Unison Local Government members voted yes for strike action but only by 51% to 49% on a turnout of 25%.
As a result the NJC Committee voted against proceeding with strike action by 24 votes to 3.
This is a significant, though not entirely surprising, setback for the overall campaign to build united undustrial action on Brown’s public sector pay limit. It is the result Dave Prentis and the Unison leadership worked for. Anyone who saw the material they produced, allegedly for a yes vote, will be in no doubt of that.
With only two sides of A4 to put forward the case for action Prentis and co thought it would be a good idea to use the front to explain the employer’s case. They had ‘gone out on a limb’ by offering the lowest grades more than 2.5%. To offer any more would certainly mean cuts in services. And so on and so on. Still they could have a real go at mobilising people on the reverse side couldn’t they?
Well they could but, of course they chose not to. Side two told council workers that, even if they voted yes, ‘it wouldn’t be easy’. It would require protracted strike action, during which they would not be paid and, even then, there were no guarantees of winning. It was appalling stuff. The Unison leadership’s role in this pay campaign has been shameful from start to finish.. They wanted to accept the deal in September by putting it to ballot with no recommendation. That was overturned by the NJC who voted for a ballot with a recommendation for strike action. They then tried to stop that be calling a special service Executive. That failed too when the service group Executive supported the call for action in defiance of the leadership. This was endorsed by the industrial action committee.
Unison’s spineless bureaucrats then fell back on a more subtle tactic. As they controlled the ballot and the material that went out they loaded it heavily against a yes vote and simultaneously discouraged branches from producing their own campaigning material. This went hand in hand with disciplinary threats against local and national elected representatives who were central in working for a positive vote.
Shameful but you don’t need to look far for motives. Unison nominated Gordon Brown for Labour leader, despite their professed policy of opposition to privatisation, low pay and anti-union laws. Some at the top believe it is their job to serve the government rather than their members. And here is a firm prediction. Before the next election at least one of these hucksters will have been ’selected’ for a safe Labour seat (my money is on local government negotiator Heather Wakefield) and beyond that at least one other will be dressed in ermine and falling asleep on the benches of the upper House It would be nice if before that they were swept out of office by their poorly paid and even more poorly represented members.
Don’t mourn, as Joe Hill once famously said, organise
