- Conference
- 2003 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 1 December 2002
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that the challenges facing UNISON’s health sector have never been greater. Proposals for radical changes in pay are only the latest of a very long list of challenges we face – restructuring of employers, improving working lives, major changes in acute hospitals, mental health, and primary care, the involvement of the private sector, and above all the impact in every employer, service and occupation of “modernisation”.
To have the maximum influence in the face of these challenges, and to turn UNISON policy into effective practice, it is essential UNISON improve its organisation and membership across the NHS and everywhere our members in health are employed. Crucial to doing that will be:
a)A reliable “map” for every NHS, private sector and voluntary sector employer, including for every department and occupation where our actual and potential members are;
b)Improved communications within each employer, department and occupation to help ensure UNISON members have improved means of receiving information and influencing decisions;
c)An increased number of workplace stewards and, where there is no steward for a department or occupation, ensuring someone is willing to at least be the UNISON point of contact;
d)Ensuring that at branch, regional and national level, we have campaigns and organising initiatives which can demonstrate to members and potential members UNISON’s relevance to their concerns;
e)Recognising that such effective campaigns and organising need to reach every department and occupation where UNISON has, or should have, members;
f)Ensuring that we organise both on general issues affecting all members within a particular employer or nationally, and also around specific issues affecting particular occupations or services;
g)Ensuring strong links with other UNISON sectors, notably local government, where there is a growing interface between health and social care.
To that end conference:
1)Calls for a concerted effort to further improve the accuracy of the current membership records so that within one year we have a reliable “map” of our actual and potential membership by employer, department and occupation and a system for ensuring it is kept up to date;
2)Calls for organising work to be a priority in all branches, regions and sectors alongside the support to individual members or groups of members. We call for the spreading of good practice to be a priority for branches, regions, the sectors nationally and the national office;
3)Calls on the national health office and regional officers to ensure that information, campaign materials and training are in place with appropriate regional officer support for this priority;
4)Recognises that recruitment and organising by occupations complements and supports branch development plans within local employers – and therefore welcomes the Organising by Occupations project as being potentially very useful in recruiting NHS staff;
5)Calls for early steps to improve communications so that UNISON branches, and stewards in particular, receive important information swiftly to ensure their ability to organise locally and make organising central to branch development plans;
6)Urges UNISON nationally to seek improved paid facility time with backfill for as many NHS stewards as possible.
We therefore call for the Health National Office, Regional Officers, and the union’s lay structure at every level within Health, to ensure that policy, communications, and campaigning work prioritises support for organising and campaigning to ensure a significant increase in membership, stewards and campaigning activity over the coming year.
We call on the SGE to monitor this work and report back to the 2003 conference.