A Statement by Workers Uniting Group

‘Back to the Future’, Neither United nor Left

The United Left have published their ‘new’ structure for Unite on their website (see below).

All Unite GS candidates say they want to unify Unite, but words are one thing and actions are another. However, you can’t help but think that these ‘new’ proposals are what the Unite GS election is really all about and why the Executive Council Elections, due to take place next year are vitally important.

These ‘new’ proposals and this Workers Uniting Group statement should be a wake up call to all supporters who believe in effective trade unionism and genuine lay democracy.

The Workers Uniting Group was formed, amongst other things, for the defence of the most democratic rulebook ever created in the UK and Irish trade union movement. A rulebook that recognised that in a modern union, the autonomy of the sectors with their ability to create space for specialist occupational groups so that all members were adequately represented, was essential. Sectors where, through elected and accountable working reps, members could represent their own interests with the support and resources of the biggest and most powerful union created for decades.

The Workers Uniting Group have consistently warned, and will continue to do so, that there were some who wanted to dismantle the most effective political structure in the trade union movement by taking us back in time, with no way “back to the future”. We currently have a structure committed to implementing Unite policy to take back the Labour Party for working people. This political structure recently delivered Ed Miliband as Labour leader, in line with members’ aspirations.

The arduous task of winning a clean expenses regime, one where activists neither gained nor lost at the union’s expense, was part of the struggle for a clean union where working reps represented working people and collectively bargained on their behalf. We warned - and will continue to warn - that the intention to remove Rule 6 was all about the preservation of a ‘vested interest’ lay bureaucracy that made a living off the union and in return would vote the ‘right way’.

These UL ‘new’ proposals are a betrayal of the members’ whose unions created Unite and the hard-won agreements forged in the process. Unite could never have been created on the outdated ‘trade groups’ of the former TGWU. Let it be known that UNIFI, MSF, GPMU all rejected that model and favoured the autonomy of their sectors - which would also attract other merger partners.

We warn members in specialist sectors - don’t sleepwalk into the abolition of your sectoral autonomy to the tune of empty rhetoric.
We fought and won a future EC of working reps that are overwhelmingly elected from the Sectors in order to keep the highest lay democratic body of the union in contact with working members. A body that has such enormous industrial power must be composed of working men and women that have a stake in the workplaces.

We anticipated and predicted that a challenge to genuine lay democracy where working reps represent working people. Now we predict that if these proposals become rules that Unite will at best fail to go forward, fail to organise and at worst could become paralysed by vested interests and become irrelevant to working men and women. The result will be a declining union not a campaigning, vibrant union but a husk – a zombie union.

These proposals are not ‘Left’. They are right-wing reactionary, outdated and dangerous. They have got nothing to do with unity and will engulf the union in out-dated bitter factionalism.

These proposals are a negation of the politics and spirit that built Unite through the rules commission where everyone knew that former practices that were paralysing the unions’ abilities to effectively organise and represent its members had to go. The merger process recognised that we were building Unite, not T&G or Amicus Mark 2.

It is time to recognise we can’t go back two or three decades to an era that has vanished.

We are in the fight of our lives against an ideologically driven Coalition, Neo-liberalism and the power of Global corporations. This fight will not be won by passing resolutions, sitting in committee meetings of structures that don’t match the reality of working life over the next ten years.

Strong workplace organisation and educated workplace reps - serviced by well-trained and motivated Officers - are our future, as well as union structures that deliver for all members, no matter where they work.
Whoever is the next General Secretary, will be duty bound to honour the commitments that our members voted overwhelmingly to endorse. Let it be known that Les Bayliss knows that, he has made that pledge.

Vote for Les Bayliss


Proposals for 2011 Rules Conference changes: from United Left National Coordinating Committee
• Objects of the Union – restore some of the Socialist principles of the former TGWU.

•Strengthened industrial structure, with major industrial groupings such as Health, Manufacturing and Transport as per the Transport Sector document circulated recently, and NISC minutes to be endorsed by the Executive Council.

•Political direction of the union to be brought back under the control of the Executive Council and Regional Committees. The current Regional and National Political Committees could then be re-named Labour Party Liasion Committees to reflect their actual rôle.

•Clearer commitment to lay member control and the rights of lay members – e.g. an Appeal mechanism against victimisation within the union structures.

•Area Activists Committees to be directed towards influencing community politics (e.g. campaigns against hospital closures) – with the emphasis being on setting up broader meetings involving all activists in the given area in the campaigns, and the Committee having an organising rôle rather than just existing for its own sake.

•Executive Council seats for Disabled and LGBT representatives.

•Eligibility to sit on constitutional committees in casualised industries to be reviewed and more practical eligibility criteria put in place (rule 6).

•Regional Committee members to have the right of recall w.r.t. Regional Committee meetings.

•Structures to be developed to allow Unemployed and Retired member to participate fully in appropriate areas of activity within the union.