As many of you will know, trade unions are in uproar about the changes to public sector pensions that the Coalition want to make because of the economic slowdown. The PCS, which is a large public sector union, has produced a list of those groups who support the industrial action being taken on November 30th.

This week, there has been news that the GMB and Unite have also voted for strike action. These are two large and prominent trade unions that could add more weight to the argument that the proposed changes should not be implemented.

However, the trade unions want to mislead the public by claiming that the majority of their members have voted for this, when it is clearly not true. I blogged (here, here and here) and previous strike action involving the PCS and it was a similar story. Clearly, senior members want to strike, regardless of what the ‘rank and file’ think.

Voting

Copyright Xavier Arnau (a.k.a. xavierarnau, iStockPhoto)

GMB

The point couldn’t be clearer in this article:

“GMB MEMBERS VOTE BY 4 TO 1 MAJORITY IN FAVOUR OF STRIKE ACTION ON PENSIONS”

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Well, it does until you read further and find that there was a 33% turnout. This means the actual number of GMB members voting for a strike was relatively small and certainly not a majority.

Guido Fawkes has more details about the figures, noting that it was 83.7% of 33% who wanted strike action, which is 27.6% of the total membership. That isn’t exactly overwhelming.

The following is from this BBC article:

“Mr Strutton said the turnout was 33% owing in part to a large proportion of lower-paid members having not signed up to the pension scheme.

He added that the four-to-one vote in favour was “very clear” and he hoped that the government would take note of it.”

Even if a large proportion of members didn’t sign up to the pension scheme, they could still theoretically support their fellow members. Also, a union cannot possibly portray any vote as legitimate when 67% don’t take part. If they go on strike, this could quite possibly mean that people who aren’t part of the pension scheme and didn’t want industrial action are still compelled to stop working temporarily.

I should also point out that the GMB seem to be very slow in publishing the vote results on their own website, despite them being released to several news outlets very quickly. All it needs is one person to convert a document to PDF and make a small alteration to an (already published) press release.

Unite

There was also news yesterday that one of the largest trade unions in the country – Unite – had voted to join the other unions on November 30th. There membership base (according to their website) is 1.5 million. 75% voted for strike action. That’s convincing! Well, that’s what you’d think until you notice that the turnout was 31%. Assuming that the Unite membership figure is accurate, 31% of the membership is 465,000. 75% of that is 348,750. This means that 23.25% of the overall membership wanted industrial action.

That might be more than the entire membership of some other unions (e.g. the 290,000 strong PCS), but it is still not enough to make the vote legitimate in the eyes of many people. It also means that, like the GMB, many people who don’t want to strike will be compelled to do so.

Summary and Conclusion

It’s true that on November 30th, we are going to see a large number of people demonstrating against changes to public sector pensions. However, this isn’t going to be a long term demonstration and it’s unlikely that the government will change their stance. There needs to be reform in union voting. The small percentages mentioned earlier cannot be taken seriously. For a vote to be valid, there should be a turnout of at least 50% and if a union proposes industrial action, 50% or more of the membership must want it.

So, what do you think?