MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

generally portrayed as having been on health grounds but there was a
great deal of criticism about the union not punching its weight in the
negotiations and he was described by one of his former staff as having
been ‘out to lunch’. From this, the conclusion seems fair that he was
removed in the way that senior managers in unions are often removed
– by being made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Bob Drake became after
merger the Chief Executive of Uniservice Ltd, the membership services
company which is a subsidiary of UNiFI, though now a substantial
minority shareholding is held by UIA Ltd, the mutual company deriving
from the former NALGO Insurance Association. Bob Drake retains,
however, a place on the Senior Management Team of UNiFI. He, in
common with Ian Maclean, was elected; old UNiFI had a wider
electoral practice than the other two unions. Ed Sweeney and Rory
Murphy agreed on a division of responsibilities after the merger which
broadly involved the former running the union, with the title of General
Secretary and the latter running the bargaining side of things with the
title of Joint General Secretary. An election was held for both of them,
on a joint ticket, in 1999 and they were elected unopposed.
7.4. As mentioned earlier, UNiFI decided early on that it would retain its
three head offices. This decision was taken principally in order to
reassure the staff of the two smaller unions that they had a future within
the new organisation and would not be swamped by BIFU. The
intention was that the three offices would be retained for three years
and that, in the interim, a working party would look at a new head office
for the merged union. The decision to close Bournemouth before the
three year period was therefore somewhat painful and, because of
merger negotiations with Amicus, there has been no further progress
on the establishment of a new UNiFI head office.
7.5. UNiFI has a declared membership of 158,733 in the current year of
which just under 39% are female. At the time the research commenced
it had 210 staff. Although a pledge of no compulsory redundancy had
been given, NWSA had a system of secondment of staff from the Bank
and many of these secondments were terminated on merger. The
union has 8 regional offices. The staff associations did not have a
regional structure and so the regional system was inherited from BIFU.
The offices have, however, been rationalised since BIFU’s time and
location of one office has been changed from Salisbury to Bristol. In
1992 there was a proposal to close the Leeds office but this decision
was overturned by UNiFI’s annual conference.
Interviewees
7.6. A preliminary meeting was held with the Joint General Secretary to
discuss the project and he made some suggestions about possible
interviewees. These were not followed entirely but broadly the same
approach was taken with this union as was taken with PCS.
Interviewees were:-
203