Independent Referee (03/04/14)
If my email post box is anything to go by, there are lots of union members out there who are completely fed up at the way their trade unions have behaved over equal pay.
Now unlike lots of other areas of public life, trade unions are not regulated effectively - so while people can complain about teachers, doctors, lawyers, property managers, the BBC, the energy industry etc etc, it's not possible for union members to raise a 'service' complaint other than with their own trade union.
So the union becomes judge and jury in its own cause which stinks to high heaven if you ask me, especially as unions support independent regulation everywhere else in society.
Here's an article from Time Times which reports on an inquiry by the Certification Officer into alleged 'phantom voters' in the election of Unite's general secretary, Len McCluskey.
But the problem is that the Certification Officer has very limited powers over union elections and the registration of certain information on how unions are organised - there is no wider or general ability to consider complaints from ordinary members that they have been let down or badly served by their trade unions.
To my mind that's wrong and just like the banks or the press and many other areas of public life, trade union members ought to have access to an independent referee, if and when they believe things have gone badly wrong - and the union won't put things right itself.
Len McCluskey is to face a formal hearingLewis Whyld/PA
By Laura Pitel - The Times
The head of Britain’s biggest trade union is to face a formal hearing over claims that his re-election to his post was unfair.
Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, has been accused of a series of irregularities by Jerry Hicks, his sole rival in last year’s contest.
Most serious is the allegation that ballot papers were sent to 160,000 “phantom voters” who should not have been allowed to take part.
Unite is being investigated by the independent trade union watchdog over the claims. The Certification Office has the power to order a re-run of the race if Mr Hicks’ concerns are upheld.
This week it announced a formal hearing into the claims, provisionally scheduled for July.
Mr Hicks, a former Rolls-Royce convenor who was backed by the Socialist Workers’ Party, believes that Unite’s decision to include 158,824 lapsed members in last year’s vote was in breach of the rules. The charge emerged after the discovery that there was a mismatch between the number of people granted a vote and the number of members cited in its annual report.
It has been claimed that some of those who were sent a ballot paper for the election, which took place in April 2013, had not paid their subscriptions for several years and even that some of them were no longer alive. The Times revealed in January that fewer than 10 per cent of the disputed members had renewed their subscriptions.
The hearing will listen to eight complaints, including allegations that Unite resources were used to campaign for Mr McCluskey and that it refused to allow Mr Hicks to make a complaint.
All the charges are rejected by Unite, which says that the rules were adhered to throughout the contest. It argued that it sought legal advice on sending voting papers to those in arrears with their membership and was informed that excluding those who had fallen behind with their payments would be against the rules.
If the complaint about the disputed voters is upheld, Mr Hicks will have to persuade the watchdog that it could have had a significant impact on the outcome if he is to secure a re-run. Failing that, the ombudsman may instruct the union to take steps to ensure that the breach does not happen again.
The outcome of the vote was that Mr McCluskey won 144,570 votes, compared with 79,819 for Mr Hicks.
Mr Hicks said he was “very buoyed up” by the news that he had been granted a hearing. He lamented the low turnout in the race, when only 15 per cent of Unite’s 1.4 million members voted and said he hoped that his complaints would lead to a more democratic union.
The last time a re-run of a general secretary contest was ordered was in 2011, when Ucatt, the construction union, was found to have sent ballot papers to only half of its 130,000 members.
The use of alleged “extreme tactics” by trade unions is to become the sole focus of an official inquiry into industrial relations, ministers have revealed (Michael Savage writes).
The investigation, announced last year, was originally ordered to examine bad practices by employers as well as the controversial “leverage campaigns” waged by some unions. However, it will now only focus on the alleged intimidatory tactics used by unions.
