La distribución general de la tierra

MSF was founded in 1988 from an amalgamation of the Association of Scientific Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) and the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Staffs (TASS). At the time, ASTMS membership was said to be about 390,000 and TASS 260,000 (Carter 1991: 45). The total membership of 650,000 made it the largest private sector white-collar union in the world (Carter 1991: 37) and a position as the sixth largest union in the TUC. Table 4 illustrates its history.

Table 3. History of MSF PREVIOUS UNIONS YEAR FOUNDED PREVIOUS UNIONS AFFILIATION TRADES UNION CONGRESS (TUC) LABOUR PARTY YEAR OF AMALGAMATION AMALGAMATED UNION Association of Supervisory Staff, Executives and Technicians (ASSET) 1968 Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs TUC Labour Party Association of Scientific Workers (AScW) (ASTMS) 1988 Manufacturing Science and Finance (MSF) Draughtsmen and Allied Technicians Association (DATA) 1970 Section Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) 1985 Independent Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Staffs (TASS) TUC Labour Party

Source: Carter (1991); Eaton & Gill (1983)

ASTMS had been founded in 1968 from the merger of The Association of Supervisory Staff, Executives and Technicians and The Association of Scientific Workers. Subsequently it had seen a period of rapid growth in membership under the leadership of Clive Jenkins, its charismatic General Secretary (see Melling 2004

for Jenkins’ leadership of ASTMS). Mainly, this expansion had been through the union positioning itself in new and expanding areas of employment, or in areas where union organisation was at a low level. It had also grown through a number of mergers with smaller specialist or employer-based unions (Eaton & Gill 1983: 123- 132). However, the harsher economic and political climate of the 1980s had seen a tailing off in this growth. Membership started to fall and the aura of success, personified in the ebullient Clive Jenkins, began to tarnish. By now, ASTMS was organising scientific, technical and managerial employees in manufacturing, finance, universities and health.

Organisationally all members were placed in one of 900 branches. The boundaries of these branches were a mixture of geographic, including members from a number of different employers and workplaces, or (particularly in large manufacturing companies) single employer or workplace branches. The branches were represented on one of the 16 Divisional Councils and at the Annual Delegate Conference, whilst the National Executive Council largely comprised individuals elected by the whole membership. The heterogeneous nature of its membership spread over a number of different industries. Its rapid growth sometimes outstripped its organisational development and its constitution and rules, resulting in a loose organisation where branches and Divisional Councils had their own funds and a degree of autonomous control over their intra-union affairs (Carter 1991; Carter & Cooper 2002; Fairbrother 2000a: 43).

TASS had been established in 1970 when its predecessor, Draughtsmen and Allied Technicians Association, had become the white-collar section of the loosely merged Amalgamated Union of Engineering W orkers (AUEW). Never a harmonious merger, the fundamental and unresolved differences between TASS and the other sections of AUEW over the appointment (TASS) or election (AUEW) of full-time officials eventually led to TASS establishing itself as an independent union in 1985. Its growth through recruitment had been much slower than ASTMS and it had a much lower propensity to attract merger partners (Eaton & Gill 1983: 111-119). Its membership was also far more concentrated in the manufacturing sector, although those members held a wide range of occupations. If anything, this concentration had made it even more vulnerable than ASTMS to the wholesale job losses and tough

political climate of the 1980s, which had particularly affected the old established engineering industries where the majority of TASS members were employed.

If the membership profile of TASS had many synergies with at least a significant section of ASTMS’s membership in engineering (Carter 1991: 40-42) its organisational profile could not have been more different. Superficially there was the same structure of local branches, Divisional Councils, Annual Representative Council (or Conference), Executive Committee and an equally dominant General Secretary in Ken Gill (see Taylor 1978: 225-228 for Gill’s leadership of TASS); but there the sim ilarities ended. The 320 branches and 26 Divisional Councils had no funds of their own or any real level of autonomy over their activity within the union. The 165 delegates to its Annual Representative Council were elected at Divisional Conferences where all branches were represented, but that was the closest most branch activists got to national activity. This small conference then selected most of the other lay representatives and national committees within TASS. These arrangements were in contrast to the 1,100 delegates to the ASTMS Annual Conference representing every branch in the union. This funnelling of representation through to the Representative Council enabled the Communist Party (CP) led Broad Left faction in TASS to control every aspect of the union's activity (Carter 1991; Parkin 1975). As Fairbrother subsequently remarked in looking back at the two constituents of MSF:

ASTMS had a tradition of organisation where the branches had considerable financial and political independence, whereas TASS branches were tightly circumscribed, the union organising on the basis of full-time officer leadership and control (Fairbrother 2000a: 43).

