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Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry
Dated: 23.8.22
Summary of Trade Union Career
. From 1970-1972, I was the Assistant Research Officer at the National Union
of Seamen (NUS). I wrote most of the union’s magazine, press releases,
pamphlets and, in particular, the papers associated with the union's
involvement with the Industrial Relations Act. It was here that I first worked
closely on trade union management issues as the secretary to the NUS Rules
Revision Committee in 1972.
. From 1972-1974, I was a Research Associate at the SSRC Industrial Relations
Research Unit at Warwick University. I was part of a four person team that
wrote ‘Industrial Relations and the Limits of Law, published in 1975. While
researching the book, I first studied the comparative governance of trade
unions, and in completing dozens of interviews with unions, employers,
employer associations, staff associations began to understand the varied
mosaic of UK industrial relations structures at a time of great change.
. From 1974-1993, I worked for the Electrical Electronic, Telecommunication
and Plumbing Union (EETPU), later known as the Amalgamated Engineering
and Electrical Union (AEEU). I started as a Research Officer (engineering) and
went on to be the National Officer for Education. Later, I was the National
Officer primarily responsible for Communications and by 1993 was Head of the
General Secretary's Office.
. During those 19 years at the EETPU/AEEU, I became a trade union manager
of different functions and resources. As a Research Officer, I wrote the
EETPU’s 1975 evidence to the Bullock Committee of Inquiry into Industrial
Democracy, giving me a lifelong interest in employee involvement. While the
National Officer for Education, I ran two residential trade union training centres,
including the first one to introduce practical vocational education alongside
trade union studies. (This was to lead to later involvement at Council level with
the BTEC Council, London East TEC and London East LSC.
. From 1992-1993, I organised the EETPU input into the post-merger processes
that created the AEEU. This was vital experience, as the merger then was the
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largest in union history, and involved reviewing, changing and re-stating the
practical management of cultural change within the trade union context.
6. From 1993-1997, I was a Lecturer in Industrial Relations/Human Resource
Management at Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University. It was
at Cranfield that I developed with Professor Chris Brewster a unit for the
management of trade unions. We ran programmes that reformed the TUC,
assisted the merger processes in Unison, the Communications Workers Union,
the Public Services, Tax and Commerce union, and developed change
programmes for the Independent Union of Halifax Staffs, Transport and
General Workers Union, the Graphical Paper and Media Union and the
National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. I wrote a
report that analysed possibilities for change within the regional management
of National Union of Teachers.
7. Following my setting up the Barclays Bank European Works Council, I wrote
an assessment of merger possibilities for the unions in the finance sector.
Much of my Cranfield work involved the same issues but for unions in Sweden,
Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Belgium and the Slovak Republic.
8. It was at Cranfield that I continued work on employers’ perceptions and needs
in IR/HRM. I contributed to Institute of Directors seminars for Securicor, spoke
for Merrill Lynch, ran sessions at Ashridge, GEC Dunchurch and many others.
Much of this work went into designing ‘partnership’ agreements, assisting with
the United Utilities, Scottish Power and Tesco agreements, work that I
continued on my return to the AEEU in January 1997 in the role of National
Development Officer.
9. From 1997-2004, I worked closely at the AEEU with the general secretary and
others in the leadership of the union at a transformational time for unions,
largely stimulated by the new government in 1997. In 1998, I was a member of
the design and implementation team for the University for Industry and later sat
on the Cabinet Office PIU inquiry into Workforce Development. I ran the union’s
communications function, writing and editing union publications of all sorts,
while writing myself for a variety of industrial relations publications, including a
regular column in Personnel Today between 1999 and 2002.
10.Within the AEEU, I rose to a senior role in the union, National Secretary. My
main focus was achieving new recognition agreements, developing the
partnership agenda with employers, managing the union’s interest in lifelong
learning and designing the huge merger between the AEEU and
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Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF), to form Amicus, a trade union merger
that came to fruition in 2001.
-From 1997-2002, I wrote and helped deliver many of the AEEU/ Amicus trade
union recognition agreements in companies such Honda, Virgin Atlantic,
Tibbet and Britten, Mastercare and Exide Batteries. During the same period, I
led the AEEU/Amicus work in designing and implementing partnership
agreements with companies such as Scottish Power, Perkins Engines,
Cummins Engines, British Bakeries, Allied Distillers, David Brown, DARA and
DML. While working directly on trade union education issues (including
vocational education) I once again managed the union’s two residential
colleges and taught shop stewards and full time officers, and some joint
HRMI/IR courses with employers. I had been a member of the BTEC National
Council in the 1980s. During 1997-2004, I was asked to take part in the
management of lifelong learning issues beyond my union remit, and so I
accepted invitations to become a member of the London East and National
Training and Enterprise Councils, and later, the London East Learning and
Skills Council. I also became Vice-Chair of governors at Ruskin College,
Oxford, and was a member of the design and implementation team for the
University for Industry and the Cabinet office Performance and Innovation
Unit's study on workforce development, a subject on which I worked in America
with the American Federation of Labour/Congress of Industrial Organisations.
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