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.

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The battle widens at Fujitsu

The campaign by UNITE and PCS over pay and pensions at Fujitsu, where I work, reached a crucial stage this week, with the end of the consultative ballots over industrial action.

UNITE & PCS members both returned overwhelming majorities for action.

This week we also had the announcement by Fujitsu of 1200 job cuts in the UK, putting roughly half the company's 12,500 UK staff at risk. An overlapping 4000 of us were already "at risk" because of the company proposal to dismiss and re-engage us without our pensions.

The offensive by the company against its workforce keeps growing, but thankfully the response from employees keeps growing too. UNITE and PCS reps have decided to add "jobs" to the existing "pay and pensions" campaign and to move quickly to a statutory industrial action ballot. It is already clear that another big wave of staff joining the unions has begun.

UNITE has issued a press release which is already getting coverage, such as this BBC report. PCS has also issued a press release about the job cuts. There is more detail on the ballot result and campaign plans on the UNITE Fujitsu "OurUnion" web site.

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Another watershed in the decline of manufacturing

The news of the end of manufacturing at Toshiba's Plymouth plant, with the loss of 270 jobs, means the end of mass TV manufacturing in the UK.

The government's failure to intervene to protect jobs and working people is an absolute scandal, especially set against their blank cheques for war and to bail out the banks.

After the economic disaster unleashed by the "free market" lunacy that has dominated the world in recent decades, you might have thought that all parties would be distancing themselves from such policies as quickly as they could. But you would be wrong. Instead, the prescription is basically more of the same.

I hope there's a good UNITE presence on the "Jobs, Education, Peace & Justice" demonstration on 27th September at the Labour Party conference, which has been called by PCS, UCU, NUT, NUJ and a variety of campaigning organisations.

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