists are often
people who give money away without much monitoring.
"a union is not about legal insurance but solidarity",
-said the treasurer of branch 1/1148 when refusing a to provide
a lawyer. The same meeting he OK'd a payment to the Communist
Party's landlord.
- Employers can also recognise a trade union, recommending
a steady stream of new paying customers for free while membership
generally has declined. At these employers, volunteer reps may
be given paid time-off for union duties and other very small
& proper benefits, like access to speak to directors, that
get them in the habit of seeing the managements' side better
than they see other members' points of view. Mr Jervis on the
night shift above was simply advised "not to get up the
management's nose" by his Unison rep. Unions can become
certified by a government office - the certification office -
as independent of employers but the certificates are not always
worth the cost, as in the recent case of the Stable
Lads Association which turned out to be funded entirely by
stable owners. And the closed shop is not yet dead. Employers
can exclude all witnesses from disciplinary meetings except an
approved
union union rep, so solicitors, friends, and reps from other
unions can be denied access while a volunteer rep's expulsion
from the union may make a practical difference to them.
- Public sector employers may be part of the same political
culture as public sector unions, linked by individuals given
time-off to work as counsellors, branches funding
labour MPs, as well as union central budgets subsidising
a political party. For example the
minister for Employment Relations is sponsored by Unite-TGWU.
Culturally, officials may respect hierarchy and "procedure"
more than truth, type with two fingers, be clueless about efficiency
or money, and assume that members are illiterate ("the
learning rep post remains vacant", I read about my own
branch). They may be more like the public sector than the public
sector itself and simply not understand good ideas or valid complaints
that they should be passing-up the management chain. When my
union should have been proposing alternatives to redundancies
and ways of avoiding stress and overwork, the volunteer reps'
quarterly negotiations with management were bogged down in the
small print of the employment contract and the paid official
was not to be seen. The public-funded voluntary organisation
I worked for had wasted its grants on a "development
unit" and too many directors, then exaggerated it's
own faults in order to shed staff. We were expected to attend
seven team meetings a week. It would have been nice if the union
had offered employee-friendly management consultancy, or a quiet
word to the trustees. Unfortunately, union officials may also
think that a "development unit" is a perfectly
good way of spending money and there's nothing wrong with seven
team meetings a week. According to the author Naomi Klein in
her book No Logo, US unions have helped sweat shop employers
upgrade their machines to get a better deal all-round. But UK
unions are the last people who could offer management consultancy
or prevent dramas turning into the crisis of a tribunal case.
An article by a Unite - Transport & General insider on Union
Ideas Network suggests an unspoken
pressure not to rock the boat at recognised employers, a
great article but one that doesn't distinguish money to real
union reps from money to activists. To pay more money to a branch
committee who have a good foreign policy and a cheap lawyers
is, I think, trying to put a fire out with petrol.
Unions take the precaution of avoiding any adult written contract
with members while officials may even avoid face-to-face contact,
preferring to pass messages via volunteer reps as in the Unison v Jervis case above. Instead
of a clear contract there is a tradition of vague little rule
books (available on request) which allow officials to control
access to legal assessment. Even a the strongest, simplest case
can be delayed by an official to save the union face or money.
In an imaginary extreme case, a no-win
no-fee lawyer could be appointed on the last day before a
court case is out of time, speak to the member about the DIY
legal work they have done already, use that information to try
and settle with the other side, and claim a 20% success fee.
A "due diligence" report by Stoy Hayward accountants
for Amicus pre-merger suggested that something like this is going
on, which on the face of it is different from what the union's
usual accounts, based at Transport House, write for the government's
Certification Officer and so to members. Organisations that used
to be unions turning into dodgy claims handling agencies in return
for funding a political party may sound like an extreme theoretical
xample but it looks almost identical to the example quoted in
a Coventry University research document above.
As Mr Whitty of the T&G explains, there is very little money
in employment law, with only £1 of damages won for every
£15 of damages for personal injury, but even the worst
and most cheapskate service makes it less likely that a member
will join his third expenditure category of "disgruntled
members".
Insurance companies are now bound by the Legal Services Bill
to register with the Financial Services Authority, which asks
them to develop the familiar A4 contracts with key facts made
clear at the start. They cannot appoint a volunteer to tell you
"I have spoken to the manager and he says that you
do not have a claim", or
"the purpose of an insurance company is not payment on
events but solidarity", or
"you do not understand: you paid all the money to me
by mistake. What a pity I forgot to tell you earlier".
The law applies so mutuals just as to PLCs, and trades
unions have no difficulty registering for their side-line businesses
of selling pensions and insurance to members. But Trade Unions'
legal services have been exempted both times this act has been
passed by the trades-union funded government, despite the House
of Lords sending the bill back for more debate.
Despite the vague rule books, some people do still take unions
to a county court to ask for their membership fees back under
an implied contract.
 Joanne Sherry's story from Pam McClounie
of Coventry News and Star, 16.2.2006
NUT failed to support teacher in dispute
A CARLISLE teacher who sued the National Union of Teachers
(NUT) for failing to give her legal advice when she ran into
difficulties at her school has won her case. Joanne Sherry, 48,
paid £3,000 over 23 years to be a member of the country’s
largest teaching union, but when she sought help from its officers
they failed to act on her behalf. Miss Sherry, who taught at
Trinity School, asked for help from her union in 2000 when she
felt she was being bullied and intimidated by former head teacher
Mike Gibbons.
She successfully fought her case at Newcastle County Court
yesterday in what is believed to be the first of its kind in
the country.
