Sunday 21 November 2010

UNITE General Secretary election result (provisional)

Despite the fact that the result won't be declared until Wednesday's Executive Council meeting, and there being nothing on the union web site, the media are already starting to report the result.

As I understand it, there's no official report from the Independent Scrutineer yet, only a preliminary report.

It currently looks like the result will be:

  1. Len McCluskey, 101,000 votes (42%)
  2. Jerry Hicks, 53,000 votes (22%)
  3. Les Bayliss, 47,000 votes (19%)
  4. Gail Cartmail, 39,000 votes (16%)
If the final result matches this, I think it is a great result for those of us who want to see UNITE as a union vigorously standing up for its members and against the cuts. Len McCluskey, backed by United Left (the broad left grouping in UNITE) would have a decisive win, while the two left candidates, Len & Jerry, would have got over two thirds of the vote between them.

However, the poor turnout (16%) is a worrying sign of the lack of engagement of members with the union.

It is particularly good to see Jerry beating Les Bayliss. A lot of people underestimated the mood of the members and assumed that he would trail behind Les Bayliss, given the backing Les had from the right of the union, the Tory press and Derek Simpson. In fact, Bayliss's disgraceful and well-funded campaign appears to have secured him only a third place with 19% of the vote.

Let's see what the official result is on Wednesday.



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