Sunday, June 24, 2007

Last Day of UNISON Conference 2007 – Wreckers seen off.


Sorry this is a bit late. The last day of conference is always a little fraught. Your morning "routine” has to cope with the additional tasks of checking out of your hotel and finding somewhere to put your luggage for the day. Cumulative late nights (and hangovers) don’t help either.

Thanks to excellent trade union history blog Timemachine for NALGO (UNISON founder union) annual for 1939 (yes, it was called the "Beano"). I missed the traditional Friday “tongue in cheek” Standing order committee report. I hear that its chair, Clytus Williams, was on form and very funny.

There then was a good emergency debate on pay campaigns. Looks like it will be our first row with Gordon as Prime Minister (...and not our last). The scheduled order of business was finished off, then after lunch we had the start of the remaining order of business (the “snake”).

In 1 hour 45 minutes there was an attempt to debate 30 odd outstanding motions and amendments. First two motions which had been prioritised were health and safety motions. Sickness Absence Procedures and Attacks on Public sector workers: Violence against staff. Excellent news, real core trade union issues being prioritised and discussed. It was a pity that certain delegates prevented proper debate on such issues by raising a point of order and calling for a vote when only a couple of speakers had said anything. But no real surprise there.

Very pleased that Motion 101 “Pension Funds and Capital Stewardship – Toward the Citizen Economy” was the third prioritised motion (see Peter Gaskins, Cambridge UNISON pension rep
and new NEC member speaking in favour) and it was overwhelmingly passed. In fact I only saw one delegate vote against (by raising his yellow A4 voting card) and he was promptly hit on the head by a female colleague with her voting card for doing so. Quite right too. I’ll post something on 101 with a full account of the “Are we the New Capitalists” fringe. However, at the risk of sounding over enthusiastic, it appears that Capital Stewardship is coming of age in UNISON at last. Related issues came up time and time again during conference such as over the arms trade, Israeli, international solidarity, health & safety issues and the danger of “Private Equity”.

In the closing session the UNISON President for the year (Malcolm Cantello – elected by the NEC it is the most senior lay trade union post in UNISON) was thanked for his work not only in the past year but also for his entire trade union service. I always find this quite emotional and nostalgic. It is a shame that some delegates immediately leave as soon as formal business is finished and do not wait to listen.

Overall, a very good week. Real trade union business debated and moved forward. Pity that some nonsense crept through every now and then, but there you go.

Next year in Bournemouth….

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a question? I was not at NDC but if, on Friday, there are no speakers against a motion -and I cannot belive that anyone woud speak against the safety motions, then there is no debate surely? It is just a formalised discussion and if everyone agrees then-as time is money and decisions on motions -it is better that more motions are addresed rather than have many speakers on the same topic all in agreement? cannot see how 'wreckers' comes into it?

John Gray said...

Hi Anon
Good point – bit if you had been at NDC you would have seen rows of Ultra left speakers on certain motions “grandstanding” and generally abusing their speaker rights on hard left motions. Not many speakers can usually be bothered to respond. However, when we have proper trade union motions, which directly affect the interests of our members, they cut short debate. Many delegates find it very difficult to prepare and get up in front of 2000 odd people to speak on issues they think important. Imagine their frustration and the damage done to the Union when they pluck up the courage to go up and speak then the opportunity is snatched away from them.

See Tuesday post for info on “wreakers”. Thankfully, Dave asserted his authority and we managed to have a good conference.

Anonymous said...

John,

I don't know which conference you were at, but I can't think of any debates on the last day of UNISON conference this year which saw rows of "ultra left speakers" grandstanding or doing very much else. There was a long debate on the emergency composite on pay, but that seemed entirely in accord with its importance to the union. The next longest debate was, I think, the one on the sickness monitoring issue, which seemed justified given its place at the top of the list of delegates' priorities.

I'm sure it must be tempting for you to write a standard "denounce the left" article about conference each day without actually thinking about whether the events of conference justify it, but really, "wreckers seen off" as a title for a review of Friday's business? Come on!

John Gray said...

Hi Nick

Sorry about delay in replying – just back from a really good UNISON Labour Link Forum meeting at Manchester. Will post on it later/tomorrow.

Actually, yes, the last day at conference (Friday) wasn’t too bad (unlike last year). Decent health & safety and pension debates (real trade union issues) were of course cut short by ultra left points of order. However, this post was supposed to be about the whole week rather than just that day. Apologies if I didn’t make this clear.

Thankfully Dave Prentis stamped on the SWP et al on Tuesday morning (see post) and by and large the “wreakers” were actually seen off and we had a fairly decent conference.

Leaving aside Friday, am I right then in saying that you don’t think that there was any “grandstanding” by delegates abusing their speaking rights to launch partisan diatribes upon the Labour government regardless of what the motion was suppose to be about?