V Festival success

Well I'm now clean and rested after a muddy and tiring weekend at V Festival in Staffordshire.

UNISON West Midlands Regional Young Members Forum has traditionally attended a summer event to promote the union to young people (having had stalls at Artsfest in Birmingham and the Shropshire Youth Games). This year we decided to go to V Festival. It was our first year there (though Eastern Region have been at the Chelmsford site for some years) so a lot of lessons were learnt, like we had to set up on Wednesday and wear good wellies!

The low point was being stuck in a traffic jam on the way up on Friday afternoon for eight hours! At one point on the motorway it took us two hours to travel one mile, with the light relief of witnessing people dancing and doing handstands in the middle of the motorway!

Our stall was really successful, our petition supporting UNISON's 6 Positive Futures for the NHS

1. Revive the NHS
2. Review value for money
3. Cooperate not compete
4. Empower NHS Staff
5. Involve the public
6. Celebrate achievement – The NHS is 60 years old in 2008

received around 700 signatures over two days and people there were really positive about defending the NHS and other public services.

We had plenty of freebies to tempt people to the stall, most popular were the UNISON/Positively Public glowsticks, we even had ques for the stall at some points.

We had literature about a number of the unions campaigns and the importance of trade unions, and we managed to recruit a few new members on the day and gave out lots of membership forms to public service workers who visited the stall.

And of course there was time for seeing bands. The Kooks were brilliant, I've been wanting to see them for ages, The Killers were great, Snow Patrol were brilliant and it made my festival when Martha Wainwright came on for a duet. Beverley Night was great as well, with Ocean Colour Scene being the top for atmosphere and singing along both in the JJB tent opposite our stall.

V Festival - Positively Public campaigning

So I'm really excited because next weekend I'll be at V Festival in Staffordshire promoting UNISON and our positively public campaign.

We'll be using loads of different positively public materials supplemented with our specially produced UNISON/Positively Public glow sticks which I recon will go down really well and will get our message to an audience we don't normally reach.

We're also doing a petition on the NHS working campaign and talking to people about the national demo on the 3rd November.

Lets face it I'm also excited about being at the festival and seeing some great bands but it'll hopefully be a great opportunity to talk to young people about the importance of public services.

So if anyone's a V come an say hello (I believe the Eastern Regional Young Members Forum are at the Chelmsford one).

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.

Policy Development & Campaigns Committee

Today I attended my first Policy Development & Campaigns Committee (PDCC) today which is one of the NEC committees I sit on. PDCC co-ordinates the unions campaigning work as well as being responsible for things like policy submissions and responses to consultations.

Some of the key issues we discussed where the government's review of discrimination law with view to a single equalities act, issues around the national minimum wage and housing. We also discussed issues for TUC Congress but I'll leave that to another blog.

Discrimination Law Review
A framework for fairness: Proposals for a Single Equality Bill

With the coming of the single body for all the equality strands the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, it important to harmonise the very different and complicated equality legislation that has been developed over the years. The last Labour Manifesto committed the Government to introducing a single equalities act.

UNISON are very keen on having a single equality act to harmonise and strengthen equality legislation. The proposals in the green paper are very concerning however, watering down existing provision and failing to address important issues particularly around equal pay legislation.

UNISON will obviously be making a submission and lobbying strongly on this with our partners. For more information check out the website

National Minimum Wage

By it's very nature young workers are often the ones in need of the minimum wage. I'm glad to see that the DTI consulting on ways to improve the enforcement of the national minimum wage and toughen up on penalties.

This is of course welcome and UNISON makes further representation about ensuring workers know their rights with regard to the minimum wage through putting the information on pay slips and compulsory posters for workplaces (in a similar was to the Health & Safety). This is something UNISON have been pushing for since the minimum wage was created.

More concerning is the DTI is also consulting on an exemption for participants in the National Framework for Youth, a volunteering programme. This would allow volunteers to be exploited as cheep labour while taking away actual jobs from young people and this scheme is set to expand into the public sector.

Housing
Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable

We were also briefed on the recently published green paper on housing. This issue was put right at the top of the agenda by the Labour Deputy Leadership election and the green paper has been welcomed. While we are really positive about the green paper, of course we want more, particularly around the role of local authorities and what affordable actually means. It was asked that details be put on the website becaue this is such an important issue for our members.

