The idea of in­de­pen­dence is not one that trade unions are com­fort­able with with­in their ranks.

The very word 'union' speaks of one­ness and slo­gans such as 'Sol­i­dar­i­ty For­ev­er', 'Work­ers of the World, Unite', 'Unit­ed We Stand, Di­vid­ed We Fall' and 'One for all and All for One', were all borne out of the need for labour to speak as one voice.

Uni­ty is the bedrock of any labour body, as the voic­es of the mul­ti­tude sound loud­er than those of a few. A small crack in the dam, it's well known, is strong enough to damn its fu­ture.

In this light, the irony is in­escapable, that on the eve of the coun­try's In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions on Tues­day, one trade union dared to be in­de­pen­dent by ac­cept­ing the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer's four per cent of­fer for the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods of 2014-2016 and 2017-2019.

Not un­ex­pect­ed­ly, some of the oth­er trade unions be­gan call­ing down fire and brim­stone-type judge­ment up­on the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers' Union's pres­i­dent Michael Pren­tice, la­belling him a 'Ju­das' for go­ing against a de­ci­sion to fight the of­fer.

What's not be­ing made clear though, is ex­act­ly what line Pren­tice is ex­pect­ed to tow with­in the union body.

As ben­e­fi­cial as it may be to speak with one voice through these large bod­ies, as leader of the AWU, Pren­tice is ac­count­able first and fore­most to his mem­bers.

Any de­ci­sion he makes must be in the in­ter­est of his mem­ber­ship, for which he will be judged by them.

There is cer­tain­ly no com­mit­ment on his part to bend to the will of oth­ers if he be­lieves his mem­ber­ship will ben­e­fit from the de­ci­sion to ac­cept the CPO's of­fer, which would have been what he and his ex­ec­u­tive ne­go­ti­at­ed for on be­half of their mem­bers.

Ac­count­abil­i­ty to the wider union body will al­ways be a sec­ondary de­ci­sion where the judge­ment of ex-com­mu­ni­ca­tion is about the worst he can ex­pect.

This is not the first time we have seen a sin­gle union go against the broad­er body.

In April 2011, Wat­son Duke, as then-pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, went against the po­si­tion of the trade union groups in ac­cept­ing a five per cent wage in­crease of­fer from the then-Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

Like Pren­tice, Duke al­so raised the ire of the oth­er unions, who like­wise la­belled him a trai­tor. In the case of both men, the ar­gu­ment has been that the sign­ings were in the best in­ter­est of their work­ers.

Duke's de­ci­sion then, meant ex­ile from the big trade union bod­ies for a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of time.

Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers pres­i­dent James Lam­bert has said Pren­tice was very vo­cal against the four per cent of­fer in meet­ings be­fore the ap­par­ent sud­den turn­around.

If what Lam­bert has said is true, then Pren­tice must re­move his union from the Joint Trade Union Move­ment.

Tak­ing an in­de­pen­dent stand is one thing, but do­ing so while giv­ing the im­pres­sion of be­ing ful­ly on board with the oth­ers is dis­hon­est at best.

Hav­ing al­ready been deemed a trai­tor for leav­ing NATUC to join JTUM, this lat­est de­vel­op­ment on­ly ce­ments Pren­tice's po­si­tion as un­wel­come among the union's um­brel­la bod­ies.

His in­de­pen­dent de­ci­sion on Mon­day has on­ly one out­come, an in­de­pen­dent fu­ture now for the AWU in trade union af­fairs.