MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
There was certainly in PTC and its predecessor unions a culture
of considerable lay involvement, probably not different in many
ways from the culture that existed in NALGO. I mean, that does
bring about what we used to called creative tension between
senior full time officers and NEC members to what extent the lay
involvement is there, which is a problem that, I think, still exists
in PCS. The CPSA culture on the other hand was for their
President and General Secretary to decide what was happening
and then for the others to come on board with that. So many
ways it at times proved difficult. It proved less difficult for CPSA
to come in with a united position that it did for PTC because the
PTC were involved in a genuine debate on its side of the merger
committee about what rule should go in, how rules should be
changed etc, which at times made it difficult for our side, as it
were, to hold its position because we had that different way of
operating in the two unions (Interviewee D)
Reference was made earlier to the ‘huge war’ going on between the
Executive and Conference. Some light on the situation below that was
offered by one manager:-
The true test of the union’s democratic strength is in the Groups;
that we have the Group Conferences and executives on an
annual basis delivering the pay and rations. That’s the true test
of the democratic process. The other is an add-on actually. No,
that’s not true, it’s just me getting carried away. The biennial
conference is an extraordinarily important test of whether we are
winning the aims and values argument. We’re not with that layer.
But just below that, with the same people for goodness sake,
they’re all the same, we’ve won it there. But it’s not with huge
rows with the elected executive committees there. Well, there
are big rows but they are different in scope. The different
atmosphere in the Land Registry Group Conference is
noticeable. And yet the same people come to the biennial
conference and yet its just as though it’s a completely different
organisation. (Interviewee K)
The point here, however, is that although many managers are working
assiduously with elected members, it is very difficult to discern a
process of merger management as it applies to senior elected
members. Many of them may well have been working together in a
spirit of generosity, but that is not obvious.
At management level, there was a deal of unhappiness at the way
things were managed:-
It was appallingly badly managed, I think, this merger in the
sense that the involvement of the senior managers was all
happening at the top of the shop and we didn't get the
opportunity to know our opposite numbers to work with. Unless
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