Yesterday's GMB CEC decision to cut its level of collective membership affiliation to 420,000 to 50,000 (and reduce funding from £1.2m to £150,000) from next January is remarkable in its timing ahead of the planned special conference in Spring 2014. While the GMB's anger at the Labour leadership's proposals to end collective union affiliation is entirely justified this premature decision plays into the hands of critics of the link given the lack of consultation with GMB political levy payers. The Collin Review is yet to conclude and the GMB weakens its voting strength ahead of the special conference. It doesn't make sense and epitomises the counter productive nature of the Falkirk issue. The mother of own goals and a criminal distraction from the priority of defeating the Con Dems at the next general election:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/04/gmb-union-labour-party-funding
#tuc12 Yesterday’s eve-of-Congress press conference held by GMB and UNISON has attracted a lot of media interest. The most important announcement was a commitment to jointly organise in the poorly unionised and highly exploitative social care sector. Yet invariably speculation about a possible merger is making the headlines, with today’s FT exclaiming ‘two unions on path to merger’ and that ‘a merger between UNISON, with more than 1.3m members, and the GMB, with 610,000, would create the UK’s biggest union, larger than the 1.4m-member Unite. It would span local government, health, education and parts of the private sector’:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fb26410-fa9c-11e1-b775-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz260JN9hrl
The GMB union will have its own reasons for inviting discredited Con Dem business secretary Vince Cable MP to its annual conference in Brighton today.
