THE Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS) is to conduct a representational rights poll at UC Rusal Jamaica Limited’s locations next Tuesday, November 3.

However, instead of the trade union involved being the National Workers Union (NWU), which had dominated the sector since the involvement of the late prime minister and NWU leader Michael Manley in the process in the 1960s, it will be its white-collar offspring, the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Supervisory Employees (UCASE), led by Manley’s protégé Vincent Morrison.

The very unusual development is the result of UCASE delinking from the NWU, ending a 39-year-old relationship, after Morrison was unceremoniously removed from his position of NWU president after his 65th birthday, in February 2014.

Morrison announced then that UCASE would not resume the relationship and removed the offices of the union from the NWU’s headquarters on East Street in downtown Kingston to Tangerine Place near Half-Way-Tree.

As the then UCASE general secretary, Robert Harris, who was also a casualty of the purge by current NWU General Secretary Granville Valentine, told the Jamaica Observer: “UCASE is not going back to East Street. The executive of the union is resolute that they do not want to be affiliated to the NWU any longer, and we have a mandate to make UCASE independent and to put a new image on the union out there.”

Harris has since left UCASE for a new job with the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), but his successor, John Levy, a wily organiser in the tradition of Manley, has been actively working with Morrison in the field over the past few months, recruiting members as UC Rusal resumed operations at the Ewarton/Port Esquivel operations in St Catherine, and to a lesser extent Kirkvine Works in Manchester.

Levy noted that most of the operations had been closed since 2008/2009, leaving more than 1,000 bauxite alumina workers without employment.

He said that the biggest issue the union has faced has been veiled threats from the management about another closure. Most of the current workers are on contracts with the company, which also raised fears about their job security.

However, Levy says that he is confident about winning the poll, which will involve more than 660 workers at the UC Rusal facilities.

The poll will be conducted at Ewarton Works and Port Esquivel, St Catherine between 7:00 am and 5:30 pm; Kirkvine Works, Manchester, and the Schwallenburgh Mines in Faith’s Pen, St Ann from 7:00 am to 12:00 noon.