Rank and file social worker Andrea Egan is the new General Secretary of Unison, with 1.4 million members, Britain’s biggest union. It will be the first time in Unison’s 32-year history that someone from outside the bureaucracy has been elected to the top job – and the first time a left winger has won.
Egan, the candidate of the broad left grouping Time For Real Change (TFRC), won 60% of the vote against incumbent Christina McAnea. Andrea will only take a social workers’ wage, not the £220,000 a year that McAnea trousered while in office. This fact alone expresses the potential for a sea-change in culture at Unison’s Euston Road HQ.
The Labour Party too is in utter confusion, not expecting the result. McAnea was a stalwart for the party’s right wing, while Egan was expelled from the party in 2022.
Now the real work begins. Activists must push hard to take advantage of a more friendly general secretary and the Employment Rights Act, insofar as the ERA contains some improvements for trade unions. But most of all, we must turn TFRC from a broad left outfit, only concerned with elections, into a real rank and file body, capable of initiating action from below.
We must campaign to oust the right wing from its still considerable positions of power in the union, whilst launching a sustained struggle over wages, working conditions, staffing levels and in the process involve a far greater proportion of the membership in active participation in the union.
