Here is a message sent by the Unison regional secretary to his regional officers in respect of the current ballot over pensions. The package that is being offered is totaly inadequate and means people will work longer, pay more yet receive less. Yet we see the union urging people to vote yes by letter, e mail and text. Why is this one wonders? Now we see the regions probably backed by national unison urging its regional officers to spy upon their branches and report back so those who are against this crap deal can be disciplined under rule I.
Rule I says 2.1 "disciplinary action can be taken against anyone who disobeys any instruction" ie the Sevice Groups "recommendation". If it is a recommendation then it is not policy but this shows how draconian Unison is.
However prior to this in Unisons own rule it says B2.2 we should "establish a member led union". Well this email flys in the face of that. Democracy in Unison my arse!
At the end comrade Ravi says what about if it were for strike action? in a democratic union the issues would be discussed with those who were against it and hopefully the arguement would be won and the majority prevail but in this instance that hasn't happened that is why p. The heads of agreement was agreed without consultation with the branches (membership)and when he regions asked forspecial meeting to discuss it was dismissed.
All Organisers
With respect to my email sent on Sunday about compliance with the union’s Democracy in UNISON Guidelines we’ve had a couple of reports of possible breaches and we need to get tighter on this. So can I please ask all ROs to do the following
- Please re-read the email below
- For all ROs who have a county or unitary / met borough branch can you please (casually and unobtrusively) check with your branch secs that they have received and read my email from Sunday and try to establish if their branch is going to follow these guidelines. I’m asking we focus on the County and unitary councils as this is where the bulk of the membership is and where we are likely to have the most problems.
- Please have these discussions in a casual way and don’t say “I’ve been asked to do this by the regional secretary” – we need to be subtle about this.
- Please report back the results of your discussion to me cc whole RMT by 4pm this Thursday. If you’ve not been able to speak to your br sec I still need you to email me to say so. Sorry about this extra work but we do need to get on top of this.
- If you are out and about at a branch committee meeting and this is discussed and the branch seek to vote to campaign against the SGE recommendations remind them of the points in the third bullet point in the email below. If they then vote on the issues please ask them to take a recorded vote and also take your own privates notes of who voted to breach the guidelines.
- And finally, if any of you doubt the advice is correct, think on this. If we were running a national industrial action ballot with a recommendation to vote yes to action, would we find it acceptable for branches to campaign for a no vote? I’m pretty sure none of the branches unhappy with the current SGE position would happy about this.
Cheers
Ravi
