If you’re reading this blog you may have wondered how often it happens to me that someone accosts me in the street and asks me what I think about the Policy Committee of the UNISON National Executive Committee (NEC). I am pleased to be able to put your mind at rest on this score. I can assure you that this has never happened.
Still, why should I let that stop me?
The Policy Committee (or to be precise - Policy Development and Campaigns Committee, PDCC) is, with the D&O Committee, the other really big Committee, both numerically and in terms of its influence and importance.
PDCC is usually a big Committee because it appeals to many NEC members. It is responsible for UNISON policy generally (with a few exceptions), as well as having specific responsibility for communications (which long ago I believe may have had its own Committee before my time) and for health and safety (the NEC does also have three representatives on the national Health and Safety Committee, which is not itself a SubCommittee of the NEC). Of course, as part of the NEC, PDCC is - or ought to be - bound by the policy agreed at National Delegate Conference.
These responsibilities mean that PDCC proposes most of the NEC’s motions to National Delegate Conference (the NEC generally moves no more than twelve motions, two of which are proposed by D&O, a couple by the International Committee but the rest generally by PDCC). PDCC also considers the great majority of Conference motions moved by other UNISON bodies (Branches, Regions, Self-Organised Groups etc.) in order to recommend to the NEC as a whole what its policy position on those motions should be.
This role means that NEC members on PDCC are, other things being equal, more likely to speak at Conference on behalf of the NEC - certainly on policy issues (I realise that, in an earlier post on the D&O Committee I didn’t touch on that Committee’s lead role in relation to Rule Amendments, but that’s for another time).
PDCC is also responsible for UNISON’s relationship with the TUC, and inter-union relations generally. When I was first elected to the NEC in 2003, and was - in that capacity - entitled to be a member of the TUC delegation, the TUC delegation used to meet in July to agree motions to to be submitted (and any member of the delegation could make a proposal) and again in August to agree amendments (with the same liberty for delegation members to make proposals).
After a few years the NEC decided that only “constituent bodies” of the TUC delegation could submit motions, and that the PDCC would do this on behalf of the NEC, so that individual NEC members needn’t trouble themselves with the taxing business of drafting a motion of no more than 250 words in line with UNISON policy. The August delegation meeting also disappeared, and PDCC took over the submission of amendments to the Congress agenda.
Now, as I understand it (not having been a TUC delegate since 2012) PDCC handles the whole business of motions and amendments for Congress on UNISON’s behalf. Since the TUC delegation was slimmed down after the 2010 Congress, so that not all NEC members get to attend the TUC, the lion’s share of the places which the NEC does have on that delegation go to members of the PDCC.
Although the incoming NEC may have all sorts of ideas to change how UNISON functions for the better, they will - initially - have to deal with “how things are” - the Policy Committee will without doubt continue to be a very important part of the UNISON NEC (although - out of loyalty to my year’s of service on the D&O Committee - I ought to add, “not quite as important as it thinks it is”).
Other former (and current) NEC members who actually served on the Committee could probably say a lot more - but they may be too busy living, working and generally engaging in class struggle...
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