A South London Council Is Firing Its Two Key Union Organisers, Before Making £25m of Cuts
Activists allege ‘union busting’ and ‘institutional racism’.
by Michael Chessum
20 August 2024
Justine Canady and Jay Kidd-Morton. Photo: Lewisham Unison
Lewisham, in south London, is a de-facto one-party state. Labour has won all but one of its 54 council seats for the past decade. The last time the party lost control, the Beatles had yet to release Abbey Road. The council is self-consciously progressive, emphasising co-production and community development. But despite cuts of £173m in the ten years to 2020, its main union branch, Unison, was notoriously placid and inactive.
Then, in the spring of 2023, a new generation of trade unionists took the helm. Justine Canady cut her teeth in the McStrike campaign and student activism. She had started working for the council in 2021, and brought together an alliance to rejuvenate the branch. “I think a lot of things came together at once,” she says. “It was the cost of living crisis and there was a national strike wave happening. Both because of that and because of their own personal situation, people were desperate to have an active union.”
At the age of 25, Canady became the youngest Unison branch secretary in the country. The new leadership quickly got results. Lewisham didn’t reach the 50% turnout threshold required to take part in strike action over pay (only two of Unison’s local government branches, Knowsley and Lambeth, did) but it did achieve one of the best ballot results in the country.
The branch turned its attention to organising low-paid migrant workers, especially cleaners and refuse workers, winning better in-house conditions and preventing cuts to overtime work. “It was slow progress,” Canady says, “but it was a start and we ended up with a team of activists and a branch committee that was much more representative of the diversity of the workforce”. In March this year, she was joined as joint-branch secretary by Jay Kidd-Morton, formerly the branch’s Black members’ officer.
Activists allege ‘union busting’ and ‘institutional racism’.
by Michael Chessum
20 August 2024
Justine Canady and Jay Kidd-Morton. Photo: Lewisham Unison
Lewisham, in south London, is a de-facto one-party state. Labour has won all but one of its 54 council seats for the past decade. The last time the party lost control, the Beatles had yet to release Abbey Road. The council is self-consciously progressive, emphasising co-production and community development. But despite cuts of £173m in the ten years to 2020, its main union branch, Unison, was notoriously placid and inactive.
Then, in the spring of 2023, a new generation of trade unionists took the helm. Justine Canady cut her teeth in the McStrike campaign and student activism. She had started working for the council in 2021, and brought together an alliance to rejuvenate the branch. “I think a lot of things came together at once,” she says. “It was the cost of living crisis and there was a national strike wave happening. Both because of that and because of their own personal situation, people were desperate to have an active union.”
At the age of 25, Canady became the youngest Unison branch secretary in the country. The new leadership quickly got results. Lewisham didn’t reach the 50% turnout threshold required to take part in strike action over pay (only two of Unison’s local government branches, Knowsley and Lambeth, did) but it did achieve one of the best ballot results in the country.
The branch turned its attention to organising low-paid migrant workers, especially cleaners and refuse workers, winning better in-house conditions and preventing cuts to overtime work. “It was slow progress,” Canady says, “but it was a start and we ended up with a team of activists and a branch committee that was much more representative of the diversity of the workforce”. In March this year, she was joined as joint-branch secretary by Jay Kidd-Morton, formerly the branch’s Black members’ officer.
A protest outside Lewisham council. Photo: Michael Chessum
Local government was once the cutting edge of progressive politics. Long before the Daily Mail complained of the “woke mob” and Tory “common sense minister” and GB News presenter Esther McVey banned civil servants from wearing rainbow lanyards, the Tory press marked out the Greater London Council as the home of the “loony left” over its support for gay rights and innovations in democratic community politics. The rate-capping rebellions of the late 1980s and the Poplar Rebellion of 1921 were the product of local administrations that were deeply rooted and, as a result, politically ambitious and antagonistic towards the status quo.
