I was very pleased to hear that the newly elected UNISON National Executive Council started today as (I hope) they mean to go on, by electing a new Presidential Team.
This blog exists, however, not so much to make the “big picture” political commentary which you can find anywhere you like on the internet - regular readers (Sid and Doris Blogger) come here for the sort of tedious and uninteresting detail you just can’t get elsewhere (because no one is interested…)
So I thought I would turn my attention to the question of when the NEC might next meet, since that will be the meeting at which it will agree the composition of its Committees, and will make various other appointments, including the Trustees of the Union.
As a service to those charged with making this decision (which in my time on the NEC had generally been made in advance of the first meeting of a new NEC and had been notified to members at that meeting) - I thought I would look back at my records to see when this meeting had taken place on previous occasions when a newly elected NEC needed to constitute its Committees.
In 2007 we met on 11/12 July. (The Presidential team having been elected on 22 June).
In 2009 we met on 8/9 July. (The Presidential team were elected at that meeting, there having been a kerfuffle at the end of Conference).
In 2011 we met on 12/13 July. (The Presidential team having been elected on 24 June).
In 2013 we met on 3 July. (The Presidential team having been elected on 21 June)
In 2015 we met on 29 July (while I was on holiday). This meeting was unusually late, which may - or may not - have had something to do with the fact that Rule D.2.9 (now Rule D.2.10) had been added to the Rule Book at that year’s Conference.
From 2017 I was no longer a member of the NEC - but the blog of another NEC member reveals that the NEC met on 4 July in 2017. (Thanks Tony). (The Presidential Team had been elected on 23 June).
A little googling (well, “duck, duck, going”) reveals, thanks to a (now) former NEC member that the NEC met on 3 July in 2019. (The Presidential Team having been elected on 21 June).
With the exception of the post-election meeting in 2015, the first full meeting of a newly elected NEC has (on six of the last seven occasions) taken place within no more than three weeks of the meeting at which the Presidential Team has been elected.
On three out of the last four occasions (2013, 2017 and 2019) this meeting has taken place within a fortnight of the inaugural meeting of the new NEC, so any suggestion that it is unreasonable to think that this might happen is a bit daft.
It is important that there is no untoward delay between the new NEC taking office and the meeting at which Committees are constituted, as the NEC needs to have put its Committees together if it is to be able to carry out its functions under Rule D.2.1.
There is another good reason for getting the meeting in early - under the Rules of the Trades Union Congress we need to get our nominations and motions in eight weeks before the week of Congress.
According to UNITE’s website, Congress this year starts on 12 September, which means that the Policy Committee (who, these days, deal with TUC matters) need to have been constituted and have met by the second full week in July at the latest).
There are, of course, practical details to be sorted out, some of which are made more difficult by the fact that today’s inaugural meeting of the new NEC took place virtually, rather than in a stuffy Conference Centre at the end of a long week.
Newly elected members need to be issued with their mobile phones and laptops, and NEC members need to complete various bits of paperwork, including - importantly - notifying the Union of any reasonable adjustments which may be required.
However, the UK’s largest trade union has the resources to progress these matters so that there should be no reason to delay the next meeting of the NEC (particularly not if meetings continue to take place virtually for the time being).
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