Nearly two million union members will be asked to name the new super-union to be formed from combining the T&G and Amicus.

After union leaders failed to agree on a fresh identity for the organisation, the union’s members, who are expected to back the merger, will be asked to vote for one of three names: OneUnion, Union@work or AmicusT&G.

Amicus prefers OneUnion. The T&G put forward Union@work. The third option is one that both can live with, but if it is chosen it will keep alive the Amicus name, which few in the union had been keen on.

Amicus employed a consultancy, at a cost of £10,000, to advise on a new name for the super-union, although then it threw out all of its suggestions as inappropriate. Two of its list of 200 rejected names were Voice and Accommodate, as it pursued a theme of partnership. Also discarded from the final list were Spectrum and United. The name that Amicus finally selected was suggested by Derek Simpson, its general secretary.

The T&G did not employ a consultancy and said that the move to let the members decide was both “more democratic and a lot cheaper than a consultancy”.

The T&G has to win the approval of one more conference of delegates, scheduled for December 19, before it can put the merger plans to a vote of its 800,000 members, which it hopes to do in January. If the T&G succeeds in overcoming its final hurdle, Amicus will ballot its 1.1 million members next month.

Providing that there is not a surprise vote against merger by the members, the new superunion will come into existence in May. Plans for it have alarmed the Labour Party because of its political muscle and employers because of its plans for greater cohesion of large numbers of union members in an industry.

It plans large industrial groupings within its structure and to spend £15 million a year on recruiting new union members.

Originally, the T&G and Amicus held three-way merger talks with the GMB, but the GMB pulled out this year after its regional officials felt that their autonomy would be undermined.

However, it is thought that the super-union will try to bring in other unions with the promise of greater resources and industrial and political power. Such moves would reshape the union landscape and would also marginalise the TUC, the umbrella body that traditionally has brought all the unions together.

Some in the union movement also fear that large unions can become more remote from their members’ needs and industries as they become larger and more general.

Birth of a mega-union

November 2008: new structure to begin after rationalisations across shared functions

Source: Amicus and T&G