- Conference
- 2018 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 4 September 2017
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
This Conference welcomes the recent initiative by the Greater London Region Black members which saw a group of young Black members attending an informational and educational seminar.
This Conference believes this is an excellent example of the kind of work that Black members can undertake to ensure that lessons and life-experiences on organising to challenge racism and win equality are shared with our younger members.
This Conference also believes that this kind of face-to-face approach is probably the most important way of showing Black self-organisation’s presence and value.
This Conference also believes that much more work needs to be done to reach out and involve young Black members more effectively, and to create the conditions in which young Black workers can be recruited and organised as leaders to sustain the union and Black self-organisation.
This Conference agrees that we need an organised programme of face-to-face contact with young Black members, with Black self-organised groups at branch, regional, and national level, setting targets of contacting and listening to the concerns of young Black workers. The aim of such contact would be to:
1)hear about their concerns in the workplace;
2)facilitate contact with other young Black members in the workplace, developing networks as appropriate;
3)encourage take up of UNISON training opportunities and delegate positions at Conferences and other UNISON forums.
This Conference calls on the National Black Members Committee to:
a)Reach out to Black workers, in particular to young Black workers by validating their experience and hear about their concerns in the workplace – whether in or outside of the union.
b)seek to work with regional Black members to develop a programme of young Black member contact based on face-to-face engagement, supported with appropriate information (for example, a regional breakdown of numbers of young Black members by branch, whilst noting that the RMS cannot yet provide an entirely accurate picture), and with realistic, achievable targets;
c)seek to consult with the National Young Members Forum on that programme;
d)review the statistics from the equality survey 2017 as to what young Black members say about barriers to participation in the union;
e)identify other means of reaching out to young Black members;
f)Encourage regional Black members committee to seek that branches where there are young Black activists examine the ethnic make-up of branch committees, stewards and branch officers to ensure these are representative of the membership/workforce.