Clive Dobson, the president of the National Workers Union (NWU), is to be challenged for the leadership of the powerful trade union when it holds its next biennial congress in September.

Dobson, 71, is to square off with two of his vice-presidents – Vincent Morrison, the current island supervisor of the union, and Danny Roberts, who, in addition to heading the NWU’s white collar affiliate, Union of Clerical, Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE), is a prominent vice-president of the umbrella Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU).

Dobson, who has held the post for the past 15 years, succeeded retired trade unionist and politician Derrick Rochester, but has been hampered by illness over the past couple of years. In fact, on the three occasions the Observer sought to speak with him at his home in Montego Bay last week, his family insisted that he was resting and unable to speak with the media.

Union officials had expected that Dobson would have given up the post due to his illness. However, when nominations closed last week it was confirmed that he would be seeking re-election at the congress scheduled for September 30 at the Jamaica Conference Centre.

Since joining the NWU as an organiser in 1958, Dobson has held the positions of assistant island supervisor and general-secretary, as well as deputy general-secretary of the People’s National Party (PNP), to which the union is aligned. He was also a PNP senator, between 1980 and 1983, prior to being elected NWU president.

Morrison, who is considered a loyal deputy and among the last of the old school trade unionists from the 50s who have dominated the NWU since the ascendancy of Michael Manley in the 1960s, is considered the second most powerful man in the union, given his positions as island supervisor and vice-president.

But Roberts believes that both positions entrust too much power in one individual.

“I am against the concentration of power in one man’s hands,” Roberts told the Observer. “The NWU has three principal positions – president, island supervisor and general-secretary. This kind of power should never be concentrated in any one pair of hands.”

Roberts also believes that issues such as globalisation and the 21st century challenges facing workers demand a new type of leadership.

“I think I can provide the kind of leadership that can concentrate on that kind of direction while creating a philosophical framework for the advancement of the trade union movement,” he said.

Regarded as one of the intellectual stars of the trade union movement, the articulate Roberts is a graduate of the University of the West Indies (UWI), one of the chief spokesmen for the JCTU and a part-time lecturer at the University of Technology. He was elected president of UCASE in 2003, but also represents blue collar workers at major firms like the Caribbean Cement Company.

The union’s only other vice-president, Norman DaCosta, who is also an assistant island supervisor in charge of the bauxite/alumina sector, says he has no intention of vying for the presidency. However, he is on the ballot to retain one of the four vice-presidencies. The fourth vice-president, who was elected at the last congress in 2003, is Errol Lynch, but he left the union two years ago and the position has not been filled since.