With a mounting workload and a breakdown in communication
between Miss Sherry and the school’s management, she began
to suffer from work related stress. NUT officers, Mike McDonald
and Bryan Griffiths, advised her to stay off work until Mr Gibbons
left the school in October 2001. The school also issued Miss
Sherry with a letter in December 2001 outlining six allegations
against her. She was suspended from school for a year. Miss Sherry
says these allegations were designed to cause her undue stress
and anxiety and force her to resign. She refused to do so and
continued to battle for an investigation into the allegations
against her.
But, despite continuing to plead for assistance from
the NUT, nothing happened. Union reps failed
to accompany her to meetings, did not return her phone calls
and e-mails and refused to give her proper advice.
Eventually, in 2002 she reached a compromise agreement with her
employers and left the school due to ill health.
District Judge Alderson said:
“The NUT had Miss Sherry over a barrel. They basically
told her if she didn't accept their advice then that was it.
They washed their hands of her.”
After the case Miss Sherry told the News & Star:
“I feel justice has been done. The NUT refused to give
me advice on the procedures of my employers and refused to accompany
me to disciplinary hearings. It failed to pursue my grievances."
The NUT must now pay Miss Sherry £3,800.
Factual note 1: Joanne Sherry discovered
cheap legal insurance bundled with her home contents insurance
after the National Union of Teachers refused to help her, so
she used that instead and won her case.
Her next job was for the county court service.
She sued the National Union of Teachers for her wasted subscription.
Factual note 2: NUT fought the case and threatened Joanne Sherry
with extra-ordinary costs if she lost.
The NUT then refused to pay without a bailiff visit.
Factual note 3: Hamilton
v GMB is a case of a long-serving volunteer
rep badly treated by his union because officials believed he
told members of another legal deal available at Stefan Cross
solicitors, who were no-win no-fee, during negotiations on equal
pay. The union held that their second-rate
pay negotiation was better for members in the long term than
a short-term victory by a no-win no-fee lawyer about equal pay.
Other GMB
cases in the appeal tribunal have been about disgruntled ex-GMB
staff, rather than the GMB making case law for its members.
This from http://ShirazSocialist.blogspot.com/2006/12/bringing-union-into-disrepute.html
backed by The Worker Spring
2007p2
Bringing the union into disrepute
Trade unions are often accused of corruption: sometimes it's
true.
But as well as blatant hand-in-the-till corruption, there
is also "let's give our friends some money" corruption.
It's less blatant than simple stealing and bribery, but it's
no less dishonest; and it goes-on very widely. Unfortunately,
the "left" are the worst offenders.
Until 1989, the Soviet Union and other Stalinist states in
Eastern Europe subsidised the British Communist Party's paper,
the Morning Star.
With the collapse of the Stalinist empire, it looked like the
Star was finished; but no! It managed to survive, mainly
because of massive donations
from British trade unions - none of which consulted their
members on this matter. The Transport and General Workers Union
was probably the biggest donor.
Now that scion of leading British
Communist Party family, Anita Halpern has come into at least
£20 million as a result of inheriting art stolen from her
family by the Nazis, you might be forgiven for thinking that
the Star aught now to be self-sufficient. But no: they are still
at their old game of screwing the trade union movement (with
no reference to the membership),
for funds
in order to keep their Stalinist lying-sheet in business.
Motion to
Region 1 (London) Committee of the Transport and General Workers
Union
from the
1/1148 (ACTS)
branch:
The Morning Star is unique in
being the only daily national newspaper published in the UK,
which is co-operatively owned by is readers[1]. The Morning Star has been a voice for
trade Unions, anti-fascists, progressive causes and peace for
seventy-six years and played a vital role in the working class
movement and despite set backs continues to be a bright independent
beacon in a capitalist dominated press.
This branch notes the importance
of the Morning Star continuing to defend and represent the workers
of this country. That it
has been the only paper to provide coverage of the Trade Union
Freedom [sic-JR] Bill and the current attacks on Trade Unions
and Shop Stewards. Its articles
and news coverage reflect a wide range of progressive views in
a non-sectarian way.
This branch believes that the
organisation for defence and advancement of ordinary people's
rights is the trade union movement ; therefore Trade Unions [sic]
should have a voice in the running of the paper. This branch notes that the TGWU Region
1 is a major share holder in the PPPS [Peoples Press Printing
Society] and believes that our union should increase its share
holding to be entitled to a seat and be represented on the PPPS
and believes that our Union should increase its share holding
to be entitled to to a seat and be represented on the PPPS Committee. This Branch notes that FBU [Fire Brigades
Union] London and RMT [Rail Maritime Transport Union] already
have a seat on the PPS Committee.
Therefore-
- This branch calls upon the Region
to increase its shares in the PPPS to £20, 000,
which will give entitlement for a seat on the PPPS Committee
- That the Region take-up [sic
- JD] the seat and play an active role on the committee.
In recognition of the vital role
that the paper plays for Trade Union Rights we call upon the
region to
- Send out an appeal to all Region
1 branches for the Morning Star
- Request the national Union website
has a link to the Morning Star web site.
PASSED - TGWU 1/1148 branch -
14th November 2004.
|
...And, as I understand it, the fake-left-dominated
Region 1 committee has passed this, so that £20,000
of T&G members' subscriptions will be spent on subsidising
Stalinism. What a disgrace! No wonder Trade Unionism in Britain
is held in contempt, even by the membership! This is corruption:
and we should say so."
This from T&G 1/1148
Branch News ("The Worker") Spring 2007 p2
suggests a second wad of worthless shares bought after the £20,000
in 2004.
Branch's
Star Turn
We have also been able to support
the regeneration the Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group
in Region 1.[...]
