Advice on starting a new union, legal insurance etc.

[johnfricker]

Whilst looking for something else, I stumbled across this website, http://www.employees.org.uk/startyourownunion.html, which seems to have been created by a disaffected TGWU public sector member. In a rambling sort of way, it covers issues such as starting a new union, getting legal insurance (even if you're in a union), the United & Independent Union (http://www.uiu.org.uk), the TGWU's use of no-win-no-fee-lawyers, how Unison officials gave evidence against a member at a tribunal (http://www.employees.org.uk/unison-lawyers.html) etc. Quite interesting .

John

[Badger]

Thanks John. Definitely something I'll keep up my sleeve.
I like to think I won't have need to what I would consider to be a last resort option, but recent events have severely damaged my faith in the UK's main unions.
Regrettably this may be the only way that Local Government members have of getting their point across.

[Jim]

Interesting links John, not had chance to have good look yet, but they look promising for links on the main website.

I have family legal protection on my house insurance, not sure if I can use it in a proactive manner, say in a dispute with my employer or just reactive, say someone tries to claim against me. Must look into it.

[thewelshman]

The United and Independent Union is a scab union, set up by two sacked TGWU Scottish employees - Andy Baird, who was the Regional Secretary at his time of dismissal, and Maragaret Ann Jones aRegional Industrial Organiser.
Whilst I have absolutely no problem with anybody starting up their own Trade Union, what these people did was to actively go into their old stomping grounds and entice TGWU members away with the promise of false riches, which they can't deliver on (A) because it's mainly in local government, and neither of them have local government experience, and (B) because they'll never get recognition.
As ex TGWU employees they are well aware of the agreements about not poaching members from other unions, yet this was their modus operandi in south west Scotland. Shameful and despicable.

[Badger]

I can't say I'm familiar with the history relating to the UIU, although I did look into it after resigning from Unison after they initiated and agreed a single status agreement which sold members down the river and lost them thousands. I'm a little unsure what a "scab union" is, but my reason for not joining was that I just didn't think it had enough clout.
Are they a member of the TUC? There are TUC rules about not poaching members, but if this union is not a member of the TUC then they are bound by no such rules.
My experience of Unison in relation to single status (and I have no evidence that Unite have been substantially different I'm afraid) is that they have betrayed their members by actively campaigning for and enforcing a policy knowing that it would cost a substantial proportion of their membership (who had paid them in the belief that they would defend them) massive amounts of money - truly life-changing pay-cuts.
This is not just shameful and despicable, it is outright betrayal. A union that does that has no moral right to gripe about members being poached because it does not deserve to have had them in the first place.

[thewelshman]

The UIU are not affiliated to the STUC. They wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. There used to be something called the Bridlington Agreement that affilaited Unions used to sign up to which prevented poaching other Union's members. And, yes, I know it's gone on between affiliated Unions...

The major problem with Single Status was the lack of funding from central government. The Agenda for Change in the NHS was fully funded, as was a similar exercise in education. There wasn't a single penny from Westminster or Holyrood for Single Status, hence the untenable position of having to comply with equality legislation, but not ebing able to fund it. So don't criticise the Unions, the fault lies squarely with the politicians. You have to ask why they still bankroll New Labour when they failed to look after working class folk's interests having done so in Health and also in Education.

The Trade Unions were sold a pup - absolutely no doubt about that, and all the fine words about nobody losing out were worthless. However, they had to deal with a situation that could so easily have been avoided. Ask youself this question - how much do you think it would have cost to fully fund Single Status so nobody lost out? Pennies, in comparison to the mess that the financial sector's left us in. That's the reality of the situation.

Don't forget the bankers though, because by their greed, the twats are going to leave local government in an absolute mess. Look forward to mass redundancies, privatisations, and wage freezes, whilst they get their bonuses. Listen to what Cameron's saying about an austerity budget and wonder why...Listen to New Labour, and it's the same albeit postponed for a year or so. It's about time there was a party that looks after the issues that affect working class folk. Used to be called the Labour Party, but there's never been a riper time to look further afield and start thinking progressively.

