Unison's Christina McAnea: "Am I Not Going To Speak To Labour? That’d Be A Nonsense"
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea (Photography by Tom Pilston)
8 min read
As the Unison incumbent fights for a second term, she says the claim she is ‘too close’ to No 10 is ‘completely untrue’. The general secretary reveals her rows with Wes Streeting, and calls for new legislation to protect trans people
She may be seen as the ‘right-wing’ Labour loyalist in the battle for Unison’s leadership, but Christina McAnea does not mince her words when asked about where the government is going wrong today.
First, a wealth tax is needed, she believes: one per cent, say, on people with over £5m in property, stocks and shares, etc. “That one per cent on them would raise £10bn a year,” she says. And what of capital flight?
“I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest there will be a flight of people. I do think it’s possible that people will find ways to avoid it, because people with that kind of money always do manage to find ways to avoid it. I accept that. So, make it bigger – make it two per cent. Then, even if you try and avoid it, you’ll still be bringing in more.”
Does she share the view of many Labour MPs that No 11 has succumbed to a Treasury orthodoxy that does the party of the left no favours in government? “I don’t want to criticise civil servants, but I imagine that is the case,” McAnea replies.
Next, Gaza. It is a genocide, she insists, and the UK Labour government must do more. She confirms that when Unison put this view to Labour conference, in a motion that passed against No 10’s wishes, she had pushback.
“Yeah, of course we did. But that wasn’t the first time that we’d done it. We came out very strongly against the removal of winter fuel allowance; we’ve come out against what happened to Waspi women; we’ve come out very strongly against what was happening on disability benefits,” McAnea says.
Then, there is immigration: the Unison head is alarmed by the Blue Labour flavour of the government’s direction of travel. She was “shocked” and “horrified” by the “island of strangers” speech delivered (and later disowned) by Keir Starmer.
“I would absolutely oppose any move from the Labour Party to shift to the right on this,” she says on the subject of immigration, speaking before Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled her asylum reforms. “It’s a huge mistake, and they’ll just annoy and put off loads of voters. I don’t know what they think they’re offering by doing this.”
As the UK’s largest social care union, Unison is steadfastly opposed to government plans to double the qualifying period before migrants secure automatic settled status from five years to 10.
“We’ve got a very clear policy of campaigning on migrant workers’ rights. We’ve got a very clear policy of supporting Black people in this country. Since the whole Reform, anti-migrant, flag-waving stuff has all started, I can’t tell you the number of Black members… who are telling us how threatened they feel,” McAnea says.
“People are voting Reform for a whole variety of reasons, one of which is immigration – but that’s not the only reason. It’s because they feel they’ve been let down. They don’t feel that Labour has come in and made their lives better.”
While McAnea refuses to engage in talk of potential successors to Starmer, asked about the Westminster chatter about the Prime Minister being replaced in May or even before then, she says: “I understand why people are worried about the direction of travel, because it’s not working.”
These will be difficult words to hear from Starmer’s strongest ally in the affiliated unions, but McAnea emphasises: “We’re not a friendly union. What we are is not an unfriendly union but a critical friend to the Labour Party, and we try and take our policies into them, not the other way around… My view is very clearly that they need to adopt more socialist policies. That’s always been my position.”
“The fact that I don’t go to a meeting with a government minister and then put out a press release saying how terrible everything is – which would get me coverage and would appease the faction that my opponent’s a member of – is because I’m a negotiator. I go in and I say, ‘Can I get something more out of this?’” she adds.
McAnea tells The House it is “completely untrue” that she is too close to No 10 and reveals she does not get one-to-one time with Starmer, though she naturally engages with ministers.
“Am I not going to speak to Labour? That’d be a nonsense and I’d be abrogating my responsibility as the general secretary of the biggest union in the country.”
She argues that the Employment Rights Bill still going through Parliament is evidence that “being a critical friend to Labour can deliver for us”, specifically citing fair pay agreements and the new school support staff negotiating body being created by the government as two substantial gains.
