Sunday and Monday saw UNISON Local Government Delegates converge on sunny Brighton for another year's debates on future union policy for Local Government.
Cardiff's motion on the Independent Safegusrding Authority and POVA and POCA investigations was 'composited' with the National Womens Committee's motion. But the composite still looked mainly like ours. The main points were that UNISON should develop a toolkit to help Branches negotiate support packages for staff who are subject to allegations and investigations under these protective processes. And also that we should develop a pack with advice and support to give to members who are in such an unfortunate position. The motion almost didn't get debated because conference time was taken up with a number of lengthy presentations and a 'panel' on Personalisation of social care- very focussed on English matters.
But I managed to speak (but with time cut to 2 minutes!) and the motion was passed unanimously.
Our ammendment to the Welsh motion on School Support Staff didn't fare as well. The Welsh motion was not 'prioritised' and was then reprioritised to the bottom of the list of motions, meaning that there was no way it would be discussed. This caused some frustration amongst Welsh delegates, who had sat through 2 days of anglo centric debates, and the one motion referring specifically to Wales was not considered important to the rest of the Country. In my view this should provoke Welsh Branches to consider putting a rule change to next year's conference allowing some 'weighting' to devolved regions so that their concerns are not sidelined by the much bigger voting strength of the English Regions.
The weather has been kind to us, but the hotel has not! Still, I'm sure members will be pleased to know that their delegates are not living it up at their expense!
Today, (the first day of National delegate Conference) Mike Hayes has spoken twice in his role as Chair of the National Finance Committee and Jane Moore is due to speak on Cardiff's similar motion on the ISA, this afternoon.
Hopefully the Branch will be comforted by the knowledge that Angie Shiels, Deputy Secretary, is looking after you all at home- but I'm never more than phone call away.
Cheers
Mark
Branch Sec
Sunny Brighton
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment