SOCIALIST UNITY

 IT’S TIME TO DELIVER

by Len McCluskey

You will soon be asked to choose the first General Secretary of our great union, UNITE.

Working passionately over the past three years to bring together two fantastic organisations; the T&G and Amicus, into one new ‘fighting back’ trade union has been challenging at times; our histories, cultures and politics are built on traditions and a passion unrivalled in the trade union movement. It has also been enormously rewarding as we collectively build our new union, a union capable of delivering for hard working people and their families in the toughest of environments, across all sectors of the economy, internationally as well as here at home in Britain and Ireland.

I believe Unite must be;

• a democratic union, with members in charge and authority pushed out to the industrial sectors, branches, workplaces and regions.
• a fighting union, that stands up for Unite members at work and in the community whenever needed.
• a tolerant and inclusive union, which welcomes diversity of opinions and in which fear plays no part.
• a progressive union, campaigning for the interests of working people wherever decisions are made at home and around the world.
• a united union, working for equality for all its members at work, in the community and in Unite itself.
• a union working for YOU, with offices and employees focused on delivering for our members.
• an organising union, reaching out to the millions that need trade union protection.

Building our new union will not be easy; we have vigorous opponents in Government and Business who fear a well organised, campaigning, fighting back and winning union like UNITE. We must have a clear and common purpose, uniting our sections and members with a vision for the future, we have a very proud past and our vision for the future must be rooted in that history.

I am standing in this election for General Secretary with such a vision, a vision I ask you to share with me as we build our great union, a union that will enhance lay member democracy, develop progressive politics, build worker solidarity and extend proud ‘fighting back’ traditions. A tolerant union, proudly diverse and international in our outlook into a world dominated by global business whose only loyalty is to profit. We must be prepared to invest in our people through training and a broader union education programme and organise both the unorganised as well as those already within our ranks building a better life for working men and women, our families and communities.

I ask for your support in delivering our great union to its members. The position of General Secretary is the single most important post in our union. I will lead from the front and not shirk my responsibilities to you. Working with a team of colleagues and elected National Executive I believe that we collectively have the drive, energy and vision to place UNITE firmly at the forefront of the British and Irish trade union movement, extending our political and industrial influence in the interests of working people at home and abroad.

The election for UNITE general secretary is developing into a two horse race, which is becoming clear from the branch nominations coming in. Only two candidates can win, either Len McCluskey or Jerry Hicks.

Three of the four candidates are senior full time officers (FTOs) of the union. There are big differences between them, and as I have discussed before, Len McCluskey is by far the best of these full time officer candidates.

If the election race only included these three FTO candidates, then Len McCluskey would have already won. Despite some in McCluskey’s team talking up the threat of a Les Bayliss victory, Les’s campaign has not taken off, and there is little in his pitch that will motivate ordinary grassroots members.

As we have discussed before:

Amongst Len McCluskey’s lay member supporters listed are 49 members of the 80-strong executive council, 9 out of 10 chairs of regional committees and 19 out of 27 chairs of industrial national sector committees. Amongst officials, he lists 7 out of 10 regional secretaries and 23 national or senior officers.

This is an impressive layer of support, but the election will not be won or lost by this narrow layer who have personally come across Len McCluskey as a senior officer of the union. It is certainly an excellent recommendation of his competence, and we can be confident that LcCluskey would be a good General Secretary.

However, the wild card is Jerry Hicks. UNITE claims 1.7 million members, even though in some sectors of the union they are counting feet not heads. If we limit the membership to those who are still alive, and paying contributions, then it is still a big union, of perhaps 1.4 million. Even if the turnout is low, even as low as 10%, then 140000 people would vote.

The reality of modern trade unions is that the networks of well respected branch officials shop stewards and lay reps are greatly attenuated. Lay activists are less ideological than they were in the past, and in less communication with each other. The days when the recommendation of the Communist Party would carry great sway with a layer of stewards and branch secretaries, and these activists would influence the members they represent are gone.

When it comes to appealing to ordinary members there is much more of a level playing field between Jerry Hicks and Len McCluskey than it might appear from behind a desk in a UNITE office. What will matter will be the election address that gets mailed out; the profile that candidates have managed to build on the Internet, and in the press; and the amount of face to face connection that the individual candidates or their supporters have managed to achieve with ordinary members.

