Seeking support for local government workers

As we gear up for the strike action on Wednesday and Thursday of next week, involving 600,000 UNISON members (and 60,000 members of UNITE) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the word has gone out to cancel all non-essential meetings.

The NEC Committee meetings (and TUC delegation meeting) taking place on Wednesday are not among those non-essential meetings to be cancelled – and rightly so (although why it should be that the Leeds branch of all people were told that the Development and Organisation Committee wasn’t meeting I don’t know!)

We have to have a TUC delegation meeting to agree our motions for the TUC Congress in September – although a new “streamlined” procedure for agreeing motions should speed the process up no end…

Since the Greater London Region (in common I should imagine with many other “constituent bodies” of our TUC delegation) did not have enough notice to arrange a meeting to discuss submitting TUC motions, I haven’t had the opportunity to be involved in any discussion of what motions to submit.

I should imagine the NEC Policy Committee (of which I am not a member) will agree some recommendations to put to the delegation meeting. With the largest bargaining group in the entire economy involved in strike action, I hope that UNISON will formally put the local government pay disputes on the Congress agenda.