Shenanigans down at the TUC. Thankfully, there are no smoke-filled rooms these days, but what’s this? According to UNISON NEC member Jon Rogers, blogging live from this august event, UNITE abstained on a POA amendment to the public sector composite which sought to add the word “strike” to “day’s of action”. According to Jon UNITE’s delegation had voted overwhelmingly to support the addition of the word “strike”, but mysteriously when the moment of truth was reached, UNITE’s voting card had gone AWOL!
Far be it for me to suggest that somebody or other at the top of UNITE didn’t think that the delegation had voted the “right” way and tactically misplaced the said card. Perhaps there is a more prosaic explanation. Either way members of UNITE are owed an explanation.
Jon also informs us that the GMB voted for the POA amendment despite the contention of the UNISON leadership at the delegation meeting that “nobody else would support it” so clearly UNISON couldn’t. Heavens above they couldn’t be in a minority could they?
Foregive my confusion here, but why, in a resolution calling for coordinated industrial action, would anybody oppose the inclusion of the word ‘strike’, unless of course, “days of action” was designed so that this or that union could avoid taking strike action, and have the defence that they had taken ‘action’ (say a demonstration at dinner time or some such)?
Martin Wicks 