A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Merger

I voted for the merger between Amicus and the TGWU so I'm pleased by the ballot result today.

I did so mainly for industrial reasons:

- in a globalised economy with huge powerful corporations you need unions with similar muscle to stand up to them
- it has been absurd that in some industries like aerospace and automotive both these unions have been organised in the same workplaces - they've already been campaigning together but it has taken effort to co-ordinate it must make sense to have a single union in each industry and workplace

The impact on the Labour Party of having such a large single affiliate - holding 12% of the electoral college and 18% of the vote at Conference - is more ambiguous but is a secondary consideration - the key question is what structure will deliver most for members on pay and conditions, keeping their jobs and other industrial issues.

1 Comments:

Blogger Chris Paul said...

I voted for it too. But as a neglected GPMU'er (joining 4 or 5 years ago as it was a nice little, specific union) I'm not sure how far I can take the Amicus-TGWU thing ...

Consultation in Man Wit, even information very hard to come by ... the majority of the members I know (and I know a large proportion) would not have backed the candidate the union backed.

12:21 am, March 10, 2007

 

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