|
|||||||||
|
Amicus
News from The General Secretary
The NEC have been informed of recent changes to senior officer & staff responsibilities, which take place with immediate effect.
Following the closure of
the
• Health Sector incluiding CPHVA moved from
The NEC has now approved proposals for implementation of the rule changes agreed earlier in the summer at our conference. This report is available on the Amicus website. However, some of the changes will affect directly how we work: Election of Officers - Conference decided that all future regional and national officers will not be appointed by the NEC as previously, but will be elected by the members. Since we are in a restructuring programme at the moment, it is almost certain that there will be no new appointments to the officer force for the foreseeable future, although when the time comes the NEC will decide how to conduct the election, what the electoral constituency should be, etc. Area Committees - Conference agreed with the NEC's proposal to establish area activists' quarterly meetings and area committees. A gap was identified between activists in the workplace, the regional councils and the biennial regional sector committee meetings. To overcome this, and to bring reps and activists together, area quarterlies will be established. These will bring together workplace reps and branch secretaries from every sector in an area to discuss industrial and campaigning matters and to improve mutual support locally. Regional Secretaries are currently working with their regional councils to establish the boundaries of areas within their regions, and these will be presented to the NEC for agreement later this year. Fair Trade Products - Conference agreed that Amicus will endeavour to purchase fair trade coffee whenever possible. If you are buying coffee for office use or for use in Amicus meetings you must adhere to this policy unless you have no alternative. Young Members - the upper age limit for young members to participate in our youth structure has been increased to 27 to align Amicus with the TUC structure.
We are very near to completing the restructuring of the membership and subscriptions departments, under the advice of management consultants ATOS, and with considerable success. Backlogs have been reduced in processing applications and reducing errors in our lists, and the NEC has expressed its satisfaction with both the improvements in service this will officer members and the financial benefits it will bring to the union. We would again like to offer our thanks to staff in these departments, which have now been merged, for their efforts during this restructuring. The department is being managed on a temporary basis by Glen Cook from ATOS, pending the appointment of a senior manager to take over membership services.
We are making steady progress in talks with the GMB and TGWU concerning potential merger. The NEC has been fully briefed on developments and has endorsed the proposal that, pending the merger, there shall be no new appointments to the union unless they are absolutely unavoidable; and that if new property is required we be looking where possible to pool our resources and requirements with our merger partners. These proposals are to be put to the other unions' executives for endorsement too.
The elections to the Amicus National Executive Council are now under way. In the Finance Sector by-election there are two candidates for one place; and in the GPM sector elections, six places are being contested by eighteen members. Colleagues are reminded that no resources of the union will be used in promoting any candidate; that the only reason employees should be involved in the election is where they vote as individual members of the sector in question; and that attempts to influence lay member democracy will be considered as a serious disciplinary matter.
The NEC has agreed a sector structure and conference timetable for next year's round of sector conferences. Senior officers will be asked shortly to begin preparations for these. The sector conferences form the basis of our industrial structures. The dates are now on the Amicus website.
The NEC has agreed that it will meet on the following days in 2006 25 th
January
Paul Talbot AGS and Sally Kosky NO are taking the updated organising strategy to the regions and colleagues are expected to get involved in delivering this. The NEC and the senior officers have been informed that there is no wish to return to the days when officers' performance was judged solely on the basis of their recruitment figures. Nevertheless the NEC has suggested that it wishes a stronger emphasis on organising and recruitment to maintain our position, hence Paul and Sally's current programme. We are facing attacks on our membership in all sectors from threats such as offshoring and the decline in manufacturing. We recruited over 70,000 new members last year so there is still strong demand for trade union membership and we can improve our position even further if we make recruitment a priority in parallel with our plans for merger.
We had a very busy week at the TUC. There was general unanimity at Congress about the need to improve labour laws, especially in the light of events such as the current Gate Gourmet dispute, where several hundred low paid workers were summarily sacked. Amicus promoted motions
on our campaign for a level playing field in employment rights, and on
manufacturing policy and the need to defend We also led with an emergency motion on the health service, expressing concern at possible government plans to introduce further privatisation into community-based NHS services, and in defence of our CMA members we seconded a CWU motion opposing privatisation of the Post Office. On the campaigns front,
Amicus welcomed a lobbying delegation of members from the MoD Defence
Aviation Repair Agency base at St Athan, near Colleagues can find a full report of all these matters on the Amicus Website. Legal News COSALT Back to www.amicus.cc
|
