GOVERNMENT WELFARE REFORMS AND CREDIT UNIONS

We condemn the Government’s Welfare Reforms and the resulting impact of the policies on our members. Many members are reliant on welfare due to poverty wages, pay freezes and cuts to their terms and conditions. This has driven many into the arms of loan sharks and payday loan companies. Millions of disabled workers are reliant […]

Fair Representation for Disabled Members in UNISON

This conference is concerned about the level of discrimination currently faced by disabled people. Cuts to public services, welfare reform, changes to health and social care, reductions in disabled students allowances and bedroom tax have all targeted disabled people. To fight this campaign against disabled people disabled people need to be politically and societally active. […]

Equality Facility Time for Disabled Members

At the Discrimination Law Conference in January 2014 Professor Sir Bob Hepple QC said that “if a new government enacts only one new piece of equality legislation it should be to require equality representatives at workplaces” – such reps would require a legal right to time off to “be involved in drawing up and enforcing […]

YOUR PENSION FUND NEEDS YOU!

Conference fully supports the UNISON campaign for transparency and better governance with regard to the pension boards responsible for the pensions of our members, including retired members. It also supports the encouragement of UNISON members to become Member Nominated Representatives (MNRs) on those boards. It is vital to recognise the opportunity this presents to encourage […]

Travel Insurance

Conference notes with concern the lack of reviewing of the age of the older population when Travel Insurance is required. Insurance companies take no consideration for anyone becoming “over 70 years of age” and premiums are increased on age alone. Government policy on retirement age is to increase the age of retirement. Therefore we instruct […]

Ethical Care Charter for Commissioning Home Care

Conference welcomes the publication of Time to Care, UNISON’s Report into home care and an Ethical Care Charter for commissioning home care which sets out the following principles: 1. Visits shall be based on client need and appropriate care will be provided. Time allocated will match need and 15 minutes will not generally be appropriate […]

Ethical Care Charter

Homecare workers are personally propping up a deteriorating system of adult social care but are being pushed to breaking point. That they are still willing to deliver good levels of care in spite of the system is nothing short of heroic. For the system to work it needs to be underpinned by adequate funding and […]

RESTRUCTURING ANNUAL RETIRED MEMBERS’ CONFERENCE

Conference acknowledges that after the narrow defeat on a card vote of motion 32 at last year’s conference the issue of the structure of Retired Members Conference needs to be looked at in more depth. In recent years Conference has allowed more time for debate of motions at the beginning of the agenda often to […]

Amendment to Standing Orders – Standing Order 3

Add at end of Standing Order 3.1 A regional delegate may move a motion or amendment submitted by a Branch within that Region if the Branch concerned is unable to be present at the Conference. Delete existing 3.3 Renumber 3.4 as 3.3.

FUNDING FOR RETIRED MEMBER ACTIVITY

Conference notes that the National Executive Council has submitted several rule changes to National Delegate Conference including one on adequate and agreed funding for retired member activity. Conference also notes the existence of Regional Pools. These Regional Pools are intended to be an additional source of branch funding for specific items where the branch could […]

WIDER SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF TREATMENT

Conference notes that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has rejected a proposal from the Department of Health that its assessment of new medicines should include the evaluation of wider societal benefit (WSB). Wider Societal Benefit is a measure of the impact of a treatment on the extent to which people living […]

Disability Related Absence

At Conference just last year UNISON attacked the government’s obsession with sickness rates, after figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that days lost due to sickness absence fell from 178 million in 1993 to 131 million in 2013. The figures also showed that the differences in absence rates between the public […]

THE PENSIONS BILL – AND WHO PAYS IT

Conference notes that the proposals in the Government’s Pensions Bill – self-praised by them as a way of making the state pensions system clearer and fairer – do neither of these things, do nothing for existing pensioners, and would result in a multi-tier pensions system so complicated that not only pensioners but probably even those […]

HANDS OFF OUR BENEFITS

Conference has on several occasions made policies regarding our determination to hang on to the small (but valuable and much valued) universal benefits elderly people have such as bus passes, free TV licenses etc. We must now recognise that there is yet another political threat to these: leading UKIP figures have made no secret of […]

Drug monitoring and suitability for older people

Conference recognises that as we get older, medically more things are prone to go wrong. Fortunately, both well established and new drugs can be prescribed which assist in the management of acute and chronic conditions in older people. We can continue to lead active, useful and interesting lives long after our parents would have succumbed […]