Carter (1991) provides a succinct history and description of the MSF amalgamation although an emphasis on the ASTMS side of the story (prompted by a reluctance to engage with the research from former TASS lay leaders and full-time officials (Carter interview 1997)) results in an occasionally skewed presentation. However, it is apparent that the political, economic and industrial environment of the 1980s had adversely affected the membership growth and organisational and financial stability of both ASTMS and TASS. W ithin ASTMS, the engineering section had seen its previously dominant position of influence whither as the union rapidly expanded into the financial and health sectors. Often working and bargaining alongside

counterparts in TASS there was a commonality of interest between them and the possibility of a restoration of power and influence for a combined engineering membership within an amalgamated union. For both leaderships amalgamation would be a straightforward response to their mutual organisational, financial and membership problems, and would provide a platform for increasing their influence in the TUC and the Labour Party. To the outside world and the membership at large these 'old tensions inherent within trade unionism' (Carter 1991: 38) were dressed up as an exercise in creating a 'new* form of trade unionism.

The problem for the amalgamation was that 'new* was never adequately defined, either in terms of form ’ or in terms of ‘character* (Carter 1991: 37). In the impetus to secure the amalgamation, these more fundamental issues were largely brushed aside by the rhetoric of the leadership and particularly the two General Secretaries, Ken Gill of TASS and Clive Jenkins of ASTMS (MSF 1988b). The amalgamation was secured based on two separate divisions (Division 1, ASTMS and Division A, TASS) with equal representation on all policy-making forums and a future National Rules Conference when the 'form' of MSF would be agreed. In the meantime, the two old unions would continue to operate as almost separate entities under this enabling umbrella. However, there were inherent problems of both 'form' and 'character* in forging the amalgamated union under this arrangement. Immediately, the disparity between the 50/50 representation and the almost 3:1 majority of ASTMS membership betrayed an apparent imbalance in internal power between the two divisions in favour of TASS. These statistics give an early indication of the genesis of the battle over 'form' that was to consume the energies of many lay leaders and full-time officials in the early years of MSF. Without any consideration of 'character1 the widely disparate 'forms' of the two old unions would have created considerable problems in producing a single 'form' acceptable to both. However, when married to the fundamental differences of 'character* between the 'anarchic, diverse and de-centralised' ASTMS and the 'democratic centralism' of TASS (MSF national full-time official interview 1999) the blood-letting of the subsequent battle for control between the two divisions was of little surprise. The confrontation is graphically illustrated by Carter (1991) and will not be rehearsed in detail here except to note that four years after the first unified National Executive meeting at the election of Roger Lyons as General Secretary Designate, Ken Gill (the incumbent General Secretary) stated that the vote had split along ASTMSTTASS lines (Carter 1991: 38).

The interviews for the MSF case study were mainly conducted in 1999 some ten years after the formal amalgamation, yet the infighting of the early years was a reference point for all the respondents. In essence, it seems that those from TASS in Division A attempted to use their tightly controlled 50 per cent block vote to dominate MSF and create it as a mirror image of the 'form and character" of TASS. After some initial success with this tactic those from ASTMS in Division 1, together with some allies from Division A countered this approach. The superior organisation and numbers of this alliance eventually saw the outcome as a union very much in the ’form and character* of ASTMS (Carter 1991; Carter and Poynter 2002; Fairbrother 2000a: 46). Fairbrother commenting that,

A union which was bom out of a merger between two unions organised on the basis of very different traditions and practices has ended up affirming the importance of workplace organisation and sovereignty (Fairbrother 2000a: 46).

The local level of MSF was composed of formal branches and informal organisations where members worked. The boundaries of these two forms of local or workplace organisation could be coterminous but in large part rarely occurred and this was the situation for the workplace case study. Branches established in ASTMS and TASS simply transferred unchanged into MSF with no subsequent attempt made to rationalise what became an increasingly irrational and confusing structure. All members were also members of a branch but this membership often bore little relationship to where they were actually employed. The result was the development of informal workplace organisations for dealing with industrial relations issues with the employer. However, branches were the only local level of organisation recognised in the constitution and rules and, outside of direct elections for the General Secretary or the National Executive Committee, were the forum for democratic governance. This dichotomy between workplace and branch had a real influence over the presence of the local context in the MSF amalgamation.

The overriding characteristic of the MSF amalgamation was a battle for control of the amalgamated union. Ostensibly, this confrontation was between the CP-led Broad Left faction that had exercised hegemonic control over TASS and sought to extend its hegemony into MSF, and an alliance between those from ASTMS and TASS who resisted this policy. However, the contention was also between opposed forms of

unionism, the ‘leader-led’ form of TASS and the ‘member-led’ form of ASTMS. The latter emerged as the dominant form in MSF. The procedure adopted for the amalgamation seemed to either, fail to acknowledge this divide or be manipulated to advantage the agenda of the Broad Left. Superficially, the location where members worked appeared to be a bystander in this confrontation but the extent to which its position in the amalgamation was influenced by the confrontation is an important issue.

UNISON

UNISON was formed in 1993 from the amalgamation of the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE), the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) and the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). Immediately before the amalgamation COHSE claimed a membership of 190,000, NALGO 700,000 and NUPE 510,000 and the combined membership of 1.4 million made it the largest British trade union (Ironside and Seifert 2000). Table 3 illustrates its history.

Table 4. History of UNISON PREVIOUS UNIONS YEAR FOUNDED PREVIOUS UNIONS AFFILIATION TRADES UNION CONGRESS (TUC) LABOUR PARTY YEAR OF