Since the 1980s, however, changes to the Labour party’s rules have meant a much tighter central grip on the councillor selection process. Meanwhile, the decline of the wider labour movement has pushed many once-powerful trade union branches into disrepair. Then came austerity. Between 2010 and 2024, council funding per capita fell by 18%, with many areas experiencing more than double that. Now, with a change of government at Westminster, a new generation of trade unionists should be capable of turning the tide – but not without a fight.
On 21 June, things started to get messy for Canady and Kidd-Morton. Lewisham council staff received an email from chief executive Jennifer Daothong informing them that, because of overspending, the council would be making £25m of cuts. Children’s services and adult social care are expected to be the hardest hit, though council leaders have yet to set out exactly where the axe will fall.
Shortly after the cuts were announced, the council moved against both of the union’s branch secretaries. In May, Canady had been summoned to a meeting and informed that her substantive post, a communications role in fostering recruitment, was being deleted. As she was on full-time release for union activities, Lewisham clarified that she could stay on as branch secretary, as had been the case with her predecessor. Managers also agreed to postpone the issuing of any redundancy notice until March 2025.
But in July, management suddenly u-turned, insisting that the deletion of her post would remove her from the council entirely. “It completely changed,” Canady says. “One minute they were reassuring me and then suddenly they’re asking how quickly Unison could hold a meeting to elect my replacement”. Lewisham served her formal notice of redundancy on 29 July. As things stand, she will be unemployed on 10 September.
At around the same time, Jay Kidd-Morton and her colleagues in the legal department were set to return to work. In an overwhelmingly white department, her team is predominantly Black and Asian. They are legally trained but do not have practising certificates, and so must have their work supervised by a ‘principal’ lawyer. In November 2023, they were put on special leave when it emerged that their work had gone unsupervised for around two years. An investigation, which ended in April 2024, concluded that the workers had done nothing wrong, effectively placing the blame for the situation with the council. But when the team of lawyers arrived at their ‘return to work arrangements’ meeting on 9 July, managers read them a script informing them that they would be dismissed.
A spokesperson for Lewisham council said: “As a council we have strong and valued relationships with our unions and work constructively with them to ensure our staff have access to union representation. We also have a responsibility to provide value for money for our residents and to ensure that our staff and structures are fit for purpose and delivering high-quality services.
“We cannot comment on specific employment issues but can confirm we are following our normal HR processes, as we would for any member of staff in similar circumstances. In the meantime, we are in active dialogue and discussions with Unison to ensure it can continue its important role in supporting our staff.”
When asked directly, Lewisham declined to comment on why, in contrast to previous precedent, it is insisting that union reps on full-time release cannot remain in post if their original jobs are deleted. It also declined to comment on why and when it had changed its position on the use of lawyers without practising certificates. Perhaps its decision to dismiss both Justine Canady and Jay Kidd-Morton is coincidental and unrelated to their trade union work, or to the £25m of cuts announced around the same time.
Either way, Lewisham’s roughly 3,000 employees could now be left without a functioning Unison branch just as a major round of cuts gets underway. For many of them, recent events have been a spur to action. Regular demonstrations have congregated outside Lewisham town hall for a number of weeks, and earlier this month Lewisham Unison voted to move towards a ballot for strike action. “You think you’re safe in a Labour council to have an open union membership and be an activist,” says Canady. “A lot of people have been shocked by what’s happening, and new people get involved or indicate their support pretty much every day.”
All bosses seem invincible until suddenly they aren’t. Many of them are tempted by the idea that active trade unionism is an anachronism, and that people like Canady and Kidd-Morton are ghosts from another era. But, like many of the self-professed modernisers in public life, they may soon find that it is they who are swimming against the historical tide.
Michael Chessum is a socialist activist and writer based in London.
Local government was once the cutting edge of progressive politics. Long before the Daily Mail complained of the “woke mob” and Tory “common sense minister” and GB News presenter Esther McVey banned civil servants from wearing rainbow lanyards, the Tory press marked out the Greater London Council as the home of the “loony left” over its support for gay rights and innovations in democratic community politics. The rate-capping rebellions of the late 1980s and the Poplar Rebellion of 1921 were the product of local administrations that were deeply rooted and, as a result, politically ambitious and antagonistic towards the status quo.