TUC Delegation Meeting

Thursday afternoon after the NEC meeting was the TUC Congress delegation meeting. This is where UNISON's delegates to TUC Congress come together to decide what motions we want to be submitted to Congress on behalf of UNISON.

The TUC Delegation is made up of people from across the union with spaces for NEC, regions, self organised groups, service groups and of course the young members forum. There were about 80 people there so it's a big delegation.

The key thing to be decided was which two motions we should submit to be debated at congress (which is the TUC's version of National Delegate Conference). Motions were on Affordable Housing, Public Services and Public Sector Pay. When I first looked at the motions, submitting a motion on public sector pay seemed obvious. As the debate continued it seemed much more sensible to submit pay as an emergency motion because lots of things are going to change over the coming months. We would then be able to submit a stronger and more accurate emergency motion on public sector pay. In the debate I spoke in favour of submitting the affordable housing motion, citing young members problems getting affordable social rented housing or getting onto the property ladder.

I'm glad to say that when the vote was taken we decided to submit the motions on public services and affordable housing.

NEC meeting

Unfortunately I couldn't make the first half of the NEC meeting on Wednesday 11th because of problems getting time off work. This largely consisted reviewing this years National Delegate Conference.



The majority of the business was dealt with in the General Secretary's report, which was quite long and had discussions from the NEC in each section so this took a while.



Dave Prentis announced another first for UNISON, as the first trade union to achieve Investors in People status.



There was discussion regarding the recent flooding (my own family having been hit quite hard), it was highlighted that we must make sure people understand the role of public service workers in responding to these disasters and preventing them, and it was noted that the environment agency was loosing over a thousand jobs. The excellent advice and support to UNISON members through UNISON Welfare was highlighted.



With the single status lobby this week equal pay is as always on the agenda. It was reported at 75% of councils still haven't implemented single status and 20% haven't even started.



Pensions continues to be a big issue, with the Local Government Service Group balloting members at the moment. Issues around how the schemes are run have come to light in all of the attention that the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) has had in recent years. Basically members money is in the hands of employers who don#t always use their money to their best interests as well as investing in an unethical way. This is something that the union is paying more attention to over the coming year and I know is going to be discussed in the forthcoming issue of Next Generation our young members magazine.



It was also reported by Karen Jennings (Head of Health) that there has been huge difficulties getting a suitable venue in London for the NHS demo for the 13th October. In order to get a better venue the NEC supported a short delay but this should mean we have a bigger impact on the day. I was glad to speak in support of this.



With the 'pay restraint' of 2% forcing below inflation increases in pay offers across the public sector, this continues to be a key issue for UNISON. Dave Prentis reported that he is chairing a meeting of the public sector unions next week to look at co-operation in the fight for fair pay deals.

It was particularly nice to here the General Secretary praise the Northern Ireland Regional Young Members Forum on their community work around suicide. This is great and important work and it was good to have that recognised by the General Secretary.

It was a good first meeting and I hope you've found this blog useful

Labour Link Forum

I've just got back home after UNISON's Labour Link Forum, where I was a delegate on behalf of the National Young Members Forum.

We were supposed start off with Hilary Benn as our Key note speaker, but unfortunately as the new Environment Secretary (and Sheffield MP) he was busy dealing with the devastating floods across Yorkshire. We had the last minute replacement of Hazel Blears, who is now in a key position for UNISON as Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities.

Hazel also has ties with UNISON having been a branch secretary and chair in NALGO, one of our founding unions. She said some good things about listening to staff and always comes across as a decent politician when you see her in person (though we obviously have some significant political differences). On equal pay she was clearly overwhelmed by the underfunding of single status for local government, I hope that she will be able to tackle this issue which is so vital for our local government members.

I moved a motion which the National Young Members Forum had submitted on Young People and Labour. The motion sets out UNISON's support for reforming Young Labour and the key principles that this reform should take; UNISON's continued support for Young Labour and Labour Students (with the possibility of funding a full time Youth Officer for the Labour Party); and a commitment for Labour Link to work with UNISON's Young Members Forums to engage more of our young members in Labour Link and the Labour Party. I am glad to say that this passed unanimously and I look forward to working with Labour Link and young APF levy payers on delivering this policy.

It was a good event, with a relaxed atmosphere which meant it was easy to get to know other delegates. It was disappointing that there were not many young members there, with just our current NYMF chair Anne True the only young member there as a voting delegate. Hopefully the work on engaging young members in Labour Link will mean that this improves in future years.