Local Government: the pay battle that never was

[LondonUNISON]

Not just the CWU leaders who are rubbish......UNISONs are even worse.....

By a vote of 24 to three a leading UNISON body has voted to accept a pay offer worth a reported 2.475%, backdated to 1 April 2007, from the local government employers' organisation. The vote came after full-time officials revealed the results of a national ballot that attracted a turnout of under 25%, who voted very narrowly (51.6% to 49.4%) in favour of sustained strikes against a de facto real pay cut for the fourth consecutive year. With varying degrees of relief and remorse members of the National Joint Council bargaining body concluded that there was not the basis for a two-day strike, originally penciled for mid-November.

The UNISON ballot had run for three weeks, closing on Friday 26 October. Citing legal advice from a leading barrister, UNISON had refused to extend the closing date for the ballot despite the evident impact of the strikes, both official and unofficial, by postal workers in several parts of the country, and especially in Liverpool and much of London. In branch after branch there was widespread anecdotal evidence that a significant proportion of members had never received their ballots in advance of the closing date, so depressing the turnout. Having opened a ballot of its members a couple of days before UNISON the PCS actually agreed to delay the close of the ballot until 30 October.

Keen on shielding Gordon Brown's New Labour administration, there were undoubtedly sections of the union's national leadership that were desperately keen to avoid a strike. Evidence emerged in at least three or four of the union's regions of full-time officials going out of their way to push for acceptance of the employers' 'improved' offer, originally tabled on 24 August. The lengthy delay in moving to a ballot, combined with acceptance of the deal by both the T&G and GMB, undoubtedly contributed to the disappointing size of the 'yes' vote, where much of the membership has no confidence of victory and many saw the prospect of a back-dated rise, however, modest as preferable to the loss of two days' pay in the run-up to the Christmas holidays with an uncertain outcome.

The effective acceptance of a real pay cut by UNISON is a significant setback, which all but kills any remaining prospect of a co-ordinated fightback against the public sector pay freeze this year and within local government could well give the signal to the employers to launch a full-fledged assault on the 'Green Book' framework of national terms and conditions. The debacle around the ballot is more than a simple bureaucratic betrayal (though it certainly is that) and points to deep problems of membership density, withered stewards' organisation and demoralisation in many local authority branches.

The members may indeed be angry in pockets, but over the next few months left activists in the union face major challenges in terms of recruitment and the rebuilding of organisation at the base of the union if there is to be real challenge both to the employers and a union bureaucracy which does so much to protect New Labour.

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?vie ... entry=1761