This is the time of year when we look at the ups and down of the past trade union year. We start at the top of the union tree as there were several elections, and non-elections, for general secretaries. We also take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of unions generally, some of their rivalries, and internal battles before turning attention to various disputes, particularly the smaller ones, with public and private sector bosses.

At the start of the year Sarah Woolley retained her post of General Secretary of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union in an uncontested election. Less fortunate was incumbent Mark Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union, who had been in office since 2005 but was soundly defeated 59–41 per cent on a 29 per cent turnout by the union’s Vice President who was long a thorn in Wrack’s side. In recent years his reign was marked by disputes over large secret payments to departing disgruntled officials and putting the HQ on the market without telling the membership.

Wrack however, soon bounced bac. Soon after his visit to the Job Centre he was nominated by the NEC of the teaching union NASUWT to replace the outgoing general secretary. After a legal case that prevented an uncontested coronation, Wrack comfortably won the resulting contest 5,249 votes to 3,126 – on a miserable turnout of 4.7 per cent in a union claiming 285,293 members.

The contest at RMT caused by Mike Lynch retiring from his post of general secretary, which he had held since 2021, resulted in his successor Eddie Dempsey being elected unopposed. The same thing happened in April at USDAW where Joanne Tomas became the union’s first female general secretary, due to her, and the new deputy, being the only candidates with sufficient nominations. The same union’s NEC elections, based on a regional basis, saw not just uncontested resulted but vacant seats.

The actors’ union Equity also retained their incumbent, who threw his stuntman opponent out of the window securing a massive 81–19 per cent victory on a 12.4 per cent turnout.

Train drivers’ union ASLEF also saw a changing of the guard when Mick Whelan, general secretary since 2011, took (slightly) early retirement in July. His replacement was the union’s president, Dave Calfe, who won the election with 4,556 votes to defeat the incumbent deputy general secretary on 2,951. That turnout was a massive 33.4 per cent.

Internal strife

Although bitter faction fighting is the norm in most unions, 2025 has seen several cases where unions’ own HQ staff have taken industrial action against their employers. One long-running example of this was at the university College Union (UCU), which began in May 2024 when UCU’s conference was cut short.

This April and May saw strike action take place over “workplace racism, a breakdown in industrial relations, breaches of their collective agreements and work-related stress crisis”.

In turn, UCU accused Unite of not discussing matters and opposing the recognition of GMB as the second staff union in UCU, claiming that 90 per cent of Unite members had defected to GMB.

Later in the year Unite took to the picket line against two other unions. In south London it opposed the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) making a quarter of its workforce, particularly women, redundant with the remainder facing a pay freeze.

At around the same time Unite picketed the grand HQ of the National Education Union (NEU). More than 400 staff took strike action complaining about a restructuring that “will have a catastrophic impact on staff workloads”. The NEU also started a fight with other unions by starting to recruit school support staff, despite a 2017 agreement not to do so. This was attempted in 2023 resulting in a TUC panel ordering NEU to pay £150,000 to Unison, GMB and Unite.

At the Transport Salaried Staff Association rail union, General secretary Mariam Eslamdoust has been accused of frustrating the election of the president and treasurer, and a former assistant general secretary who crossed Eslamdoust has been suspended for some mysterious reasons.

The biggest internal union row, however, is in Unite over the notorious hotel and conference centre in Birmingham that increased in costs from seven million to £112 million. Much of the work was carried out by a company based in former General Secretary Len McCluskey’s native Liverpool. Defenders of the project say rising costs were due to enhancements to the project agreed by the union, and by insisting on proper trade terms and conditions for workers. The hotel was a major issue in the present General Secretary’s 2021 election campaign in which she promised an internal inquiry, of which an interim report was published in June. This declared that there was a “pervasive fraud environment” in which “dominant personalities and a weak control environment facilitated opportunities to commit fraud” and “unusual relationships” between former senior staff and Unite’s customers and suppliers. The former leadership firmly deny any improprieties. Now doubt this matter will be at the heart of next year’s General Secretary elections.

The Bill

One matter that kept popping up during the year was the Employment Rights Bill, which Sir Keir Starmer (Prime Minister at time of typing) asserted was “the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights for a generation”. It was clear from the start however, that the Bill was a pale shadow of what was in Labour’s Manifesto, and that that was a pale shadow of the proposals drawn up by Andy McDonald, the Middlesbrough MP who remained a humble backbench MP.

Provisions for sectoral collective bargaining were missing, and it still fell below United Nations standards. Cunning use was made of using the small print to exclude many workers. For instance, workers such whose “homes” were part of the workplace were excluded from many protections. At the end of its progress through Parliament the abandonment of plans to provide protection against unfair dismissal from day one was the final act of surrender to business interests, not that Starmer needed much persuading.

Police, not fans, to blame for Hillsborough

Police officers from two major police forces, including a chief constable and senior officers, would have faced misconduct cases for their parts in the country’s worst-ever football tragedy, an official report released last week has found.

In April 1989, more than 90 people were killed and hundreds were injured in a crowd crush at the Liverpool–Nottingham Forest FA Cup semi-final in the Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield.

The incident triggered a years-long campaign for justice by the families of the victims. For years they faced a public perception that fans were to blame for the tragedy.

The report, released as the result of investigations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the country’s official police watchdog, and an associated investigation, said no evidence was found to support previous police accounts that the behaviour of supporters caused or contributed to the disaster.

The investigation concluded that the 97 people had been unlawfully killed, officially clearing them of any blame.

It also found that South Yorkshire Police (SYP) fundamentally failed in its planning for the match and in its response as the disaster unfolded, and in how it dealt with traumatised supporters and families.

There is “considerable evidence” of the “defensive approach” adopted by SYP to the investigations and inquiries that followed as it attempted to deflect the blame, the report said.

It also found “deficiencies and potential evidence of bias” in the work of the West Midlands Police (WMP), who had been tasked with investigating the disaster.

The report said the chief constable of the South Yorkshire force at the time and a host of other police officers from SYP and WMP would have had cases to answer, had they still been serving. All but one of the cops investigated had retired by the time the investigations began.

“The 97 people who were unlawfully killed, their families, survivors of the disaster and all those so deeply affected, have been repeatedly let down – before, during and after the horrific events of that day,” said Kathie Cashell, deputy director general of the IOPC.

“I hope this report serves as a timely reminder of what happens when organisations focus on protecting their reputation rather than admitting their mistakes and acting to put things right,” she added.