Matt McCarten: Little bites off a lot more than he can chew

It's been accepted for months that Andrew Little, the head of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, would move into the presidency of the Labour Party some time this year.

Last weekend he was formally installed into the role.

Outgoing president Mike Williams has had an unprecedented long run. Eight years at the helm of a party without many internal rifts is a sign of a good president, and a lot of that is due to his inclusive leadership style.

Mind you, it did help that before Williams' tenure, the troublesome left wing of the party decamped with Jim Anderton to morph into the Alliance. And after the party's nutty right wing followed Roger Douglas into the Act Party, running the Labour Party would have been a doddle. The most stressful job for Williams was probably holding the hands of errant MPs while Clark cut their throats.

But it seems a bit churlish for the party to not give Williams the deference he deserves and wait until the party's conference until they replaced him. Just because Clark and her deputy, Michael Cullen, resigned their leadership positions it shouldn't necessarily follow that the party president should have to fall on his sword immediately.

After all, Clark and Cullen are still collecting their parliamentary salaries until some better job comes up, while Williams is out of paid work.

I guess the party just decided that the sooner they ousted the old guard the better.

I respect and like both the outgoing and incoming presidents. The new president has talent. Little leads our biggest private sector union and is arguably the country's most influential trade union figure. So I really wonder why he's talked himself into heading up the Labour Party's organisation while keeping his day job at the union.

Both these jobs are full-on commitments.

Little's predecessor at his union, Rex Jones, once took on the Labour presidency too. But he stepped down after just one year because of the heavy workload.

Labour was in power then so there were certain advantages for his union, such as having access to Cabinet ministers. But it's hard to see what the benefit is to the EPMU members when their leader takes up the presidency of the Labour Party when it's the National Party that is running the country.

Imagine Little trekking up to the Beehive to lobby government ministers on behalf of his union members and expecting a sympathetic hearing. These National Party politicians know his other job is to kill them at the next general election. But it's even stranger than that.

Little also says he will run for Parliament at the next election. Does Little or his union think his political opponents in the Government will give him anything that helps him?

Little and his other senior union colleagues are smart so they will have thought this through. But there must be a little too much 'group think' about what's good for Labour rather than what's best for their members.

The EPMU leaders are surely not naive enough to think that employers and politicians will believe that Little can speak in his union role without having a political motive. The same suspicion will occur when he speaks for the Labour Party.

Given that he has a personal agenda of becoming an MP, I think that he'll find it difficult to do either job well.

As the boss of the Unite union myself, I'm not saying a union leader shouldn't be knee-deep in the political process. Workers have always the known that politics impacts on their lives, and expect their unions to have a political strategy. Workers in many countries, including New Zealand, have even formed political parties of their own to advance their interests.

But no one believes that Labour is the sole champion of workers' interests any more. The Greens are consistently better on workers' issues. The Maori Party is more reliable. Even if Labour was the most pro-worker party, putting all the union movement's eggs into one party isn't that smart.

Trade unions face a hell of job over the next few years, given the global economy. It's an even bigger challenge for the EPMU, given its central role in the export and manufacturing industries. I find it hard to believe that Little can do both his union job and the Labour Party role well. Either job is enormous on its own.

Little will obviously have a succession plan and delegate the day-to-day management of major challenges to others.

But anyone who has worked for a senior boss who has announced that they will leave soon, yet stays in their role while working part-time in a new job as part of a transition process, knows it doesn't work. Frankly it's bizarre.

Parliamentary politics are important. But offering to lead the main opposition party doesn't make any sense at all. Particularly as the union movement is smaller now than it was when Labour was elected nearly a decade ago.

Now that Labour is in opposition, I would have assumed that a union leader's main priority would be to give his full attention to the union work, rather than taking up another job.

That's why workers pay their union leaders a full-time salary, isn't it?