Development and Organisation Committee report

I will draft a fuller report of today's meeting of the Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) for London branches.



In the mean time, here are the edited highlights!



Recruitment of new members in the run up to the pensions strike has been record-breaking. We recruited far more than twice as many new members this November as last November.



The Committee discussed the vital importance of retaining members in the coming months, recognising that this might depend upon the future progress of the pensions dispute - and that the key thing for us to do is improve further our communications with our members.



We went on to receive an update on learning and organising activity, including on our bid to the Union Learning Fund. We received a brief verbal update on the ongoing review of self-organisation and a detailed and valuable report on data protection issues which will found further guidance to branches.



The Committee held its annual debate on the scheme of representation for branches at National Delegate Conference, where we have seen a declining attendance of low paid members as delegates in spite of increasingly vigorous application of a scheme designed with opposite intent.



A sound point was made that the real problem here is with organisation of, and participation by, members at branch level - since proportionality and fair representation should be for life (not just for Conference).



As well as endorsing the timetable for the forthcoming elections to Service Group Executives and the template for next year's Branch Assessments, the Committee received an update on branches under regional supervision, with which I will deal in the next post.

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