A motion submitted by our branch calling on the Region to increase
their share holding in the paper and to promote readership was
passed by the Region 1 ACTS Trade Group.
The ACTS Trade Group will now send the motion to the Regional
Council.
|
This happens to be the group of cheer-leaders for the T&G
who helped dupe me into believing that I had got fair value for
my £11+ a month and so would get legal insurance if sacked
in a cack-handed way. I was stupid. They were wrong as well,
with less excuse and less willingness to change their minds.
At the end of the year they all turned-up unpaid to meet the
taxpayer-funded undustrial organiser, who seems to have got a
flipchart out and listed their pretensions such as meeting nearly
once a month. (action point: persuade real reps to attend. next
month's action point: acknowledge that real reps have a lot of
real things to do and don't want to come to these stupid meetings
even for the money).
In exchange for decieving colleagues into believing that a
union did still exist in any useful form, these activists got
wads of money for political hobbies. Maybe this site made a difference
though, becase all Unite The Union branches will get next to
no money from next year according to the new rule book. I'd advise
them to put all branch accounts into Zopa or somwhere that pays
decent interest and to donate it to another organisation for
the purpose, because money earmarked for branches in any grabbable
account may be un-ear-marked. This means that branches which
have been doing great things for no money will also be ruled-out,
and if that is the fault of this site: sorry. The problem is
that local initiatives with a lot of democratic support should
get a lot of membership money (the idea that they could change
unions or go it alone is a good one) while local initiatives
that elect each other on a show of each others hands deserve
no money. Maybe many branches are in the middle: genuinely trying
to do the right thing for their membes, but without any way of
consulting members who don't want to turn-up at a monthly meeting
at the town centre with no coffee available. Unions do not make
it a priority to help activists consult members - they do not
ask their IT managers to dream something up, nor send cards to
all members saying "this is what you do to be consulted".
No. Bollox.
- Tibet's
Feudal past is the start of a series of reports in recent Morning
Star editions. Those who subscribe know what the articles
are about. A paper that supported the invasion of Czechoslovakia
by Russian tanks (and known as "Tankies" by
other left wing groups ever since - a pun on their dress sense
because they look like geography teachers and are might sport
a knitted tank top) can still provoke a response by advocating
invasions. The only good part of the article is the last line,
which could be directed at Labour party taking away money from
trades unions and allowing dodgy voting systems for the people
who sign the cheques:
"those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".
- Morning Star accounts show
a £292,000 loss - after sale of uneconomic adverts and
ever-more non-dividend shares to trade unions - to be met somehow.
(The Central office of the union buys shares in Tribune).
- Communist Party
of Britain accounts and report read "There are criticisms
of Amicus but its continuing record of support for the Morning
Star is an indication that it will, along with other unions continue
to play a valuable and progressive role."
- Peoples Press
Printing Society rules allow one vote per one pound share, regardless
of who reads or writes for the paper, very much like other newspaper
PLCs except for the small, politically-charged nature of the
trade union shareholders and the lack of dividend on the shares.
"They won't pay a dividend till hell freezes over"
said the tankie who took money from my branch account and refused
to fund a proper lawyer. To claim that it's different from Mirror
Group Newpapers - a co-operative of shareholders including many
shares owned by the Maxewell family - or Northern and Shell that's
another shareholder co-operative of opinionated folk - is a statement
of editorial line. It is not a statement about financial structure.
The Morning Star is no more or less a co-op of one pound shareholders
than any other tabloid.
- The Unite T&G Region One for London and the South East
likes to affiliate
to organisations even though some of the branches in the
region are also affiliating and donating to the same ones. Other
regions don't keep similar lists. Despite subscribing to Labour
Research Department, Institute of Employment Rights and Emplaw,
they weren't able to give me any information about how to sue
a dodgy employer, presumably because they didn't want to start
a job without paid back-up. These subscriptions are for officials,
not members, and if there are not enough officials to use them
for members then members cannot use them directly. I had to join
Labour Research myself to find out if it was any use to me, which
it wasn't. Unite don't contribute towards Bailii.org , which
was useful. They didn't even tell me about it when refusing to
let me use their Emplaw subscription. I contacted Emplaw about
this who referred me to the T&G. My official said "There's
another one that's easier to use - I've forgotten what it is"
after an interview that began "I'm too busy to read
cases".
- A Guardian interview with the Morning Star editor reads
"But what I don't understand is, if there are 38,000
shareholders, why aren't there 38,000 readers?"
"Well, some of the shareholders are trade union organisations"
[including trades groups]
"...some of them are dead" [meaning that the
shares have never paid dividends so there's no way of knowing].
- Unite-T&G Branch 1/1148 account headings and amounts
were given to me at their annual general meeting.
Morning Star contributions were a significant amount, with the
rest donated to other organisations. Subsidies to the regional
office's "hopeless" lawyers were nil, and discussion
of what the branch official was doing was nil.
- At about the same time as the motion quoted above, someone's
career was hitting the rocks at my employer. The person was the
boss who I planned to return-to after illness, who had a duty
of care to make reasonable adjustments to disabled concentration.
She had no idea how to do this. Her appointment had been dangerous
in itself, but instead of being sacked for a fair reason she
complained of bullying by her boss. My boss walked out of a meeting
with her boss at one point, which was about how a colleague who
took maternity leave and myself (about to return from sick leave)
were to be managed. No official to come with her to meet a director
about it. She managed to get a rep from our former employer who
was a friend of hers. The director who heard her complaint had
little to say in the minutes about bullying or the reason she
had walked out of a meeting - in fact he asked for "tighter
management" of the two staff. Nor did he seem very specific
about what the job was meant to be, and allowed her to remain
in post for a few more months to bully and be bullied and be
berated for vague things like "leadership" when the
point was whether I got supervision. Anyone who has worked in
voluntary sector social work has opinions about what a decent
union should be doing, and probably none of those opinions is
that they should have a duff lawyer, and absent official, and
leave the budget to hobbyists who give it away.
