National Young Members Forum sets its agenda for National Delegate Conference

The National Young Members Forum met on Friday, and as with most of UNISON's structures at the moment much was taken up with National Delegate Conference. For the NYMF, NDC is an important opportunity for young members to take our agenda to the rest of the union and get our message across to one of Europe's largest gatherings of trade unionists. We previously decided to submit the motion 'Celebrating, defending and improving the National Minimum Wage As It Reaches Its 10th Year' and a rule amendment to add environmental sustainability into the aims. Both of these were successful in reaching the agenda.

We decided to submit 2 amendments (which is our limit), amending Motion 46 - Education & Skills and Motion 1 - Organising, our amendments highlight young members priorities in these areas. On Education & Skills we add stuff on the 2009 review of higher education funding, and include more on apprenticeships (a key issue with the Government's aim to increase there use within the public sector).

The National Young Members Forum also gets to prioritise 4 motions and 2 rule amendments.

Motions (in order of priority):

1. Motion 12 - Celebrating, Defending and Improving the National Minimum Wage as it Reaches its 10th Year (NYMF)


2. Motion 46 - Education & Skills (NEC) NYMF Amendment


3. Motion 01 - Organising (NEC) NYMF Amendment


4. Motion 76 - Opposing the Far Right (Newcastle City Branch)

Rule Amendments (in order of priority)

1. Rule amendment 01 - Including environmental stability in aims (NYMF)


2. Rule amendment 06 - Reducing length of membership needed to qualify for legal representation from 13 to 4 weeks (Bury St. Edmond's District Health Branch; Croydon Branch; Haringey LG Branch)

We also discussed that all important issue of The First Annual Young Members at NDC Social!

The NYMF has previously decided not to have a newsheet at conference, and instead fund a social for Young Members at the conference to have a get together. This year we will be going bowling! We will be having a get together at the conference centre and then getting bussed to the bowling ally. Details will be coming out to those delegates and visitors registered and identified as young - I will post details here closer to the time too.