MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

The evidence does not support these hypotheses. Managers were
asked as part of their interviews to describe how they went about their
jobs as trade union managers and no manager in any union identified
communication as one of their key roles.
Unions do have some systems in place which involve communication
activities. PCS has a development reviewing scheme. Some managers
use team meetings as modes of communication. In the case of that
union, there is also some evidence of written briefs being issued to
staff. UNiFI has a personal development plan system which is linked to
IIP. That automatically means that there are institutional links with the
union’s Business Plan which need to be made. The researcher
attended a staff meeting at one of the head offices. UNISON has a
development reviewing scheme and an objectives and priorities system
which is intended to cascade objectives through into sectional and
regional business plans.
Against that, there is criticism of communication. In CWU this is made
in an external report (Delivering on Equality 2000). In PCS it is made in
reports from a senior officers’ meeting at Eastbourne, also in 2000. In
UNiFI there is no criticism but some managers’ accounts of
communications processes relate to their old unions rather than to
UNiFI itself. In UNISON there was criticism identified of communication
during the merger process, although there is here some evidence of
communications processes at work since then.
This is, therefore, something of a paradox. Trade union managers may
view communication as a necessary part of the work the union does in
its trade union role but not as something to which many consciously
apply their minds in their managerial roles. It is also the case that poor
managerial communication is a symptom of centralised management. If
management is centralised and there is perceived to be concomitantly
less value placed in the powers of middle managers, communication to
them, and from them to their staff, is likely to be perceived to be less
reason for communications strategies to be adopted. The three unions
where managerial communications are less easy to identify are also
most centralised in terms of their resource modalities. Whether this has
been carried forward into the attitudes of their managers to managerial
communication would be speculation but it would repay investigation.
Managing People
The case studies were structured around four categories in the area of
people management. The first was people management in a
generalised sense, obviously important in view of the ‘norms’ which
were emerging about managers’ values in regard to people. The
second was performance management, relevant because of the
constraint which this appeared to be for managers. The third was staff
development. In the past, literature (cf Heery and Kelly 1994) has
suggested that unions were not strategic in their approach to staff
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