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.

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.