National Young Members Forum meeting

Today we had a very productive meeting of the National Young Members Forum, the forum agreed in principle to campaigning around the national minimum wage in the run up to the 10th anniversary of its introduction. We can now start work on putting together the plan for this campaign so watch this space. We also agreed to submit a motion on this to National Delegate Conference and Labour Link Forum.

On NDC motions we had some discussion around rule changes to propose. We have decided to submit a rule change to add environmental sustainability into the union’s objectives in the rule book. There was also some discussion about whether to submit a rule change to bring the length of time you need to be a member of UNISON before you are entitled to protection down from 13 weeks to 4 weeks. This has been debated at NDC before but has failed to get a two-thirds majority. This is a crucial issue for young members who may well be new to the union and to the workplace. On the basis that we know that other branches will be submitting this rule change to NDC this year we have decided not to submit it but the forum will be actively supporting it at conference to try and get the two-thirds majority required for the change.

And of course we talked about pay and the Pay Matters campaign, I have asked the regional reps to go back to their regional young members forums and get them to consider how they can support the campaign in their regions.