Gray Allan – UNISON Falkirk Council Branch
Andrea Egan, a social worker from Bolton and Secretary of Bolton local government branch has been elected General Secretary of UNISON for the next five years. We congratulate her wholeheartedly on her victory, which is the most important gain for the left in several years. However, it is important to see that this in not the end of the battle against the union right wing.
This is a historic vote by UNISON members. For the first time in the history of UNISON a lay member has been elected General Secretary. All her predecessors were from the full-time staff of the Union. It is also the first time that the left in the Union has been able to unite behind one candidate. Andrea has committed herself to work tirelessly to transform the Union, and has also given a commitment to take only her previous social worker salary, not the £181,000 paid to her predecessors.
Not only did she win, but she won convincingly, with 58,597 votes, 59.8% of votes . The incumbent GS, Christina McAnea got 39,353 votes and this was a crushing rebuke to her leadership of the union. What was regrettble, and also an idictment of the former union leadership, was the very low participation of members, the turn-out being a meagre 7%, even less than the last General Secretary election, when McAnea defeated three left candidates with only 10% of votes cast.
Lay activist wins for first time ever
Andrea has a long history of activity in UNISON, becoming a steward thirty years ago, she then became the campaigning secretary of Bolton Local Government Branch.
She was elected to the NEC in 2017 where she was allied to the “Time for Real Change” (TfRC) broad left group and was Union President in 2022. She supported the establishment of UNISON’s first race discrimination panel, supported trans-ally training, championed the Union’s disabled workers passport and led on the “Organising to Win” programme that supported members in battles to improve pay and conditions. Caught up in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat, Andrea was expelled from the Labour Party for sharing a Facebook post from Socialist Appeal, which was subsequently proscribed.
UNISON bureaucracy campaigned for McAnea
Andrea Egan faces an enormous task. She will be now be the chief officer in a trade union bureaucracy which openly campaigned for the defeated Christina McAnea. Full-time officers, by union rule, are not allowed to participate in elections in any way, but we know they do, distributing leaflets for their chosen candidates.
Andrea faces an NEC in which the right wing still has a majority, most of whom campaigned for McAnea. She was nonetheless very gracious in her victory, calling on everyone to work with her to transform the Union.
It remains to be seen if her opponents will reciprocate. Hopefully they will, but what members do not want is for their full-time staff working to undermine the General Secretary, like the Labour bureaucracy worked assiduously against the then leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Many of those involved in undermining Corbyn were believed to be prominent lay members and staffers from UNISON and some of these people are still in the organisation or active in the lay structures. So it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there could be some spurious challenge to Andrea, using the Certification Officer or the Courts, notwithstanding the size of Andrea’s majority.
However, the Right wing face another obstacle. When the left had a majority on the NEC, in 2021-2025, the General Secretary refused to carry out some of its key decisions. McAnea and her officers got legal advice on the powers of the General Secretary, which backed her stand. Andrea Egan can now take advantage of that very same opinion!
An immediate problem Andrea Egan will face is the creation and filling of a new Assistant General Secretary post by the outgoing Christina McAnea. McAnea should now be acting as a caretaker general Secretary and not taking any actions that could prejudice any decisions the new incoming General Secretary may wish to make.
Senior Party figures appalled at the result
Andrea Egan is also not alone. Her highly effective campaign team will remain in place to provide political support. As General Secretary Andrea will be constrained in some of her freedoms to speak and act. TfRC and her supporters will be able to provide the initiatives that Andrea can then act on. They will make the bullets; she will fire them.
The Labour Party leadership is reportedly appalled at Andrea Egan’s election. One senior Party member was reported by HuffPost as saying the result “was an absolute fucking disaster – a massive loss for Keir”. UNISON was Keir Starmer’s biggest union backer in his leadership election campaign and it speaks volumes that both he and Wes Streeting – ‘Labour’ leaders determined to further privatise the NHS – showered praise on McAnea after her defeat.
