In my fourteen years on the
UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) I think I have spoken from the platform
on no more occasions than the four on which I spoke, from the floor, in the two
days of my last Local Government Conference as a branch delegate.
My NEC colleagues,
recognising that I am outclassed by so many of their number as a speaker, have
kindly spared my blushes over the years by protecting me from too much public
exposure.
This year however, I was
asked to speak should Conference reach motion 56 (Retirement? What
Retirement?). I appreciated the wit of asking an NEC member who was voluntarily
standing down from the NEC and returning to work to speak on a motion with such
a title.
However, the motion is too
far down the remaining order of business (known as the “snake”) to be taken
before tomorrow lunchtime – and now that we have seen the outcome of the
process of reprioritisation of Friday afternoon’s business it is clear that the
motion will not be taken and hence my last speech to UNISON will not be given.
Although Motion 56 repeated
much that Conference had already discussed and so there is no loss to
Conference business from its not being taken, it does mean that I will not be
able to address Conference on one of the little discussed social problems which
has been a, perhaps unintended, consequence of the removal of fixed retirement
ages in recent years.
This has created space for a
pernicious new form of elder abuse, in which older workers are denied the
opportunity to retire and enjoy their pensions under pressure from (for
example) partners or colleagues who cajole the older worker into continuing to work even
where this is against the wishes and best interests of the worker concerned.
Since I will now be leaving
my last UNISON position tomorrow, having successfully engaged in the sort of succession
planning which it is the responsibility of all of us to attend to, it will be
for others in our Union to consider whether, and if so to what extent, UNISON
should address this problem in future.
Never say last because this job does have a habit of sucking you back in. The union won't be quite the same without your active contribution. I'm just about to set off to Brighton for the Friday as a visitor, I owe you many crates of beer for all the help and support you've given me over the years so if we bump into each other I would like to start paying that back.
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