- Personal note: I'm not always for or against the places where
the money goes.
I am against a bad union service which is so much worse than
the employer's human resources staff and legal insurer's panel.
I'm against gaps in the union budget left when money and time
is given-away by busybodies. The Labourandcapitalblogspot,
noticed just the same problem with my Fidelity stocks and shares
ISA, which has lost a few hundred pounds in value recently but
is lightened even more by donations to causes its customers don't
all support. I'm not against oddballs and odd parties either,
but committees with budgets should contain a majority of people
who are sane enough not to give money away, and preferably be
sane enough to monitor the daily grind of union business. They
should be elected on the broadest cheap balloting system, not
a self-election by show-of-hands (rule 10.4b) that the
union's rule 10 clause 2 says is invalid if most of the members
don't attend branch meetings. For the past few years the equivalent
of the show of hands in the union rule book has been ballotbin.com and branches should
start experimenting with it now.
- An envelope has just come through my letter box with candidates
names for the General Executive Council. I've never heard of
any chance to stand in this election and don't know any of the
people, but had added a hustings.html
page.
Indented paragraphs are an update since 2008/9
When I tried to get services off Unite T&G they hankered
after lay branches and paid several percent of membership fees
to branch volunteers. Different branches paid up to half as much
more than each other per month - about £9.35 - £15
- depending on the cut to the branch. A branch with functional
democratica backing and an appeal procedure to somone outside
the circus might be a great idea, but this needn't be a rep in
the place where you work or anything to do with all of the reps
at local employers They could be like the South London Branch
of Unite T&G.
In some branches this meant that volunteers did all the work
for the T&G for free. The hustings.html
page links to comments from one of the Irish branch secretaries
of a trucker branch who has probably been trying to do a good
job for members for no money for a long time. Otherwise branches
probably withered away if they weren't connected to an employer
or a trade where people were in touch with each other.
Most branches probably had a few hangers-on who liked donating
the money to various causes: the election system of a show of
hands was so out-of-date as to allow self election in practice
and keen committee attenders could simply donate all the union
budget to their choice of causes, such as charities and policitical
campaigns which choose not to keep public accounts. Obviously
you have to keep-up appearances. Voters and causes have to look
like part of the labour movement. But T&G decisions were
taken at regional offices and the London and South East Office
put a handy list on their web site of labour movement political
causes and charities which did not keep accounts.
The South London Branch of the T&G seemed to have been allocated
to a group for historical reasons, a group who were always willing
to help pretend that elections had been contested in return for
a few of the seats - for example at the last T&G general
secretary election, a man physically unfit for a tiring job stood
against the main candidate, and favours are returned. It's an
odd relationship, because the union also breaks employment law
by stating that it will not employ communists in certain jobs,
but both sides somehow co-exist and this puts people like Opus Dei or the Chistian
Socialist movement in charge of a £20,000 branch bank
account. They are called the Communist
Party of Britain. I only know this because as people who
like to meet monthly they can end-up answering complaints from
members who have been fobbed-off by the paid staff with un-answered
letters, and this is why I met a volunteer for the Communist
Party of Britain to tell me that "It is true that
the union web site says they provide legal insurance but this
is a mistake. We are not the fifth emergency service! A union
is about solidarity."
This is changing at the end of 2008 with an imposed rule book:
good branches that did all the work for now pay are now excluded
from the budget altogother. Branches that were in it for the
money like this one have ceased to add pages to their web site
since the bad news. The last one was about a meeting with an
"industrial co-ordinator" paid for from taxpayers'
Union Modernisation Grants. They listed their strengths as meeting
eleven times in the year (note: try to meet twelve times next
year), recruiting new members to their bogus union and producing
an edition of "The Worker" magazine which shows
committee members marching down Whitehall for greater union shits
rights. Since the money has been cut off there have been no new
sets of meeting minutes posted on the union branch web site.
For the record, if you have a bogus branch that is the only
part of the union willing to listen to your complaint, this is
what you might find.
At the time I was working for a firm that was attached to
this budget-holding volunteer branch, but had no way of knowing
it. The union administration had allocated me to something called
branch one in region one, and my file was only moved to branch
48 region one and their lawyer when I asked for help. Neither
branch had ever got in touch.
This is not unusual. Members of Unite-T&G are not polled
about anything but the legal minimum: a choice between unknown
candidates on a list which comes through the letter box every
few years. "Branch Membership" on the T&G
diagram means "branch committee membership" unless
there is some broad and inclusive method of election which I
have never seen. The committees act as exclusion committees.
They may be public in theory but there's little point in going
unless you want to share a table with the self-appointed while
they give money away, and their other function is to exclude
ordinary members from electing senior officials at delegates
conference. They do the deligating. Few people could hope to
win a vote on this kind of committee unless they are part of
a political hobby group.
My interest in my employer and my colleagues had been channelled
through an entirely different, un-funded group of people loosely
called a shop who had never had any help from paid union staff
even when asked. Those of us who belonged to the union were spread
across different parts of a firm. Some were reps and met each
other at quarterly meetings. I think someone tried to use their
right under the union recognition agreement to meet directors
quarterly with concerns, but this wasn't something that worked
in practice for whistle blowing or negotiation.
