Personal report of UNISON Development and Organisation sub committee of UNISON NEC 13th January 2021

Concern was expressed regarding the late receipt of the papers for this subcommittee.

2 subcommittee members currently have COVID so we sent our best wishes.

Report on branches currently under regional supervision - questions on why a branch was brought into Regional supervision and in other cases of how long investigations were taking. 

Though recruitment activities had been impacted by COVID the overall recruitment figure was that 179,858 members had joined in 2020. 

An NEC member reported that in their branch an online branch meeting had been called the day before schools had been due to go back and 100 had attended. 5 new reps had been recruited. There had been a surge in membership.

There was a Branch Resources Review presentation. An NEC member asked how much of this could be shared currently or is there an alternative document to report back to Regional Council for example.

Under Learning and Organsising report:

1690 Activists attended other training last year with risk assessments, disability discrimination & campaigning with social media particularly popular.

The Open University (OU) and Worker’s Educational Association (WEA) as UNISON partners were able to adapt and deliver courses such as mental health & wellbeing and associated areas.

Almost 3000 members have now been allocated a skills academy account.

It was asked on anti-racism training the NEC took a view on this some months ago. Had we tried to set up anti racism courses. It was stated we had Hope not hate training. 

Improvements continue to be made to the RMS system under the banner of the “Merlin” company.

The next step is to modify existing weekly leaver reports.

Report on Young Workers month, research mapping and survey - UNISON’s  Young Worker’s month in November 2020 arranged a variety of activities including a survey, Health & Safety updates and an event centred around what they need post COVID. An NEC member stated that young members as well as workplace campaigns could be engaged with Black Lives Matter or environmental campaigns. An NEC member stated that the Young members officer - a lot of branches act like this is the only role available.

We noted the latest GDPR report which had a total in 2020 of 175 subject access requests (SARS).

2 Draft D&O motions for 2021 National Delegate Conference were agreed.

Rule amendments were approved for forwarding to full NEC, changing language in the existing rule book to non-gender specific in place of the current he/she, him/her etc. North West NEC members were happy to support this.

An Honorary life membership was agreed.