MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Moral rules and trade union principles
you definitely have to make sure that you are performing to
optimum (Interviewee D)
Another believes that sometimes the ideal is affected by pressure of
demand:-
Sometimes although you think you are in partnership and you
should all be going in the same direction, and by and large we
are, sometimes, particularly in Finance, maybe when push
comes to shove you have got conflicting demands coming
forward about -- we need to get this sorted out, we need to get
that sorted out today etc and I'm saying, well, we can't do
everything here. (Interviewee N)
Reflection on the relative stakes of lay member and management
stakeholders results in an interesting debating point:-
I would always say -- and in bars I do say sometimes -- that
actually we have got more, those of us who are employed, at
stake in this organisation than lay members do because at the
end of the day, if Unison goes down the pan they can join
another union. If it goes down the pan, we have lost our jobs
and therefore we are much more concerned about being an
effective organisation, positioning itself well with the decision
makers, the government, than the lay members do who are
sometimes more concerned about political purity and their ability
to get re-elected, although I do understand that. (Interviewee B)
Earlier, describing the operation of partnership working in UNISON,
one manager expressed the view that it was on occasions slightly
manipulative, though that manager emphasised:-
I mean manipulate in its most positive sense, if it does have a
positive sense. (Interviewee L)
There are echoes of this view, by a manager who is philosophically
very much committed to an inclusive approach:-
Some of the time I think the relationship is not always very
honest because I do think that, as I say, you spend time learning
to manipulate your committee and I do look around at senior
managers and see that those with the best committee
manipulation skills are often the ones who are most successful
organisationally because it is, not a trick but a process you have
to learn to manage. (Interviewee G)
UNISON managers thus see problems, potential and real, in the
systems of representative rationality as they operate in the union. Most
evidence, however, suggests that there is at its lowest an acceptance
of systems which involve forms of partnership – at its highest,
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