Today it was the turn of new lecturers’ union, UCU, to announce their ballot for their first General Secretary, and this one was a bit closer run than yesterday’s T&G/Amicus merger vote.
Sally Hunt, the General Secretary of AUT won with 52% of the vote under a new Single Transferable Vote system, which saw the count go to a second round, after the third placed candidate (Peter Jones) was eliminated and his votes reapportioned by second choice fairly evenly between Sally and Roger Kline. You can get the full scrutineer’s report here.
I’ve met Sally a few times and she’s very open and personable, so am glad to see the result for her. A bit one-sided maybe as I’ve never actually met Roger, though have heard positive things about him from his former NATFHE colleagues – perhaps why the outcome was so close run.
Happy to see though that Sally’s leading role in Unions21 will hopefully be continuing now – and it’s also very good to have more women at the top of the union movement – despite a lot of changes in the last few years, still less than a quarter of unions have female General Secretaries.
So – Congratulations, Sally, and good luck now in taking UCU on to the kind of success that this merger promises.
