Union Groupthink Kills Industries and Jobs

What is the point of Unite?

This week, Britain’s anti-industrial green agenda created yet more problems for the beleaguered Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire. In July last year, the then owners, Prax, faced accusations from the green press and Miliband himself that their mismanagement had led to the crisis. US-based Phillips 66, which owns a nearby plant, has now acquired the Lindsey site from administrators but has said that it is “not viable in its current form”, according to the Telegraph, indicating that the site will be mothballed. All this is very predictable, sadly. But perhaps the biggest tragedy is the continued failure of the unions that represent workers to respond to this car crash that was foreseen decades ago.

The Telegraph quotes Unite boss Sharon Graham, who told them:

Lindsey oil refinery is a critical piece of UK energy infrastructure. Phillips 66 should not be allowed to just mothball the site and turn it into a glorified storage tank. The Labour Government needs to finally get into gear. Its Net Zero policies are hurting workers – it’s time it showed them whose side it is on.

True. But what did Unite do about it? Moreover, whose side has Unite been on as the green agenda claimed victim after victim, not merely in the form of industrial businesses that have been shutting down but also the union’s own members employed at them?

Unite boasts nearly 1.2 million members, of which full-time employees pay £18.16 a month fees (those working under 21 hours a week pay £10.92). This gives us a ball-park figure for Unite’s turnover of £260 million a year. The green agenda has been rolling for 20 years now at pretty much the same pace, meaning that, for the sake of argument, £5.2 billion has moved through the union’s bank account in that time (leaving aside the fact of it being founded in 2007 by merging Amicus and the TGWU). In fact, the first year of its existence, in which it boasted more than 1.6 million members (more than 5% of the UK’s entire working population), coincides with the year in which the Climate Change Bill was being read in Parliament.

This sketch of the enterprise’s vital stats is not intended to be precise. The point being made by this humble writer, at this humble publication, is that a very small part of something like £5.2 billion could have bought the union a great deal of scrutiny of three parties of government’s policy agendas. Yet Unite and other unions have leant their support to the climate, energy and industrial policy agendas of all governments since Blair. And here we are.