MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
from the Clapham culture. I watched the way they worked and I
studied it for about two months. (Interviewee E)
Once the merger was voted through, we decided that the best
way to move on this (because I do actually know people who
worked for unions that have merged in the past and have seen
the difficulties) was from Day 1 to get to know the staff at
Clapham. We socialised, we went over for meals, drinks; we had
some new equipment delivered at Ealing essentially for
projected joint purposes - we had more space over there - so the
first thing I did there was to get all the staff from the Clapham
office to come over to Ealing regularly to learn how to operate it
and get friendly. So by the time we actually merged we were all
great mates. (Interviewee H)
Although we were in two separate buildings for nearly three
years, the head of department would spend three days a week
at Ealing, which is where the NCU were based, and two days a
week at Clapham which is where the UCW were based and tried
to produce an integrated structure, an integrated way of working
across the whole of the Research Department. So for the first
couple of years the merger didn't really impinge. We carried on
doing what we did but J and me were in touch with each other to
say, well, you deal with more on the telecoms side and I will deal
with the postal side. (Interviewee F)
And this laissez-faire approach was continued even after the new
building was occupied-
At the staff level, the trade unions meet but they are talking
about internal matters. We should have social events where
people get to meet each other. All we have is one Christmas
event and it is so structured as to exclude the executive and to
be such that a lot of people do not go to it. So space is important
but the culture is about more than space and I think that we
should be looking for ways of building bridges (Interviewee L).
In some areas, ex NCU staff have continued with ex-NCU work and ex
UCW staff with ex UCW work:-
I am just doing a quick recce sitting here. S is new, the wages
are done on the ex NCU system, the office manager runs the ex
UCW system, we have two people to deal with ex UCW branch
claims. We have one person deals with ex NCU branch claims,
they are both ex NCU employees so, yes. So basically it is,
apart from where somebody has left and we have recruited
somebody new, predominantly the people who work in this
department are ex UCW and ex NCU employees who work on
it……We have taken on a number of people from the TUC
Academy, the Organising Academy over the years. They are
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