Report from UNITE Manchester Area Activists Conference

My Area Conference took place on Thursday. It was a chaotic affair, demonstrating that the arrangements for the new UNITE structures have not been communicated clearly enough to activists, and also that the fudges between "Amicus" and "TGWU" approaches have produced a camel that doesn't serve the membership as well as it should. I hope activists are considering how to improve matters when we finally get to our first rules conference.

Conference agreed motions:

1. against the practice in construction of management "parachuting" in stewards who had not been elected by members
   
2. against blacklisting and the unsupervised use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by local authorities to snoop on workers
3. highlighting the FT report of the vote by the UNITE delegation at the Labour Party policy forum in Warwick for privatisation of the NHS (against union policy) and calling for a report of the decision along with a list of the delegates to be made available to members
   

The conference elected the Manchester Area Activists Committee:

1. Alan Aspen
2. Andy Ford
3. Anna Cropper
4. Arthur Adshead
5. Barrie Eckford
6. Colin Trowsedale
7. Dave Quayle
8. Debra Green
9. Ian Allinson
10. Jackie Cook
11. Jane Knox
12. Jason Phillips
13. John Hughes
14. Lou Ashton-Hurst
15. Martin Brown
16. Nick Parnell
17. Paul Dale
18. Pauline Bradburn
19. Peter Bury
20. Raul Burke
21. Steve Pollard
22. Terry Abbott

The Committee then met briefly and elected Terry Abbott and Pauline Bradburn as delegates to the North West Regional Committee. I was very pleased that the Committee was able to elect from its number to all the Equalities places. I don't think it's appropriate to post the names here.