There was a paid official who did not attend quarterly meetings
with directors in order to pass on concerns about stress levels
or bullying, nor did even attend my bosses disciplinary meeting
or mine. He has now taken early retirement.
The system at Unite-T&G since the 1980s has been that
"branch" means volunteer committee with a budget and
a name like "South London branch" or "Vauxhall
Branch" and "region" means one of thirteen office
blocks with paid officials hired from job advertisements and
a paid regional general secretary chosen - I think - by the sector
biennial... No: I'm not sure. Anyway the official was
employed by Transport & General at region one, but the staff
/ member ratios, the quality and pay of the staff and the intricacies
of how he was employed remain a mystery, to me and to a smaller
extent to the branch. I know that his remit included voluntary
sector social work staff, Sainsbury's staff and Stagecoach bus
drivers (who have a "steering committee") and so he
knew about as much about my trade as I knew about his.
When I did discover the existence of my new branch committee,
I was refused any kind of online vote or a postal ballot. I asked
if they could use a free online system for elections, because
I was beginning to smell a rat. "The
region would probably not allow it" I was told, of online
votes or elections; "the purpose of a union is to bring
people together" and accounts aren't sent to members either
by post or online so there is little to vote about. When this
organisation was several months late in providing a lawyer I
decided that I had better go personally to the annual general
meeting which brought together about five people who elected
themselves on a show of five hands to represent the other
thousand branch members. There were other people in the room,
but I think most of them were there to receive donations for
causes. The meeting was held at the back of the Bread & Roses
pub in Clapham and if you're ever there at the beginning of December
you might see a branch committee that you can join-in. They don't
expect many of the thousand-odd members to turn-up because this
year's meetings have moved to somone's office.
This year, since my complaints, the branch secretary has forgotten
to invite me back so I don't know when and where meetings are
held but in my short acquaintance I never saw any great interest
in the technical side of running a union. Perhaps that was the
job of one of the other committees on the flow diagram above
(found on the internet from an activist's site), but I have never
had any communication from them so your guess, looking at the
diagram, is as good as mine. I am still a Unite member and according
to the Unite T&G website they have been having elections
since December. I have heard nothing about any election from
them directly. When I was a more regular member of the union,
brown envelopes would arrive every year or more inviting postal
votes for printed lists of candidates for obscure committees.
Each candidate's name had a paragraph of rhetoric next to it
but nothing very concrete except the names of nominating branches:
by branch had a turnout of about from perhaps a thousand members
to elect five office holders; this
web post and this
one claim 10% turnout for senior officials' elections, and
the surprising fact that they're elected like politicians. Mr
Camfield, the outgoing regional general secretary and Mr King,
the incoming one, have both written me letters of pretended misunderstanding
about complaints and lack of legal help. Both seemed indistinguishable
from each other of the employer, but apparently they are from
different political factions.
Curiouser, for committees so distant from other union members,
they know members' thoughts. They know what causes members want
to pay for. I was too polite to say "Causes that don't
give receipts" when I attended the annual general meeting,
and the branch account was "no longer frozen by the branch"
that year so I suppose someone else had asked, an
accountant had been called-in and declared everything OK.
I would be interested to know what a receipt from the people
of Cuba, Palestine and Venezuela looks like. Do they give receipts
separately or together? Maybe there is a company called Overseas
Solidarity Services which streamlines the process and collates
feedback about how much the campaign effects people in these
countries. Do the outbound payments from branch 1/1148
match the inbound payments to the Morning
Star? Or is there some legal and unspoken exchange of favours,
such as a Communist seat among the trustees of each organisation?
This from The Worker, T&G
1/1148 Branch News Spring 2007
In November the Branch sponsored the Southern & Eastern
TUC [...] conference, which saw two of our members elected to
officer posts. Julia Brandreth is one of the Co-Chairs and Anton
Johnson is Secretary.
Most unionised workplaces have the odd notice or bulletin
email like the one above, suggesting business as usual. Many
of the people who read this site will know someone who is listed
in union publicity or even be quoted themselves. The Worker
does not say whether Anton Johnson and Julia Brandreth are on
the committee to raid the petty cash for the Communist Party
or whether they think that keeping-up appearances for a trades
union is useful voluntary work. They happened to be at the branch
I belonged to, so I presume they've read this site before letting
their names be used in union publicity. Why? As Hitler's secretary
said "I didn't know all of what happened but I
could have found out. I could have asked. All I can say
is that I was very slow to grow-up and a lot of other people
were taken-in as well". They, you, or anybody who keeps-up
appearances for a bogus union could add "this is a different
degree of wrongdoing", which is true, "I am
shocked", which I hope is true because nothing else
will stop them backing-up a system that inflicts so much harm
on their colleagues, and "those who are ripped-off must
have been taken-in as well", which is partly true but
many people who need unions in a crisis do not join because of
a vague and justified sense of rip-off. Finally, someone who
is wrapped-up in their own rightnousness can say something as
stupid as "it can't be as bad as this site makes-out,
maybe the person had a bad case", which is why this
site is on the net. So that people can print it out, show it
to a union activist and point to detail before asking: "are
you still not advising all members to take out private
legal insurance?", because if they know all the
facts, and they still don't advise proper legal insurance to
members, they are either very stupid or very crooked. Offence
is justified and intentional. It is far smaller than the offence
caused by these people to others who they mislead. If any journalist
or reasearcher is reading this, incidentally, and wonders why
insurance brokers and PLC board members who rip people off in
specific ways end-up in prison while this lot don't, I have to
admit I don't know either. Please get
in touch if you want to compare notes because I am still
puzzled.
