Unison’s left NEC must stand up to general secretary who doesn’t want to rock the boat

Hugo Pierre, Unison Local Government Service Group Executive member, personal capacity

Almost 350,000 Unison members were balloted for a strike to win a pay claim of £3,000 or 10%. This claim would have started to address nearly 15 years of real-terms pay cuts, where the average school staff or council worker is 20% poorer – effectively working one day a week for free compared to 2009 pay levels!

80% voted to reject the employers’ offer of £1,290 for all grades. It barely met the Labour government’s pay award to other public sector workers at the very bottom of the scales, and was completely inadequate for lower-paid workers, never mind those on average pay.

This year’s pay claim was submitted late, and the response from the employers was received well after the 1 April date the pay rise was due. Members were balloted for strike action from the start of September in a national ballot that was broken down by employer.

No serious lead from top

There was a need to get a good number of councils over the 50% turnout level required by the still unrepealed Tory anti-union laws. Unfortunately, there was no discussion throughout the union involving a wide layer of activists as to what was the best strategy for achieving the 50% turnout in a larger number of employers than was achieved last year.

To many activists, it appears as though the ballot was a negotiating ploy rather than a serious thought-through strategy to win. Many branches put in a lot of work to get a turnout but unfortunately only three large employers got over the 50% turnout threshold.

The Labour Party is the largest party on the body that represents the majority of councils, the Local Government Association, and it currently holds the chair. The £1,290 offer was made under the Tories. While the union negotiators asked for the negotiations to be reopened, there was no demand on Keir Starmer’s Labour during the general election to back our pay claim.

Letting Labour off the hook

This is staggering, considering Unison has a political fund that is affiliated to the Labour Party. However, it is not so surprising when we read on the union’s website that the Starmer-supporting general secretary, Christina McAnea, believes that closing the £40 billion funding gap “won’t be a painless experience and there is a clearly a price to be paid for the years of dreadful Tory economic mismanagement.”

Even though she goes on to say that the budget should protect workers and public services over the next five years, it’s clear to many members that the message from the top of the union is that ‘we need to give Labour a fair chance; they have a tough job to do and we shouldn’t cause them too much trouble.’

The intention not to ‘rock the boat’ has clearly been behind the whole approach of the general secretary and union machine all through this year’s pay process.

Determining a strategy to win the ballot and getting ready to achieve it should have been discussed widely among a broader layer of activists. A national seminar earlier in the year to learn lessons from the campaigns in Knowsley and Lambeth – the councils that got over the line in 2023 – was a missed opportunity to bring the resources of the union behind significant and selected branches to win a ‘yes’ vote.

Unison must demand now that Labour immediately repeals the Tory anti-union thresholds.

The National Executive Council (NEC) of Unison is led by the left-leaning Time For Real Change group. The NEC cannot afford more failure to organise members to fight on pay. The school and council workers’ ballot shows that Unison members are ready to fight to win back lost pay. They now need the leadership to win.