- Conference
- 2016 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 15 September 2015
- Decision
- Carried
Conference celebrates the fact the since the birth of UNISON self-organisation has had an essential role in the development and participation of Black members, women, Disabled people and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender members. However, the majority of UNISON branches do not have their own local Self Organised Groups.
One of the barriers to setting up a group can be that only one or two members from a particular branch may be interested in participating. In these circumstances it can be beneficial for a number of branches in geographic area to come together and support a “cluster” SOG open to any Black member. Conference applauds the work of Black activists in both Suffolk and Norfolk who have established county wide SOGs open to any member regardless of service group.
Some branch SOG Officers are not given enough support and development and struggle with setting up and maintaining a branch group Conference therefore applauds the Eastern Region for running a residential training weekend for SOG Officers in May 2015.
UNISON’s membership database does not have information on a large number of its members. This means that branches don’t know who are their Black members and cannot send them targeted information about self organisation.
Conference therefore instructs the National Black Members Committee to:
1)Produce a guide on establishing Branch Black Members’ SOGs and send it to every branch secretary and regional Black Members SOG.
2)Approach UNISON’s Learning and Organising Services and discuss how to promote SOG Officer training in each region.
3)Consider how branches can be supported to encourage more members’ to declare their ethnicity.
4)Ask each regional Black members group to report annually how many branch SOGs are functioning in their region.