MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

CHAPTER EIGHT
MANAGERS IN UNISON
About the Union
8.1. UNISON was formed in 1993 by the merger of three public service
unions, COHSE (the Confederation of Health Service Employees),
NALGO (the National and Local Government Officers’ Association) and
NUPE the National Union of Public Employees). As mentioned earlier,
it was, and still is, the largest merger in UK trade union history and the
merger was a process of extreme complexity.
8.2. The three unions were very different. NALGO was primarily a white
collar union – formed, in fact, originally in 1905 to campaign for
pensions for very senior local government officials. It retained in
membership a proportion of senior officials and in 1980 had led a
dispute seeking comparability pay for local government staff which led
to a settlement giving 18% at the top and 9.5% at the bottom. Its
membership had peaked at around 750,000 in the 1970s and its losses
in membership had not been catastrophic, probably because
privatisation had not hit administrative, professional and technical staff
as hard as it had blue collar staff. NUPE was primarily a blue collar
union and, although retaining a membership on merger of over
500,000, it had suffered both loss in membership and income which
caused a financial crisis in 1991. The two unions were fiercely
competitive, not only because of the few overlaps which occurred
(since NUPE had in membership a number of white collar staff, often
because they wanted to be in a union which was affiliated to the Labour
Party) but also because of their approaches to trade unionism. NALGO
activists tended to see NUPE, which had a powerful and visible officer
corps, as less democratic than NALGO, something which caused major
problems when local branches amalgamated some time after merger
and ex NALGO activists largely took control of the structure. Both
unions organised in local government, the National Health Service
(NHS) and the utilities. NALGO organised in addition in transport and
was virtually the sole union in Electricity.
8.3. COHSE by contrast was largely a one industry union, with its origins
amongst mental health nurses in the NHS. It had originally turned down
the opportunity of joining merger discussions but eventually did so in
1990, at which point merger discussions re-commenced. It had
obviously competed with both of the other unions in the NHS but it was
much smaller than the other two unions, even though it was an equal
partner in the negotiations.
8.4. One particular issue worthy of note is that NALGO had many more staff
than either of the other unions. At the time of merger, it had in the
region of 1300 staff, whereas NUPE had only around 400 and COHSE
nearer 100. NALGO had several large central departments and very
powerful district offices, as it called them, with significant lay structures
built around them. This was obviously to have a significant impact on
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