MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Moral rules and trade union principles
I think it is based on values and it is based on how they would
genuinely want to treat people, generalised of course. I think
sometimes lay structures want you as a manager to behave in
one way when you are dealing with their employer but not
necessarily when they are the employer and they want you to
behave as an employer. They sometimes get the edge of their
role very blurred. They cannot see sometimes why they need to
apply the same principles to the people that they have a
responsibility for and they put you under pressure to deal with
those situations accordingly. So I think there is a difference.
Hopefully it or comes down to treating people the way you would
wish to be treated yourself. (Interviewee C)
This is supported by the UNiFI Business Plans of both 2000 and 2001.
which commence with a statement of the union’s strategic ethics. One
of these is:-
To practice what we preach in respect of our own staff and
others with whom we work. (UNiFI Business Plan 2001)
Two other of these ethical statements relate to other aspects of the
welfare of people in general, suggesting that the union is aware of the
link between management of people and the welfare of people in
general.
Another manager felt very deeply about this issue:-
It sounds a bit trite really and I suppose there are probably those
personal principles in the way that you do that that both made it
that you have chosen to work for a trade union and also
influence your style of management. You are not going to go for
a style of taking everybody down the disciplinary route every
week. We do a lot in nurturing people and exercising those kind
of values which are part of working for a trade union. Certainly,
my management style, I think. (Interviewee J)
I think it comes down partly to the values again, about valuing
the individual and it probably comes to crunch time if there are
problems or difficulties with a member of staff’s performance. I
think as a trade union manager you try harder for longer than
perhaps you would do elsewhere. Having said that, I have
colleagues who have not done that but I think that would fit in.
And apart from that it would be the kind of pressures on the
organisation, whether you are making profits or whether you
have got to balance the books. That kind of imperative is
different. I think it is that if it came to crunch time, it would be
handled differently. And the values that you would be working
with -- diversity and things like that, I think it would perhaps be a
more tolerant environment. (Interviewee J)
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