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:
- against the practice in construction of management "parachuting" in stewards who had not been elected by members
- against blacklisting and the unsupervised use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by local authorities to snoop on workers
- 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:
- Alan Aspen
- Andy Ford
- Anna Cropper
- Arthur Adshead
- Barrie Eckford
- Colin Trowsedale
- Dave Quayle
- Debra Green
- Ian Allinson
- Jackie Cook
- Jane Knox
- Jason Phillips
- John Hughes
- Lou Ashton-Hurst
- Martin Brown
- Nick Parnell
- Paul Dale
- Pauline Bradburn
- Peter Bury
- Raul Burke
- Steve Pollard
- 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.
