Discussion article by a London UNISON activist AS UNISON delegates across the country prepare to pack their suitcases for the first annual conference in Bournemouth in the middle of May, the question on many minds is "What the hell is going on?".
With the merry-go-round of internal full time officer appointments still creaking around, with FOUR head office buildings scattered across London, and with a national membership system which lurches from crisis to crisis, the services to activists and members of the three former unions COHSE, NALGO and NUPE, have collapsed like a pack of cards.
The Union's finance section is so paranolo about members finding out the state of play that information is restricted to a small sub- committee of the NEC.
One member of the committee revealed after a few beers that the Union is dropping £2 million SUPPOR Time, quite large numbers of manual workers.
NALGO members are far too ready to dismiss former COHSE and NUPE activists as "right wing" because they don't necessarily share the enthusiasm for the same issues, adopt all the right slogans or sell papers outside meetings.
A classic example is in local government where ex-NUPE branches, after years of being