Greater London Authority UNISON AGM with Sadiq Khan Mayor of London

 

On Wednesday lunchtime I was invited to attend the UNISON GLA hybrid branch AGM in City Hall as a guest speaker. Before me the Mayor Sadiq Khan spoke to members about the importance of partnership working between employers and unions. He kindly name checked me for my support with some of his early housing policies. UNISON Director of Political Strategy, Maggi Ferncombe, spoke about the impact of the Employment Rights Bill while new GLA member James Small-Edwards gave a very personal speech about how important the Labour movement family is to his politics. 

I spoke to the meeting about the importance of voting in the forthcoming UNISON NEC elections which starts later this month on April 21st. I made it clear that while I am re-standing as a candidate for the NEC, it is as the representative of Housing Association and Charities UNISON members and no-one in the GLA can vote for me in this election. Instead I am just making a plea for members to vote, regardless of who they vote for, in these really important elections. 

The UNISON NEC is made up of  67 elected lay representatives and is our "Parliament" which runs the union in-between our annual conference.  It is hugely important and for many years the turnout in elections has been really poor (8% or so of our 1.3 million members). Everyone should agree that we need to improve these participation rates. 

I had to leave straight afterwards in order to go back to the TUC Conference on Pensions (which I will post about another time) but I was very impressed with the the GLA branch for the efficient and effective running of their AGM.