UNISON NEC Conference motions for 2007

The UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) yesterday agreed its motions and Rule Amendments for submission to Conference. If any London UNISON branches would like to see the text of any of these (which will of course shortly be published in the Preliminary Agenda) then please get in touch.

The motions deal with the following subjects;

· Learning and Organising
· Organising and Recruitment
· Organising Migrant Workers in the UK
· Review of Branch and Service Group Structures
· UNISON Equality Scheme
· Public Services in the Developing World
· Trade Union Rights under threat
· Child Poverty/Anti Poverty Strategy
· European Union and Public Services
· Leitch Review of Skills
· Marketisation of Public Services
· National Health Service
· Spending Review and Efficiency
· UNISON Commitment to the Environment

As there are fourteen motions and the NEC can only prioritise twelve motions for debate at Conference there is no guarantee that all of these will be debated. I queried the wording of a couple of the motions and did succeed in removing a bit of awful jargon from one (which then led to a national official pointing out to me later in the meeting that I use a fair few clichés myself…)

The NEC Rule Amendments deal with the following Rules;

D 2.4 Additional Members Seats (this renames the Additional Members Seats on the NEC as Black Members Seats)
D 3.2 Service Group Conference
D 3.7 Sectors
D 6 Retired Members Organisation
Q Definitions
Sch B 2 Rule Book Benefits

The NEC also considered the plan for Conference. Likely guest speakers are Baroness Scotland (on domestic abuse), Ashok Sinha, Director of Stop Climate Chaos and Annie Geron, President of PSLink from the Phillippines as the international speaker. I welcomed a suggestion that consideration would be given to a speaker on the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.