A re-examination of UNISON’s relationship with the Labour Party was one of the main planks in Andrea’s campaign. She was highly critical, and rightly so, of the subservient position of the Union under previous General Secretaries. She is determined to make funding dependent on the Labour Party taking a much more radical position. MPs and candidates who act against UNISON policy should expect to lose financial support.
Another difficulty she will face, however, is that the Union’s political arm, UNISON Labour Link (ULL) is still dominated by Labour right-wingers. Decisions on political funding and UNISON’s relationship with the Party are exclusively matters for the ULL.
All previous General Secretaries have been Labour members and were able to participate in Labour Link meetings. As Andrea is not a Party member, she will find herself excluded under the rules as they stand. The Labour Link has some 400,000 members at the last count – these are the members who voluntarily pay the political levy. This number and this number alone is affiliated to the Labour Party, a fact that is always ignored by the media.
The ULL has a parallel structure within the Union in which only Labour Party members can participate at Regional and National levels. Branch Labour Link meetings are open to all payers to the Affiliated Political Fund, who in theory elect delegates to Regional Labour link Forums and Regional Labour Link Committees and submit motions. Delegates must be individual members of the Labour Party.
Delegations to the annual Labour Link Conference are indirectly elected from regional Labour Link Committees. Branch ULL organisations can also elect delegates to local constituency Labour Parties but, again, delegates must be individual members of the Party.
Undemocratic nature of the Labour Link
In theory this is all democratic but, in practice, branch ULL groups rarely meet and delegates are largely self-selecting. In addition, the UNISON National Delegate Conference is prevented by Rule from taking decisions that affect the policy of the Labour Link. The role of the Labour Link is to take UNISON policy into the Labour Party, but there is no effective mechanism other than the goodwill of Labour Link activists to ensure that this happens.
The weakness of ULL is evident in the fact that delegates to regional and national Labour conferences, and those elected to Labour Regional Boards and the NEC, frequently vote and act in a way that is detrimental to the membership, by backing the Starmer leadership and Labour bureaucrats. For the selection of delegates for the general election – foisting right-wingers onto reluctant Constituency Labour Parties – UNISON representatives played a key role. All that needs to change.
In the past, the ULL structure was able to play a positive role in some cases. A large chunk of the measures in the new Employment Act came from UNISON. While I was a member of the National Labour Link Committee Labour lefts were able to carry the vote getting ULL to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for Party Leader – which did not stop staff working against him during his time as Leader of the Opposition.
This structure is set out in the UNISON Rulebook and stems from the original merger of three unions to form UNISON. COHSE and NUPE were already Labour Party affiliates, while the third union, NALGO was not. So the separation of ULL from other parts of UNISON was to preserve COHSE and NUPE’s relationship with the Party, while respecting NALGO’s non-party political status.
What the left in the union needs to do is to democratise ULL and make it relevant and meaningful to the mass of members, not just 40% of them. Andrea’s promise to re-examine the Union’s link with Labour should be aimed at democratising ULL and using the Union as a spearhead to fight against the Labour right wing in the Party.
She has said her view of Starmer “doesn’t mean turning away from politics”, but that needs to be more concrete. It would be a serious mistake to adopt – as Unite’s Sharon Graham appears to do from time to time – an ‘arms-length’ attitude, or worse, indifference, towards affiliation to the Labour Party. Affiliation should be supported and used to fight the right wing.
It would be the worst possible mistake for Time for Real Change, if there were any complacency as a result of Andrea’s marvellous victory. We cannot rest on our laurels as if it were ‘job done’. Just as important – in some respects more important – is the fight to build a mass broad left of active members in every region, district and service group. That is the only guarantee of supporting Andrea and winning a left NEC.
The left needs to build in UNISON. The first step is the Service Group elections, which start in January. Then the work to win a left majority on the NEC in June must begin. The left coalition that campaigned with so much determination and elan to win the General Secretary election has a historic responsibilty to hold together and finish the job of making UNISON a left, militant, fighting union.
