Alliance president Jill Ovens has told the Alliance that Labour apparatchiks are 'dogs', but is jumping ship to them anyhow (see also the Herald article). Turning ultra-pragmatic, Ovens has decided that if she really wanted a top job in the Service and Food Workers Union she needed to put aside her politics and join Labour. The reason she gives is that Labour MP Darien Fenton had (incorrectly) told members of the Service and Food Workers Union that links to the party were crucial to their pay rises. Ovens used to challenge Labour and show how working people and unions shouldn't trust them, but now she's given all that away and even goes so far as praising what they've done in government.
Ovens' move is very sad for a number of reasons. First, hardly any unions are affiliated to Labour anymore, yet she Ovens now parrots the old lie that affiliation is good for union members. Labour has always just wanted to docile unions and union leaders that don't challenge the neoliberal programme of the party, and this is what Ovens is falling for. She says that she made the switch because the union workers are incapable of understanding the more 'sophisticated' arguments against Labour and therefore wouldn't have voted for her. It seems that she's just become another pro-Labour bureaucrat that will give Labour some left-cover.