Getting back to activists who raid the petty cash, stories about
Anita Halpin have got the technique into the
papers
“What she does is the grindingly boring meetings that
are the lifeblood of the left wing,” said a trade union
activist who knows her.”
“The modus operandi is to attend every single meeting and
get yourself into positions where you control the agenda. She’s
done that very well.”
Her firm's accounts to the electoral
commission include thousands of words in house style - all
exhortation of other volunteers to do more and more and to be
ear-bashed at ever-more regular meetings. Volunteer party members
should buy the Executive Committee's opinions with an extra subscription
on top of their membership, and then sell- them-on to local left-wing
bookshops. The pressure is so remorseless that a couple of CPB
members lost their health in the build-up to the Pensioners Advisory
Committee meeting. With people like this on the trustees of an
organisation, it's easy to see why some of the other trustees
would melt away, the remainder be side-lined while the organisation
and its budget, buildings, mailing list, trust-funds, money-laundering
potential and good name taken-over.
I expect that payments match receipts of charities in most
branches, but transparency would help a lot at the Register of
Friendly Societies (who charge £15) and the Co-Op bank
which runs low-interest bank accounts for clubs and societies.
It would be great if a bank could launch a club account which
allowed anyone to see the online bank statement, but the only
difference between other
accounts and these Co-Op managed Unity-Trust-owned ones is
the ratio of interest
to risk.
The most transparent system was at the Morning
Star itself, which sends accounts to anyone who buys some shares.
I've transcribed them as accounts-ppps.html.
If you are a union accountant or staff auditor, I suggest you
buy ten shares in the Morning Star and use your right to go to
their office and check payments inwards.
There is a special section in the special law that governs
unions, the Trades Unions and Labour Relations Act, about members
who would like to see a receipt. Mr King of a neighbouring cab
driver's branch (also newspaper publishers) took this literally
and tried to use his statutory right: accounts-tgwu.html
. Mr King never did get to see the accounts.
There the newspaper was Cab Trade News rather than Morning
Star and the same need for subsidy was acknowledged by a committee.
A special court exists to hear complaints under this special
law, called the tribunal at the Certification Office. Personally
I would prefer a proper county court, but Mr King trusted this
one and the civil servant paid by you and me who heard the case
agreed that in a small union, a member might very well want to
see the actual receipts. But in a small informal branch of a
large union that would
"give members the
ability to conduct their own audit of a union’s affairs. I respectfully agree that Parliament
is unlikely to have had that intention". "I respectfully
believe that the governing parties who pay my wages treat union
members as scum"
Some of this quotation is fanciful.
To distinguish anything from politics is impossible but you would
expect a point to be reached were (as for Fidelity
unit trusts and the Conservative Party) shareholders or members
are consulted. I don't know what happens at my unit trust management
company's board meetings, but at my union branch's meetings there
is no attempt to separate business from politics or consult members
on a political fund. There is no mention of union business anyway.
I heard no mention of political funds or general funds in my
two committee attendance, nor read of any in the one set of branch
accounts I got, but the distinction is vital to deciding how
much a lawyer or an official is paid, how much is sent to Cuba,
and whether the Certification
Office account of the political fund is true. From the layout
of the account it appears not to be true, as branch money is
shown as separate from the political fund.
I would expect a branch to be interested in these, because
minutes showed that the month before an ex-colleague from my
old employer had been to the same group with a similer complaint
of bogus lawyers after the union had failed to do anything about
a round of bullying and redundancies there. The minutes describe
how she was told that she had a case, lent a lot of papers to
the branch lawyer, who at the last minute changed his mind and
did not return the papers, so she could not argue the tribunal
case herself. The branch committee had gone through the motions
of calling on the regional office to do something, so I would
have expected the entire meeting this month to be about the result.
I would have expected them to be resigning from the union, telling
all members why they had done so, and setting up a proper one.
I would have expected them to be a little embarrassed to get
a second complainant from the same employer the next month while
they exercised their right under rule#10.4b to re-elect themselves on a show
of hands and pass a set of accounts to themselves that are not
shown to other members.
Legal services were mentioned by chance because I was there
and put my hand up to interrupt an ask about them.
The accounts also showed that they had paid a large amount
of money out of the branch budget to Bindman
and Partners to support "a member" in a
legal dispute. Usually another firm is used and paid from another
budget, so things had gone wrong before, but for some reason
on my second complaint to the committee I was refused anything
similar and the paid official who had dropped in said "I
wash my hands of this".
It is odd to write about this and read it because I would
have expected a branch committee, given a zero-budget lawyer
by the branch office, to become experts in what they are meant
to be doing. It is odd to write and then read what a disgusting
act this committee commited, because the tone at the time was
like the old Harvey's Bristol Cream advertisements:
"one instinctively knows when something is right",
and this unanimity helped the five hands to take money out
of the branch bank account. As with the Olympics the Millennium
Dome, the Private Finance Initiative or the most recent daft
reorganisation of the NHS, the most blatant vanity and removal
of scarce money is so blatant that you don't know what to say
back:
"Good morning Madam I have come to steal your video".
"Oh: right you are then. Go ahead. Would you like a cup
of tea?"
"No thank you madam: I always like to make my exit before
the shock has worn off".
"Good morning Mr Union director: I am offering legal services
at below the market rate."
"Well: that sounds too good to be true but start on those
bloody goody-goody communists who never hold proper elections
and are scared to complain whatever I do. If it goes well I'll
give you a proper branch and if not I'm retiring anyway. You'll
deserve each other. I'll be in Blackpool".
