unions

Unison: our favourite union in all the world. Great members, but a hopeless hierarchy.

We're hearing great things about the just-gone annual Unison conference in Brighton: we're still clarifying a few of the murkier points, of course, but so far understand that the highlights involve a monkey, the Socialist Party, and a flasher, in no particular order (although the flasher should probably go somewhere near the front).

Hangbitch was herself chucked out of Unison conference two or three years back by this wrinkly wee hooker called Linda Perks, or Porks, or GizzaPerk, or something along those lines. Can't exactly remember. 

Yours truly was then made the subject of the dreariest 'investigation' process in the history of the planet. It was all about spending as much of members' money as possible trying decide whether one had used a union computer to upload an anti-Blair comment to a website (that was the transgression that saw one chucked out of conference, you understand).

This mystery remains unsolved - twas the Hanging Rock of its time, if you will. The union rolled back the coffin lid on some old digger from Dorset, and sent him to London every six months or so to glean more 'facts' about Hangbitch's expulsion from conference. They kept this 'investigation' going for ages - indeed, they kept it going for at least six months after Hangbitch, terminally bored by this point, found another job and left the union altogether (took Linda a while to get the lobes round the fact that she couldn't keep trying to expel a person from the union if said person had already gone).

But anyway - to current events, and here's a little story we once wrote about the new Dear Deputy Leader Harriet Harman and her charming husband Jack Dromey.

Delightful pair. Delightful.

Back soon with more interviews with real and normal people.

Labour Party leadership candidate John McDonnell says he's within striking distance of getting his name on the leadership ballot.

A full and rowdy house of trade union activists has rolled up for this evening's John4Leader public campaign event in Euston. The attendees are not all geriatric either: the youth wing of the Labour left is a noticeable force now at many McDonnell events.

The star turn appears on excellent form, not least because the government isn't. Lord Levy has just been chucked in the jug again, and McDonnell tells his very enthusiastic audience that the word - and the hope - on the ground is that one A C L Blair might not be too far behind.

'I think there is a prospect that the Blair government will unravel very quickly now,' McDonnell says with no small pleasure, as he outlines the many encouraging potentials offered by Levy's second exit with the fuzz. 'Things could speed up [with the investigation] even over the next few days.'

If they do, McDonnell says, he and the large number of union members, young activists, reinvigorated leftwing Labour party members and everyday punters who are turning out to these meetings up and down the country will take the opportunity to tell the voting public all about the real traitors to the Labour party.

Background reading: JJB Sports employee and union organiser Chris Riley is sacked after organising strike action at the JJB Sports Wigan depot

All sorts protest outside JJB Sports stores against the sacking of JJB Sports employee and union organiser Chris Riley

The protest outside the Shepherd's Bush JJB Sports store is quiet until mall Security turns up to try and move the protestors on. Security is two weedy-looking, middle-aged guys who are wearing dark jackets, light trousers, plain shoes, and old and cloudy plastic badges.

The protest isn't huge at this point - maybe ten people altogether, at least three of whom are not protestors, but SWP worker-bees, who have clearly been pressed into putting an hour in at the protest, to try and shift leftover copies of this week's Socialist Worker - but the two security guys still look a bit worn on it. Being paid bugger-all to protect JJB Sports stores from people who are protesting about being paid bugger-all to work in JJB Sports stores probably does get on your wick towards the end of the week.

Life doesn't improve too much when they try to assert themselves, either.

This statement was released by the GMB on Thursday 16 November

In talks between GMB and JJB Sports Chief Executive Mr Tom Knight, during yesterday's and today's strike at the warehouse, the company has tabled a revised pay offer. The new offer now in writing deals with the issue of the basic rate and access to bonus for all workers in the depot. 

The revised offer will be put to 280 GMB members at a mass meeting in the warehouse at 11.00am Monday 20th November. It will then be put to members in a ballot vote after that meeting. GMB negotiators are recommending acceptance of the offer.

The first strike day next week on Tuesday 21 has been suspended. The strikes for Wednesday 22 and Thursday 23 November 2006 are still on pending the outcome of the ballot vote. The work to rule and overtime ban are still ongoing.

The Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate are today interviewing 3 local Wigan agencies. See Note 1 for names. GMB has supplied  information to the Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate regarding agency labour being used by JJB Sports during strike days and during the rest of the week to deal with the backlog as a result of the strike. The agencies are aware of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations 2003 which makes it illegal for agencies to supply labour to companies during a trade dispute. 

Graham Coxon, GMB regional officer who led the negotiations with Mr Knights said, 'GMB has today received a revised written pay offer from Mr Knight which the union can recommend to our members in JJB Sports. GMB will put the offer to the members on Monday next and they will make the decision as the whether they will accept it and call off the dispute. If accepted, the offer will be backdated to 1 August 2006.'

During this dispute GMB has carefully monitoring the illegal strikebreaking activities of the 3 local employment agencies. We want these activities stopped in this and future disputes. We want the agencies punished for breaking the law. We will not rest until EAS takes action. The agencies are being interviewed by EAS today.

