Via a GoTo meeting. NEC members were asked by the Chair to type in the chatbox if they wanted to speak. Josie Bird, President was Chairing. Referred to Dave Prentis, General Secretary retiring. ‘We were well placed to face future challenges’.
General Secretary election procedures – The Chair asked any member present to leave the meeting if they were considering standing. Roger McKenzie, Hugo Pierre, Christine Mcanea and Karen Reissmann left the meeting whilst the procedures were discussed.
Election procedures had been through Development and Organisation (D&O) NEC sub committee. There were some changes due to Coronavirus. Nominations could be submitted online if the branch rules allow or virtual nominations out of rule could be made if a member of staff was present. The Region should be given 7 days notice (so someone can get there). Nominations were via an online portal (CES). Donations to candidates were £150 max per member. Candidates should keep a record of all donations including in kind so the investigating officer could investigate if a complaint was received.
All hustings should be virtual not physical. If one area was in lockdown we did not want to disadvantage a candidate from that area. An NEC member asked if a Region was unable to send someone to the meeting would it invalidate the nomination even if the branch had done everything right? We were assured a member of staff would be available for the nomination meeting. An NEC member said some disabled members in a vulnerable situation should not be expected to attend a physical meeting. The General Secretary procedures were agreed with surprisingly little controversy. The nomination period was 10th August – 25th September 2020.
General Secretary report – Dave Prentis referred to the work done by the union during the Covid crisis. The website had 1 million interactions in terms of traffic. It was updated 2 or 3 times a week. There had been heart-breaking stories of members unable to pay for funerals of family members. £500,000 had gone to the welfare fund. Staff had started to move back to the Regional Office. UNISON Direct had reopened. 1,000 emails a day were being dealt with during the lockdown. 34,500 had joined taking into account leavers. 50,000 new members had been called in the last 6 weeks by Local organisers, Area organisers and Regional Organisers. This was appreciated by members. The health crisis was going to lead to an economic crisis. There was a grim outlook. A £10 billion shortfall in Local Government. We had to ensure there were no compulsory redundancies. In Tower Hamlets, a Labour council, 1000’s of UNISON members were striking against imposition of contracts. (Sack and re-employ staff on inferior contracts).
Covid – we were calling for a public enquiry into what happened and wanted local and national stories from members to feed into evidence for a public inquiry. There was a separate item later on on Black Lives Matter movement.
An NEC member referred to the worry of vulnerable members with a disability after shielding ended in England on 1st August. Another NEC member referred to the unacceptable 0% pay ‘offer’ in Higher Education. An NEC member said the Covid crisis showed we needed a publicly run national care system not the current fragmented, privatised system that had been exposed in the current crisis. An NEC member from the North West said the Government had taken NHS staff for granted and we should ask for our pay award date to be brough forward 4 months to early December. This was a discussion that was taking place amongst the Trade Unions and we had the public on our side to get the proper pay award we should have got a long time ago.
Dave Prentis came back on a number of points raised. In relation to the Tower Hamlets dispute the 2 UNISON reps on the Labour party NEC had raised this and we were assured Keir Starmer’s office would intervene.
A strong statement had been put out in support of Black Lives Matter. We had given evidence to the Doreen Lawrence inquiry. We had written to the Prime Minister about the failure of Government action. Additional work was to be done to deal with the issues affecting black workers in relation to Covid. The lack of screening, advice and risk assessments. An assistant General Secretary said we needed real change to get rid of institutional racism. The Mayor in Tower Hamlets presumably supports Black Lives Matter but black workers and also women workers were disproportionately affected by the proposed imposition of worse contracts.
The Chair at the end of the meeting said there would be a meeting in the period 10th August to 25th September 2020 to make a nomination for General Secretary as an NEC.
