Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Unions need a voice and HSBC needs a chairman: I name my candidates

The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself.

issue 29 May 2010

The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself.

The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself. These days, the public associates the brotherhood of organised labour chiefly with the bizarre antics of the highly politicised Unite union, with its warring and tweeting joint general secretaries and its out-of-control airline cabin crew branch hellbent on destroying their own livelihoods by driving BA to bankruptcy in a dispute over travel perks. Yet at a time when jobs are at the top of the political agenda — the impending loss of them in the public sector, the urgent need to generate more of them, with higher skills, especially for young people, in the private sector — the workforce needs an articulate voice. This thought occurred to me while I was watching coverage of George Osborne’s first £6.2 billion worth of spending cuts: a man on a park bench in a casual shirt was being invited to comment, and I genuinely had no idea who he was until the caption announced him as TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

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