Union conferences

On the fringes of the annual conference of the public services union Unison (from 22 June in Bournemouth), there will be opportunities for both local government and health activists to get together and debate attitudes to the current pay offers, and a meeting to launch an exciting new campaign to raise support for the newly emerging trade union movement in Iraq. There will also be a meeting in the official fringe on the TUC Play Fair at the Olympics campaign - talking about issues around sweatshop workers and how trade unionists in this country can and should get involved in campaigns like...

By Kate Ahrens A key issue coming up on the agenda of Unison local government conference in Bournemouth on 21 June will be the Workforce Remodelling agreement in schools which Unison and most other education unions signed up to last year, but which the NUT has maintained opposition to. The plan will replace teachers with less well-trained - and lower paid - support staff. Many teaching assistants are finding that the implementation of the deal is developing as the NUT predicted - extra work with little or no extra reward and, in many areas, the prospect of support staff teaching whole classes...

The Fire Brigades Union conference has voted approximately five to one in favour of disaffiliating from the Labour Party. A formal card vote is still being counted as I write. The defeat of the union Executive's alternative proposal, to remain affiliated but open up the possibility of supporting some non-Labour candidates, was ensured by the members' utter frustration with being repeatedly let down by this once popular and reputedly left-wing union leadership. The decision, unfortunately, reflects frustration and disillusion more than any clear positive alternative direction. Meanwhile, the...

By Nick Holden The conference of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) was suspended on its first day (11 May), following the collapse of talks between the FBU leadership and the employers over the implementation of the latest stage in the deal which brought the firefighters' strike to an end a year ago. Shortly before the conference the employers announced that they wouldn't be paying the second stage of the agreed pay increase, unless the FBU agreed to end "stand down time" - the practice of allowing crews on night shift to go off active duty in the early hours of the morning. The union leadership...

By a conference delegate Agenda for Change (AFC), the proposed new National Health Service pay system, dominated Unison's health conference, in Glasgow, 26-28 April, although the key decisions were scheduled for a special conference later in the year. Health workers are slowly discovering the scale of the threat represented by AFC, as news from the 12 Early Implementer (EI) sites leaks out. The details are institutionalised low pay, a longer working week for many, and greater management control over pay progression. Unison will be holding a ballot on whether to roll-out the AFC package in...

By Anita Downs (Guy's and St Thomas's) and Nick Holden There is mounting evidence that the proposed new NHS pay scheme, 'Agenda for Change', is bad news for health workers, and possibly unworkable. Unison and Amicus members will be balloted later this year on whether to accept the proposed system for the whole of the NHS. But the 12 sites which are trialling it are reporting massive problems, on top of fundamental objections to the scheme that are unlikely to be resolved before the ballot. Faced with the prospect of seeing the proposals thrown out last year, the leaderships in both unions...

By Patrick Murphy, Divisional Secretary, Leeds NUT The largest teachers' union, the NUT, meets in Harrogate at a time when it is under pressure within the TUC for its insistence on the principle that only qualified teachers should teach. Apart from NUT, every union representing school-based staff has signed up to a national agreement to "remodel" the school workforce. The agreement was drawn up in January 2003 for implementation from the beginning of the 2003-4 school year and will lead to teaching assistants taking responsibility for whole classes. The other teacher unions, NASUWT and ATL...

The following text may be of use to activists drafting amendments for Unison conference. The deadline for amendments is 26 April. For the text of the motions, see the Unison website . Amendment to motion 002 Delete point e) and replace with: e) recognises the link between recruitment and a vibrant internal democratic structure that enables members to genuinely participate in decision making and holding elected representatives to account at all levels of the union. *** Amendment to motion 026 - National Minimum Wage Delete clause 2 and replace: 2) while the government has agreed to extend the...

The leadership of the FBU are preparing to follow the RMT into conflict with the Labour Party leadership, by proposing to next month's FBU conference a shake-up of the union's political activity. This will include a reduction in donations to the Labour Party, and a move which would return FBU policy to the position of the 2001 conference - with the exception that this time, the leadership will be proposing it, rather than fighting it. The conference agenda contains motions calling for disaffiliation from Labour, and it is in the face of these calls that the EC has agreed to put a "middle...

The leadership of the Fire Brigades Union is to recommend cutting donations to Labour and might redirect funding to other parties. The FBU leadership states: The Fire Brigades Union should carry out a root and branch restructuring of its political work. So its national executive will recommend to its May conference. The move came at a special meeting of the 18-strong executive in response to calls to split from the Labour Party at the union's annual conference in May. They reflect the union membership's anger at Government tactics used during the 9-month long pay dispute and particularly...