David brought together the seven unions at BOB to agree a response. “We needed to be co-ordinated and work with the organisation in a positive but challenging way to get them to do the restructuring properly,” he explains. “One of the basic principles of consultation is that staff have sufficient information to ask questions and inform their decisions, and they weren’t able to do that.”

The ICB “relaunched” its consultation in early July, this time proposing to expand its workforce to over 560 posts. “The problem is that they’ve repeated many of the mistakes from the first consultation, but we’ve continued to feed back members’ views, with input from the other unions,” David says. The consultation has now closed and the ICB is now working on the feedback from staff before going to the board for approval.

MiP taking the lead during the negotiations has “worked naturally quite well”, David says, because as a senior manager he knows how the system works. He adds: “I feel the MiP rep’s role is quite unique in that you can use your management experience to bring some shape to the discussion.”

Unpicking problems

In his day job as associate director of quality, “I tend to get involved when things have not gone so well,” David says. “I work with teams to see what’s gone wrong and what we could do differently—the aim is to design the problem out of the system.” He also supports the commissioning of services for patients who don’t fit into traditional care pathways and supports colleagues to identify good quality services and work with organisations on quality improvement.

Collaborative working and building relationships are key to David’s work as a manager, union rep and co-chair of the ICB’s LGBT+ network. “I like identifying a problem and working with people to find a solution,” he explains. “That’s the bit I enjoy the most. My background is in risk management and I can use those skills to unpick the problem with them.”

In a small union like MiP, local reps have a lot of autonomy, and David says it can be difficult knowing how far he can take decisions for the union. “I often think, I’m going to challenge them on this, but you need a bit of a sense check when you’re talking about putting yourself into a dispute.” He’s been able to draw on support from MiP national officer Rosie Bartram and a national network of ICB reps set up by the union’s national organiser Katia Widlak. The group now meets regularly to discuss common issues and share experiences and best practice.

When the restructuring is over, David would like to spend more time recruiting members. “People need union support because these things aren’t going to be a one-off,” he warns. And he would also like more opportunities for MiP reps and members to meet as a collective. “It would be really nice to see some of the people I’ve talked to face-to-face,” he says. ” //