When this dispute is over GMB will raise question about how EAS does it's job. GMB members are far from satisfied that we are in the third week of the dispute before EAS took action

Contact: Graham Coxon , GMB Lancashire Regional Officer on 07740 804064 or Steve Pryle, GMB Press Office on 07921 289880 or Rose Conroy on 07974 251823.

Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate (EAS) 0845 9555105.

Bond Personnel 01942 743270, Heads Personnel 0161 746 8811, Lightyear 01942 511159.

The agencies supplying labour to JJB Sports are Heads Recruitment, Bond Personnel and Lightyear Recruitment Limited. (Contact details above). Light Year Recruitment is jointly owned by David Speedie ex. Liverpool, Chelsea, Blackburn and Coventry footballer. 

And so we continue our tale a far-off (kind of) land, where a hopeless People's (some might say New Labour) Party Council is cutting services, getting rid of Council housing, spending millions of pounds on private consultants and paying senior management huge salaries for achieving bugger-all at great cost.

You can read the Prologue to this article here.
You can read Chapter One here .

Chapter Two: The Councillors try to sell reform and the idea of a call-centre to the staff

For the local branch secretary, it all began one Monday morning when she looked up from her newspaper in the staff cafe, and saw the Mayor standing in front of her. He had one hand in his pocket, and a big smile on his face.

The branch secretary sighed. She could barely stand it. For most of his career, the Mayor had been an old-style People's Party politician - a balding, often unshaven, large, committed working man who believed in community (even if he quietly preferred white ones), and was rarely seen in anything other than jeans, a Chelsea scarf, and an elderly vinyl jacket. Unfortunately, he had caught the modernisation bug, somehow, and had recently refashioned himself into a new-style People's Party politician, complete with banker's suit, manbag, earpiece, and a wispy little Hoxton fin on top of his head, where a mighty comb-over had once reigned.

From the archive: Remember this?

Brighton and Hove special-needs teaching assistant Simon Parker, 30, spent part of the hour before Friday's strike and protest fighting with his partner about money. He will strike on the planned day of action in January, as well, if Brighton and Hove council doesn't accept assistants' concerns about a proposed new pay package.

Like the hundreds of assistants who took strike action on Friday, Simon Parker was furious at council plans to reduce the number of paid weeks in assistants' contracts by five. He also thought that assistants were desperately in need of better wages generally. 'I don't necessarily think we should get the same as teachers, but we need to get something that we can live on. You do spend a lot of time teaching, as well as the assistant's work. If I could have a pay increase, I could live with that.'

Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell at a public meeting in Hackney

John McDonnell is just late enough for this evening's political gathering in Hackney to spark a few nervous cellphone calls from a few nervous organisers. 'He's on his way,' they report to the crowd after the first call. 'He's probably underground,' they say after several attempts at a second. 'He's at Bethnal Green tube station waiting for a taxi,' they tell us after the third.

So, things are a bit tense at the start. McDonnell's not the only one missing. The organisers - the Hackney TUC and the Leabridge branch of the Labour party - are concerned that there aren't enough people in the audience. Then suddenly, it becomes clear that are going to be too many, and that people will have to be turned away for health and safety reasons.

This is a long story which is serialised on this site. A new section is added every couple of days.

It's a story about a far-off land with a Council that is cutting services, getting rid of Council housing, spending millions of pounds on private consultants and paying senior management huge salaries. Many members of staff are union members, but they get very little support in their local fight from the leaders of their union. That's because the leaders of these unions are desparate for good relationships with the political party that is destroying the country, because so many of those senior union members want to become MPs themselves. Wankers.

Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell speaks to us from Hammersmith 

It is 8pm on a grey, sticky Wednesday and John McDonnell is telling a Hammersmith Stop the War meeting a story about the sorry behaviour of some of the overpaid, moral-free assholes who run the New Labour-affiliated trade union UNISON. He's telling us the grisly true story of the fate of the union activists who walked out in protest against the Iraq War when Tony Blair was prattling through his keynote speech at the TUC conference in Brighton in September.

Publicly, UNISON supported the activists and the walkout - or agreed, at least, that Blair was probably past his best as an attraction - but behind the scenes, the union hierarchy turned on the members like the Reich. Union bosses chucked the protesting activists out of the conference and sent them home and, as McDonnell understood it, were now toying with the idea of disciplining the activists for their attitude towards Tony Blair - the union disciplinary process being a protracted procedural nightmare that could take years and ultimately lead to expulsion of the activists.

Ever tried to shut the New Labour Treasurer up?

It was an heroic female called Jayaben Desai who led her low-paid fellow workers in a brutal, two-year fight for decent pay, treatment and conditions at the Grunwick film processing plant 30 years ago, but the commemorating audience in Kilburn's Tricycle Theatre today could be excused for thinking that the champion of that hour, and most since, was Jack Dromey, New Labour Party Treasurer, deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, husband of Blair/Brownite Labour minister Harriet Harman and - as is, alas, becoming too, too clear - a man who believes that an audience will best enjoy an historical narrative if it is appraised, in detail, of his own contribution to it.