Repping against rot

I’d dance a jig with any Unison member to the defeat of Starmerite Christina McAnea in the union’s general secretary election. And it’s a delight she was beaten by a candidate expelled from Labour for sharing a Marxist group’s article on social media and who ran on taking a social worker’s pay, rather than the bosses’ salary awarded to McAnea as members’ wages plummeted in real terms and layoffs abounded.

But let’s get real. Andrea Egan was elected leader of Unison on a seven per cent turnout. This was mostly the organised left animated by her candidacy. This shows: 1. Egan was not seen by the mass of members as a change to strengthen the union. 2. How divorced socialist groups are from the union membership.

How could the election of Egan begin to lift the union off its knees? She couldn’t even run on the minimum that’s required and happens to be the most popular position in the country: forthright opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Egan’s rallying cries were “members first, Labour Party second” and getting “value for money” for Unison’s 16 per cent of members who can stomach paying into the Labour link. Getting “value” from a government pillaging the population?!

Those of us who are Unison reps knowing we desperately need to strengthen the union, work our backsides off. Whether it’s organising and integrating the most marginalised sections of the class into our branch, or fighting every angle against the bosses in defence of our members, you won’t hear me complaining about our necessary (though exhausting) tasks.

What’s maddening are the layers of rot, within the union, that have to be chipped away to do the day-to-day work of fighting for our members against the bosses. Having to constantly struggle against the branch bureaucracy before you can use the union’s leverage to defeat speed-ups. Or establish a branch position that making it harder and costlier for the employer to penalise staff is worthwhile. Or to fight for the perspective that our strength lies in collective action which must be amplified by real (not token) coordination with the other trade unions in the workplace. Or even to make the basic point for independence from the bosses—that members who have been promoted to senior management no longer have a place in the union and should be kept out of our business.

The fish rots from the head. The class collaboration that stifles the union’s fight at branch level flows from the union tops’ complicity with a Labour government ruling for the City of London bankers.

During the general secretary election, I told my branch reps supporting Egan I would be her most energetic campaigner if she gets off the fence and runs for breaking with Labour. Socialist groups could have used what influence they have to do similar and to connect with the mass of the membership. Many members would probably have been more interested in a campaign to break their union from the most hated man in the country. This was a missed opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of socialists in strengthening the union.