“That’s huge. I’m not quite sure what my opponent’s done that comes anywhere close to anything like that… She seems to be running a very negative campaign.”
And yet still members who back her rival Andrea Egan in the general secretary election insist that – under McAnea’s watch – Unison has been toothless in the fight for pay restoration back to 2010 levels. The union has struggled to win national ballots for action on pay, for example.
“I think you’ll find all of the big unions struggle on that. Unison, Unite and GMB all struggle on it,” she says. “It’s very difficult when you’re a big union in a big sector. We easily get over 50 per cent when we’ve got small sectors or individual strikes. We’ve got loads of strikes running at the moment.”
McAnea admits that pitching a line that lands with all members is a struggle: “When you’re trying to say this 3.2 per cent pay increase that you’ve been offered is terrible, if you’re at top end of the pay scale, you may actually be thinking ‘It’s not that bad’ but if you’re at the bottom end, you’re probably thinking, ‘Yes, it is terrible’. Trying to get that messaging right is very difficult.”
One of the key demands of unions is for Labour to remove the 50 per cent turnout requirement for a ballot on industrial action to be valid. Is she hopeful that is coming?
“They’ve told us we should get something next year, and it will be secondary legislation or a statutory instrument,” McAnea says.
Unlike comrades such as Unite’s Sharon Graham, McAnea is satisfied with the level of ambition in the Employment Rights Bill. She is “pleased” that the government is “sticking to its guns” on the legislation, she says, after some feared it would be watered-down in the wake of Angela Rayner’s departure from the Cabinet.
McAnea was not best pleased with the plans for ‘subcos’, however: wholly-owned subsidiary companies created by NHS Trusts to deliver services.
“Cleaners, caterers, porters, housekeepers, the people who do the specialist cleaning of equipment from operations and things like that – they were all going to get transferred into this wholly-owned subsidiary company, which in effect means they would no longer be employed directly by the NHS,” she says.
The general secretary says she fought it tooth and nail. “I went in to see Jim Mackey and Wes Streeting and had huge arguments with them,” she says of the NHS chief executive and Health Secretary.
“If you do this, we will fight you on every front. Every trust where you do this, we will have a campaign against you. We will ballot members with industrial action if we have to,” she reports telling them.
“A few days before Labour Party Conference, Wes Streeting announced that it was all put on hold because he’d listened to the unions, particularly Unison.”
Born in Glasgow, 1958, McAnea was raised in poverty by her mother, a school cleaner and dinner lady. She has worked at Unison ever since its founding in 1993, and – when promoted by members from assistant general secretary responsible for collective bargaining and negotiation to become Dave Prentis’ successor – she made history as the union’s first female leader.
Inspired by the great shipyard unionist Jimmy Reid, McAnea joined the Communist Party as a 16-year-old and did not leave it until a decade later. Today, her opponent may have largely united the ‘anti-bureaucratic’ left, including the Socialist Party and Revolutionary Communist Party, but one part – the CP – is backing McAnea.
One reason that part the left is put off by Egan is her proximity to self-organised identity-based groups in the union, such as the trans and non-binary network; they regard this as an inadvisable prioritisation of identity politics over genuine class politics.
McAnea shares the view of many LGBT+ members in Unison, however, that the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of woman in the Equality Act is unwelcome.
“I’ve been a trans ally for many years… My big worry just now is the way the law has been interpreted by the Supreme Court still leaves people in a state of not knowing what’s happening,” she says. “There has to be a different piece of legislation that comes through. It just doesn’t make sense at the moment.”
Would she like to see the Equality Act or Gender Recognition Act amended? “There has to be a new piece of legislation which clarifies rights, particularly just now for trans people. I think that’s an issue for us.” Asked whether this is a likely prospect, she shoots back: “It doesn’t look like it, but we’ll certainly be pushing for it.”
