Unison has failed to punch its weight despite 30 years of promise

The talks about merging and the merger process itself took many years but came to fruition to produce a predominantly public-sector union which has for many years since been the biggest union in both Scotland and Britain.

The new union spent time trying to amalgamate and integrate the different operating traditions and tendencies of being more lay led by activists (Nalgo) and being more full-time officer led (Cohse, Nupe).

Thirty years ago really does seem like another era. Use of email and the internet were just beginning but are now part and parcel of everyday existence.

South Africa had not yet seen the abolition of apartheid. And the Labour Party still had some radical pretensions before Tony Blair was elected leader in 1994 after the untimely death of John Smith – whereas now Keir Starmer states that even Blair’s “New” Labour did not go far enough in throwing out any progressive policies.

Today, UNISON has some 1.25m members, 75% of whom are women and its first female general secretary, Glasgow-born Christina McAnea, was elected in early 2021.

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Numbers matter because numbers bring potential power. But equally critical is what is done to create actual power with these numbers, how it is used and for what purposes.

UNISON has always managed to keep its membership numbers above one million. On the one hand, this is no mean feat given the cold shouldering of unions by “New” Labour and then the continued Thatcherite attacks since 2010 as well as privatisations, contracting out and cuts in public expenditure.

But, on the other hand, UNISON has never been able to use all its now combined resources and potency to create a virtuous upward spiral of continued net membership growth and sustained influence.

This was the hope and expectation of the advocates of merger – that bigger was necessarily better and scale was significant in achieving aims. In some of UNISON’s heartland areas, such as local government and health, membership density is well below 50% and has not been resuscitated.

So, there is a sense that UNISON has never punched its weight, much less anything above that. While it was instrumental in achieving the introduction of the national minimum wage in 1999 and has won important legal battles (like the 2017 revocation of fees for making an application to an employment tribunal and in 2022 secured the same minimum level of paid annual holiday leave for all workers no matter how many hours they work), there have been disappointments.

Some of this is attributed by those on the radical left to insufficient industrial and political militancy from the leadership of UNISON.

But some of this must also be attributable to a radical left inside UNISON that has not been able to unite together to credibly challenge its internal opponents until very recently.

For example, three left-wing candidates were beaten by McAnea for the general secretaryship but together polled more votes than she did, albeit on a poor 10% membership turnout.

The contrast with Unite the Union is instructive here. Formed in 2007 from a merger of two unions with just under two million members, under all its leaderships but especially those of Len McCluskey (2010-2021) and Sharon Graham (2021-present), Unite has been a thorn in the side of the economic and political establishment.

McCluskey sought to shift Labour to the left and was a keen supporter of Corbyn. However, his leadership was seen as being too concerned with political machinations and funding Labour and not enough with the pay and conditions of Unite members.

Consequently, Graham was elected as the upstart candidate to replace him. Under her leadership, Unite has engaged in excess of 600 industrial disputes, winning 80% of them and consequently putting £300m more into members’ wage packets.

This has been facilitated by a strike fund of some £35m.

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Though Unite has had its internal wrangles and lost some 800,000 members since its formation, a left leadership has been able to put up spirited resistance industrially and politically, winning quite a few battles along the way.

For UNISON, there is still the sense that it could do more and better.

It does well on high-profile campaigning against racism and homophobia, for example, but has struggled to create an active and influential alliance between the providers of public services – its members – and the users of public services through the likes of its “Positively Public” campaign.

In the current and continuing cost of living crisis, it has had quite a muted voice overall.

Thirty years is often seen as amounting to a generation. No doubt UNISON will be around for another 30 at least but it will take a new generation of leaders to realise the union’s as yet unrealised potential.

Professor Gregor Gall is a Visiting Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Leeds