EC Applies The Finishing Touches

Workers Uniting Group Supporters on the Unite EC have agreed to publish this statement on the Workers Uniting Group Website.

The proposal to be put to the Special Rules Conference in June - to follow the 2010 Policy Conference for the formation of the next EC has completed the outstanding decisions to be made to fully implement the Unite rulebook.

The Regional Committees, Equality Committees, Area Activist Committees and Regional and National Industrial Committees are all in place. The Political structures are already showing their worth in the run up to the General Election. Increasingly more and more activists are participating in our global union, Workers Uniting.

Thousands of activists are now taking part in the lay decision making processes of the union. All (or should be) qualified under Rule 6 as working representatives of members. The new expenses regime whereby activists neither gain nor lose through their activity is having an impact in cleaning up the committees and opening up opportunities for new reps to fill the places of the ‘committee-men/women.’

All the delegates to Policy and Rules Conference will be (or should be) Rule 6 compliant, properly expensed and will have the ultimate say on union policy and determine the make-up of their next Executive Council.

The EC proposal will be put to the Special Rules Conference for either endorsement or rejection.

There will be no amendments taken at the Conference. The reason is that the rulebook largely prescribes the make-up of the EC though not the numbers. There has to be a balance between sectors and regions and proportionality for both Women and BAEM seats and proportionality of membership representation from both the sectors and the regions.

In essence if you modify one part of the equation you have to make consequential amendments elsewhere.

This will give an EC of 64 members, still slightly high, but significantly down from the current 80. The dominance of the industrial sectors makes the future executive consistent with the rest of the structures of the union. This, along with Rule 6, will make for the most representative lay leadership of any trade union in the world.

Previous EC decisions to separate the delegates to conference, all from the RISC’s and the resolutions from all of the constitutional bodies, which includes 9000 branches, leaves a tricky situation as far as ownership of conference resolutions and compositing and speaking arrangements are concerned.

On this occasion tribalism defeated the normally sound rationale thrashed out from the former sections to defeat the proposal to ‘filter’ the resolutions through the national and regional constitutional committees, which would have established clear ownership and capped the number of resolutions.

The net effect of this was that the March EC had no alternative but to decide that on this occasion there could be no amendments to resolutions due to time constraints of recalling all the committees before the Conference.

Nevertheless the common sense of the lay delegates will overcome the shortcomings, though supporters of ‘super lay democracy’ will need to reflect on the follies of their idealism as the reality is that the most powerful body at this conference will be the Standing Orders Committee and those that run it!

Policy conference should establish Unite as the most progressive union in the UK and Ireland and should the Rules Conference accept the proposal for the next EC, Unite will establish itself as the most democratic, genuinely lay member led trade union in the world.

With sound, sensible and visionary leadership at the top, this union can go on to achieve all of the things that drove us forward in the merger talks. Despite harrowing moments on the way, those who fought, sometimes from a majority but more often a minority position, can be proud of what we are about to achieve.

A trade union that is capable of challenging the Global corporations that are currently running riot across the whole world and play a key role in politics in the UK and Ireland.
Having completed and determined the rulebook there is now no reason for this EC to continue. It has completed its historic task.