Wednesday, December 08, 2004

The strange world of UNISON elections

It's coming up to time for UNISON to hold it's General Secretary Elections. In order to stand, a prospective candidate needs 25 branches, 2 regions, 2 service groups or the NEC to nominate them.

We invited all four people wanting nomination over to our branch to hear what they had to say. Dave Prentis asked a full-time official to organise a representative to come and talk to us on his behalf.

Said full-time official (I'll not name the person concerned) phoned me on Monday, and commented "I think it would be a disaster if Dave Prentis isn't elected, don't you?". When I replied that my job as Secretary was merely to enable the branch to make it's feelings known, he noticably cooled.

As it happens our branch didn't decide to nominate Dave Prentis, we nominated Jon Rogers of Lambeth UNISON, I didn't vote, but I agree with Jon that full-time officials ought to be doing what the members want and not think that they ought to ignore what we have to say.

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