A short bitch

Warming up for a blogging restart with fantasies for 2008: We @ hangbitch like to think that 2008 will be the year that furious trade union members finally put a fatal gumboot into the traitorous Labour party. We want this to be the year that the majestically hopeless Gordon Brown pays for privatising public services and jobs, and fragging the standards of both for the forseeable future.

We also like to think that this will be the year that trade union members go after the Labour party butt-kissers who run the big public sector unions. Just a fantasy at this stage, but one we're spending a lot of time on. We're getting sick of hearing that left-leaning union branch secretaries are being disciplined on trumped-up charges by their very own unions, etc. We're particularly keen for 2008 to be the year that the career of Linda Perks, the evil New Labourite witch who doubles as Unison London regional secretary, meets a globby end after gross, and very public, hostilties. Slag.

But anyway... here we are, at an unofficial meeting of a large group of union branch secretaries and reps in a cold Houses of Parliament committee room, talking about the malignant environment that branch-level union reps are having to operate in. We won't be naming the meeting attendees on this occasion, in case that crone Perks decides to discipline union members for showing their faces at an unofficial union meeting. That would totally be her style. Attendees aren't in the most festive of tenors as it is: Fighting for the lowest-paid workers and the public services they provide isn't a picnic and this has been a difficult year. It ain't ending on a high note, either.

Certainly, senior people in the union movement have taken some worrying hits. Karen Reissman, a Manchester community psychiatric nurse and Unison rep of many years experience and integrity, has just lost her appeal against her sacking by the Manchester Mental Health Trust earlier this year. The trust admired Ms Reissman's work as a nurse - indeed, in true New Labourite arse-about form, it promoted her to a senior nursing role on the very day that it suspended her - but it didn't care for her committment to unions and Manchester's grassroots fight for decent, public community psychiatric services. The trust sacked her for sharing - in her capacity as a union spokesperson - the union's concerns about the effect of NHS funding cuts in mental health care with a newspaper.

Meanwhile, down the line in Newham in East London, longstanding Newham Unison chair Michael Gavan has been sacked for organising a protest against the plans of cretinous Newham New Labourite mayor Sir Robin Wales to privatise cleaning and refuse services in his increasingly ridiculous Olympic borough. Gavan has one of the highest profiles on the trade union circuit, especially now.

'We know what that [privatising] means,' Gavan has said many times. He's right. Plenty of people at this unofficial meeting have firsthand experience of exactly the sort of failed privatisation programme that the likes of the dire Sir Robin drools for (God knows why - privatisation has been such a disaster for New Labour that even halfwits in outlying boroughs ought to be keen enough on self-preservation to avoid it). Careworkers who have the dubious pleasure of being employed by Barnet borough's Fremantle Trust know exactly what privatising means for staff and services, and have repeatedly taken strike action throughout 2007 in response to it.

'My members say that we've got this thing called the Labour Link,' one branch secretary sniggers. 'They say 'I've got this nice shiny magazine (the Unison-Labour party link magazine that yaps on about the myriad benefits of Unison's supposed influence with New Labour politicians) that comes through (the door).' Well, I want to see something from that, for Manchester and for Newham and Fremantle. 'That link has got to start to work. Now... before my head explodes, I'll sit down.'

'Newham used to be an old Labour council,' somebody else says. 'Many people there stand for public service... our mayor doesn't want to see it continue like that. The mayor in Newham says the union is the biggest obstacle.'

Somebody else insinuates that Unison's London regional officers have been obstacles as well in Newham - not for Robin Wales, but for their very own union members.

'We're going on strike [in support of Gavan], but we've had four [Unison} regional officers around the table at every stage [standing in the way of our strike]. They would say No, [we have to ballot again] that's not the [union] rule.'

Somebody else worries that they might be disciplined by their union for attending this unofficial meeting at all. This person says that it's bad enough trying to deal with the problems managers at Newham have caused by confusing the message about the strike to support Gavan.

'On Monday [just gone], every council worker who opened their computer got a message from the council saying they couldn't strike and that if you did, it would be illegal and you would be sacked. It's a problem when what you've heard from your own [regional] union officials appears as the council's message by Monday morning. It's a worry when you wonder if you will be in trouble with your union as well as with your management and police and everyone else in the world... It is absolutely vital that we continue the debate with the union officials in our region, that yes, we have to fight, and we need help from our officials to do that.'

Other union members reveal that they have asked for the Labour Link to be mobilised - for their union to use its 'special relationship' with the Labour party to pressure the party into toning its privatisation obsession down. 'One of the answers I've been given is that it would be too embarassing to the unions in not being able to effectively use that link' - ie, even union hierarchies know their influence with the Labour party adds to up about five-eighths of bugger-all.

'This is a question about the politics inside the Labour [party] unions,' someone else observes. 'We are constantly blocked by the total embarassment [that is this] Labour government and Labour councils.'

'Now is the time for our union to come together at every level,' fumes somebody else, ' right from [Unison general secretary] Dave Prentis down to every regional grouping. [They need to be] standing up in solidarity, saying that's enough, we've had enough. We need a big explanation about why we have to keep facing this [privatising of public services]. We need a political explanation as well.'

An explanation from the Labour party about its attacks on public services? Can't WAIT to hear it.