Stage, Screen & Radio - December/January 2015 - 6

President
Jane Perry looks at how individual and collective interests can be united

All for one and one for all?

ROD LEON

S

o how far should a
union go for an individual
member and vice versa?
The most obvious
example is the question of
whether a union should take
strike action over one individual
member's issues. A union has
a responsibility to the individual
member and to the collective
membership.
However the two need not be
mutually exclusive if the situation
is handled with honesty to both
constituent parties. The
individual is told their union will
represent them as necessary in
what is their negotiation with
management. Then if that
negotiation fails the union can
tell the collective (let's call them
Branch A) that it may be
necessary to use their collective

the whole idea. Of course crossing
a picket line is the ultimate in
undermining the collective. This is
why it's hard for those who have
been on strike to forget those who
have not, especially if they
accepted whatever was won by
their striking colleagues.
UNITED FRONT

Move on Up has won
the support of the
greats; the next event
is on 25 March

strength - leading potentially
to ballot. The case has to be
honestly put to the membership
of Branch A - they'll need a clear
explanation of the case against

management, the context in
which the action is called for and
also an explanation that as the
action is called in support of an
individual member so the final
outcome of negotiation in their
case, though represented by the
union, is (and can only be) their
decision. Such circumstances are
very, very rare - I've only seen it
done once.
UNDERMINING THE COLLECTIVE

What about when an individual's
issues undermine the collective
position? Of such things
management dreams are made!
Collective action applies to all
trade unionists including
freelance workers - they often
need the protection of collective
action more. In this year alone
BECTU freelance members stuck
together to get the rates they
believe they should be paid on
television dramas, they were
very well aware that if one was
prepared to work for less then
they would never get a fair rate.
Amongst employee members
bonus-related pay is often
dangled as a carrot, as a way of
paying increases to those whom
"deserve them." What is always
missed out is that such bonuses
are neither consolidated nor
pensionable and of course that it
will be management who decide
who is deserving. Such individual
inducements are always at the
expense of the collective - that's
6

Freelance and employee BECTU
members have worked very
successfully together to forward
both collective aims and to
support each other's collective
actions.
Equality committees also work
well cross-divisionally. I don't
think anyone could deny just
how successful Move On Up has
been in terms of raising BECTU's
profile. I think there is still so
much that could be achieved
both for the individual activists
involved and for the causes they
are active around, by their taking
those issues, via their branches
and divisions, into the collective
arena. Once in the workplace
the potential of equality issues is
still huge: the Equal Pay Act was
born of individual women at a
factory in Dagenham, acting as
a unionised collective, to
successfully challenge their
employer grading them
unskilled while grading the men
in the factory, doing equivalent
work, semi-skilled.
My activism was lit by my
employer's hopeless attitude to
disability in 2002. The national
official who encouraged me to
be active predicted, "You'll want
to move on from disability
issues." I was gobsmacked: what
could possibly be more
important or more urgent than
how disabled people were
treated at work? I then thought.
Eventually that official was
proved right - it wasn't that
either they or I thought disability
rights less important, it was just
the realisation that the best
place to actually make a real
difference, on any front, was
in the collective arena: size
matters! l

Stage Screen & Radio December/January 2015
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Stage, Screen & Radio - December/January 2015

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