How a “Labour” Mayor took on a Unison General Secretary

DAVID may well have found a way to beat Goliath, but no one is laying odds that Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor John Biggs will succeed in defeating one of the UK’s largest trade unions in the Tower Rewards saga.

On the one hand, we have Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor John Biggs, who stood for election on a Labour Party ticket (three times – winning on the second and third attempts). Biggs has not had an easy time of it: first having to deal with the Government Commissioners and then with a fast shrinking budget as Tory austerity hit. Some of the cuts he has made have not been popular – in the community or in the Labour Party. However, in late 2018 his Administration came up with a proposal to change the terms and conditions on which Council staff were employed. The package was called “Tower Rewards”, and it was more controversial than any of the policy initiatives that had come before.

The real reason why Biggs chose to sanction a major revision of Council terms and conditions is something probably only a very few people know. It was not a manifesto pledge and there is no evidence that it was discussed or agreed by the Labour Party as a strategic objective for the Administration in advance.

The redundancy, severance, shift and travel payments which Tower Rewards seeks to reduce or remove were hard won. In the case of redundancy and severance, the reason why they were higher than the statutory minimum is because once upon a time a Labour Council said that making redundancy costly was a good way of making employers think twice before sacking workers as a way of dealing with central Government cuts. The fear now is that because cuts in redundancy payments are such a large part of the Tower Rewards package, mass sackings are on the way.

Unison strikers enjoy public support during the second 3-day strike.

This must be one of the factors that Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis is taking into account. Local government workers were reduced in number during the austerity years and those who remained suffered a pay freeze that in effect reduced their wages. Now Councils up and down the UK are announcing that, after emergency spending on the COVID-19 pandemic, their budgets no longer balance. The Government has said that it will not make up the shortfall, so who will pay?

The obvious candidates are the Council workers – with redundancies and pay cuts. Prentis is not just defending the workers in Tower Hamlets – he’s drawing a line in the sand now, before other Councils follow the Tower Hamlets example.

Tower Hamlets Councillors should think long and hard about Tower Rewards and realise the significance of what they are doing if they sanction this change in contracts. They are not backing a minor, local administrative matter. They are taking on a national trade union – one of the big four, a huge force in the labour movement of which Labour Councillors are also a part. Sometimes you just have to put your hands up, admit you made a mistake – and back down.

Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, pledging Unison’s support
for the fight against Tower Rewards:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=905713709841063

Not that backing down is something in which Executive Mayor John Biggs is greatly experienced. Biggs was leader in 1994/95, the first year of the Labour Administration which won a landslide victory in May 1994 and swept the Liberal Democrats from office.  The Lib-Dem Council had delegated about as many powers to small groups of neighbourhood councillors as the 2010 Labour Council delegated to the Executive Mayor, and Labour’s first task was to bring those functions back “in-house”, to a borough Council which was competent to run them and open to scrutiny. Integral to the recentralisation process was the negotiation of new terms and conditions of the Council workforce.

The process triggered a bitter war in the Labour Group (and the Labour Party and wider community), which became deeply divided over how the process should be handled and the implications for equal opportunities and diversity in the workforce.

Mayoral Election, May 2014: Biggs shows he can admit defeat if he wants to.

When he was elected Executive Mayor in June 2015, John Biggs said that he was coming into a divided borough, seeking to heal it and unite it. Tower Rewards is the biggest example of the failure of his intent.

The division of 1994/95 was only turned around when the Labour Group dispensed with Cllr Biggs’s services and elected a new Leader. If the Labour Group of 2020 is feeling pragmatic, it may need to do that again.  If not, if the majority of its members bury their heads in the sand or hang on in there, backing Tower Rewards and hoping for a job and a Special Responsibility Allowance in the next Biggs Cabinet, they will have to explain to local Labour Party members and the wider community why they knew better than the General Secretary of the UK’s largest public sector union.

•Read more about Tower Rewards:
Tower Rewards

•Read more about the Biggs Administration:
Executive Mayor John Biggs