MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Deploying resources
smaller groups get more per head for the reasons I have
outlined. (Interviewee C)
An observation by one manager, however, suggests that the practice of
these values may be more difficult to discern at times:-
In terms of the power we have, I don't think it is a
regional/central division; it is rather about the big battalions in
the union. Last week, the first time it has happened, there was a
gathering of the presidents and chairs of groups and national
branches and one of the things that came out of that was from
the smaller areas who said that it was all very well if you are in
the Benefits Agency. If you are in the Revenue, PCS may be
delivering for members there but in our little area where we have
only 1000 members, we're not getting the same service. There
may be a division there. (Interviewee G)
But another manager affirms that principles of minority protection in
resource allocation are in fact widely shared:-
It was not too difficult for me to be able to say to them, the
90,000 who dominated everything physically, intellectually,
financially, to say to them; ‘the photo printers are in real trouble,
privatisation, low pay, all those things, we need some resources
to campaign’. Resources were made available. For every small
group, you were able to argue that they need the help of the
majority. The coastguards. Not one union in its right senses
would organise coastguards. 400 people spread, by definition,
on the coast of this country, are just not an economical unit.
You’d just leave them alone. But we organise them and
therefore we cross-subsidise them. Who in their right minds
would organise Metropolitan Police Traffic Wardens? One
thousand who are always getting whacked on the head by irate
motorists. They have accidents, incidents at work twenty times
higher than any other group. They need the cross-subsidy of a
larger organisation and it is always given. It is never questioned.
That’s just two examples. (Interviewee K)
So this is an issue which exercises PCS managers. When it comes to
the allocation of physical space, this is an issue in respect of which
managers display significant awareness, particularly in the light of
cultural issues arising from the merger. There is not a great deal of
evidence, however, that the move to Clapham per se was used as part
of a strategy of creating a new culture, partly because explicit merger
management was something that PCS found great difficulty in agreeing
on until some time after the move had taken place. But some thought
was given to that:-
One of the things we did was to try and structure the way we put
the staff together. We did try to make sure we had a mixture of
staff from each part of the union. It did not happen everywhere.
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