[johnfricker]

So don't criticise the Unions, the fault lies squarely with the politicians.

The politicians must bear much of the blame, but the unions didn't have to promote and enter into the Single Status Agreement in the absence of central funding, thewelshman. However, Unison in particular didn't seem to want the lack of funding to get in the way of its apparent 'equal pay at any cost' policy. Had they warned their members that they risked losing £thousands in pay, instead of dishonestly promising in 1997 that "nobody should lose" in the pay and grading reviews, it is doubtful if they would have won the vote for the Agreement. It is also doubtful that members would have voted for the loss of bonus payments and cuts in overtime payments and allowances had the unions properly explained the implications of other provisions of the Agreement. I remember attending a regional union briefing where FTOs had plenty to say about the 37 hour week, but nobody had a clue about how the "nobody should lose" promise would be honoured. It was suggested that workers like binmen would gain in pay reviews because their working conditions would be a factor and concerns were expressed about how this might impact on competitive tendering. The national unions' dishonesty quickly became apparent when the they failed to condemn life-altering pay cuts at councils (like Tendring DC) which implemented early. Dozens of reports of council workers suffering swingeing pay cuts and the impact on their morale and health have been reproduced on this website ever since.

In the absence of support for Single Status, the unions could have stepped up their support for equal pay claims, generally in respect of blatantly discriminatory bonus payments. Just as Stefan Cross is now doing, raking in £thousands in commission in the process. The thousands of council workers in unisex jobs would never have needed to suffer pay cuts.

There have been many posts in this forum regarding poor support and guidance from branches and FTOs, poor job evaluation practice and poor local agreements. None of that is the fault of the politicians. Instead of condemning and calling a halt to the disaster being experienced by hundreds of their members, the unions conspired with the employers in 2004 to compel councils to carry out pay and grading reviews by imposing a deadline. Until then, the management and unions at my own council, having experienced the evils of job evaluation prior to Single Status, had agreed to avoid further upheaval by finding other ways to identify and remedy pay inequality. Just as many companies in the private sector do if they wish to avoid equal pay claims. The Equal Pay Act has never required employers to use job evaluation and it has never required pay to be cut to achieve equality.

[thewelshman]

So don't criticise the Unions, the fault lies squarely with the politicians.

The politicians must bear much of the blame, but the unions didn't have to promote and enter into the Single Status Agreement in the absence of central funding, welshman. However, Unison in particular didn't seem to want the lack of funding to get in the way of its apparent 'equal pay at any cost' policy. Had they warned their members that they risked losing £thousands in pay, instead of dishonestly promising in 1997 that "nobody should lose" in the pay and grading reviews, it is doubtful if they would have won the vote for the Agreement. It is also doubtful that members would have voted for the loss of bonus payments and cuts in overtime payments and allowances had the unions properly explained the implications of other provisions of the Agreement. I remember attending a regional union briefing where FTOs had plenty to say about the 37 hour week, but nobody had a clue about how the "nobody should lose" promise would be honoured. It was suggested that workers like binmen would gain in pay reviews because their working conditions would be a factor and concerns were expressed about how this might impact on competitive tendering. The national unions' dishonesty quickly became apparent when the they failed to condemn life-altering pay cuts at councils (like Tendring DC) which implemented early. Dozens of reports of council workers suffering swingeing pay cuts and the impact on their morale and health have been reproduced on this website ever since.

In the absence of support for Single Status, the unions could have stepped up their support for equal pay claims, generally in respect of blatantly discriminatory bonus payments. Just as Stefan Cross is now doing, raking in £thousands in commission in the process. The thousands of council workers in unisex jobs would never have needed to suffer pay cuts.

