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Unite General Secretary Election

Some interesting observations here on the disconnect between the ‘online left’ and the activist base in Unite. I don’t agree with a lot of it but given its coming from the CPB (the most pro-Turner group) it’s quite the attack on the labour/corbyn/momentum/Twitter left:

morningstaronline.co.uk

Unite — another victory the left failed to call: whose line is it anyway?

When deciding its ‘line’ the Labour left must listen to the workers, rather than each other — or risk being thrust into irrelevance, argues SASHA DAS GUPTA
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline.co.uk
 
Another pretty good article from an aerospace rep who was involved in the Graham campaign:
www.voice.wales

What Next After Sharon Graham’s Stunning Victory In Unite | Ray Morell -

Reading Time: 8 minutesRay Morell is a Unite workplace rep in aerospace and was a member of Sharon Graham’s campaign team. At the start of the campaign, he wrote about the huge challenges facing one of Britain & Ireland’s biggest unions and why Sharon Graham was the best candidate to overcome...
www.voice.wales www.voice.wales

The aerospace site I now work on in Edinburgh has several hundred members with a two-decade history of nominating right wing candidates – from Sir Ken Jackson, to Les Bayliss and Gerard Coyne. It’s not that the membership on the site is ‘right wing’. The branch leadership was and they were the only people who communicated with the membership over that period. This time was different. The Coyne nomination was challenged by reps who saw through Coyne but couldn’t see the point of backing Turner.

They saw the opportunity for change with Graham. After winning the nomination, reps met with the campaign team and then began to directly contact members working on site and those home-working to encourage them to vote for Graham. The rep’s operation ran right up until the last day of voting. This kind of intense, face-to-face contact was being coordinated by the campaign to help support several hundred activists up and down the country, and it explains how Graham won.

It’s no guarantee that Turner, the status quo candidate, would have won if he was allowed to stand head-to-head against Coyne, who would have become a repository for all those looking for a way to express their frustration at the existing leadership.
Click to expand...

It also links to this by Hazeldine in the NLR, which I'd not seen before but is a proper masterpiece of the "union elections viewed through the Labour Party looking glass" genre:
newleftreview.org

Tom Hazeldine, Back to the Workplace — Sidecar

Unite’s new leader: a gift to neo-Blairism?
newleftreview.org newleftreview.org
Starts with: "The left’s position within a Labour Party increasingly led by neo-Blairites has taken another knock." and ends with "...champagne corks will be popping again in the office of the Leader of the Opposition." Literally an analysis that starts and finishes with "what do I imagine Starmer would think about this"?
 
Sprocket. said:
Nice to see someone standing by their pre-election promises. Star as you mean to go on.

Sharon Graham: Unite leader to skip Labour conference Sharon Graham: Unite leader to skip Labour conference
Click to expand...

Totally. I also clocked her comments on the latest labour obsessional internal psychodrama: omov v the electoral college: its white noise and irrelevance to workers: focus on the energy crisis and the fact that many people are worried that they’ll be able to heat their homes and eat.

Spot on. A breath of fresh air
 
Smokeandsteam said:
Totally. I also clocked her comments on the latest labour obsessional internal psychodrama: omov v the electoral college: its white noise and irrelevance to workers: focus on the energy crisis and the fact that many people are worried that they’ll be able to heat their homes and eat.

Spot on. A breath of fresh air
Click to expand...
I watched a brief Starmer video clip , which in the midst of issues like the energy prices, high and fire disputes, the NHS backlog etc that they could have spoken out on, , was promoting a new and improved Labour Party complaints procedure.
 
The39thStep said:
I watched a brief Starmer video clip , which in the midst of issues like the energy prices, high and fire disputes, the NHS backlog etc that they could have spoken out on, , was promoting a new and improved Labour Party complaints procedure.
Click to expand...

Maybe the 10 million thought pieces about the decline of Labour, the ‘red wall’, identity politics, rules, composites and so on have all overlooked a fairly basic point: the Labour Party is failing because it’s collectively interested only in itself?

The huge question is can something be built - in workplaces and communities - that allows those of us much more interested in energy prices, people not having enough to eat, fire and rehire and so on to come together and do something about it. Unite can and should play a role in that discussion
 
The39thStep said:
I watched a brief Starmer video clip , which in the midst of issues like the energy prices, high and fire disputes, the NHS backlog etc that they could have spoken out on, , was promoting a new and improved Labour Party complaints procedure.
Click to expand...

And people, ie some Lefts, esconced, ie, almost stuck in the crevices of, the Labour Party, wonder why the elected leader of workers in the Labour/Workers Movement faced with these exact issues would rather be spending time talking with and to those members on and how they can improve their conditions rather than a complaints procedure.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
Maybe the 10 million thought pieces about the decline of Labour, the ‘red wall’, identity politics, rules, composites and so on have all overlooked a fairly basic point: the Labour Party is failing because it’s collectively interested only in itself?

