Proud to be Labour

Supporting the Labour Party can sometimes feels like a dirty secret, and it’s no secret that I have had some significant policy disagreements with the Labour Government.

But after a week at Labour Party Conference, a Labour Party Conference full of Labour activists committed to equality and social justice and where speech after speech has given real commitment to progressive policies many of which we in the trade union movement has been calling for, I’m certainly proud to be Labour.

From education, where school support staff have finally got a national pay structure to housing, where we not have a consensus about the way forward which includes local authorities being able to build new council houses.

Policy seminars were a good opportunity to put forward our point of view, which is then fed into the policy forum process. The first one I went to was in the sustainable communities section, where I was able to ask Hazel Blears about reviewing how effective the two-tier workforce code of practice had been and she gave commitment to working with UNISON to review the implementation and see what more can be done. In health I asked about bringing cleaning staff back in house to help improve our hospital cleaning. I was able to follow this up with her at our reception later in the week and they are seriously looking at cleaning contracts to see what can be done. I also attended the crime a justice seminar, where Pat Heatherton (Vice Chair of the National Labour Link Committee) was able to ask about the appalling statistic that around 95% of prisoners have a mental health issue.

Fringe events were really interesting. A highlight was the Women in Work fringe organised by UNISON where the Minister for Women spoke very encouragingly about what we want to see from the Single Equalities Act.

And the week has also been a great opportunity to talk to politicians in an informal setting. Talking to Anne Keen about contract cleaners in hospital, or discovering Alan Johnson’s cousin is married to my dads cousin (small world). I had a very useful conversation with Dawn Butler MP, the Labour Party’s new Vice Chair Youth. She seems to be a real activist at heart and we will be following up about supporting young trade unionists within the party.

There's a lot of speculation with the success of the conference as to whether Gordon Brown will call a snap election. I really don't know what he'll do, but whenever a General Election is called I'm sure UNISON will be right behind Labour delivering the 4th term.

TUC Congress thoughts

Well, I’m on my way back from TUC Congress feeling quite tired it has to be said.

I used to watch some of congress on the TV, admittedly when nothing else was on, but it was quite different being there. It was interesting to hear Gordon Brown speak, the first time I’ve heard him as prime minister. I thought he gave a solid performance which spoke directly to his audience, whereas Tony Blair would be more focussed on talking to the media. The news of his speech seemed focussed on public sector pay, describing it as the ‘main thrust’ whereas actually it was mostly about skills.

Amazingly for the diversity of the trade union movement we agreed on nearly everything, great for the movement but not so great for our entertainment.

Wednesday afternoon’s session brought a couple of contentious debates, on child care and the EU constitutional treaty. On the EU treaty, we have a clear policy in unison supporting call for a referendum and a no vote in that, not because we’re anti Europe, but because we want a social Europe, rather than a Europe based on economic liberalism and undermining our rights to good public services. We supported a motion calling for a referendum from the GMB and a motion from the RMT which also called for TUC to campaign for a no vote. The only speaker that spoke directly against the RMT motion was from community. In fact both Unite’s General Secretaries spoke in favour of the GMB motion on the basis of opposition to the treaty spinelessly avoiding speaking against the RMT motion, then voting it down.

On childcare we opposed a motion from TUC women’s conference calling for the TUC to offer crèche facilities outside of formal business hours. Speakers rightly pointed to the importance of fringe and social events at Congress, and how people with child care responsibilities shouldn’t be excluded from those opportunities. However, UNISON opposed the motion on the basis that crèche facilities aren’t the most appropriate form of childcare out of hours and that other unions should take more responsibility in funding tailored rap around childcare for their members, because if they can’t do that at TUC how do they engage women in their own conferences the other 51 weeks of the year?

Thursday morning contained debates around education. I spoke for UNISON in a debate around participation in education or training post 16, with the Government proposing increasing the compulsory age. It was nice to see UNISON release this! I was proud to be speaking out against compulsion. The real show down on this issue had been avoided through the compositing process, with the word compulsory being removed. This left the composite supporting participation, rather than compulsory participation. But then the mover from the Association of College Management (ACM) spoke in favour of compulsion, the seconder from University & Collage Union (UCU) went a bit mad attacking the ‘manager’ for not knowing what it’s really like in FE colleges. This led to UCU voting against their own composite.

I did really enjoy the week, especially the social events (as they often offered free drinking opportunities) next stop Labour Party Conference.

TUC 2nd Delegation Meeting

So having discussed in the morning at PDCC what we would recommend to the delegation I had already had a warm up for the afternoon's meeting of our TUC Delegation.

First off was discussing our policy on motions submitted to this years Congress. Most of this was uncontroversial so our policy is to support, with some were we are deferring our support so we can seek either further clarification from the submitting union or the view of UNISON bodies (such as women's committee on a women's motion).

There are two motions that we wish to oppose, one which would undermine the bargaining mechanism in local government and one which supports raising the compulsory education or training age to 18. The raising of the leaving age which is compulsory has been opposed by UNISON as we believe that 16 year olds should have full adult rights and responsibilities and our members working in education have concerns about the behaviour and motivation of those compelled to stay on.

We then discussed amendments to motions, with three amendments being put forward to motion 02 on the national minimum wage, motion 05 on agency workers and motion 21 on the Discrimination Law Review. All these amendments enhance motions which we felt needed some strengthening and some emphasis on important issues for UNISON. They where uncontroversial and approved with minor adjustments.

I'm really looking forward to my first TUC Congress - I'll let you know what I think of it once I've been.