Preparation for the final Divisional Council meeting of 2015

I await the last USDAW Divisional Council meeting of 2015 on Wednesday 2nd December.

The Divisional Council need to select a delegate and a reserve for the TUC Black Workers Conference 2016. There are 5 nominations for this Conference.

We also need to select one delegate and one reserve for the TUC Young Workers Conference 2016. there are 79 people that we can consider so this will be a hard choice with so many candidates.

The Divisional council also needs to select members for the newly reformed divisional political committee.
there are thirteen nominations.
I'm not sure how many people we need to choose as this is not clear in the paperwork.
I have drawn up a list in order of preference which includes all thirteen nominations.

I will post a report after the Divisional Council Meeting.

USDAW Midlands Divisional Conference 21/11/2015 - 22/11/2015

On Saturday 21/11/2015 and sunday 22/11/2015 I attended the USDAW Midlands Divisional Conference at the Hilton Hotel Bromsgrove.

This was my first USDAW Divisional Conference as a member of the Divisional Council.

The conference went very well and the subjects we covered were very well received by all of the delegates.

Presentations were made to the Academy Organising officers and a few of the USDAW Organising awards Midlands Divisional winners were present.

It was good to see so many old friends and to make some new ones.

There was plenty of entertainment in the evening with lots of jokes and plenty of odd dancing on the dance floor.

There was a collection held which is to be split between MENCAP and the Salvation Army. The total figure wasn't know at the end of conference as the collection was still being counted up. Once the total figure is known I will update this post.

USDAW Midlands Divisional Conference paperwork

The paperwork for the USDAW Midlands Divisional Conference has arrived. 

The conference will be taking place on Saturday 21st November and Sunday 22nd November in Bromsgrove. 

The conference will cover " looking ahead to 2016 and USDAW's 125th anniversary year ".

There will also be two guest speakers - Zoey Purdy from men cap and lee Barron who is the Midlands regional secretary for the TUC. 

There will be two workshops run by our training officer Warren Scott. 

We will also be holding a presentstion for all the students who took part in the 2015 USDAW organising academy program. 

USDAW organising awards 2015.

The USDAW Midlands organising award winners have now been contacted and the winners names have been published.

I can now announce the winners for each category. 

Individual organising award - Claire Poole. 

Individual recruitment award - Joshua Halliwell. 

Team recruitment and organising award - Shaun Horton and Mark Hurn. 

Campaigns award - Nicola Hitch. 

Health and safety rep award - Linda Gray. 

Union learning rep award - Claire Poole. 

Equalities award - Paul White. 

Most promising new activist award - Julie Haycroft. 

Outstanding achievement award - Leslie Roulstone. 

I'm most excited about the outstanding achievement award, as I nominated Leslie Roulstone from my branch due to all the hard work he does keeping all the branch upto date with meetings, letters, news, union elections, conferences, courses, rule changes and sending this to us as soon as it arrives on his doorstep. Leslie has been retired for over 10 years but is still a very important member of our branch and committee. 

This award nomination was to show him how much we all appreciate his hard work. 

Congratulations Leslie and I hope you have a great night at the awards ceremony with your wife. 

I will post an update after the conference with a report on how the conference went. 

Divisional Council Meeting number six

Wednesday 28th October I attended my sixth Divisional Council meeting at the USDAW Redditch office. 

Apologies were received from:

Gareth Davies - Holiday
Jenny Chiltern

Kate MacLeod

Minutes from the previous DC meeting

We then read the minutes from the previous DC meeting. These were accepted. 

Minutes of the recent EC meeting

We received the EC Minutes from Maureen.

There is a proposed membership contribution increase for membership scales A and C.
As in previous years this will be debated and voted on at ADM.

Minutes from other Divisional Councils

We took a look at the minutes from other Divisional Councils. These were accepted. 

Central office circulars and press releases

We looked through a selection of circulars from central office and a selection of press releases. These were accepted. 

Federation reports

East Midlands

Thanks given to Alex Fraser and the office staff at Kegworth for organising and planning the event.
The federation school concentrated of pensions. The subject was well received by all in attendance.

There was a collection and food was brought and donated by the attendees. The food was given to a local food bank and the money went to the wounded soldiers benevolent fund.

West Midlands

Thanks given to the office staff at Redditch for planning and organising the federation school.

The subject was - Trade Union bill - redundancies and changes to contracts.

All attendees enjoyed the subject.

Divisional officers report
We received the Deputy Divisional officers report from Gavin Dadley.

Membership total  - 443,934 nationally and 57,802 divisional. 

Stand down - 169 reps since 1/1/2015

Who have signed up 1,841 new members. 

We received the Divisional officers report from Gavin Dadley.

(1) 9th - 13th November - Respect for shop workers week.

(2) Divisional Conference Saturday 21st November - Sunday 22nd October - Hilton Hotel Bromsgrove.

A guest speaker has been invited to attend. There will be a work shop on the Chain Makers Festival. There will be presentations to the 2015 Academy members.

The Divisional officers report was read and all points noted/endorsed.

Midlands Regional TUC 

There are four seats available on the TUC's regional committee in the Midlands.

Members of the Divisional council were asked to consider if they would like to take up one of the seats. 

We discussed this and nominees came forward and after a vote the following was agreed.

Gavin Dadley will take seat number 1 as our Divisional officer.

Ann Lloyd will take seat number 2.

Claire Thomas will take seat number 3.

Kate MacLeod will take seat number 4.

Ann Lloyd will be put forward for the womans reserved executive seat which is voted on by the whole of the regional TUC committee.

Simon Willmott will be a reserve should any of the above members not be able to attend a meeting.

USDAW Organising awards 2015

After several weeks of the Divisional Council members reading through the 108 USDAW Organising Awards nominations forms and many hours of re reading some of the forms - the time has come to vote for the person/team who we all think deserves to be the Midlands regional winners for each category.

We needed to pick one person/team for each of the 9 categories.

We all filled out our winners list and handed them into Gavin Dadley, Maureen Bowen and Andrea Watts who went to count up the votes and to see if there were any outright winners.

In a first for the Midlands one person had been selected to win two separate awards.

In another first for the Midlands in the Team Recruitment and Organising Award there were 9 teams selected, as each Divisional Councillor had voted for a different team. 

We then had a second round of voting which left us with three teams with the same number of votes.

We then had a third round of voting and an outright winner was selected.

All USDAW Organising Awards Regional winners have been contacted.

I have not named any of the winners in this report but I will do once the Divisional Conference has been held and the winners have been made public.

I have been lucky enough to be a regional award winner and the experience of the awards presentation is amazing so I send my congratulations to every category winner and I wish you all the best of luck and again well done to everyone who was nominated.

Any other Business

we then moved on to any other business.

I handed out a written report from the USDAW National Pensions conference.

A proposition has been sent into the Midlands Division for inclusion at the Divisional Conference. This was read, Discussed and agreed it would be included at the conference.

The meeting was then closed.