London UNISON members love meetings - official

This morning the Development and Organisation Committee of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) is meeting. I’ll post a summary of my report to London branches later. The Committee will be looking at a report of some research conducted by the Labour Research Department based upon a questionnaire sent out to UNISON members.

The report makes interesting reading. It shows that half of all our members have sought the help of a local shop steward at some point – and that members are most likely to be satisfied with the help they receive from their local representatives. About half of our members have attended workplace meetings – and almost half have recently participated in the campaigning around pensions.

I don’t know if this means that the bucket is half full or half empty – but I was encouraged to read that members from Greater London were more likely than those from other regions to have attended both branch and workplace meetings of UNISON. Well done Greater London! I hope that delegates to the Regional Council meeting rearranged for 14 December can live up to this record of participation.

The report touches on the question of the relevance of our branch structures – members clearly relate more to issues in the workplace than issues in the branch. Those of us committed to lay control of a democratic trade union will need to monitor closely how the findings of this research are used.