What is more, some of the arguments which Jerry Hicks makes will strike a chord with many ordinary members. They may be part of a union claiming 2 million members on its website, but that doesn’t translate into any feeling of collective security in their own personal life. They did see their union give millions of pounds to the Labour Party, claiming not only that this was to prevent the Tories getting in, but also that it was buying influence. Yet hardly anything was received as quid pro quo from Labour in return. Indeed the failure of the Labour government to listen to the trade unions over which issues mattered to working class voters; affordable social housing, a feeling of security at work, and the prospect of well paid proper jobs for their children; cost Labour the election.

While ordinary members of UNITE have scrimped and saved, and been worried that losing their jobs might mean they become homeless; and have fretted over whether they can provide a secure future for their children; Derek Simpson, the current Joint General Secretary has lived like a prince at their expense. With fancy hotels, expense accounts, chauffer driven cars, and a nice house in the country, all paid for by the union members. A life of pampered luxury paid for by the voluntary union subscriptions of cleaners, and nurses, and bank cashiers, and bus drivers.

Of course, Len McCluskey had no part in that, and would be as opposed to it as Jerry Hicks. But the stink of moral corruption remains, and in the eyes of many members there is something deeply wrong in UNITE.

Jerry Hicks can potentially tap into that feeling because he is an outsider; and he is also a man who has clearly walked the walk; for some thirty years a well respected convenor in a blue chip engineering company; in the engine test section at Rolls Royce aero-engines in Bristol.

Now I don’t agree with everything that Jerry Hicks says. Personally I don’t see what is gained by electing officials. Some of the changes that Jerry,  would like to see in the unon are beyond the power of a General Secretary to bring about, although obviously he could use the position to campaign for rule changes over the longer term. But equally, I don’t agree with everything that Len McCluskey says either. They would both be good General Secretaries, but they would be good in very different ways, UNITE members have a genuine choice.

But as I wrote elsewhere:

There is a whispering campaign against him from some in the union that Jerry Hicks is a hot head: this is completely untrue. As a former convenor in an engineering factory Jerry knows that you have to be able to take the membership with you in order to deliver action; and he also knows that disobeying the law is a gamble you can only take if you have the industrial strength to be confident that management will not invoke legal sanctions against you. Jerry knows that you can’t bet the farm on a single dispute, you can’t deliver a strike if the members won’t follow you, and you can’t run a union if your funds have been sequestrated by the courts.

Despite some scare mongering about Jerry bankrupting the union were he elected as General Secretary, the same fears accompanied the election of Mark Serwotka in the PCS, and were proven unfounded. Bob Crow, the most militant trade union General Secretary in Britain today has shown that militancy can be accompanied by due caution in following the letter of the law. Jerry Hicks would not jeopardise the union any more than Mark Serwotka or Bob Crow.

Len McCluskey’s campaign quite rightly concentrates upon the need to follow an organising agenda, and build the capacity of the grassroots and the lay activists to carry a lot of the day to day work of the union. That means finding a way to connect with the ordinary lay members.

What they need to start contemplating is that Jerry Hicks might win; and if he does it is because he has connected with the ordinary members himself, and acted as a lightening rod for many of the frustrations which UNITE members feel with their union.

Of course some of that frustration is unfair. Full time officers are blamed when they can’t achieve miracles, and members who would not contemplate industrial action sometimes wonder why management walk all over them. But if the frustration is expressed in the electoral process then that can be a positive thing in reengaging the members with the union.

Jerry Hicks, because he is not part of the traditional trade union heirarchy, can talk to and for ordinary UNITE members in a unique way; and his pledge to take the average wage of the members will be popular. If he becomes General Secretary he will work with the existing staff and officers to improve the union, and has pledged himself to the organising agenda, to ensure that lay activists and grassroots members are empowered.

Jerry Hicks is a capable and dedicated trade unionist, who puts the interests of the union and its members first. And he could win. The last thing which UNITE can afford is civil war, so the whispering against Jerry has to stop, and UNITE officials need to start thinking how they would work constructively with Jerry Hicks in the interests of the members.