If my local union branch were taken-over by the womens' institute
they would be setting-up a rival union or picketing the regional
office or both, but communists are more like contestants on Ms
World, Eurovision or the XFactor, so happy to have been short
listed at all that they will never question the process as though
it were real.
Donations to Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela or other causes -
which I often agree with - work very much like Dragons Den
on drugs. The tone is pious, like a church congregation near
a free faith school funded by the taxpayer. But this is the branch
that likes to say "yes". Dispite the complaint
in the minutes the month before and the clearly bogus nature
of the whole fraud, they are going to keep-up appearances, elect
each other on a show of hands and approve their budget. Whatever
you think of exotic political parties, they certainly fill a
gap where union democracy should be.
 £250
for printing local leaflets? "yes",
[foot note]
£2,000 for a sponsored march to Westminster from University
of London Students Union? "yes"
Thousands of pounds for more non-dividend hard-to-sell newspaper
shares? "yes"
A three hundred pound advert wishing the newspaper staff a happy
christmas? "yes"
A speech about the branch's foreign policy?""yes"
A donation to an overseas solidarity campaign? "yes"
[foot note]
A donation to the London Socialist Film Co-op? "yes"
A donation to the Marx
Memorial Library? "yes"
A payment to the comminist party's landlord? "yes"
A payment to Lambeth
Trades Union Council? "Does it exist?", someone
asks.
"It meets. A bit inward-looking but it meets.", says
a calm voice from the Morning Star proposer.
The paper is also funded by Lambeth Trades Union Council and
GLATUC.org.uk
which is funded by Lambeth Trades Union Council and branch 1/1148"yes"
The response to motions about bad services to members such as
the need to pay for legal insurance is different. The tone and
language sound well-worn and habitual. The treasurer of the Communist
Party of Britain said:
"A trades union is not about legal insurance but solidarity"
"It is true that the union web site says that
we offer legal insurance, but that is
a mistake.
The purpose of a union is solidarity. We are not
the fifth emergency service!"
I would have expected the branch to have higher priorities.
The previous month, according to minutes, an ex-colleague from
the same firm had visited them with a similar complaint about
the employer and about the same union lawyer too. It looked to
me from her complaint as though he was deliberately trying to
loose cases where the other side doesn't settle before the hearing.
Later, speaking to the chair, I discovered that he too had given
up on union's panel lawyer as hopeless against the same solicitor
- Devonshires - that my ex employer uses. The chances of Devonshires
being bluffed again when they have refused before are nill. Clearly
the branch had to give-up on the union hirachy and hire their
own lawyer or even break away from the whole fraud or not. They
did not.
I would have expected this month's meeting to be about whether
the same lawyer was still on the panel, if so why so, how much
he was paid, how much the union officials were paid, why there
are only 400 paid union staff per 800,000 members: under £10
a year each leaving the rest for a black hole in the accounts.
I would have expected this meeting to be a kind of melt-down
at which the farce of feckless unions began to unravel. But this
lot were terrible goody-goodies and mainly interested in who
they could give money to. They were like school governors who
say
"Mrs Parent: you don't understand. The purpose of
a school is not to pay teachers but solidarity.
May we get-on with our garden party now?"
If the governors of a school blew the money I guess they would
end-up in prison, but these union branch people are still leading
relatively normal lives and I guess wreaking havoc on others'.
I would also have expected a Tribunal chair to warn me that
something was up. The lawyer had asked me not to attend but the
chair had stopped the hearing and insist I come. He had done
cases for the T&G as a barrister and had worked in South
London for some time, so I would have expected him to warn me
that most of the case had been discussed with no evidence behind
my back and help me to sue the union when writing his written
judgment.
"I cannot do that and I think you know the reason
why not"
The people who were
nothing to do with anything at my employer were something to
do with another South London employer. Two of the current committee
claim to work for a firm called "CPB" and share names
with officials [source]
according to the accounts of a Croydon employer, Communist
Party of Britain. The office is at Ruskin
House, also a charity which branch 1/1148 donates to, which
is convenient because CPB have just increased the amount of rent
they pay and taken over a full floor of a Georgian house, which
is expensive for an organisation of between 36 and 1,000 members
(depending on the counting method). Other communist parties with
thirty six members are not so wealthy. Their rival CPBG trades
from a PO box and a second hand printing machine which has just
broken down. The difference in wealth is so great that it must
be coming from somewhere other than membership subscriptions.
CPB's slogan is a favourite sign-off of another committee member,
the branch secretary at branch 1/1148 who is mentioned on the
CPB web site. I would have expected the paid officials to notice
a problem too, but at my second complaint meeting with the branch
the new branch official turned-up to say
"I wash my hands of this" of my need for
a new lawyer and in a follow-up email to all members
"The branch works exactly as it is supposed to work,
making donations to working class charities. A gem."
He remains a paid regional official, employed by the Regional
General Secretary who was elected on a 10% turnout at the sector
biennial delegate conference after discussions of foreign policy.
Comments
& suggestions to disagree with.
Occasionally, student-union style people contact me after
glancing at this web page and tell me that I should "get
involved"; that a £15 - a - month organisation
that doesn't even have a contract is "like all organisations",
"imperfect" rather than bogus, and might want
my unpaid help and advice to become like a £15 a year commercial
equivalent. They are like me and most of us, but unlike volunteer
union reps and trades unionists of previous generations. They
do not want to do something embarrassing, hard and thankless
like run a regional union with a funny name or going with someone
who has a hopeless case to a dismissal meeting. If I have been
let-down by a union then the same correspondents know it's my
fault without asking for detail. The current generation tend
to be rather shrill and quick to form the opinion that I "do
not understand", using vague words like "solidarity"
when they think they are being businesslike and other vague words
from the students union when they're not. Luckily hardly any
people get in touch directly, but one did, objected to my press
release on Indymedia an started a thread on a message board called
urban75, so I got to know the arguments that people use.
