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.