By Jon Lansman, from Left Futures

Len McCluskey, candidate for General Secretary of Britain’s biggest union,  UNITE, this weekend revealed just how widespread his support is.  In a full-page  advert in the Morning Star, he listed his supporters amongst leading lay members and officials of the union revealing not only that he is the front runner in the election by a wide margin, but that he is the only candidate in a position to unite the union on a progressive course.

Amongst his lay member supporters listed are 49 members of the 80-strong executive council, 9 out of 10 chairs of regional  committees and 19 out of 27 chairs of industrial national sector committees. Amongst officials, he lists 7 out of 10 regional secretaries and 23 national or senior officers.

The union was formed through the merger of the TGWU and Amicus (which itself had resulted from the merger of several unions in a few years including the AEU, EETPU and MSF) , and only last month held its first policy conference. The ability of its first sole General Secretary to unite these different strands with their own traditions into a single effective organisation is critical in the face of the worst recession in almost a century and a coalition government that in economic terms is as neo-liberal (i.e. deeply conservative).

Len’s unique ability to unite the union is illustrated by his support on the lay executive: on the half of the executive representing the former TGWU, not a single member supports one of Len’s challengers, and yet Len has the public support of about a quarter of the former Amicus members in spite of the fact that all three opponents were in Amicus. Not surprising then that he announces himself in the adverts as:

the candidate of unity, building a progressive consensus across all sections of Unite.

Unlike other candidates, Len has produced a detailed manifesto for each sector in which the union organises and the wider labour movment which can be found here.

By Jerry Hicks

From today’s Guardian

As the only rank-and-file candidate in the election for general secretary of Unite (the other three are all very senior officials) I read with interest your interview with Len McCluskey (Union boss needs to unite the public sector and public opinion, 25 June).

You spoke of his distant past. “In the mid-1980s his union was part of a ‘united front’ against a government squeeze on the city’s finances that included Derek Hatton, Liverpool council’s then deputy leader. Along with the miners’ strike, it was a defining era of clashes with the Tory government.”

Then we were transported to the present, to the BA dispute and what McCluskey would do in the future. Does the industrial action that could arise from Tory spending cuts include strikes? McCluskey replies: “Absolutely.” Yet the leadership has so far failed to inspire action – which may have saved workers at the Redcar steel factory, van maker LDV, Cadbury’s in Keynsham, Johnnie Walker and so on.

McCluskey is described as playing “a prominent role” in the British Airways cabin crew dispute, and you say, “Not that his more conciliatory tone has produced a breakthrough.” This is an understatement: BA has suspended 70 Unite members, sacked seven others and organised scab flights while Unite has offered pay cuts and little more.

Last Christmas a BA injunction was granted by a judge on a technicality, using anti-union laws and overturning an overwhelming strike ballot of 12,000 members. Those anti-union laws, brought in by Margaret Thatcher, were left unchanged by Labour – despite the TUC and our union having for 20 years had a policy of repealing them; that’s the same period that the current union leaders have been in their posts.

What was McCluskey’s role as a union boss during the Labour government’s three terms in office? Many grassroots members of Unite would argue that senior officials such as him were too close to new Labour, agreeing to donate millions in members’ money for little return.

Members need more than just tough talk: it’s not what someone says that matters: it’s what they do. I didn’t see our leaders showing solidarity at Lindsey in Humberside, the three Visteons plants or Vestas on the Isle of Wight.

The interview reports McCluskey’s speech to the Cuba celebration event: “Solidarity, comrades, is what we are about… it is what makes us different from the bosses’ class and the elite who rule us.” In theory, yes. But what many people forget is that trade unions, just as much as big business and governments, also have their own elites and boss class – and they do not necessarily represent the interests of the average worker. Many Unite members believe that they have been ruled by such an elite for decades – and that the reluctance to walk out and hold occupations is partly responsible for the long-term erosion of our members’ terms and conditions.

Sometimes it seems that our trade union leaders are so busy celebrating past revolutions in distant countries that they have no time to fight for members here and now.

No doubt there will be plenty of ‘glasses raised to past struggles and sacrifices’ at the Durham Miners Gala and Topuddle. It is very important to remember the past but even more important to realise that we create tomorrow’s history today. How can we look the next generation in the face, when they ask “What did you do when the cuts came?” if the reply is “We always stayed within the law and got shafted, sorry but you have to work til you’re 70”!