The huge question is can something be built - in workplaces and communities - that allows those of us much more interested in energy prices, people not having enough to eat, fire and rehire and so on to come together and do something about it. Unite can and should play a role in that discussion
Click to expand...

It is truly a conundrum.....
 
Insightful interview/report on Sharon Graham’s approach to leverage and organising.

Unite has also produced a report with a “study of the accounts of the big FTSE-350 companies shows executives are now using this as cover to push up their profit margins – by 73%. Take out energy firms, and the numbers are still huge: over 50%. While the Bank of England is jacking up the rates on your mortgage and credit cards, and hastening a recession, policymakers are fighting a war that is half a century old. It’s not workers who are pushing up inflation; it’s often their employers”

Graham’s strategy is to ensure they workers in these companies (and others) are paid in line with rising prices and since her election the union has supported 52,000 workers in more than 300 disputes. Of those that have been resolved, Unite has won three out of four. In the past few months alone, workers at Gatwick have got a 21% pay rise, at Devonport dockyard in Plymouth have won 13%, and employees at the BMW Mini plant in Oxford 21%.

Graham is a breath of fresh air. And is leading a return to serious trade unionism in our union.

www.theguardian.com

Profiteering bosses, not workers, are pushing up inflation. Here’s how to fight back | Aditya Chakrabortty

Unite’s leader, Sharon Graham, is leading the charge against 21st-century corporations. Why isn’t Labour following suit, asks Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
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This call - to rebuild the shop stewards movement - by Sharon Graham is extremely significant.

Why? Because the necessary steps to rebuild the shop steward movement also require a decisive shift of power, resources and democratic agency away from the union full timers and senior lay bureaucrats and towards rank and file stewards.

It would require a decisive shift away from concession bargaining and towards workers control with shop stewards’ committees (sweeping away intra union disputes) bringing together all the unions. Given the structure of modern corporations the approach is a pre-requisite of rebuilding working class power in the private sector.


 
So who has any beans to spill on what's going on with the irish section/Brendan Ogle and the current rift? Was seemingly frozen out of all previous activity on return to work after a 2 year illness. Moves afoot but a lot of people unhappy about it.
 
No specific info beyond:

Don’t believe everything you read on Squawkbox

Ogle has a bit of a rep for being, well, a bit of a twat.

Certain defeated leader candidates have been rather unsupportive of SG and the policies she was elected to enact.
 
Unite EC elections coming up:
www.left-horizons.com

UNITE NEC elections and the need for a democratic left

By William F. Ward Elections for the EC of Unite, the UKs second largest union, are underway and nominations have just closed. Unite is important as both the most industrially active union in the country and as a major supporter of the Labour Party, paying about £1.5 million a year in...
www.left-horizons.com www.left-horizons.com
It's not often I look at skwawkbox, but wow, they really have an obsessive hatred for Graham.
 
belboid said:
Howard Beckett appears to be completely in the shit. Lost his tribunal for unfair dismissal and basically, yes, he does have a shitload of questions to answer.

www.bbc.co.uk

Senior Unite union official loses unfair dismissal claim

Howard Beckett had argued that the claims against him were “baseless”.
www.bbc.co.uk
Click to expand...
Yes he does as do other former leaders on how one person could get away with what he is accused of, if indeed he is found to have done it. Audit requirements are generally quite strict and presumably there is a finance director and finance and audit and risk committees.
 
Dom Traynor said:
Yes he does as do other former leaders on how one person could get away with what he is accused of, if indeed he is found to have done it. Audit requirements are generally quite strict and presumably there is a finance director and finance and audit and risk committees.
Click to expand...

Unite hasn’t published audited accounts since 2020.

I assume when they are finally published they will be accompanied by a lengthy explanation from Sharon Graham on the investigation into the office/hotel/conference centre and the relationship between the various contractors and the previous GS/Beckett/others.
 
The plot thickens...

Serious Fraud Office probe £112m Unite union hotel​


The Serious Fraud Office is investigating the construction of a hotel and conference centre owned by one of the UK’s biggest trade unions, the BBC can reveal. Unite the Union spent a total of £112m of its members’ money on the project in Birmingham. The building has since been valued at just £29m, suggesting £83m has been wasted. A KC-led inquiry commissioned by Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham also identified a missing £14m which has been described as a “mystery” and does not feature in the project’s final accounts. Unite has told the BBC the case is “now with the Serious Fraud Office” and Ms Graham, who took over as Unite general secretary in 2021, would “leave no stone unturned in finding out if there was any financial wrongdoing”.
Click to expand...
 
Must be absolutely fucking infuriating for Unite workplace reps and activists, considering the amount of thankless work that goes into keeping a branch running, trying to persuade workers facing rising costs that they should keep on prioritising their union subs over all the other things they're having to cut back on, only to have that money spent on this.
 
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