Unison general secretary election- who will stand for women's rights?

[crunchermuncher]

Hi I'm a member of Unison and have been sent ballot papers to elect a new general secretary.

I've had a quick look at the biog of each of the 4 candidates. Only one mentions fighting against sexism.

2 mention fighting inequality including discrimination against women.

But I want to know exactly what definition of a woman they are using in order to know what their priorities are.

There are no contact details so I can't ask them about their views.

Is anyone else struggling with this decision? Does anyone have more info?

I'm glad you asked that crunchermncher as I haven't voted yet so there's still time for purple to influence my vote if it amounts to more than "supported Corbyn so must be anti-semitic."

If it hadn't been for the pandemic I could probably have got some local gossip on the suspension but I'm not meeting the same range of people this year! It could be related to the bin dispute as there were bullying complaints flying back and forth (again, according to my local paper.)

I found some youtube videos; still working my way through them. I will link them but so far they didn't help on GC issues - just gave a flavour of how they speak. I think Christine M will win easily as the harder left vote is split 3 ways so I'm still leaning to Paul in the hope he does well enough to make the leadership wonder if they are out of touch and they may be worried enough to consult their membership on their views. Probably over-optimistic.

Paul Holmes stood for election in 2010 too so for a while I was watching an election video wondering why he was talking about Gordon Brown. I did learn that he doesn't like PR so that's a strike against him for me.

Paul Holmes August interview, no idea who the other guy is. Jeremy and Roger McKenzie - UNISON That Jeremy guy looks familiar. Hugo P, full on election promo. I wasn't keen.

Christine M doesn't seem to have anything elction related. Confident of winning or keeping her head down. This is her on International Woman's Day last year. Sounds good but she doesn't say what a woman is..

Thanks, I will check out the vids.

I'm watching the Paul Holmes one. About 13 minutes in, he gets asked about trans rights. It's a rambling answer and the interviewer doesn't ask for clarification so I still don't know what he thinks - sounds like "if we all just sit down and talk about it, it'll be fine."

Could be worse, could be better.

Onto Roger as interviewed by the blessed Jezza who it turns out is a Unison member. Well I didn't know that.