Good video explaining the case of the Miami Five, UNITE’s Len McCluskey speaking at the TUC conference

two candidates for General Secretary of uNITE have dropped out in the last few days: Simon Dubbins ane Paul Reuter.

The two mainstream candidates remaining are Les Bayliss of Amicus and Len McCluskey of the T&G; of whom Len McCluskey is vastly preferable.

 The wild card is left wing grassroots activist Jerry Hicks, a former convener at Rolls Royce in Bristol. The interesting aspect will be whether Jerry’s grass roots campaign can connect with sufficient members to overcome the advantages that the candidates who are already senior officials in the union have.

from the Morning Star

Wales TUC conference: Unite assistant general secretary Len McCluskey has accused “our politicians” of letting the trade union movement down as he moved a motion on employment rights.

He told the Wales TUC conference that, despite 13 years in office, the Labour government had failed to “repeal Thatcherism’s laws to make trade unionism ineffective.”

This failure meant Britain still had the worst labour laws in Europe and he asked how that could be, how a country that had helped to bring freedom to occupied Europe 65 years ago did not enjoy trade union freedoms today.

Mr McCluskey recalled the recent death of a 21-year-old Polish worker at the Olympic site in London.

The young man had fallen into an unprotected water-filled trench and drowned, but the firm had been fined just £750.

“Until such time as bosses are jailed for negligence, these tragedies will continue,” he declared.

Highlighting the “bizarre” anti-union judgements of courts in Britain and the European Union, he insisted the legal elite would always defend the interests of their class.

“Solidarity is a virtue not a sin. Only organised labour has the power to defend jobs, services and communities,” he said, stressing that now was not the time to batten down the hatches but to rise like lions.

Owen Herbert of rail union RMT explained his union’s decision to take the British government to the European Court of Human Rights over anti-union legislation.

He said the legal shackles around working people seeking to take industrial action were being continually tightened.

Ken Smith of journalists’ union NUJ addressed the case of Johnston Press, which was imposing job cuts, compulsory redundancies and a pay freeze.

The company had successfully thwarted legal industrial action by telling the High Court that it employed no journalists, having hived off employment to subsidiary entities.

Nick Ireland of shopworkers’ union Usdaw welcomed recent legislation on agency workers and blacklisting.

But he also emphasised its shortcomings and urged vigilance towards loopholes that could be exploited by unscrupulous employers.

Terry Renshaw of construction union Ucatt said 53 workers had lost their lives in his industry last year, while the Con-Dem coalition was threatening the powers of the Health and Safety Executive.

Another week of bullying by BA has backfired, Unite the union claimed today.

Heavy-handed attempts to scare cabin crew back to work - including withdrawing their travel assistance, deeming sick workers as strikers, and docking crew wages for days which are not strike days - are not working the union said as the scale of cabin crew strikes unfolds and BA’s contingency plans unravel.

Unite says that sadly passengers are suffering from BA’s hyped-up claims to be running a functioning operation as dozens of flights were cancelled yesterday - and that already today BA has cancelled over 130 flights, its greatest number yet.

Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary said: “BA’s bullying is backfiring. Instead of being cowed by their employer’s aggression, cabin crew are striking forcing BA to cancel ever growing numbers of flights.

“Mr Walsh needs to stop claiming that BA is flying more passengers because he isn’t. Where he can, he is putting BA customers onto other carriers and paying heavily for their services in so doing.

“But where BA is trying to fly its own routes it is clear they are failing. Dozens of flights flew yesterday without passengers and crew. Dozens more were simply cancelled, and today already over 130 flights will not leave.

“Yesterday, hundreds of fed up passengers, encouraged to travel by management’s exaggerated claims, were dumped in the terminal because the airline ran out of strike breakers.

“Everyone can now see through BA’s contrick. It is truly sad that a great airline can be trashed in this way by its management.

“Without its cabin crew, BA cannot function. It has to end this lunacy now and get back around the table to find a solution.”

Yesterday Unite announced that it is seeking legal advice on BA’s attempts to deny striking crew pay for days other than strike days, and on BA’s move to deem sick workers as strikers and punish them by withdrawing their pay and travel concessions.

For more information on the dispute, click here