Sunday 21 December 2008

UNITE Executive Council reports

The Joint General Secretaries (JGSs) have now produced their briefing on the 24-26 November Executive Council meeting, which I am happy to email to members on request.

The first day of the meeting was taken up with heated disagreements between the JGSs, primarily over the integration of the union. A lot of the issues which had previously been the subject of rumour and maneuvering finally came out in the open.

The EC set the JGSs a deadline to resolve the issues. A special EC was agreed for 18th December and the JGSs were told that if they hadn't agreed an integration plan by then, the EC would do so itself.

At the EC meeting on 18th December a plan was unanimously agreed, and I have the details of this for any members who want them.

The major outstanding issue is in many ways the key one for lay members. Not "who gets which jobs" at the top, but the structures for lay members to meet and deal with the real business of the union. Proposals for this should be coming to the January EC meeting. There's still a lot to do though - for example the issues about the composition of the "IT & Communications" sector remain unresolved. Lay members from the north-west (from Amicus and TGWU) looked at the question of the structures many months ago, and managed to reach consensus on a sensible approach to setting them up. I hope that the proposals from the JGSs are as good.



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