Fighting redundancies

I understand the ballot for industrial action among UNITE members at Steria in Manchester closed today, but I haven't heard the result yet.

Let's hope the delays of the painful balloting process haven't undermined people's confidence to fight. The United Campaign to Repeal the Anti-Trade Union Laws reports on the debates and vote in parliament on amendments intended to take small steps in this direction. The vote itself was on an amendment relating to making the ballot process less of a minefield. The campaign's report highlights this as the biggest revolt of Labour MPs under Brown's leadership, with 45 Labour MPs voting to slightly improve workers' rights. While this is quite an achievement for campaigners, it is also an indictment of the Parliamentary Labour Party that there were so few. Perhaps the headline for the story should have been "45 MPs find backbone"?

Meanwhile another tragedy is unfolding for manufacturing in Manchester, with the threatened closure of Rolls Royce Crossley Engines - already a shadow of its former self.

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Manchester Area Quarterly meeting, 12th Feb

The main points were:

1. Discussion on improving participation, picking up on ideas from the last committee meeting.
2. Agreement that the future quarterly meetings would be on the dates in the letter being sent out from head office, not the ones discussed at the last committee
3. Clarification about who is on the Area Committee
4. The next quarterly meeting (20th May) will be on the Credit Crunch, which is having an impact on working people in every sector, but most directly in Finance
5. Lobby your MPs to support the agency & temporary workers bill on 22nd February
6. Remind members to vote in the UNITE NEC elections 3-28 March.
7. A group of young members from the north-west are going to join May Day celebrations in Cuba this year.
8. We will do a Manchester street stall in support of the pensions campaign by Lil-lets workers on 8th March (International Women's Day)
9. We will look at having a stall at the Manchester Town Hall event for international women's day.
10. We had a speaker from Rolls Royce Bootle. Their plant is threatened with closure and jobs moving to the USA. They feel subject to unfair competition with US plants having little or no rent or rates to pay. Exchange rates are also an issue. They thanked everyone for supporting their campaign, which will continue.
    

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Manchester Area Activists Meetings

Tonight I attended the Amicus section's Manchester Area Committee, which meets between the full Area Activists' Quarterlies, which all workplace reps and lay branch officers are entitled to attend.

We were grappling with how to involve more people and to encourage more campaigning in the Greater Manchester Area.

We agreed dates for the rest of 2008 [PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE DATES NO LONGER APPLY]:

Quarterly meeting, 7pm	Committee meeting, 6pm
12th February	11th March
29th April	17th June
22nd July	9th September
21st October	2nd December

All meetings take place at the UNITE/Amicus Prestwich office.

We decided to have a main theme for each of the Quarterlies, and to use these to help us work systematically to target particular parts of the union structure to seek more involvement.

At the February Quarterly meeting we want to get a speaker from the campaign against the closure of Rolls Royce Bootle and someone from Abortion Rights UK. While we want to put some effort into encouraging more women activists to attend, the attacks on abortion rights are an issue for all trade unionists.

At the April Quarterly meeting, we want to have a discussion about the impact of the Credit Crunch. This affects us all, but presents an opportunity to get more people from the Finance sector (the biggest in the Amicus section of UNITE) to take part.

At the July Quarterly meeting, we hope to have a discussion about the proposed new UNITE rulebook. It would be particularly interesting if we could get some colleagues from the TGWU to come along as guests.

We also discussed doing some work to map the membership and potential membership in the Manchester area, so the Quarterly meetings can help the union to grow.

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