MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Deploying resources
centralised and comparatively undeveloped with plans to devolve
further responsibility to budget holders stalled.
Nevertheless, the union has engaged in planning processes for some
years. In 1999 it produced a Management Plan, shared with the NEC,
to which was annexed action plans for senior managers. None of the
nine strategic objectives were financial with the exception of one which
talked in general terms about maximising membership. Objectives for
individual managers mentioned the union’s financial objectives but
there was no indication that these were linked to the Plan.
In 2001, the union produced an ‘NEC Plan’, the name of which was
changed by the NEC because it didn’t like the word ‘management’. This
is a more professional job but in itself it does not present any financial
objectives. The Financial Officer, however, presented to the NEC a
paper which was designed to cost and seek finance for the
achievement of the objectives of the Plan. It contained a schedule
indicating whether the proposals had no cost implications, were within
existing budgets, were to be costed to the Campaign Fund or were part
of an allocation made specifically for the Plan.
Finance, it will be seen, was not integral to the planning process. There
is no indication that the budgetary system was to be changed, except
insofar as some of the finance for raising the union’s profile was to be
allocated to regions - but:-
Clearly we will have to create some controls to ensure that each
region is using the funds to meet PCS' overall objectives. (PCS
Plan – Additional Costs, May 2001)
Although, therefore, the expenditure would no doubt be monitored
(indeed, in the Management Plan this was a duty allocated to the
Financial Officer) there is no indication that systems are planned which
will incorporate performance monitoring and managerial prioritisation.
The only indication that this might be contemplated was the Cranfield
seminar on devolved budgeting, already referred to, the conclusions of
which were not actioned. There is obviously consistency here, even if it
presages tensions in a union which has decentralised to some extent to
deal with the decentralisation of Government Agencies and the
establishment of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments:-
Because our structures have been based on the regions being
essentially bargaining units, that (dealing with a wide range of
regional issues) has never happened out in the regions to that
extent. I think that the regions in our union will now become
gradually closer to the regions in other unions and therefore the
business which would be dealt with at our Scottish Committee
will gradually become more like the business which gets dealt
with in the Unison Scottish Committee but I mean, essentially
you have got a tremendous tension in there with the NEC seeing
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