Since the 1980s, however, changes to the Labour party’s rules have meant a much tighter central grip on the councillor selection process. Meanwhile, the decline of the wider labour movement has pushed many once-powerful trade union branches into disrepair. Then came austerity. Between 2010 and 2024, council funding per capita fell by 18%, with many areas experiencing more than double that. Now, with a change of government at Westminster, a new generation of trade unionists should be capable of turning the tide – but not without a fight.
On 21 June, things started to get messy for Canady and Kidd-Morton. Lewisham council staff received an email from chief executive Jennifer Daothong informing them that, because of overspending, the council would be making £25m of cuts. Children’s services and adult social care are expected to be the hardest hit, though council leaders have yet to set out exactly where the axe will fall.
Shortly after the cuts were announced, the council moved against both of the union’s branch secretaries. In May, Canady had been summoned to a meeting and informed that her substantive post, a communications role in fostering recruitment, was being deleted. As she was on full-time release for union activities, Lewisham clarified that she could stay on as branch secretary, as had been the case with her predecessor. Managers also agreed to postpone the issuing of any redundancy notice until March 2025.
But in July, management suddenly u-turned, insisting that the deletion of her post would remove her from the council entirely. “It completely changed,” Canady says. “One minute they were reassuring me and then suddenly they’re asking how quickly Unison could hold a meeting to elect my replacement”. Lewisham served her formal notice of redundancy on 29 July. As things stand, she will be unemployed on 10 September.
At around the same time, Jay Kidd-Morton and her colleagues in the legal department were set to return to work. In an overwhelmingly white department, her team is predominantly Black and Asian. They are legally trained but do not have practising certificates, and so must have their work supervised by a ‘principal’ lawyer. In November 2023, they were put on special leave when it emerged that their work had gone unsupervised for around two years. An investigation, which ended in April 2024, concluded that the workers had done nothing wrong, effectively placing the blame for the situation with the council. But when the team of lawyers arrived at their ‘return to work arrangements’ meeting on 9 July, managers read them a script informing them that they would be dismissed.
A spokesperson for Lewisham council said: “As a council we have strong and valued relationships with our unions and work constructively with them to ensure our staff have access to union representation. We also have a responsibility to provide value for money for our residents and to ensure that our staff and structures are fit for purpose and delivering high-quality services.
“We cannot comment on specific employment issues but can confirm we are following our normal HR processes, as we would for any member of staff in similar circumstances. In the meantime, we are in active dialogue and discussions with Unison to ensure it can continue its important role in supporting our staff.”
When asked directly, Lewisham declined to comment on why, in contrast to previous precedent, it is insisting that union reps on full-time release cannot remain in post if their original jobs are deleted. It also declined to comment on why and when it had changed its position on the use of lawyers without practising certificates. Perhaps its decision to dismiss both Justine Canady and Jay Kidd-Morton is coincidental and unrelated to their trade union work, or to the £25m of cuts announced around the same time.
Either way, Lewisham’s roughly 3,000 employees could now be left without a functioning Unison branch just as a major round of cuts gets underway. For many of them, recent events have been a spur to action. Regular demonstrations have congregated outside Lewisham town hall for a number of weeks, and earlier this month Lewisham Unison voted to move towards a ballot for strike action. “You think you’re safe in a Labour council to have an open union membership and be an activist,” says Canady. “A lot of people have been shocked by what’s happening, and new people get involved or indicate their support pretty much every day.”
All bosses seem invincible until suddenly they aren’t. Many of them are tempted by the idea that active trade unionism is an anachronism, and that people like Canady and Kidd-Morton are ghosts from another era. But, like many of the self-professed modernisers in public life, they may soon find that it is they who are swimming against the historical tide.
Michael Chessum is a socialist activist and writer based in London.
No comments:
Post a Comment