Union elections

Kirklees Unison has held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Paul Holmes has been re-elected as branch secretary in an online ballot of all members. The Huddersfield Examiner reports that Unison nationally has supported Holmes in holding the branch secretary position despite him being sacked recently by Kirklees council, as Solidarity has reported . Paul Holmes is appealing against his sacking, and believes it is victimisation due to his trade union activities. Paul Holmes was challenged by Socialist Party member Angie Waller, and the outgoing assistant branch secretary position was also...

The Deputy General Secretary (DGS) election in the National Education Union (NEU) has been won by "moderate" candidate Niamh Sweeney. It had been expected that Gawain Little of the “NEU Left” would win. Workers’ Liberty supported Martin Powell-Davies, the candidate of the rank-and-file Education Solidarity Network, and we advocated a transfer to Sweeney to stop Little. Little is a prominent member of Communist Party of Britain, with all that entails. In the first round Little got 9,953, Powell-Davies 6,724, and Sweeney 11,035. Sweeney got around 60% of Powell-Davies’s second preferences...

Voting in the election for the first ever elected Deputy General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) opens on 4 October, with ballot papers being sent to members’ homes. Voting closes on 29 October. Socialists, rank and file activists, and members should vote for Martin Powell-Davies, the Education Solidarity Network (ESN) candidate. Martin is standing on a 10-point manifesto: 1. Action to protect the health, safety and welfare of staff and our communities from Covid-19 2. End excessive workload, and end the high stakes testing that drives so much of it. 3. A Union that builds...

Elections for the Assistant General Secretary and National President positions are currently taking place in the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers (RMT). Supporters of Workers’ Liberty active in the union are backing Alan Pottage (AGS) and Sean Hoyle (National President). The past year in RMT has seen outbreaks of conflict within the union over the application of its rule book and how much power should be held by union officers and staff, as against lay bodies like the National Executive Committee. The former General Secretary Mick Cash retired early, following claims...

The 2021 Unite the Union General Secretary election appears to have continued the pattern of a declining turnout in each General Secretary election since the union’s creation.

With the success in June of the “Time For Real Change” left slate in the National Executive Committee (NEC) elections for the public services union Unison, the union’s Labour Link Committee, mandated to guide the union’s activity within the Labour Party, could for the first time be controlled by the left. Unison have election rules which ban slates in elections, but both right and left of the union have one candidate in each contested seat. (Some are uncontested). Voting runs from 7 Sep to 13 Oct. The left candidates are: East Midlands - Anjona Roy Greater London - Ruth Cashman Northern -...

On 25 August Sharon Graham won the Unite general secretary election, becoming the first woman to lead the union. Graham got 46,696 votes, with Steve Turner — the favoured successor of outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey — gaining 41,833. Many feared that two left candidates in a First Past the Post election would allow right winger Gerard Coyne to win; in the event, Coyne came third with 35,334. The turnout was around 10% of Unite’s 1.2 million-strong membership. It was 12% in 2017, 15% in 2013, and 16% in 2010. Workers’ Liberty supporters in Unite called for a critical vote for Sharon...

Sharon Graham has won the Unite general secretary election, becoming the first woman to lead the union. Graham won 46,696, with Steve Turner - the favoured successor of outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey - gaining 41,833.

Dale Street ( Solidarity 601 ) is right to take issue with the entirely uncritical hagiography to newly-elected GMB union general secretary Gary Smith offered by a group of “GMB comrades” in their article of the previous week ( Solidarity 600 ). Reading the comrades’ paean would give readers the impression that Smith was a radical class fighter, if not quite a revolutionary socialist then very near to one, and someone who has dedicated himself to an unambiguous one-man mission to turn the GMB into a militant, class-struggle union. Smith is exactly what Dale Street has, in previous articles...