My opinion…….
As London members are aware, I have for a number of years expressed my concerns regarding how our Unison National Forum in Ofsted operates.
For a number of years, I and various other forum members (both past and present) have expressed deep and serious concerns regarding the set up and the actual operation of this forum. Concerns include lack of transparency, lack of democracy, ineffectual and weak representation of our members issues, not to mention failure to respond and act appropriately and/or swiftly to various detrimental decisions imposed on us by management (for example the Coaching Drive fiasco in October 2006) to name but a few!
My concerns about the Forum remain, and in fact have increased. Various other members within the forum share my concerns, and we continue to raise them with UNISON National Office. I am not at all convinced that members’ interests have been fully and appropriately represented nationally, and as a result, I believe that this has had a detrimental effect on our members.
That said, I am stressing to you all, that we in London are extremely lucky in belonging to Lambeth UNISON (Jon Rogers and Nick Venedi being our branch secretaries) and in having Stuart Barber as our Regional Officer. London UNISON has always represented members’ interests in a transparent and democratic manner, and Lambeth UNISON is amongst the most respected Local Government UNISON branches in the country, and has a reputation for stringently defending and representing their members and acting without fear or favour. Once again, I say that I am proud to belong to this branch.
I have the opposite opinion however of the Forum. In my opinion, we should be allowed to operate as a fully functioning Branch, instead of a Forum. If we operate as a branch, then members:
- Have a say in electing branch officers
- Have a say in electing specific positions within the Branch
- Have a say in electing reps who demonstrate good leadership skills and are not afraid to challenge management on a number of issues that have been imposed to the detriment of our members.
- Have a say in electing reps who are not afraid to enforce legislation in order to safeguard members working conditions and environment.
- will be secure in the knowledge that their branch has a constitution, and is democratic and transparent and open instead of the present situation where (in my opinion) it operates dysfunctionally, undemocratically and operates as a token gesture – relying instead on the decisions of a minority instead of a majority.
- Social Care members can not only access their own union representative, but can access Mike Stapley, Social Care Inspector, who has an absolute understanding and knowledge of their issues…..instead of being told that Mike’s position on the Forum will be deleted as of September 2008, despite the wishes of the majority of the Forum Reps and Social Care members!!!
I have lost count of the number of times that the Forum has taken a democratic vote on a specific issue, which has not been followed through. For example:
·1 Why has Mike Stapley (a Social Care Inspector who should be representing the interests of our Social Care brothers and sisters) been told that he cannot remain on the Forum after September – despite the majority of Forum reps wanting him to remain?
·2 Why has the National Health and Safety Rep (me) been prohibited from contacting all members nationally despite a majority vote?
·3 Why is there no constitution despite a majority vote to do this?
·4 Why, way back (years ago in fact) was London UNISON not invited to attend the meetings with management regarding London Allowance, despite my numerous formal requests to certain members of the Forum to do so! Instead it was left to certain Forum individuals (non London) to act and negotiate on our behalf - DESPITE my numerous requests to include our Lambeth Branch!
·5Why do I feel uncomfortable that some aspects of the Forum remind me of Ofsted Management!
·6Why do I feel confused regarding what/who is the Forum and what/who is Management!
·7Why are the concerns of the majority of the Forum reps completely ignored and not acted upon?
·9 Why are democratic votes of the forum being ignored?
By having our own Ofsted UNISON Branch, we can ensure that we are self governing and transparent, as opposed to, what is (in my opinion) the present completely unacceptable situation, whereby the Forum appears to be a law unto itself, makes its own decisions, is not transparent and is not democratic. We have lost some excellent Forum Reps because of this, and I believe that we will continue to lose reps until and unless those at National UNISON actually stop ignoring our complaints and do something about it.
I feel very strongly about this situation, as I do not believe, and have not believed for some time now, that the Forum is effective – due to it’s (in my opinion) dictatorial. Autocratic and beaurocratic approach.
Easy isn’t it folks…..represent our members to the fullest, work with the employer but do not be afraid to challenge the employer. After all, that’s why unions came into effect.
Posted by Roulla Xyrizos
5 comments:
I totally agree and endorse all of the comments from Roulla and I too am writing to the general secretary about these and other issues. It is also disgraceful that there will be no social care representation beyond September of this year. It is nonsense for some in Unison to say Unison is all things to all mankind. While I will support all colleagues in Unison social care members do have issues that are particular to them and members want to be supported by a social care rep be it me or someone else.
What an earth is going on here? Why are certain members of the National Forum are being ALLOWED to act in such an unforgiveable, unacceptable and totally outrageous manner? Who pays these people to sit in their positions and let each and every one of us down? They were NOT there for London members who were put on the coaching programme in Sept 06, they were NOT there for the London members who were suspended for 'cutting & pasting' in Nov 06, they were NOT there for London members who were victims of SEVERAL Data Protection breeches during the later part of 2006 and for most of 2007. Were where they when our London UNISON Rep was suspended in April 08? I'll tell you were they where shall I? They were sitting on their well paid backsides doing absolutely NOTHING!!! How do these people sleep at night? I would like to urge EVERY UNISON member to act now - lets get rid of these individuals and vote in an open, democratic manner for people who we KNOW have our best interests at heart. People who we KNOW will be there for us, people who we TRUST.
This is a very biased, one sided point of view which gives the impression that there are personal issues between strong personalities. This is very worrying as we should all be united. I also disagree with the airing of these personal issues on this blog. This gives us members the very wrong impression that the forum is not supporting us, which is totally untrue. Can we stop the bitchy remarks, stirring up discontent, and concentrate on uniting all members not dividing us in London from our brothers and sisters all over the country.
Could the message above have been sent by a 'friend' of the forum I wonder! The whole point of this blog is to allow members to voice their opinions - that is democracy! As a member of the London Region of UNISON, I see nothing 'personal' in these comments. What I see is that members have been offered a bum deal - and we all have a right to know that. The remarks made are not 'bithcy' however, if people want to continue to live in cloud cuckoo land - then carry on!
Wake up the preson who thinks this blog is being used by people to air their personal views and to be 'bitchy'.
This is called democracy, a chance for people to have an open debate, to voice their concerns, vent their frustrations and express their anger.
It's been a long time coming so lets get the facts out into the open.
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