UNISON Housing Association Annual Report 2010: Branch Secretary

(From Annual Report) "I unexpectedly became Branch Secretary in May following the resignation of Mary Powell. I think everyone would want to thank Mary for her many years of service to the Branch, both as secretary and as an executive committee member beforehand.

I have worn a number of different union hats over the years but
this is my first time as a Branch Secretary. It has been a bit of
a rollercoaster experience, especially since a few weeks earlier, I was also elected for the first time as a London Borough Councillor as well.

Two key events during the year were the Notting Hill Strike (see Chair’s report) - the first strike in our sector in decades and our first National UNISON Conference for the Community and Voluntary sector. Meanwhile our branch is one of the biggest in London and the Southeast and still growing. Our finances are in better shape than they have been in a long time. We are thinking about moving the branch office to somewhere central and accessible. While most of us will be bitterly disappointed at the election of this new government at least locally in London the BNP scourge were wiped out.

However, let us be in no doubt that all of us are facing a horrible year ahead. Most of you already have experienced zero or below inflation pay awards which has meant a cut in real terms. Some employers have even increased hours and cut basic pay. In parts of the housing and social care sector, we are facing a race to the bottom for staff terms and conditions. Of course we understand that decent employers are facing huge problems by being undercut by “minimum wage” cowboys. However, some employers appear to be using this as an excuse to do whatever they want.  Amazingly some employers are even trying to de-recognise
unions. Collective bargaining is a fundamental human right. Full stop. Any employer that tries to de-recognise is not only anti-union but will also be condemned for attacking human rights and basic freedoms of association.

Our residents are also about to feel the full force of the Coalition cuts. We will be expected to be evicting not only the long term unemployed when their housing benefit is cut but also lone parents whose children have left home and are now deemed to be “over occupying”. New development is shot to pieces due to the Cuts while the proposed 80% market rates for new homes will mean in the future that there will be no such thing as affordable housing for low income families.

Meanwhile there are 5 million on the housing waiting list. Many living in appalling conditions.  There is an alternative to all this. We must constantly remind ourselves that this recession was not caused by over paid public sector lollypop ladies but by entirely avoidable failures in the Banking system. Instead of massive cuts the deficit should be tackled by a fairer taxation system and government policies that promote growth. We also need to turn ourselves into a campaigning and organising union at all levels. The TUC have organised a national protest in Central London on Saturday 26th March. Please try and make sure that every union member possible (and their families) turns up to support this protest. We shall be there with the branch banner.

We desperately need to increase the number of union members in each employer to at least 50% of total and increase the number of trained stewards and safety reps.  Our target is at least one rep in every workplace or area. We need to hold regular workplace meetings of members and reps. Reps from across the employer need to meet together and plan. There should be timetabled Joint consultative committees and joint health & safety committees with management. We need to communicate better with members and utilise both old and new media. Produce regular local newsletters as well as blogs. We want to research and develop practical, convincing arguments not dogma. We need to form alliances with other unions, with resident and community groups. We need to use our political funds to lobby Ministers, MP’s, Boris, London Assembly members, Regulators, Councillors and Boards.

Our UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis told Conference last year that “our time has come...trade unions were not created for the good times... but for the hard times”. We now live in hard times and the simple choice is that if we do nothing these hard times will just get much, much worse. We won’t win all our battles but by organising, by campaigning - we can help protect members jobs, we can successfully fight
to preserve our terms and conditions, we can build a momentum that will delivery on pay.

Please recruit a work colleague to the union, volunteer to become steward, write an article for a newsletter, help organise a local meeting – then with your family join UNISON on the TUC March in March.

John Gray (Photo on cover of Annual Report is of Branch Labour Link Members at our House of Commons event last year supporting the UNISON Million Voices Campaign)

Labour Link with Unions?

I'm not really sure what to make of the story in today's Independent about Ed Miliband supposedly severing "big money" ties with affiliated trade unions.  It is all pretty unclear and confusing.  This is after all the winter silly season. 

The idea of having a 4th estate of Labour "supporters" (define?) to vote in leadership elections seems particularly daft and impractical. 

The state of the Party finances means it is hardly in a position to contemplate getting rid of any financial sources never mind trying to pass controversial rule changes at Conference. 

I'm not at all sure what impact this would have on an affiliated union such as UNISON which has its own separate political fund called (hint, hint) "UNISON Labour Link" paid for by voluntary levy payments by individual members of much, much less than £500 per year.  In fact I think changes could indeed strengthen the link between the Party and its unions. 

I do like this great quote (para 354) by former Labour Party General Secretary Peter Watt “...I think the relationship between the party and trade unions, people misconstrue it, it is not a relationship we have with them, they are of the Labour Party, they formed us, they are members of. People talk about the trade unions and the Labour Party, we are the same institution in terms of the Labour Party, they are fundamentally in our DNA from top to bottom, and that cannot and will not change, and the party gains huge political strength from that and I think could gain more".

Hat tip UNISONactive

Tower Hamlets: A bit of a flashback

Tower Hamlets Councillor Rachel Saunders gives her personal take on what has gone wrong with the local Mayoral election.  Hat tip Labour List (and Unmesh Desai!)

"Thursday night, the night Labour lost Tower Hamlets, felt like a bit of a flashback. The venue was different, York Hall instead of Canary Wharf’s Winter Gardens, but Oliur Rahman and Rania Khan were doing V for Victory signs, hard working Labour activists were miserable and Ken Clark (London Labour's regional director) was at the front of the room looking grumpy.

One difference though – in 2006 I went up to a couple of Labour councillors and gave them a piece of my mind for working as a part of a group of Labour councillors who were making deals with Respect and others to save their own skins and knife councillors they disliked. This time Lutfur Rahman was victorious, but no longer in the Labour Party, at last openly supported by Respect and by others who travel through political parties as it suits them.

This election result came after a messy summer, where two separate panels made up of NEC and regional board members decided not to shortlist Lutfur Rahman, but he got on the shortlist through an appeal. Having previously declined to shortlist him, NEC members chose not to accept his nomination by the local party, and voted instead to impose the sitting council leader Helal Abbas.

Abbas is a decent man with an impressive personal story. From his leadership of the local squatters movement in the 1980s, standing up for Bengali families in desperate need who were excluded from social housing, to his record as the first Bangladeshi council leader, Abbas was the best candidate to steer us through the difficult times ahead. Why did he lose?

It will take a bit longer than a day to articulate what went on in the Bangladeshi community over the past few weeks and months. It is important to be clear that our greatest campaign leaders and activists were Bangladeshi, and that Lutfur presented himself as “Real Labour”, exactly like Respect before him – the bonds that tie our party to the east end of London remain strong, and our opponents only win by impersonating us.

I think our loss has two root causes. One, despite London region intending to run a short selection process and leave us a long summer to campaign, the cock ups and conspiracies meant we must have appeared to our electorate to spend the entire summer warring amongst ourselves. Combined with the London mayoral selection and leadership elections that many of us were involved in, we can’t blame our electorate for feeling like we lost our focus on what should really matter. We did continue to run campaign sessions several times a week, but not everyone will have seen us. This will have contributed to the very low turnout.

Secondly, Lutfur’s narrative was up and running before our story had its boots on. Lutfur presented himself as a victim of the evil Labour Party machine. He had much of the Bengali media behind him, and the intervention of Ken Livingstone, who turned up a few days before polling day and did a walkabout with Lutfur that the BBC were available to film, meant that Labour Party process was all anyone could talk about. Added to this was a smear campaign more filthy than I could have imagined – and I’ve seen a few nasty ones since Respect came into town.

Make no mistake though, there is no difference between the coalition of people that came within one councillor of toppling us in 2006 and the people who managed it on Thursday. Previously Ken Livingstone came to Tower Hamlets to slate Jim Fitzpatrick MP and give Galloway a hug, this time he slated Abbas and hugged Lutfur. Siraj of Clifton restaurant was a supporter of Galloway then and he’s a supporter of Lutfur now. Oliur Rahman, the first Respect councillor and opponent of Jim Fitzpatrick in 2005, who has been a member of four political groups in as many years (SWP/Respect, Left List, Labour, Lutfur), was crowing at the Labour defeat.

The selection process was a mess, but the NEC were absolutely right to stop Lutfur being the Labour candidate.

We defeated Respect convincingly in May 2010, and we’ll do it again. We’ll do it in exactly the same way. Again, we have a wave of new activists who are disgusted at what they have seen and want to defeat it. Again, we have excellent local organisation and hard working talented activists and councillors. We’re stronger than before, with two excellent Labour MPs. We’ll win back the hearts and minds of the people of Tower Hamlets through demonstrating that we understand their concerns, and that only Labour can represent the whole of our community.

This time we’ll have to stand up for them in opposition at the Town Hall. If you oppose the politics of hatred and division that Galloway stood for in Tower Hamlets - before we drummed him out - then stand with us".