Editorial: UNISON spectacular leftward move is a sign of things to come

In many editorials in Left Horizons, we have argued that the labour and trade union movement is sharply divided between those at the top and the grass roots. While the Labour leadership and many trade union leaders are firmly on the right, their rank-and-file members are being pushed inexorably by economic insecurity, wage freezes and falling living standards to the left.

That is nowhere more evident than in the recent elections to the NEC of the UK’s biggest trade union, UNISON, whose million-plus members in health, local government and public services are at the sharp end of the government’s ongoing austerity drive. Despite being applauded for their role as key workers during the pandemic, workers in the public sector have been insulted by a pay freeze and UNISON members have shown what they think of that.

In the NEC election results that were announced just before the union annual delegate conference this week, the left has made spectacular gains. It has overturned the solid right-wing majority that had been in place for the best part of the last two decades, since the union was founded by the amalgamation of three smaller unions. The left has won over 40 seats out of 68.

UNISON bank rolled Starmer’s leadership campaign

The UNISON NEC elections could have potentially important implications for the Labour Party. Two UNISON reps, Wendy Nichols and Mark Ferguson, are currently on the Labour NEC, Nichols being currently chair of the organisation sub-committee. Both have consistently voted with the right wing on all major issues.

Without any consultation of the membership, the leaders of UNISON supported Keir Starmer’s leadership bid and were his biggest financial backers within the trade union movement, stumping up over £31,000 of members’ cash and money in kind for his campaign. Presumably, this money was disbursed with the consent of ‘Labour Link’, that part of UNISON’s internal structure that deals with the membership that affiliates to the Labour Party, the officer responsible being Mark Ferguson.

Not only that, but there is an impression that the union has become a safe career haven for some of those Labour officials named in the leaked ‘Anti-Semitism’ report as having cheered at Labour’s losses in 2017 and hung their heads in disappointment at the narrowness of its defeat. Their apparent efforts to undermine Labour’s election campaign in 2017 seem not to have damaged their career prospects in             UNISON. That cannot be allowed to continue when the new left NEC takes office.

In fact, Wendy Nichols has now lost her place on the UNISON NEC, where she represented the Yorkshire region, and the new incoming NEC must make sure that she and Mark Ferguson similarly lose their places on Labour’s NEC. What the new NEC needs to do is to make sure that the union’s affiliation funds, and Labour representation reflect the aspirations of its members and not the factional needs of Labour’s right wing.

Key workers applauded for their efforts

Above all, the new NEC has an opportunity to turn UNISON into a union that really fights for its members. UNISON has to demand that the government fork out for all those ‘key’ workers who were applauded each week during the pandemic, but who have since been put in a 1% straitjacket. The union has to demand an end to the pay freeze.

Recently, its local government representatives, along with those of the other two big unions in that sector, Unite and the GMB, have put forward a pay claim of 10%. Even that claim will not allow local authority workers to recover the losses in their living standards suffered in past years, but  such as it is, the claim must now be pursued vigorously and effectively.

In the health and social care sectors, too, UNISON must now pursue a pay claim of at least 15%. Unite and the RCN have put forward pay claims that match or better the local government claim. In both the local authority and health and care sectors, UNISON must now become a fighting and militant union, aggressively and relentlessly working for its members.

Elections within union democratic structures

The left-wing #TimeForRealChange group conducted a model campaign in the UNISON NEC elections, showing the importance of working as far as possible within the democratic structures of the trade union movement. It built on the  general secretary election campaign, in which the left candidate, Paul Holmes, came second with 45,000 votes, the highest losing vote for any left candidate.

Paul really ought to have won that election, because the winning candidate, Christina McAnea, took less than 48% of the votes. Had it not been for the fact that another ‘left’ candidate and an ultra-left, in third and fourth places, drew votes away from him, Paul would have won for the left. The ‘spoiling’ tactics of the ultra-lefts unfortunately continued in these NEC elections, and in the Northern Region, for example, a solid left candidate, Terry McPartlan, missed out by only 19 votes and he, too, would have won, but for the intervention of an ultra-left who came third.

A divided left opens the door for the right wing

The #TimeForRealChange campaign showed the importance of developing a serious broad left within a trade union and the effect it can have on outcomes. As important as UNISON is for the broader labour movement, the current election within Unite, the second largest union and Labour’s largest affiliate, is just as important.

But members and non-members of Unite have been astonished to see that there are still three candidates on the left, raising the danger of the only right-wing candidate for general secretary winning that position by default. As the election of Christina McAnea in UNISON demonstrated perfectly, a divided left will open the door for the right to win and that is an outcome in Unite that can easily be avoided if the three lefts came to a principled and binding agreement for a single candidate.

For socialists, the outcome of the UNISON NEC elections is not an issue of this or that personality. It is an indication of the trajectory of social and economic developments in Britain. In an era when living standards are challenged, both in terms of the actual wage and the ‘social wage’, when conditions at work are under threat as never before, it is inevitable that workers will seek to fight back.

Workers will not meekly accept that their livelihoods and jobs are less secure and should pay less than they did a decade or two decades ago, and their willingness and desire to fight back against counter-reforms will impact on their organisations, principally the trade unions. The votes in UNISON are the music of the future.

We can celebrate the victory of the left in the UNISON elections, therefore, but only for a moment. It is, after all, only a preparatory stage in a much longer struggle in defence of living standards and ultimately for a fundamental change in society. It is but a step on the road to building a fighting, member-led trade union, but it is an important one.