21.03.1996

Council workers prepare to fight

Unison threatened with derecognition in Brent

For the first time a major local council is threatening to deprive its workforce of union representation. Brent, in north-west London, which has a Conservative majority of one over Labour, is proposing to withdraw recognition from Unison, the main trade union.

Ostensibly the Tories are objecting to the conduct of Unison regional officer Stuart Barber for his part in exposing a shady privatisation deal involving Whitewater Leisure Management, which has taken over the borough’s three leisure centres, and is now subject to an internal investigation. But local officials are convinced that the attack on one particular union full-timer is just a pretext for crippling workers’ defence in the face of new assaults.

Assistant branch secretary Geoff Raw explained:

“The 1996-7 budget proposes to make further cuts of £8 million, but opportunities for doing this are now few. For example education expenditure per child is already the lowest, so they are looking for other ways of saving money.”

This could include the rapid privatisation of all ‘direct-line’ services with the loss of many jobs and cuts in wages and working conditions. That is why the council wants to break the union.

Yet the Tories are insisting that it is only Stuart Barber they are objecting to. Councillor Sean O’Sullivan, chairman of the personnel sub-committee, which made the derecognition proposals, told me: “We have no problem with industrial relations or staff morale. But Stuart Barber has conducted a political campaign against the council through what is basically a series of lies.” O’Sullivan went on to tell me how sad he was at having to go down the derecognition road, but he thought the situation now looked “somewhat positive”. He believed that Unison would replace the regional officer and thus resolve the problem.

Refusing to say whether the derecognition proposals were now official Tory policy, he claimed that it was not a party political question. The two Labour members of the sub-committee, while opposing derecognition, “agreed there was a problem with Stuart Barber”.

Officially the Labour group claimed that “personalities are irrelevant”. Personnel spokesperson Joyce Bacchus said: “Just because Mr Barber has embarrassed the Tories - particularly in relation to scandals in social services - is no reason to ride roughshod over workers’ rights.”

However, Unison branch secretary Brian Butterworth retorted: “Stuart will not be replaced if we have anything to do with it. That would be a defeat: a Tory council telling the union who can represent them?!”

Instead Unison is preparing to fight back. It is mobilising for a mass lobby of the council’s policy and resources committee on April 1, to be followed by a branch membership meeting the next day to decide what action to take.

As Geoff Raw says:

“Our members have been battered, but there is enormous anger and expectations of a strike. This is a national issue and the national union must not be let off the hook. Stuart Barber must not be made the scapegoat.”

Peter Manson