The President Eric Roberts welcomed everyone to the meeting,
and also welcomed back a number of NEC members who had been ill or suffered
injury (including me). Thank you again to North West colleagues for the support
after my accident at National Delegate Conference in Brighton.
We observed the one minute silence for colleagues who had
sadly passed including for Dave Ellis of Kirklees branch. Dave Prentis ,
General Secretary, the President and Paul Holmes NEC member and Branch
Secretary of Kirklees paid tribute to Dave who had died aged 69 from cancer of
the oesophagus. Dave was a veteran trade unionist and worked as a caretaker. Dave
Prentis said he was special, a socialist, chair of the FE college committee for
a number of years and he was ‘the heart and soul of this union’. Paul Holmes
said Dave’s silhouette would be painted on the branch banner alongside Tony
Benn and Bob Crow.
Sue Hatherley from the South East region had retired and had
stood down from the NEC. Angela Roberts was welcomed as a new NEC member from
Cymru/Wales.
The President’s charity is the new MIND campaign to deal
with mental health issues for staff in the Emergency services. It was hoped
this issue would be taken up in branches.
A message of solidarity was sent to striking workers in
South Korea. This was part of the S.Korea government plans to privatise public
services. There is a hashtag #koreanstrikeforjustice
Dave Prentis in his
General Secretary report referred to the disaster in Haiti. The NEC gave
power to the Presidential team to give a donation when the call comes from the
Disaster Emergency Committee. There was a campaign on to highlight the position
of workers and lack of rights for those building stadia for the World Cup in
Qatar – a number of Premier league grounds would be leafleted.
Dave referred to the Brexit vote. This could be 2010 again
only worse. What would be the effect on public services as Brexit went forward?
The latest calculation was that in 18 months there would be a 9/10% drop in
Gross Domestic Product. We needed a campaign to make sure the public championed
our public services. Alongside Brexit there had been growing racism in this
country. We had taken on the BNP, EDL and we would take on racism again in this
country. Also referred to was the Orgreave justice campaign and that there
should be a public enquiry into what went on at Orgreave. Ethical care charter
- 19 Local authorities had signed up to the Ethical Care charter. We needed to
spread the word to get a domino effect going.
Dave referred to the Teaching assistants industrial action
in Durham and Derby. In Derby staff had received a 25% pay cut. The council had
decided to downgrade them with no consultation and protection. The average wage
was £18 K to £20k. Some had had difficulty paying rent or mortgage. The leader
of the council arrogantly ignored the plight of the workers. It was incumbent
on us to make sure we won the dispute and the workers know they have the
support of the union. There had been an article in the Guardian newspaper on
the dispute.
In Durham a similar thing was proposed (25% pay cut) from
January 2017 – there were negotiations ongoing. 70% had vote against the latest
offer. The Deputy leader of council had been hardline. UNISON members had been
offered 1 year compensation from January 2017. Legal action was also being
looked at. The union had asked Jeremy Corbyn, the Local Government association
and North East MPs to intervene. UNISON has recruited 500 teaching assistants. There
was also industrial action taking place at Further Education colleges in
Scotland.
We had been through the TUC and Labour Party conferences. An
incredible amount of work had been done by the union since the conference in
June. The big battle would be to keep employment rights.
The NEC sent a message of support to the teaching assistants
and the members taking action at the FE colleges in Scotland.
John Jones from WET and the North West asked that the
General Secretary report be higher on the agenda in the future as was the case
today and also raised concern for the Local Government Pension Scheme and
attempts to restrict redundancy, pension and other ‘exit’ payments.
Roger Bannister from the North West asked if we could
approach Jeremy Corbyn to get a general statement from him about actions of some
Labour local authorities about unilateral variation of contracts and dismiss
and reengage - not acceptable actions from Labour councils.
Dave Prentis said public sector exit payments was becoming a
bigger and bigger issue. There were talks taking place in the civil service
where it was understood the 2 biggest unions had rejected the offer. Our
position was to reject the proposals and it would be an issue for Service
Groups. We had to co-ordinate our response.
Our position on the Jeremy Corbyn election was that we
nominated Jeremy and we had supported Jeremy going directly on the election
paper. We had put Jeremy on the ballot paper.
What the Tories do would lead to the economy contracting and
there would likely be cuts to public services.
An NEC member asked if we should support (as the largest
union in the NHS) a national demo in support of the NHS in the New Year. Keep our
NHS public and others were looking at this.
Dave said January was not a good time for a national
demonstration and there was an issue of having time to build for the demo. It
would be an issue for the Health Service Group Executive.
I asked that a message be sent from the NEC (to say how
proud we were of them) to Dave Anderson and Angela Rayner (both former NEC
members) in the Labour shadow cabinet. Both had stepped up to the plate
following the shadow cabinet resignations during the summer. Angie was now
Shadow Education secretary leading the campaign against the Tory grammar schools
and had been high profile on TV leading the campaign etc. and had emerged as a
significant political figure.
I also asked could we review the fact we have not met as a
full NEC since June 24th 2016 and since then we had had the Brexit
vote - arguably the biggest political crisis since the Second World War, the
increase in racism and renewed threats to workers’ rights etc. Had we not missed
a trick by not meeting over the summer?
In response to a criticism from an NEC member Dave said he
didn’t say we couldn’t run a demonstration in January 2017 – we would take a
lead from the Health SGE but January was still not a good month.
Organising update
– August was a slow month for recruitment but this year was better than the
previous 2 years although there was still a net drop in membership. A
significant number of our existing and new members are EU citizens. They now
face an uncertain future as a result of the Brexit vote. There was a campaign
for the ‘right to remain’.
Public Service
champions campaign – One of the Assistant General Secretary’s lead on this –
this was a campaign post Brexit and with a new Tory administration and in the wake
of Motion 31 (‘Public services under pressure’) at national conference. We had
done surveys over the summer about how members feel about the political
situation. The objectives of the campaign were that UNISON continues to be
positioned as the expert on Public service provision, to highlight the valuable
work our members do, to build public awareness of the pressure on public services
, to build hard-line policy and political argument as we go into a more fraught
political phase. Launched at the Labour Party conference on 26th
September 2016, Adverts have gone out on radio, press and billboards. The
response of members to the surveys was that no one ever said thank you for all
the extra effort they were putting in. The thank you was to make members feel
good about themselves. At the end of October phase of the campaign the message
would be that this is all at risk because of the Government. The campaign was geared
towards the budget statement at the end of November 2016. It is a 5 year
campaign.
Whilst most NEC members had no concern about the content of
the campaign however as the campaign was a 5 year long one some questions were
asked about where did it come from in lay structures?, shouldn’t it have been
discussed by the whole NEC and why was there a verbal report not a written
report. We needed to take ownership of it and bring it into the proper democratic
structures of the NEC. Again there had been a disbenefit by us not having an
NEC meeting over the summer.
Service Group update
–We received an update on
bargaining and pay campaigns across all the union’s service groups, most often
there was reported a 1% pay offer although noting that the lowest NHS pay band
had been abolished in Scotland from 1 October, leading to a £3,000 a year pay rise
for the lowest paid workers. Questions were raised by some NEC members about
the Trade Union act and our ability to organise national industrial action. The
Industrial action committee would meet to discuss the implications of the Act.
Finance – We approved the union’s accounts for
the first eight months of the year.