The facts are that Equal pay legislation has been around since the 1970's,a nd it's only belatedly that the Unions have had to deal with it because of the raft of equal pay claims coming in from no win no fee lawyers, otherwise it would have drifted on relentlessly.
The total lack of funding was shameful and portrays local government as second class public sector citizens, compared to health and education - absolutely no doubt. The question has to be asked why?...and it's never been answered. Had JE been fully funded there wouldn't have been a problem. It's sadly symptomatic of the whole New Labour experiment that they bent over backwards to help the fabulously rich while missing a golden opportunity to help hundreds of thousands of genuine cases.
Equal pay claims - the first thing a Tribunal would ask whether or not there's been any attempt to rectify the situation after a (collective?) grievance has been lodged. If a JE scheme has been put in place they would await the findings of said scheme.
If there had been hundreds of thousands of equal pay claims where would that have left local government other than bankrupt right across the country? Sad, but true, and that's why deals have been done below the true level of any real claim so there will still be jobs afterwards. It's unpalatable, but Stefan Cross will disappear from the landscape once he's made his millions and forget about nursery nurses, dinner ladies, school cleaners, etc - he doesn't give a toss about real equality, just lining his own pockets.
I know from my own experience in local government, as a Trade Union seconded Job Analyst, that all those interviewed were very clearly told that at least 20% of workers would lose out, as per my last posting. Didn't like saying that, but it certainly made people aware of the issue, as the Trade Unions had for a very long time, make no mistake about that.

[Badger]

Look, the crux of the issue, as John points out, is that unions urged members to accept the single status deal by falsely persuading them that they should not lose out as a result.
The whole point of a union is to defend members' terms & conditions - that's why members pay them. That's why they exist.
As I see it, no union should ever enter into an agreement that will knowingly be detrimental to members' pay
You say that 20% were told they would lose out - not before the single status vote was taken they bloody weren't! If they had been I can assure your membership would not have voted for the single status and furthermore I very much hope that you would have urged them to reject it.
"Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day" should be a basic union tenet. No union should enter a job evaluation scheme on anything other than this basis. Blaming central government for not funding job evaluation is a total red herring - they don't bloody need to now do they?! The unions have solved the problem for them. If more trade unionists had stood up for what they believed in (like the Greenwich branch of Unison tried to do) and refused to co-operate until funding was provided then yes, we would have had a long, drawn-out process of equal pay claims going through the courts. But no court in the land could order a pay cuts for staff - sadly, it takes a union to do that.
You say this would have led to councils going bankrupt - so be it. If that's what it took to have secured central government funding, so be it.
You have to stand up for what you believe in.
You have to fight for members and keep fighting.
Pay cuts are not a requirement of equal pay legislation. I can understand employers arguing "but how can we afford it otherwise?", but I don't expect to hear that crap from my bloody union!

[johnfricker]

The facts are that Equal pay legislation has been around since the 1970's,a nd it's only belatedly that the Unions have had to deal with it because of the raft of equal pay claims coming in from no win no fee lawyers, otherwise it would have drifted on relentlessly.

Unison was stepping up its support for equal pay claims, almost exclusively involving discriminatory bonus payments, for some years before the Single Status Agreement was signed in 1997 and long before people like Stephan Cross appeared on the scene, thewelshman. I suspect that the Single Status initiative came from the unions, who wanted to avoid the mounting cost of legal representation for equal pay claimants. The use of job evaluation seems to have been promoted by Virginia Branney (Heather Wakefield's predecessor at Unison) who had experience of its use in her native New Zealand. Of course it was siezed upon by the employers who saw it as a mechanism for equalising pay by levelling down and for forcing their employees to meet a proportion of the costs.

If there had been hundreds of thousands of equal pay claims where would that have left local government other than bankrupt right across the country?

There would have to have been hundreds of thousands of women manual workers who were losing out because of discriminatory bonuses paid to men for that to be true. Had the employers paid the bonuses to the women (and consolidated them into basic pay) when they should have done, the ECJ ruling requiring equal pay awards to be back-dated six years wouldn't have applied. Councils are probably worse of now than if they'd settled all their equal pay claims prior to Single Status. Pay and grading reviews have actually made it easier for Stefan Cross to win equal pay cases.

I know from my own experience in local government, as a Trade Union seconded Job Analyst, that all those interviewed were very clearly told that at least 20% of workers would lose out, as per my last posting.

That's very disturbing because it is clear evidence of there being a pre-determined outcome at your council. Something your union should have had no part of.