I suspect that these people's hands are in the till: they
or their employers or some cause they approve of are doing very
nicely from the current system and they do not want your advice
or mine about how to make it fit for purpose. They are nothing
to do with colleagues who help each other at work and nothing
to do with the productivity and thrift of past generation's mutuals
and unions.
I suspect that student unionist's hobbies are gesture politics
& evening committees and they have no more interest in helping
union members than the people I met at branch 48. They may believe
that all political causes join together in some sort of jumble
which only they know how to interpret on members' behalf. They
do not dare do real concrete difficult things like
- re-fill their own ink or toner
cartridges to print leaflets. Tonertopup
offer very reasonable rates.
- sell their their favourite newspaper at a station (or give
away samples). They might have trouble selling the one that justifies
invading Tibet though.
- buy shares in employers, or buy failing employers off the
receiver, or set-up rival employers like The
Workers Beer Company.
- ask awkward questions like "does it exist?"
more often. Cuba
Solidarity Campaign (against US Cuban sanctions) solidifies
in Seven Sisters Road, North London where it has four staff and
has just advertised in the Morning Star for a fifth employee
on £22,000 (this is the
job description). It is an un-incorporated society with five
members of staff, one of which works full-time on soliciting
donations from trades unions. Staff are encouraged to join branches
in the ACTS trade group of Unite-T&G.
Student unionists do not want to end the system in which they
talk about other people and spend other peoples' money. Talking
is, after all, difficult enough. Few of us in our right minds
would commute monthly to a beige-painted room in a town centre
to discuss motions, grumbles, and perhaps sincerely-held beliefs
of other people we do not choose to hear from and have probably
come to the meeting because nobody else wants to hear from them.
The places they meet probably don't even offer a cup of coffee[2]. These who do go to meetings may feel
they have done enough and deserve the perk of voting donations
to favourite causes, even at the expense of a union doing its
job, and in time the perks of being able to talk politics and
give away money become much much more important than checking
the efficiency of the rest of the union. And once you claim £650
for leaflets you can't mention a word like efficiency. Best not
to draw attention. Leave it unsaid. Pretend that the organisation
would be legal under an ordinary legal system and is not a scam
run against members.
This is why I think of these grant-artists as student unionists:
like students they are quick to jump to conclusions, they live
in expectation of grants and are not used to being judged by
the service they provide. I've been a student myself and don't
mind their behaviour on University Challenge or a debating club
("fingers on buzzers: Is Iraq good or bad? No opinion?
Over to you Maudlin") but it belongs strictly at the
end of an agenda, after business.
Organisations with a 5 out of 1,000 election turnout and committee
structures like the Freemasons don't happen by accident. They
are designed to allow perpetual-students to take other peoples'
money while preventing proper trades union services from being
provided. When a more down-to-earth group of people would be
picketing the union office, setting-up a new union or lobbying
MPs for a clearer law, this
political bunch - communist, Labour or anything - keep-up appearances
as though nothing was the matter and carry-on raiding the
till for their political hobbies. It doesn't matter whether they're
the small minority of communists or the large majority of Labour-types;
they are nothing to do with union members.
Polical unionists are allowed to take all this money in a
legal framework set-up by a parliament where the majority party's
central office declared over £200,000 from the Transport
and General at the last election. Some MP's local expenses are
funded by Unite-T&G branches including the most vehement
in opposing the Legal Services Bill where it could have applied
to Trades Unions. For example one of the ministers of employment
- the one who answers MP's letters complaining about unions and
allocates Union Modernisation Grants - is also a T&G sponsored
MP. His letter said that he believed union rule books formed
a contract between members and their organisations and like his
party he voted that Unions should be exempt from having to register
with the financial services authority.
They believe in tight expensive bureaucratic and powerful
regulators for insurance companies but not unions. They would
wouldn't they?
Comments & suggestions to agree with.
One good point that critics have made is that a unions are
more likely to start from the ground-up - from a conversation
in a tea brake - than from an online insurance deal like mine
where:
- members are dispersed & not encouraged to help each other,
for example by asking for a recognition agreement, acting witness
in disciplinary meetings, or passing ideas up the management
line; they are certainly not encouraged to strike
- officials & human resources workers are probably not
part of the deal, or, if they are, they will at first be used
to working for the employers' side and not used to building-up
volunteer effort. They will be offering advice to individuals
all over the place, mainly on the phone, rather than knowing
one trade or helping people at one workplace. I've only seen
one human resources web
site that mentions the employees side, and this presumably
isn't the firm that legal insurers like this
one would use if they wrote a policy that included human
resources cover.
So, I've changed this web site to say that I don't think trades
unions and legal insurance are exclusive; if unions are bad,
you should have both, if they are non-existent, you should have
legal insurance, and if they are good: well we should make that
happen. Many small unions may already be doing good things and
perhaps I should writing a website called "Which Union?"
to discover a really good union that people should join, rather
than the one recommended by an employer, or following
an employer's campaign not to have a union. People click
on the union parts of this page despite DIY legal links being
at the top, so there's certainly interest in good unions and
any branch that gets bad value from its regional office should
simply set one up.
Another option is for lots of people to set-up lots of trades
unions from scratch. I have not looked-though all the ones at
the Certification Office, but there is one new small union beginning
with A called the Associated
Train Crew Union. There was another attempt next to my T&G
union's accounts called the Twenty First Century Aircrew, which
was a union of ten people to buy proper legal insurance and that
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