By Adam Ives, governance and executive officer, NAHT The School Leaders’ Union | 3 min
In the first of this two-part blog series on governance and trade union renewal, Adam Ives, governance and executive officer at the NAHT – The School Leaders’ Union, explains why the NAHT revised their rules
The governance structures of trade unions can either facilitate or frustrate their capacity to respond effectively to industrial landscapes that change rapidly and invite significant scrutiny.
At NAHT – The School Leaders’ Union, our recent rules revision process demonstrated how modernising union procedures can support the broader objectives of trade union renewal. NAHT’s rules revision process was conducted before the optimism of the last general election, at a point when the trade union movement faced a distinctly hostile landscape, where challenges such as minimum service levels legislation and intractable governments to negotiate with highlighted the need for a strong foundation for the union’s governance.
What emerged through this process was a recognition that union governance structures are not simply technical matters but foundational to both a union's resilience and its ability to thrive in uncertain times. The common adage we often remind members of is that "it's your union": this takes on an important meaning in not just affirming the mechanistic workings of the rules but in allowing members to lead in positioning the union’s identity and structures in a way that reflects their values, experiences and ambitions for the union.
The challenge of ossification
Trade union constitutions often accumulate amendments and revisions over decades, creating byzantine and mystifying structures that reflect the priorities and politics of earlier eras. This not only hampers a union’s ability to respond to emerging challenges but distances members from the decision-making structures.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has identified this directly, positioning internal governance as one of four core areas for trade union renewal. Their research emphasises that democratic internal governance is essential not only for effective operations but also for maintaining credibility with members, the public, employers, and regulators. Poor governance detracts from core messaging and limits capacity to deliver industrial wins, whereas sound governance systems act as drivers for legitimate, effective decision-making – underpinning all of this is a constitutional bedrock that either permits or denies effective strategic governance.
Outdated rules create tangible risks not just on the macro-level, concerning manoeuvrability and credibility, but in day-to-day operations as well. At NAHT, we recognised that unclear governance procedures could jeopardise critical functions like elections, disciplinary processes, and membership services. Rule changes are typically fettered by the need to be brought before an AGM and this invites piecemeal amendments that do not directly address the practical vulnerabilities within the traditional constitutional framework. Rules without clarity expose unions to internal disputes or potentially costly challenges, whereas where rules become too exhaustive the constitution itself becomes unwieldy and inaccessible to members.
At NAHT, our process revealed a constitution that, while functional, was not optimised for a modern trade union landscape. Too many rules concerned themselves with procedures that often became subordinated to practice; often rules considered what members could not do rather than facilitating and directing pathways for participation, and many of the rules sat more comfortably with the identity of an association rather than a trade union.
Next: In part two, Adam Ives discusses NAHT’s approach to the process of rules revision, and how it was implemented
