URTU pulls out of TUC
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• The United Road Transport Union has become the first union in history to resign from the TUC, promising its members that it will "not only survive but flourish".
URTU's resignation came just two weeks before it faced expulsion from the TUC for failing to encourage some 300 workers at Ford's Dagenham plant to return to their former union the Transport & General Workers Union.
The TUC had given URTU until 1 February to urge the drivers to return to the TGWU or to pay the larger union a fine of £36,000.
URTU general-secretary David Higginbottom insists that the union was right to accept the Ford workers who, he says, felt "betrayed and dissatisfied by their union and exercised their right to leave". He points to the many unions in the General Federation of Small Trade Unions who survive outside the TUC.
URTU used its resignation, which ends a 100-year-old relationship, to slam the TUC for being a "club which ignores the reality of life".
But TUC general-secretary John Monks, who says the URTU decision is a sad day for the trade union movement, rejects these claims.
"This was no David and Goliath situation," he says, "simply the fair and lawful application of our own rules."