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With the division, and what looks like organising stagnation, in UNISON’s lay national executive (NEC) following the election of a majority running under the Time for Real Change (TFRC) ticket, it is a good time to look at what exactly lay control is, its history and how that works in partnership with the full-time structures. It certainly wasn’t intended to centre on paying for various legal opinions to try to justify TFRC attempts to meddle with National Conference rule decisions. There may be legal looph
No matter what the politics are, lay control surely shouldn’t be about a union of 80% women, a union that pioneered self-organisation to recognise and promote our diversity, using a TFRC ticket to replace an expected low paid woman president and most national committee chairs with white males. It’s worth remembering that some so-called ‘left’ groups historically opposed self-organisation of structurally disadvantaged groups.
The results of these changes can now be seen in the volume of worker movements, exacerbated by the pandemic, many are leaping to the next job seeking better pay to compensate for their otherwise poor conditions of employment. This can only be described as a jobs crisis. But it is not limited to the private sector. Within the public sector it looks like a pay ‘rise’ of 1.75% will land on council workers. This is against the context of a reported shortage of around 170,000 – 190,000 care workers, with 105,000
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