Union elections

Voting in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) General Secretary election is taking place between 4 and 25 June. There are two candidates — the incumbent, Christine Blower, and Martin Powell-Davies, a member of the Socialist Party and the candidate of the Local Associations National Action Campaign (LANAC), a rank-and-file network within the NUT. Workers' Liberty is supporting Martin Powell-Davies. When the Deputy General Secretary election takes place later this year LANAC will be standing Patrick Murphy, a Workers' Liberty member. The GS election is a straight choice between the current NUT...

The results of the elections to the NUT National Executive for 2014-16 were released on 10 April. They show significant successes for the Local Associations National Action Campaign (LANAC). Following the elections there are around eight NUT Executive members who are strong supporters of LANAC and a wider group who have a track record of supporting the rank-and-file network’s proposals to escalate industrial action in the current dispute with the government. The first priority in this election was to ensure that LANAC convenor Martin Powell Davies, a Socialist Party member, was re-elected in...

The negotiations forced on London Underground bosses by Tube workers’ strike of 4-6 February will conclude on 14 April. Activists in the RMT union say the talks have been useful for learning more about the scale of bosses’ cuts plans, but that little progress has been made, management remain intransigent and workers must be prepared to strike again. The talks have revealed that LU bosses want to increase managerial staff by 370%, while reducing frontline staff by 753 posts. While they propose to close every ticket office on the network, they have admitted that they only plan to install 150 new...

Delegates to the conference of the National Union of Teachers will meet in Brighton from 18-22 April just weeks after our national strike. Top of the agenda will be the national dispute with Michael Gove and, specifically, the next steps in the campaign of industrial action and public agitation. As at previous conferences the debate on the dispute will be shaped by a priority motion from the National Executive and amendments from delegates. There are at least three major issues to resolve. First what is the action plan for the months ahead? The Executive motion recommends a further one day...

Nominations for General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) close on 30 April. Martin Powell-Davies, secretary of Lewisham NUT, is standing as the left candidate for General Secretary, with the support of the rank-and-file activists’ network Lanac, along with Patrick Murphy (Leeds NUT secretary and an AWL member) for Deputy General Secretary. The NUT plans a one-day national strike on 26 March, but the condition of the union’s campaign against education minister Michael Gove’s frenzy of right-wing policies underlines the need for a left challenge in the union elections and a...

Earlier this summer, Max Watson, Chair of London Met Unison, and on the National Executive Council, wrote on his blog an article entitled “IWGB: Two small unions?” . Max documents the behaviour of the IWGB (Independent Workers union of Great Britain) trade union at London Met – claiming poaching, duplicity, and more. He goes on to draw parallels with a collection of workers and campaign I am heavily involved with at the University of London, based at Senate House in Bloomsbury (I am the Youth Officer of the Unison branch, and an IWGB member). The campaign is called "Tres Cosas” (“three things”...

This article was written in response to a piece in Socialist Review. The author has also requested that it be published there. We host it in our website in the interests of furthering the debate. The move of Senate House cleaners, other outsourced staff, and their supporters to leave Unison en masse and form a University of London branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), after the annulment of their elections, has sparked heated debate within trade union circles, especially among Unison activists. Sandy Nicoll, branch secretary of SOAS Unison, contributed to this debate...

Members of the Independent Left network within the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) are standing in the upcoming National Executive Committee elections alongside members of the Independent Socialists. They are standing on a platform of transforming the PCS to make it a rank-and-file-led union with radical, imaginative industrial strategies. For more information on the platform and the candidates, see here .

Voting in the election for the general secretary’s position in Unite began on 18 March, with the ballot due to close on Friday 12 April. The incumbent, Len McCluskey, is re-standing. His only opponent is Jerry Hicks, a former shop steward at a Rolls Royce plant in Bristol. Workers’ Liberty members in Unite are backing a vote for McCluskey because he is the candidate of the United Left grouping in which we are involved. While on some issues we agree with Hicks against McCluskey (such as union officials taking an average worker’s wage), we do not believe Hicks’s campaign offers a serious...

Workers’ Liberty members in Unite will be critically supporting Len McCluskey, the candidate of Unite United Left (in which we are involved), in the forthcoming general secretary election. There have been some positive improvements within Unite under McCluskey’s leadership. A culture of greater democracy and debate has been encouraged, and the move towards industrial reorganisation and workplace branches is positive. On the whole the union is more prepared than in the past to back its members in taking action, and providing resources to help organise direct action in support of industrial...