A Prospect member

Prospect is a trade union that represents scientists, engineers, specialist workers in both public and private sectors, and, since its merger with BECTU, film and theatre workers.

The formation of a new network, ‘Democratising Prospect’, is a welcome development. While starting with democratic concerns particularly, it has the potential to develop as a body that can bring the left together in the union. Our members, like workers everywhere, have suffered under austerity and the cost-of-living crisis and need a union that will defend us.

Fighting union

Launched as a “a rank-and-file network… which organises independently to transform Prospect into a democratic, fighting union that stands in solidarity with all workers and oppressed groups around the world,” it is the result of a number of built-up frustrations.

One of these is the leadership’s top-down control of delegates at the 2025 Congress of the TUC (Trades Union Congress), particularly the instruction that delegates abstain on a motion to support trans rights, despite policy set by Prospect conference.

Another is the scandalous way that Prospect failed, for four months, to properly inform members that its database had been hacked, exposing members’ details, including bank details and protected characteristics such as sexuality and disability. The breach is specially concerning for Prospect members working in sensitive industries like nuclear, defence, and counter-intelligence. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has now launched an official investigation.

Some also feel bitterness at the continued grovelling praise of Starmer’s Labour government from Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy, despite the union’s claims to be “proudly politically independent.” Socialist Party members in Prospect are raising the need for the union to be part of the fight for a political voice for workers.

Finally, there is a feeling in some branches of failures to uphold basic democratic norms.

Winning for members

At the launch meeting, a member rightly pointed out that, though Prospect is a relatively small union, it is in fact twice the size of the RMT transport union – a union historically seen as a democratic, militant union that wins for its members.

A renewed, democratic, fighting Prospect would be a significant positive development for Prospect members and for our ability to link up with members of other unions in fights to defend jobs and pay.

The network pledged to stand for:

  • Increased accountability and transparency of union leadership
  • More power to branches and elected lay-reps
  • Union staff on a wage no higher than that of a skilled worker
  • A ‘strategy for building real industrial power’ in the union, including a strike fund, and a cultural shift for it to become a fighting working-class organisation
  • Solidarity: standing against the far right; supporting the international workers’ movement; organising across unions; and defending disabled Prospect members, and disabled people and carers more generally, against repeated government attacks on their conditions