· TUC general secretary-elect Brendan Barber is discovering that his new job is no bed of roses. Bombarded by telephone calls, faxes and letters from FBU supporters seeking a recall of the TUC general council to declare war on Mr Prescott, he is being accused of being half-hearted and too soft on the government. Walter Citrine, whose "ABC of Chairmanship" should be read by any would-be tyrannt intending to stifle debate, knew what he was doing when he drew up a TUC constitution concentrating power in his own post. The new generation of union chiefs have discovered there is no mechanism they can use to get the meeting. Mr Barber, who officially succeeds John Monks in May, is about to be accused of his first "sell out" of the workers, a charge that goes with the job.
· The election to succeed John Edmonds at the helm of the GMB is warming up nicely with Paul Kenny and Kevin Curran engaged in an escalating war to sound the most anti-New Labour. Mr Kenny, a London baron, and Mr Curran, the GMB's main man in north-east England, are really somewhere in the centre politically yet both are haunted by the fate of Sir Ken Jackson who ran in Amicus as a Blairite, starting out as the red hot favourite and ending up as Sir Ken Who? Voting closes on April 14, by which point the pair are likely to be praising North Korea's efforts to promote world peace.
· Come back Stephen Byers, all is forgiven. Alistair Darling may be considered a safe pair of eyebrows in Downing Street but his name is mud among the leaders of the various groups of rail workers. Whereas Mr Byers held a regular meeting with the Aslef, RMT and TSSA general secretaries every five weeks, Mr Darling has refused to meet them even once since he took over last summer. Mr Byers was forced to resign within a few days of receiving four standing ovations at the Aslef annual conference in Scarborough, a kiss of death if there ever was one. Mr Darling would be well advised to bin any invitation from the train drivers to have a drink in the north Yorkshire resort this summer
· Four less compromising members of the union movement's awkward squad - Mark Serwotka, Mick Rix, Billy Hayes and Bill Speirs of the Scottish TUC - argued at an Oxford University debate that trade union militancy does not harm the economy. All four insisted they won the argument. They only lost the motion, insisted Mr Hayes, because his 280,000-strong block vote was disallowed after William, son of Jack, Straw decreed they could only have one vote each. Mr Rix has demanded a recount, Mr Serwotka denounced it as a capitalist plot and Mr Speirs was heard to ask who cares anyway because it was in England and therefore irrelevant.
