Each year in the middle of June the good folks of UNISON take themselves to the seaside but it’s not for sunshine, sandcastles and lounging on the beach. Honest, it’s not.
UNISON conference is the decision making body that formulates policy to guide our industrial and political strategies, so it’s not so much fun and frolics or even beer and sandwiches as discussion, debate and deliberation.
http://www.unison.org.uk/conference2010/fringe.asp
This year promises extra fun as the participants come to grips with the fact that the New Labour Government that we were used to roundly condemning is no more, and we have to get used to a Con Dem Coalition that is about to make all our collective nightmares come true. No doubt in the rhetoric department there will be plenty of jaw rattling about mobilising the workers.
For most people in the hall however, there is a much more serious purpose to their participation. How can the union protect them and their families from a Government that has the stated intention of cutting their jobs, their pay and their pensions? Slogans will not dent or demolish David Cameron’s policies or indeed his resolve that the public sector should be punished for the sins of the bankers and the huge injection of public finances to bail them out.
The British public south of Birmingham decided that they needed a change a change of government and they have given us one. Across the board, badly needed policies that the union agreed with are being torn up. Speaking out against them either at national or local level is necessary but not sufficient. Organising and campaigning need to be entwined at all levels of the union,
So the major debates that are going to take place should demonstrate practically the roles that we all have to play.
On the economy, we are already up and running with the alternative budget proposals that came from the Million Voices Campaign. But those proposals should not be a document on a branch shelf. How can they be integrated into a local branch campaign against the cuts? How do we take our message into the wider membership and the community?
On public services, from local government to the NHS to police staff to all those involved in education from the nursery to university, with threats from cuts to Total Place , how can we empower branches to engage in debate with employers that there are alternatives to compulsory redundancies and privatisation? What skills are needed? And if branches don’t have them how do we equip them to do so quickly?
How do we stop our campaigns on cuts running into the silos of our own making, where a health branch will campaign on health cuts and the local government branch across the street will campaign on local government cuts, forgetting that the local government workers are the patients who will be affected and the health members will be the local council tax payers? It’s difficult to talk to the community when we don’t even talk to each other.
In the debate on pensions, there will hopefully we unanimity about the need to protect the LGPS and other public sector pensions. What the debate will need to focus on is how those funds are best protected. Luddite objections to a review of fund structures and the parasitic role of fund managers play into the hands of those who argue that it is economically unviable to maintain decent public sector pensions.
Some issues have risen up the political agenda quickly, and one of those is social care. UNISON is well placed to influence the debate, representing the caring workforce, but can we utilise the experience of our members who are often carers themselves or experience the service as users?
In a generally disastrous general election , the one bright light was the defeat of the BNP in Barking and Dagenham and elsewhere. What can we learn from that campaign for the future, and just as importantly, how should we be tackling the so called “ Defence Leagues” , be they English Welsh or Scottish? Conference is the place for that debate.
Finally, UNISON has always been proud of the value that it places on its international solidarity. Given the recent terrorist raids carried out by the State of Israel, the debate on Palestine is timely and should show the outrage felt by ordinary trade unionists that such events have been carried out
