MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Deploying resources
• restructuring the Department to control financial
management and budgets and to move to open plan working
to facilitate teamworking
• designing detailed budgets including labour and
administration costs, to facilitate the management of each
budget directly with budget holders to control costs whilst
improving service to members
• producing a report benchmarking CWU services against
other trade unions with the aim of working towards best
industry practice (CWU Finance Department Strategic Plan,
May 2002)
As has already been debated, this type of budgetary and financial
control will mean that the union has to prioritise some things over
others, not something that has been undertaken until now but
something which impacts on representative rationality insofar as it may
involve changes to the operation of the democratic structures.
One senior manager indicated the extent to which her trade union
principles influenced her approach to resource allocation in that
resources should be related to the extent of the members’ problems
rather than to sheer numbers of members. Common sense had some
application in such a situation:-
Today there is a big engineering issue going on and you jump
because that is 30,000 people and to say "well l'm sorry there
are 2 members over there with whatever" -- well, that would be
stupid. (Interviewee G)
But this did not affect her commitment to her ethical approach to
resource allocation:-
I try and say "look at the issue." It's issue driven. Is the issue
time-critical; is the issue for that group of people much bigger.
So you have 500 people with this issue and 2 there with that; is
the issue for those 2 far greater? Like, for example, the colour of
the painting in the accommodation block -- not that we would
deal with that at this level -- for the 500 but loss of occupational
pension for the 2. So we would put the resource to the 2. So I
would try and look at it issue-driven in the sense that it is the
issue that matters. (Interviewee G)
This is not, however, an issue that arose to any extent in interviews
with CWU managers. This could be because of the political character
of the union, with its preponderance of elected officers and the power
structures this creates. Or it could be because of the occupational
profile of the interviewees, with some gaps between lower level
managers and the four General Secretaries or ex-General Secretaries
where this sort of issue might be more of a real one.
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