UNITE schedule of meetings 2013

Regional Industrial Sector; Area Activists; Regional Equalities & Regional Political Committees	National Industrial Sector Committees & National Political Committee	Regional Committees	National Equalities Committees
During:	Between:	Between:	Between:
December 2012	Jan 2nd – 21st	Jan 22nd – 30th	31st Jan – 8th Feb
March 2013	April 2nd – 19th	April 22nd – 26th	29th April – 10th May
June 2013	July 1st – 12th	July 22nd – 26th	July 15th – 19th
September 2013	Oct 7th – 25th	Oct 28th – 1st Nov	Nov 4th – 8th

Executive Council Meetings:                                              Bank Holidays:

            11^th – 15^th March 2013                                               1^st January 2013

            10^th – 14^th June 2013                                                  29^th March – 1^st April 2013

            16^th – 20^th September 2013                                        6^th May 2013

             9^th – 13^th December 2013                                         27^th May 2013

                                                                                                26^th August 2013

Finance & General Purposes Committee:                         25th & 26^th December 2013

            24^th January 2013                                                                  

            21^st February 2013

            25^th April 2013

            23^rd May 2013

            18^th July 2013

             4^th Sepember 2013

            24^th October 2013

            21^st November 2013  

Annual Trades Union Congress:

            8^th – 11^th September 2013

Annual Labour Party Conference:

            22^nd – 26^th September 2013

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Capita IT Services staff vote to strike over jobs

UNITE members at Capita delivered an impressive 4:1 vote for strike and 9:1 for action short of strike as part of their fight against redundancies, including plans to offshore their jobs to India.

Similar issues concern workers at many IT companies (and IT workers in other industries concerned about outsourcing) so many people will be hoping members win a a positive outcome to this dispute.

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UNITE Area Activist Meetings

The details for most of the 3-yearly Area Activist Meetings which elect the Area Activist Committees are now on the UNITE web site on the same page as the industrial and equality conferences.

There's been some confusion about who can attend these meetings, but the following clarification has been sent to Regional Secretaries:

The short answer is that any member of the union in the particular area has the right to attend.

The last Rules Conference adopted an Executive Council statement on Rule Six, which read in part:  "…membership of Area Activist Committees should not be restricted in the way prescribed by Rule Six and should be open to all activists, including those who cannot be workplace representatives because of their circumstances."  Clearly, if that is the case regarding the AACs to be elected at the forthcoming meetings, it would also have to be the case at the meetings themselves.  Given that the term "activist" has no rulebook definition at all, this must mean any member in practice.

However, it should be noted that AACs are divided into constituencies, and only those members attending from a particular constituency should be allowed to vote for the AAC seats from that constituency.  In particular, retired members and community members attending should only vote for the two seats allocated to each of those groups of members on each AAC, in the event that the number of nominations requires an election.

It remains the case that any member delegated to attend the Regional Committee from any AAC must be a workplace representative in the terms of Rule Six.

In terms of notification, branches should be advised as to the arrangements for each Area Activists meeting, and told to notify their members.

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